How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So whoever put the labels on is a little off.  What they label as “First Trench” is an AT ditch, they even have left the berm up.  The “Second Line” is the fighting position.

It is a textbook complex obstacle, assuming mines all along those dragons teeth and ditch.  That monster, when sighted and covered would make for an entire breaching op to assault.  Of course one needs more than 10km of it on this terrain, unless there is a swamp somewhere to tie it into.

What is interesting is that the UA did not appear to go this way on the defence.  Likely because they did not have the resources, however, they were still able to stop the RA advances cold.  Another oddity in this war.

There must be more to it. They had 8 years in front of Donetsk. 

[chrisl]

7 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

That's just the wind direction.,no? Standard stuff wind in a coastal strait type. 

And it’s molten pieces of ice from the bridge hitting the water and splashing all that molten ice from under the bridge into the air.

[Artkin]

51 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

That's just the wind direction.,no? Standard stuff wind in a coastal strait type. 

The wind is pushing those little fragments? No way. The cars would be flying off the bridge first. 

Those fragments have little to no surface area if theyre solid. What else could they be? Thermite chunks? I'd believe it then. 

[Vet 0369]

On 10/11/2022 at 6:12 PM, cesmonkey said:

So this is what Elon Musk is in legal jeopardy for?
 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953

Also, if the U.S. Government charges Musk under this law, they will be able to charge other violators, who world have immediately accused the U.S. of discrimination, under the same law (looking at you Dennis Rodman).

[Kinophile]

4 hours ago, akd said:

Part of the truck lodged on the bridge structure:

 

No (or too little) rebar in a primary load bearing structure, built on unreliable and quake prone ground conditions.

That aggregate looks off too. 

TiR. 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]

11 minutes ago, Artkin said:

The wind is pushing those little fragments? No way. The cars would be flying off the bridge first. 

Those fragments have little to no surface area if theyre solid. What else could they be? Thermite chunks? I'd believe it then. 

? 

Yes wind.  Stiff littoral breeze.  Termite chunks would rapidly descend. It's wind pushing water droplets/spray from both the blast and the road segments hitting the water surface. 

[Kinophile]

57 minutes ago, chrisl said:

And it’s molten pieces of ice from the bridge hitting the water and splashing all that molten ice from under the bridge into the air.

Molten ice..... You jest, sir. 

[chrisl]

Just now, Kinophile said:

Molten ice..... You jest, sir. 

Ice is a mineral if you live in a cold place. Water is molten ice.

[Kinophile]

2 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Ice is a mineral if you live in a cold place. Water is molten ice.

I know, I was playing along

[chrisl]

1 minute ago, Kinophile said:

I know, I was playing along

But about those termite chunks…I don’t think there’s any wood in the bridge.

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, akd said:

Part of the truck lodged on the bridge structure:

 

Those bit and piece parts of the truck suspension are the most convincing thing I have seen as far as it being a truck bomb. I do have a few questions. Are they visible in any of the earliest photos? Also is it just me or do some of those bits look like they were unbolted instead of ripped off? I would expect a great of deformation in the bolt holes of that hub on the bottom right, at the very least. Really none of it looks like it was explosively disassembled. If it was ground zero when the hammer of god paid a visit it wouldn't look like that, the axle itself would be bent when the bomb smashed the suspension down. They are also trying to sell me that the wheel came off with wrecking the lug nuts, the more I look the more it looks wrong. Just asking questions? Unlike a lot of things I pontificate on, broken heavy machinery is an area of real professional experience. Kind of like the stuck rusted out bolts, my god that brings back nightmares.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So obstacles such as these are force multipliers, much like artillery.  The idea being that you can hold broader frontages with fewer forces because the cost of obstacle breaching is so much higher for the attacker force-wise.  Theoretically, all the Russians really need is sufficient artillery and ISR with fewer troops on the ground, spaced in hard points with AT and radios.  Even lower quality troops would do along defensive belts like this.  

