How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

18 minutes ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

The question is why?

They may have arrived in good shape and been treated like crap.

I'll be interested to see where the finger pointing leads.

It wouldn´t surprise me, if they need new barrels, because their initial ones are worn out. IIRC the Leo2 A4 barrels we used in the nineties were good for 700 shots.

Dunno about the PzH2000 barrels, but I guess it may be in the same ballpark.

Edited August 10, 2022 by DesertFox

[Grigb]

46 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Quick update on Pisky - I managed to check fresh UKR Butusov video from Pisky. The chit chat that I could understand was not important (just general  chit chat that situation is difficult due to RU shelling, but it is under control). However, the most interesting part is the drive of the reporter to Pisky. 

So, as you can see while RU controls the southern (village) part, UKR control the northwestern (urban) part and it is safe enough to drive unarmored car with reporter straight to Pisky outskirts.

[UPDATE] Meanwhile RU fully captured Pisky on 5-Aug

I am checking RU reporter video about Pisky and It is getting extremely hilarious. 

[Haiduk]

14 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

It wouldn´t surprise me, if they need new barrels, because their initial ones are worn out. IIRC the Leo2 A4 barrels we used in the nineties were good for 700 shots.

Dunno about the PzH2000 barrels, but I guess it may be in the same ballpark.

I read the peak load for PzH2000 autoloader is 100 shots for a day (and I hav't info how much this number should be for a month or between plan repairs). And this turned out too few for current intensity of warfare 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Haiduk

[Huba]

9 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I read the peak load for PzH2000 autoloader is 100 shots for a day (and I hav't info how much this number should be for a month or between plan repairs). And this turned out too few for current intensity of warfare 

M777 barrel lasts for 2200 (IIRC) full charge equivalents. I'd think that SPG barrels are longer lived, as designers didn't have to concern themselves with mass that much. For comparison, D20 lasts for 5000 FCE. 

That said, if you overheat the gun by firing quicker than allowed, you might destroy the barrel much much faster - funny things happen to steel when it's temperature increases to few hundred degrees. 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Huba

[Haiduk]

More video (the lower one) of Nova Kakhovka bridge damages. Damaged railways and destroyed KAMAZs

 

[Rokko]

41 minutes ago, dan/california said:

~80 years after Tigers had far more losses to their own running gear than the Russians it would appear that the German military industrial complex has learned exactly nothing...

I've read in German news media some weeks back that there were issues with barrel wear. Unsuprisingly the Ukrainians had used these system to a much greater extent than anyone ever before and the barrels had become worn rather quickly. There was also some mention of using "special munition" (SMart rounds?) with larger than the maximum recommended charges in order to use them at greater range.

[MikeyD]

As recently as 2017 it was reported that US Marines had 'burned out' several M777 gun barrels during fighting in Raqqa Syria. US has had some fairly recent experience using (and abusing) artillery and MLRS in high intensity warfighting situations, themselves. I assume they used this knowledge to adjust expectations in Ukraine.

[The_MonkeyKing]

The first satellite photos I believe:

 

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

The first satellite photos I believe:

 

Those look like multiple strikes to me, but this is not my area.  @Combatintman?

[DesertFox]

3 minutes ago, Rokko said:

I've read in German news media some weeks back that there were issues with barrel wear. Unsuprisingly the Ukrainians had used these system to a much greater extent than anyone ever before and the barrels had become worn rather quickly. There was also some mention of using "special munition" (SMart rounds?) with larger than the maximum recommended charges in order to use them at greater range.

Yeah, there you have it. A PzH2000, if fully stocked can carry 60 rounds and can fire with 10 rounds per minute max. If they use it to the maximum of its capacity (or even beyond) it wouldn´t surprise me if each given PzH would need a new barrel every 2 weeks.

[The_MonkeyKing]

Lost equipment in that strike is worth a small countries air forces whole inventory.

[Battlefront.com]

56 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

If you were referring to my post as describing the third ammo dump in your post that I have bolded ... I said no such thing.

As to the girder, I don't know.  Interestingly there is no obvious scarring on the tarmac and the girder does not appear to have passed through anything else before impaling the vehicle so its trajectory was more near horizontal than horizontal.  Based on the limited information available, that corrugated hangar, which I agree is more of a workshop than anything else, based on the fact that it is too small for aircraft and no aircraft have been seen on any of the imagery I've looked at parked in it, is the most likely source of the girder.

There is another fuel storage facility, which does not appear to have been covered anywhere else, annotated in the image below.

It is certainly a more likely source than any of the other facilities for an explosion that would cause a girder to move east to west but still too far south for my liking.

