How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

The thing about a truck bomb is it is more complicated to deliver. It can carry a massive charge and be detonated precisely. But you have to assemble it and get it through a checkpoint. Then who it driving the truck? A suicide bomber, robotic system or an unwitting person with it detonated via special forces? I don't think a timer would be reliable is enough to risk an otherwise well planned mission on. BTW would the high angle of the bridge be a weak section? 

This isn't NYC in October 2001.  Russia is actively supplying military materiel across the bridge and you could either stick a triggering charge in an existing Russian shipment or forge a bill of lading for the truck that's something like "10 tons 152 mm HE shells.  Pleeze deliver to Nazi Ukrainians through Toobz.  From Russia with Love" and then it's not only ok that it's full of HE, but it's *supposed* to be full of HE.

[FancyCat]

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Hmm.  This is to follow very closely.  This is likely more important than the bridge.

Steve

 

[Letter from Prague]

37 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

What's the flight distance between the bridge and any likely launch point for Hrim-2, perhaps 500km? I doubt Ukraine would be so bold as to drive the missile right up to the Kherson front to fire it. The bridge may be beyond Hrim-2's range.

Odessa is about 470 km, Zaporizhzhia is about 300 km.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

They were parked there. No way they were ignited in the explosion and stopp on the spot.

Oh, forgot the important part. There are two spans down of the bridge (about 50-100m apart). Quite a puzzle how one explosion can cause that.

It's a single segment of roadway, or maybe a few that were better connected to each other than the next ones out, like a piece of Hot Wheels track, plopped over several piers.  I initially had the impression that they had done single segments to span each gap between piers, but it looks like longer segments that span several.  When you slam a hard force down in between two piers, bending it downward, it pulls the roadway longitudinally and yanks the road out of the end connectors.  It's why it has nice straight separations at the ends with just some rebar sticking out.  

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Zeleban said:

Another problem with the truck version is that the blast always takes the path of least resistance. If you blow up a truck with explosives on a bridge, most of the energy from the explosion will simply go up and the smallest part of the blast wave will affect the surface of the bridge.

Not quite.

You're correct that you suspend a bomb 3 feet above the roadway and blow it up, the roadway will reflect the 50% of the energy from the bomb that's going downward back upwards.  But all that energy goes downward first, and the roadway experiences a reaction force equal to the force reflecting back up.  And the roadway then deforms inelastically, turning a bunch of that energy into bent metal, concrete, and shredded end connectors, and a big splash.

[Beleg85]

Translation of an interview with commander of Ukrainian 14th Brigade, may be worth reading:

https://wartranslated.com/colonelohrimenko/

[OldSarge]

An AP article on the bridge and other related items.

Truck bomb hits bridge to Crimea, hurts Russian supply lines
 

A bit into the article is this announcement
 

Quote

Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would command all Russian troops in Ukraine. Surovikin, who over the summer was placed in charge of Russian troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo.

 

And a 'partial' civilian evacuation of the Kherson region
 

Quote

On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week, amid an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. Kirill Stremousov told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and their parents, as well as the elderly, could be relocated to two southern Russian regions because Kherson was getting “ready for a difficult period.”

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by OldSarge
Typos..

[kevinkin]

26 minutes ago, chrisl said:

This isn't NYC in October 2001.  Russia is actively supplying military materiel across the bridge and you could either stick a triggering charge in an existing Russian shipment or forge a bill of lading for the truck that's something like "10 tons 152 mm HE shells.  Pleeze deliver to Nazi Ukrainians through Toobz.  From Russia with Love" and then it's not only ok that it's full of HE, but it's *supposed* to be full of HE.

You are going with an unwitting person driving the truck detonated via special forces? Or a suicide bomber knowing what they are about to do? 

While its interesting to speculate how it happened (tactics to be used elsewhere), the fact it did happen is more important. Let's see how this one is spun and where the blame is pointed. 

[sross112]

3 hours ago, Pete Wenman said:

Loads of speculation here and elsewhere (no surprise)

But lets try a different angle - what can we gleen from this image - not the CCTV footage but the wider image

 

We appear to be in a CCTV monitoring room. It's being filmed by a phone or equivalent and has been released into the public domain. Who is this content meant for.

The camera (looks to be fixed)and  is showing pretty much the exact spot the explosion occurred.

