How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

43 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

I thought about this too, the luckiest driver, and the unluckiest. At least it was quick.

58 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I give the Russian mil bloggers way more credibility than I do the Russian government.  Hell, even the Russian mil bloggers don't think the Russian government says anything that's true.

Under water at the moment.  I doubt Russia will provide us with any good shots to look at.  Though they have been known to do dumber things, so maybe they will!

Steve

Which is more than we can say for the random batch of sad sacks the FSB is going. to torture to into confessing to this thing. Bleep me I hope they are guilty of something.

[paxromana]

35 minutes ago, Fenris said:

As there was a clip of the "almighty will be better than anything ever seen before or since (amen)"  T-14 the other day I'll quietly slip this one in here for any that are interested.

AbramsX Technology Demonstrator

Says it's a hybrid, I wonder if it can do pure electric for little bits - would certainly be quieter than the howling T-14 if what we saw the other day was real.

I wonder. As I understand it the smaller crew(s) of modern Russian vs NATO tanks have been problematic as it means the Russians have substantially the same amount of maintenance that has to be done at a single vehicle level and fewer crew to do it, and that this has had a noticeable impact on operational levels ... made worse, no doubt, by the general rubbish base reliability of Russian systems coupled with a society wide shortage of mechanics and electronic techs.

So, if the Abrams-X reduces the number of crew and increases the degree of automation, some of which will not be 'user serviceable' and which still retains the need for a lot of grunt and muscle work for the mechanical things, this will cause operational maintenance bottlenecks!

Perhap not as bad as for the Russians, but still less reliable than the current fully crewed versions.

Edited October 10, 2022 by paxromana

[dan/california]

Read the whole thread, there are opinions in it about domestic politics, you were warned..

[chrisl]

25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

BTW, there is a third span that got damaged.  I noticed it earlier today and forgot to add it to my list of known facts about the damage.  The span appears to be two BEFORE the one that the explosion happened.  Look to the far left of the first picture and you can see another separation.  It's also visible in the second picture as well as seeing a dip in the section in the third picture.

Not sure what happened there.  Looks similar to the one ahead of the explosion, but I can't see what allowed it to separate.  The one ahead of the explosion separated because the other end slipped laterally off its pier.  That didn't happen to the span in question.   Looks like the lamp posts were stripped off as well.  Yet we saw two vehicles survive the blast and they should have been marooned between the blast span and the one I'm pointing to, yet they aren't seen in the pictures.  How'd they recover them so quickly?  A bit of a head scratcher!

Whatever caused the failure, this was quite a ways away from the explosion.tcher.

That's the end of the "hot wheels segment" that blew.  The whole thing can slide longitudinally - the expansion joints have to work that way.  So there was either an actual expansion joint there, like in this picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_joint#/media/File:BridgeExpansionJoint.jpg or the segment was otherwise only weakly tied to the next one.  The longitudinal beams might not have even been fastened at all to the next ones, to allow for expansion.  They probably should have had slots or pins to keep the road segments aligned laterally, but there may have been no slotted plates and bolts to prevent vertical motion - as long as the beams are the same dimensions and the pans are the same dimensions and they're sitting on a common bearing, gravity should keep them even.  So when the whole strip got yanked toward the explosion, that part moved enough to fall off the bearing and land in the water.  And that one went straight down.

I think both of those vehicles stopped short of the dropped segment - the car next to the vanishing truck was the second unluckiest person in Kerch that day. The following truck and car each braked when they saw the explosion, and it looks like both sets of brake lights stop, rather than falling in.

When I counted lamposts in the video along the road side, it looks like about 8-10 lampposts from the exploding truck to the following car and truck - the perspective makes it tricky to tell exactly where they're even with the posts.  But both vehicles are on the hairy edge of being in the wrong spot.  We see their brake lights come on, and they stay on to the end of what got posted.  So they don't seem to have ended up on the isolated segment.

[Kinophile]

@Haiduk....? 

[Zeleban]

11 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

@Haiduk....? 