 

The girder interested me as well.  It obviously came from an easterly direction.  I don't see any evidence of it ricocheting off the tarmac, so it had to be a fairly flat trajectory for over 360m!  Given how gravity works, I'm surprised it could make it that far before going landing.  And yet it didn't magically appear there.

If you look at the damage of the vehicles as driver moves towards the impaled car, you can clearly see the ones near the access route are incinerated whereas the ones closer to the end of the video are simply damaged by shockwaves (from the east) and debris.  There's a lot of what looks like tarmac debris.

It is hard to imagine that a fireball from the "Fuel Storage" area noted on the above map reached all the way to the carpark.  It's over 700m away!  There doesn't appear to be enough fuel there to have shredded a steel buliding 400m+ away, not to mention sending a girder another 350m.

What makes the most sense is that the "maintenance shed" took a direct hit by something very large and there was something in there that helped fuel the fireball and propel the girder over 360m from the shed.

This once again seems to push us away from SOF op and back to large missile strike.

Steve

[Haiduk]

T-72B mod.1989/BA with penetration hole of tandem missile, likely Stugna-P. Hit at the weaken zone.

Kontakt-5 ERA activated itself, but turned out useless. By the words of Russians, the comamnder - KIA, gunner and driver survived.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

T-72B mod.1989/BA with penetration hole of tandem missile, likely Stugna-P. Hit at the weaken zone.

Kontakt-5 ERA activated itself, but turned out useless. By the words of Russians, the comamnder - KIA, gunner and driver survived.

This gets us back into the "end of the tank" discussion.  Tandem warheads are effective against ERA, especially if they are just filled with foam   Tandem warheads used to be fairly limited on the battlefield, now they definitely are not.  This means that ERA is increasingly ineffective.  This seems to favor APS and foregoing ERA to save on cost and weight.  But APS is an imperfect defense.

Steve

[DesertFox]

16 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

The first satellite photos I believe:

 

And here is an additional good thread with more pics also:

 

 

[akd]

Well, whatever steel girders were present in that workshop building have clearly relocated themselves far away:

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

The first satellite photos I believe:

 

Well, this just confirms what I just posted!  How timely

Look at the picture in the upper right.  That is the "maintenance shack".  It took a direct hit. There's absolutely nothing left of it.

[Grigb]

I do not think I will be able to do evening map today - there is no significant changes and life interrupts again. However, to make up a bit for that here is an updated map for Soledar. They did not take ruins of Belokansky plant. Well, attempts are being made to develop an offensive toward ruins. I am seeing this phrase a lot lately. They use the same phrase to describe RU "offensive" from north around Yukovlivka. 

[akd]

This imagery more clearly shows three similarly-sized craters, only two of which correspond to clear objects in pre-strike imagery.  Possibly the third at the bottom was on a simple open-air bomb dump (there is something darker than the typical tarmac in rough lines there) for the nearby ramp that wouldn’t show clearly at these resolutions.  The workshop in the upper right is wrecked and may also have been targeted.

The hardened ammo dumps and the main and flight line fuel depots do not appear to have been targeted.

Edited August 10, 2022 by akd

[Battlefront.com]

OK, more images confirming where things happened.  They aren't where we thought they were.  The bunkered facilities do not look like they were hit.  Instead the focus seems to have been on the aircraft.

Looking over the images now, it seems the two big explosions we know of were the two "shacks" on either end of the embanked aircraft.  Looks like there might be 3 other significant sized craters there as well.  The big fireball was from the western shack, and both lit off dry grass which burned to the north of the location.

[Battlefront.com]

AKD and I are apparently mind linked, but I'm out in the woods so his link is faster than mine

So what does this tell us?  Not a SOF op in its entirety.  Maybe they were staged to smash up some of the planes with small suicide drones while all the chaos was happening, but they did not cause the two primary explosions (buildings) or the three large craters in the berm protected aircraft areas.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Starlink antenna in thermal camera

 

[Battlefront.com]

Looks like they didn't destroy as many aircraft as we would have hoped to see.  It's tough to say, but I'm counting 8 probable destroyed, with 2 possibly repairable or at least usable for parts.

Steve

[DesertFox]

Ugh! Something is brewing...No more beer for the orcs?

 

 

 

[Letter from Prague]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Looks like they didn't destroy as many aircraft as we would have hoped to see.  It's tough to say, but I'm counting 8 probable destroyed, with 2 possibly repairable or at least usable for parts.

Steve

Was this the explosion that broke windows a kilometer away? I would expect the planes to be entirely unusable if they were anywhere close.