It seems an odd location for a typical CCTV, and so you assume this is part of the bridge defence network, with the camera not monitoring traffic flow, but the actual bridge structure.

Above the main screen appears to composite views showing 18 other camera views

It seems the footage is being watched after the event as there is little emotion in the voices that can be heard

@Grigb - Can you translate 

On the video itself 

The wave seen in the video under the span closest to right screen edge is being suggested as a boat by some, but the explosion and span that collapses is the other side of the nearest bridge support. 

It could be the wake from a fast moving boat that goes under the next span/rams the next bridge support, or it could just be a wave.

The explosion itself seems not so much a flash and bang, but rather to be a flash and burn with something on the right being a smoke source for some several seconds - can be seen in the video around the 45 second mark.

Disclaimer - I have no real idea what I'm talking about, but there are some interesting aspects to this video.

 

P

I find this part very interesting as well. Why was someone in the Russian control center taking a cell phone video of a CCTV monitor on the exact spot of the explosion at the time of the explosion? And then no real excited "Holy **** what just happened!?!?" from the viewers. To me this is the strangest part of it all.

As for the timing with the train, in the first videos you can see the train is stopped on the bridge. The cars and trucks are moving but the train isn't. Why it would be stopped there is beyond me but I don't know much about railway habits.

The truck bomb theory is the easiest and makes the most sense to me. I think we would all agree that the US is slightly ahead of Russia in technology. There would also be an argument that the professionalism of US custom agents and border patrol would probably be better than their counterparts over there. Literally tons of drugs and who knows what else come across the southern border all the time and don't get caught. If they can get that through, a thousand pounds of explosives past the Russians can't be that hard with the levels of corruption and uncaring attitudes we have seen in their society and government. Also, the SBU has had 8 years to plan these sorts of events. When it comes to the trucking industry a lot of the drivers have no idea what is in the trailer. They can tell you what is on their bill of lading but they just hooked on in the morning and took off. Someone else loaded it and gave them the bill and the destination. Also like others have pointed out, explosives in large quantities moving to a war zone wouldn't be out of place so all that is really needed to be concealed is the detonation device and not the whole cargo/bomb. 

The Hrim-2 theory is possible but the problem I see with that is a lack of any kind of video evidence 12 hours later. Just in the CCTV room from what we could see there were at least 18 cameras on the bridge. To not have any glimpse of anything is possible but doesn't seem probable. Then looking at the 20 defense initiatives to protect the bridge you would think there would be something somewhere that would have detected an incoming missile. 

Someone earlier talked about the speed of the bridge construction, corruption effects and probability of it not being as sturdy as it should. When looking at the road bridge and the multiple section collapse from the side you see the support piers shifted. So the blast was big enough to buckle the span, the movement of the span shifted the pier and then a domino effect on the other piers causing the other end of the span to drop? 

So without further evidence I'm casting a vote for truck bomb.

[Beleg85]

Damn...

 

[TheVulture]

4 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I find this part very interesting as well. Why was someone in the Russian control center taking a cell phone video of a CCTV monitor on the exact spot of the explosion at the time of the explosion? And then no real excited "Holy **** what just happened!?!?" from the viewers. To me this is the strangest part of it all.

One of the other clips of what looks like the same phone footage from that room looking at those screen starts off with a second or two of the vehicles moving backwards on the bridge, making it look a lot more like they are reviewing the CCTV footage shortly after the incident to try and figure out what happened.

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think we can be assured that Ukraine planned this way in advance.  What they almost definitely did is plotted numerous target points and calculated flight times for each one.  Math geeks would have figured out the average speed of a train and average length.

That calculation is not even rocket science

[sross112]

3 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

One of the other clips of what looks like the same phone footage from that room looking at those screen starts off with a second or two of the vehicles moving backwards on the bridge, making it look a lot more like they are reviewing the CCTV footage shortly after the incident to try and figure out what happened.

Ahhh, that would make a lot more sense! Thanks!

16 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

You are going with an unwitting person driving the truck detonated via special forces? Or a suicide bomber knowing what they are about to do? 

While its interesting to speculate how it happened (tactics to be used elsewhere), the fact it did happen is more important. Let's see how this one is spun and where the blame is pointed. 

Definitely unwitting. Much easier for them to get through any checkpoints. They have no knowledge of what is in the load or the mission so they won't have any signs of nervousness or stress when dealing with the officials. 