Yes. A missile attack on the center of Kyiv has just been launched. It's rush hour and there are a lot of people... The bastard takes revenge for his broken toy

[Zeleban]

 

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

If it's a clean hole it's a missile.

If it impacted.  The span structure is relatively thin between the longitudinal beams. But The explosion is absolutely massive, with a lot of water airborne water, mixed in after so I'm suspicious that a lot of the blast force maybe missed any proper,  heavy structure. 

[Kinophile]

1 minute ago, Zeleban said:

 

Thank you. Man, what a prick. Still, unless they hit Zaluzhny UKR will be ok, in the long run. 

[Zeleban]

I hear loud pops. These are our air defense missiles that shoot down targets.

[Zeleban]

This is a repeated rocket attack on Kyiv

Edited October 10, 2022 by Zeleban

[Kinophile]

Rough as it is, the UA is going to kill a lot more RUS soldiers today, tomorrow and afterwards until every goddamn Ivan is gone. 

Cold comfort to the affected Kyiv families, there's going to be some terrible tragedies tonight. My heart goes out to them.

[Zeleban]

 

[Zeleban]

Third missile launch reported from the Caspian Sea

[mosuri]

Eastern Finland residents report odd light in the eastern sky (google translate link):

https://www-hs-fi.translate.goog/kotimaa/art-2000009123868.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Rocket launches are occasionally visible (SLBM launch seen in Norway a few years ago was reported internationally) but would be interesting to know more details on this one.

EDIT: Plesetsk cosmodrome had a scheduled GLONASS satellite launch, so probably that: https://www.rocketlaunchschedule.com/russian-space-forces-soyuz-2-1b-fregat-glonass-k1-no-17/

Edited October 10, 2022 by mosuri

[Zeleban]

 

[Zeleban]

 

[chrisl]

29 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

If it impacted.  The span structure is relatively thin between the longitudinal beams. But The explosion is absolutely massive, with a lot of water airborne water, mixed in after so I'm suspicious that a lot of the blast force maybe missed any proper,  heavy structure. 

We do know that there's a hole in the deck approximately where the truck was - we've seen it from behind.

The start of this video (and again about 3/4 through) have shots down the deck to where the hole should be right around the waterline and the surface looks remarkably smooth, though there's something just below the waterline on the left (either bridge parts or truck parts?).  Tides in the straight are apparently only ~5 cm, so it shouldn't be getting covered and uncovered.

 

[Zeleban]

My electricity goes out intermittently. Looks like they're hitting power plants.

[Probus]

9 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

 

Zeleban thank you for keeping us updated on this attack.  I hope all forum members from Ukraine will let us know they're OK.

[Zeleban]

To be honest, I don't understand what Putin is trying to achieve. Intimidation doesn't work. We have already gone through this, at the very beginning of the war there were similar attacks on the residential areas of Kyiv and this only caused an increase in hatred towards the Russians. I think the only result of these attacks will be an increase in military assistance to Ukraine.

[Zeleban]

Again I hear air explosions. Air defense works. It reminds me of the very beginning of the war

Edited October 10, 2022 by Zeleban

[FancyCat]

3 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

To be honest, I don't understand what Putin is trying to achieve. Intimidation doesn't work. We have already gone through this, at the very beginning of the war there were similar attacks on the residential areas of Kyiv and this only caused an increase in hatred towards the Russians. I think the only result of these attacks will be an increase in military assistance to Ukraine.

They took the wrong lessons from Chechnya and Syria.

 

 

[Zeleban]

 

[Zeleban]

13 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

To be honest, I don't understand what Putin is trying to achieve. Intimidation doesn't work. We have already gone through this, at the very beginning of the war there were similar attacks on the residential areas of Kyiv and this only caused an increase in hatred towards the Russians. I think the only result of these attacks will be an increase in military assistance to Ukraine.

 

Although, to be honest, I know. For comments like this. Russians rejoice in social networks shelling residential areas of Kyiv. Finally, they waited for revenge for the Crimean bridge.