Problem for RA is twofold- first as I outlined earlier is whether or not UA will play by the old rules - which I doubt, they have not so far.  Second is the frontages they are covering, even with these belts is truly immense.  Even with the Kharkiv contraction it still looks like 400km along the L-D-Z line, which is still near Western Front levels.  Even with the best obstacle belts in the world, assuming the UA allows the RA the months to build them, that is going to require a lot of artillery and manpower - one has to have the initial troops to multiply. And the ISR architecture to cover all that in near real time.

Lastly there is the logistical problem.  That is literally millions of mines weighing thousands of tons to make those belts work and the UA keep hitting ammo dumps in depth and the trucks that move them.  

Russian game appears to be driving up cost of retaking ground in hopes to deter UA, might work but the RA would need months and a lot of resources to pull it off.  I doubt the UA will give them that time.  Of course obstacle belts are also very good at canalizations of enemy forces…so if we are still talking tac nukes it could be a set up for that but only if the UA is dumb enough to mass in a convenient KZ.

 My guess is that the UA might not even need to assault these lines, they will just continue to deep strike logistical lines until the RA folds inward and then walk over them.  It is clear that the Russians are playing by the old playbook, same one we would use.  The UA is writing a new one.  How those rulesets play out in this particular collision is still somewhat up in the air.

So they are building this behind their current lines, creating a very limited number of places their forces can pass through to take up new positions. With the AFU having drones, Himars, and apparently mines that be delivered by HIMARS? I do hope we get video of how this brilliant plan works out.

Edited October 13, 2022 by dan/california

[sross112]

30 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Those bit and piece parts of the truck suspension are the most convincing thing I have seen as far as it being a truck bomb. I do have a few questions. Are they visible in any of the earliest photos? Also is it just me or do some of those bits look like they were unbolted instead of ripped off? I would expect a great of deformation in the bolt holes of that hub on the bottom right, at the very least. Really none of it looks like it was explosively disassembled. If it was ground zero when the hammer of god paid a visit it wouldn't look like that, the axle itself would be bent when the bomb smashed the suspension down. They are also trying to sell me that the wheel came off with wrecking the lug nuts, the more I look the more it looks wrong. Just asking questions? Unlike a lot of things I pontificate on, broken heavy machinery is an area of real professional experience. Kind of like the stuck rusted out bolts, my god that brings back nightmares.

Those bottom two pictures I think are just for reference to show people what the mangled stuff in the top two pics is. At least that is how I interpret it, otherwise, yes I'm with you that there is no way those are from a blown up truck.

32 minutes ago, dan/california said:

So they are building this behind their current lines, creating a very limited number of places their forces can pass through to take up new positions. With the AFU having drones, Himars, and apparently mines that be delivered by HIMARS? I do hope we get video of how this brilliant plan works out.

@The_Capt above talks about how this is the conventional way of doing a defensive belt, but I'm with you in that I don't see it being an advantage in this war. Just by looking at how things that we've noted for a couple thousand pages have been done differently and the ISR advantage the UA has this looks like a good way to get lots of RA troops killed. 

The UA used fortified hard points and bunkers for years but they weren't facing the PGM capability that the RA is. I'm still trying to work through it in my head but if you were defending against an opponent that had superior ISR and PGMs I'd think your only viable option is to very very mobile. Any soldiers in fixed positions need to be dug in really really deep and kept well dispersed. Any vehicles or exposed pillboxes will just get hammered.

As the UA I don't think you even really try to attack it. I think you just sit back and hammer targets. Turn it into an attritional game and capitalize on your ISR, PGM and range advantages. Let the RA feed as much into the defense as they are willing to lose. Wait until there is nothing worth wasting an arty shell on and then walk through.

[sross112]

8 hours ago, Billy Ringo said:

Two can play at this game.  And my money is on the Ukrainians to more rapidly and efficiently restore power.  Not to mention have more access to replacement/repair parts which could become a major issue if Russia is dependent on western sourced supplies.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/major-fire-breaks-out-at-power-substation-in-russia-s-belgorod-ukraine-war-50276055.html

Someone posted pics of this earlier and I was thinking the same thing. If Russia depends on the west for so much of it's technology type products I'm betting they don't make their own transformers and big electrical grid stuff. How much do they have on hand for replacements before places go dark and stay dark?  