[Letter from Prague]

It certainly feels suspicious. Nobody swearing in videos, everyone is calm, train was stopped there for no reason and it got fixed very quickly. I'm getting Nordstream vibes.

[Bulletpoint]

18 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I find this part very interesting as well. Why was someone in the Russian control center taking a cell phone video of a CCTV monitor on the exact spot of the explosion at the time of the explosion? And then no real excited "Holy **** what just happened!?!?" from the viewers. To me this is the strangest part of it all.

Might have been filmed after the event. They rewound the footage already knowing what happened, so no shocked reaction.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[akd]

16 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I find this part very interesting as well. Why was someone in the Russian control center taking a cell phone video of a CCTV monitor on the exact spot of the explosion at the time of the explosion? And then no real excited "Holy **** what just happened!?!?" from the viewers. To me this is the strangest part of it all.

They are playing back a recording…

[FancyCat]

Shame.

Anyone want to give more missiles to Ukraine?

I mean the red line is broken now....

Edited October 8, 2022 by FancyCat

[chrisl]

35 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

You are going with an unwitting person driving the truck detonated via special forces? Or a suicide bomber knowing what they are about to do? 

While its interesting to speculate how it happened (tactics to be used elsewhere), the fact it did happen is more important. Let's see how this one is spun and where the blame is pointed. 

Or unwitting person driving a truck full of legitimate explosives with an extra little timed/GPS triggered gift inside.

How it was triggered it TBD.  But probably the truck, and probably with clean paperwork "official Russian explosives" on the paper not "bad nazi ukrainian explosives" with paperwork that says "washing machines and toilet paper"

[MSBoxer]

33 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Damn...

 

This video looks off.  Typically track is not ballested on bridges. It is embedded directly in concrete as seen on this previous picture of the bridge https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.unian.info/society/amp-10586211-russian-occupation-forces-build-first-rail-track-on-kerch-strait-bridge-photo.html

 

Of course this may have been done as a temporary fix, but I still have my doubts that this is from the bridge.

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by MSBoxer

[keas66]

Just now, MSBoxer said:

This video looks off.  Typically track is not ballested on bridges. It is embedded directly in concrete as serum on this previous picture of the bridge https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.unian.info/society/amp-10586211-russian-occupation-forces-build-first-rail-track-on-kerch-strait-bridge-photo.html

 

Of course this may have been done as a temporary fix, but I still have my doubts that this is from the bridge.

 

 

 

Well - Does it even matter ?  Ukraine has decided that the Kerch Bridge is now a target - I would expect them to be continuing to target said bridge much like they have continued to target other Military Targets . If the Bridge is now  100% down - one would expect further attacks to make it reach that state .

[chrisl]

6 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

This video looks off.  Typically track is not ballested on bridges. It is embedded directly in concrete as seen on this previous picture of the bridge https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.unian.info/society/amp-10586211-russian-occupation-forces-build-first-rail-track-on-kerch-strait-bridge-photo.html

 

Of course this may have been done as a temporary fix, but I still have my doubts that this is from the bridge.

 

 

 

Or could be at the beginning/end where it's back on land with ties and ballast.

[Zeleban]

 

Some action from the front to spice up your big bang theories

[Der Zeitgeist]

6 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Or could be at the beginning/end where it's back on land with ties and ballast.

The bridge has gravel below the tracks. It's easy to compare with older images. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Der Zeitgeist

[sburke]

22 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Well - Does it even matter ?  Ukraine has decided that the Kerch Bridge is now a target 

yep I think this is more the point.  It was just demonstrated that the entirety of the southern front is not much better than Kherson.  It is a spectacular psyop mission regardless of how long the bridge is actually out of service. They just made Putin look phenomenally weak... on his birthday.  Another hammer blow to Russian morale and an encouragement to all the Russians and pro Russians in Crimea to utilize what remains of that bridge to leave now.

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

Damn...

 

So could be propaganda faked to reassure scared RU folks?  I would love to see stampede of folks out of Crimea back to RU.  Will make the demographic issue less difficult if UKR retakes that area.

Let's say it's truck bomb.  And let's assume the perpetrators are still in the area, just waiting for another chance to put a bomb on another vehicle or train, and they pull off another one of these.  This could get to be really fun as every single shipment has to be checked top to bottom.  Heck, that's nearly as good as knocking out the bridge.