[dan/california]

16 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Someone posted pics of this earlier and I was thinking the same thing. If Russia depends on the west for so much of it's technology type products I'm betting they don't make their own transformers and big electrical grid stuff. How much do they have on hand for replacements before places go dark and stay dark?  

Russia being ruzzia they would strip low priority areas bare to keep Moscow's lights on. That would give some already very unhappy places another thing to stew over. Saddam use to do that, some incredible percentage of the whole countries electrical output went to Baghdad. Everybody else got to sweat in the dark. 

[JonS]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

In this war 10km is a bit close for a major obstacle belt project like this.  You build stuff like this at least an operational bound to the rear, so 20-30kms out of indirect fire range…well before HIMARs and the like.

Aye, the tone of the tweet though was "lulz, silly russians. They're just giving away 10km!"

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So obstacles such as these are force multipliers, much like artillery.  The idea being that you can hold broader frontages with fewer forces because the cost of obstacle breaching is so much higher for the attacker force-wise.  Theoretically, all the Russians really need is sufficient artillery and ISR with fewer troops on the ground, spaced in hard points with AT and radios.  Even lower quality troops would do along defensive belts like this.  

Yup, buuuuuuuut...

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 My guess is that the UA might not even need to assault these lines, they will just continue to deep strike logistical lines until the RA folds inward and then walk over them.

It's even worse than that for Russia.  They are increasingly coming up short on heavy weaponry.  Due to the scale of what they have to defend they will not have the full range of capabilities or depth needed to defend against a deliberate attack in more than a few places.  The rest will be sitting ducks with little capability to respond in a meaningful way.  Any breach is going to be a problem for the Russians to seal off, which means Ukraine simply has to strike where Russia is weak and stronger points will be compelled to fold or die in place.

I'm also not so sure how much benefit the defenses provide for the untrained masses that Russia is pushing into the front.  Picture a defensive line that is manned by 90 mobiks, under armed and way too few for the frontage.  Now picture them under precision attack for a couple of nights.  Now there's 70 mobiks with a few less heavy weapons. Ukraine blares a message over loudspeakers that they have one more night to either surrender or evacuate their position by morning.  How many might bolt?  Wouldn't take much for the manpower level to be below what is needed to put up even a decent fight. Even if none leave, they are going to be looking over their shoulder just as much as out front.

I've played this sort of thing out in Combat Mission where the defender just doesn't have enough resources to hold an otherwise good defensive line.  If they don't score some early hits on the attacker, they will lose the battle. Which is where the shortage of good infantry and proper support weapons comes in.  Russia's ability to score those early hits is questionable.

We can see this in Kherson.  Russia had months to prepare and did so, to the extent of making concrete fortifications.  They used their best remaining units and the troop density appears to be decent compared to other sectors.  Terrain favorable for defense as well.  But they've lost a great deal of territory already and are struggling to keep from losing more.

And lastly, Russia never does anything full arsed.  Which means there's going to be plenty of places for Ukraine to push through without too much difficulty.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

39 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Someone posted pics of this earlier and I was thinking the same thing. If Russia depends on the west for so much of it's technology type products I'm betting they don't make their own transformers and big electrical grid stuff. How much do they have on hand for replacements before places go dark and stay dark?  

Germany totally flubbed this in WW2.  Tankgorod (as it was called) relied upon electricity from only a couple of plants.  There was no grid to speak of, so knocking even one out would have been very disruptive to production.  At the time their turbines came from the United States IIRC.  The estimate I remember was about 1 year to replace a destroyed turbine.  Yet Germany didn't (apparently) even try to take one out.  It would have been very difficult, granted, but with all of Nazi Germany's innovations and imagination I think they could have come up with something.

Steve

[dan/california]

I would love to know where that ditching operation is relative to this map.

 

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, akd said:

Part of the truck lodged on the bridge structure:

 

This guy's analysis is pretty damned good.  His theory of how the bridge pieces came to be where they are is probably spot on.  He's ruled out a bunch of stuff very convincingly, similar to what we've done here.  He's narrowed it down to either a truck bomb or a missile, same as here.  And there's where he made a mistake.

He looked at ATACAMS and dismissed it because the warhead wouldn't make such a huge explosion and impact on the bridge.  We've seen what similar missiles have done on the Dnepr and none of them did anything like this amount of damage.  I had the same feeling about ATACAMS from the start, including that if Ukraine had access to them they'd likely have access to more than one and would have launched a series of them.  While we can't rule out misses smashing into the water, I doubt a salvo of 6 would produce 1 hit and 2-5 misses.

The mistake is that ruling out ATACAMS led him to conclude it was a truck.  That would be OK if he explored Hrim-2 theory, but he didn't even mention it.  Since this missile has an even longer range than ATACMS and a warhead big enough to do this sort of damage, he needs to address it and explain why he doesn't think it's in the mix of possibilites.

The little bit of that massive truck was a good find.  However, like so much of the evidence we've seen all it does is confirm the obvious.  Which is the truck was effectively at the center of the explosion no matter what caused it.  Plus, the deck below it dropped into the water, therefore nearly all of the truck is below the surface and we don't know much about what is left of it.  I suspect not much based on the one bit that is visible.

A minor quibble I have is about the supposed oil stains.  I don't know what they are, but I doubt they came from truck parts.  First of all, that's a big, concentrated stain caused by many liters of liquid (oil or otherwise).  I don't know what it is, but I think it's either unrelated or something other than what he's theorized it being.  But it's a minor quibble because it doesn't matter.

I'm still leaning towards Hrim-2, but not so much that I dismiss the possibility it was a truck.  The facts as we know them today support either, with small question marks for each possibility.  Yup, the truck theory has some inconsistencies that need to be resolved as does Hrim-2.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, Artkin said:

If it was a missile it must have been something pretty advanced, I imagine "dumb" ordinance would have smashed right through the bridge and into the water before it exploded, considering the velocity it was carrying. If it exploded on impact the road would have been totally annihilated. I didn't see chunks of asphalt all over the road. The footbridge in Kiev for instance was completely covered with it.

I didn't know they had missiles with airburst tech, that's something new to consider.

I should qualify my previous post on this.  I also don't know if it could airburst.  What I should have said is that the span going to Russia appears to have been damaged by an explosion at a significant height above the road surface.  I know it's a long shot, but it could have hit the truck and detonated above the surface because of it.

As for the previous discussion about the direction of the blast seeming to go to the "right" (towards the Russian bound span).  The explosion would have favored the "right" because of the prevailing strong winds whether it be Hrim-2 or truck bomb.  However, the Hrim-2 vector is

Steve

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

A minor quibble I have is about the supposed oil stains.  I don't know what they are, but I doubt they came from truck parts.  First of all, that's a big, concentrated stain caused by many liters of liquid (oil or otherwise).  I don't know what it is, but I think it's either unrelated or something other than what he's theorized it being.  But it's a minor quibble because it doesn't matter.

There was a  tanker train on fire in the vicinity. A lot of scope for making a mess there.

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

There was a  tanker train on fire in the vicinity. A lot of scope for making a mess there.

Yup.  In fact, you can see the rail car leaks igniting and causing what appears to be secondary explosions on the road, but really is just burning fuel hitting it.  At least that's my take on it after looking at both videos about a hundred times

BTW, the shower of sparks is definitely something burning.  In one video you can see the pieces burn a little bit after they hit the road.  However, this could be the contents of the truck as it was fully loaded with something and we don't know what it is.  The Russian information about the truck, so far, is a big fat lie.

Steve

[chrisl]

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This guy's analysis is pretty damned good.  His theory of how the bridge pieces came to be where they are is probably spot on.  He's ruled out a bunch of stuff very convincingly, similar to what we've done here.  He's narrowed it down to either a truck bomb or a missile, same as here.  And there's where he made a mistake.

He looked at ATACAMS and dismissed it because the warhead wouldn't make such a huge explosion and impact on the bridge.  We've seen what similar missiles have done on the Dnepr and none of them did anything like this amount of damage.  I had the same feeling about ATACAMS from the start, including that if Ukraine had access to them they'd likely have access to more than one and would have launched a series of them.  While we can't rule out misses smashing into the water, I doubt a salvo of 6 would produce 1 hit and 2-5 misses.

The mistake is that ruling out ATACAMS led him to conclude it was a truck.  That would be OK if he explored Hrim-2 theory, but he didn't even mention it.  Since this missile has an even longer range than ATACMS and a warhead big enough to do this sort of damage, he needs to address it and explain why he doesn't think it's in the mix of possibilites.

The little bit of that massive truck was a good find.  However, like so much of the evidence we've seen all it does is confirm the obvious.  Which is the truck was effectively at the center of the explosion no matter what caused it.  Plus, the deck below it dropped into the water, therefore nearly all of the truck is below the surface and we don't know much about what is left of it.  I suspect not much based on the one bit that is visible.

A minor quibble I have is about the supposed oil stains.  I don't know what they are, but I doubt they came from truck parts.  First of all, that's a big, concentrated stain caused by many liters of liquid (oil or otherwise).  I don't know what it is, but I think it's either unrelated or something other than what he's theorized it being.  But it's a minor quibble because it doesn't matter.

I'm still leaning towards Hrim-2, but not so much that I dismiss the possibility it was a truck.  The facts as we know them today support either, with small question marks for each possibility.  Yup, the truck theory has some inconsistencies that need to be resolved as does Hrim-2.

Steve

I agree his analysis is pretty good.  But so far it's clear that all the explody and structury people have never put a camera in a vacuum chamber with a strobe light and a water spray.  Little droplets can be very bright.

The structure of the bridge is why only that one edge is bent down on the adjacent deck.  Each deck looks like it's basically a sheet of thick steel, like the steel plates your local road department uses over trenches, laid across a bunch (looks like 10) of longitudinal box-section beams that run parallel to the road.  At the outer edge of each deck, outside the big rails that support the struts linked to the cross-beams, there are two smaller stiffening elements that look like they're just long strips of plate, probably the same thickness as the deck and not nearly as tall as the big boxes. Those will have very little lateral rigidity compared to the box beams.   The picture from underneath shows this well. 

When the pressure wave hit the adjacent deck, the asphalt has very little strength in tension as it's getting blown up like a balloon.  The shock front is moving fast enough that the air can't get out of the way fast enough to "roll" across the span and it stays a spherical shock front. The asphalt isn't very strong in tension, so it doesn't do much to keep the steel underneath from flexing, and the load is coming from an angle that the road wasn't designed for - the shock front hits it like a big ball bearing from up and to the side, so flexes the deck down and the smaller vertical "rails" more sideways, where they have no strength.  The combination of a stiffer deck and further distance from the center of the explosion makes the bending less dramatic once you get in a little ways from the edge.

And while I'm still in the truck camp, I won't totally rule out a missile (though there don't seem to be any missile parts around).  The explosion seems to have come from the left side of the truck, possibly from something that wasn't sitting on the floor of the truck (about 2m off the deck).  It could be that the explosive was stacked up, but it could also be that a missile hit the upper left side of the truck.  Given the bridge construction, I suspect people are overestimating how much HE it would take to flex it in the middle enough to pull the ends in and let gravity do a lot of the work.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

A question on the dragon's teeth we've been seeing.

If they really want to adopt that along the front, what does that look like, logistically? Where are they getting them in the first place? And then they still need to get the hefty buggers trucked around to where they are needed. That is a big task for a logistical system not exactly wow-ing anyone.

It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to to get a low rent Maginot Line that the Russians cannot adequately man and that the Ukrainian artillery can systematically dismantle the strong-points of whenever they please. And that is assuming the Ukrainians won't simply drive through the "Ardennes".

 

[chuckdyke]

From 2nd strongest army in the world down to the 2nd strongest army in the Ukraine. The reason not the 3rd strongest army in the Ukraine because there are only 2 armies in the Ukraine. Wagner is only a contractor recruiting criminals.