How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Also, there are heated discussions about airplanes from airstrip- were they destroyed but debris moved by Russians before the photo was made or those black signs are just remnants of some equipment?

Yeah, I was wondering about those.  Depends on when the image was taken.  It does look like SOMETHING was in at least 5 or 6 slots, so I guess we should assume aircraft.  Certainly there is some debris there and the black marks of something having burned.

OK, I'll revise my minutes old post above and say there's 9 visually confirmed fighters (2 of which might be repairable), 2 possible non-fighters (damaged or fine, no way to know), and another 5 or 6 fighters that are not in view (likely no longer serviceable).  And that brings me to 17.

Steve

[DesertFox]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I just don't see the evidence to support the larger number of destroyed aircraft.  Looking at the aftermath I count at most 9 probable fighter aircraft, 2 of which might be only somewhat damaged.  There's also two or more non-fighters in the area that likely have some sort of damage.  I don't see where the other 9 are post strike.  Before strike... sure, I see all kinds of aircraft, but that means nothing.  Aircraft can move

Steve

You checked all pictures from Eliot Higgins/Belincat tweet?

 

 

 

[Calamine Waffles]

  

39 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Now that he's put this theory out there... I think we've all seen a Grim strike before.  Remember the precision strike on the HQ southwest of Izyum that nailed all kinds of senior officers?  Remember that I doggedly stuck to my guns and said the one hit on the HQ was a PGM and the other hits were to camouflage it?  Remember at the time I speculated that Excalibur was used for the precision strike and Tochka-Us for the others?  Well... I think I got all that right except it was a Grim instead of Excalibur.

Hrim has a 500 kg warhead, so the resulting blast would be significantly bigger than from artillery shells, which wasn't noticeably so in the video IIRC

[FancyCat]

 

 

 

[FancyCat]

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Here's a bit to chew on.

A contact of mine in Kyiv has spoken with a former Yuzhmash employee who has first hand knowledge of the Grim project.  What he was able to suss out is a theory that Ukraine has had these available for some time now, but only in extremely small quantities.  Some were used at ranges where they could be confused with Tochka-U strikes.  However, having had nearly none on hand at the start of the war and only able to produce them very slowly, there's not been many of these used until yesterday.  The theory goes that Ukraine built up a small quantity (~10) to do a strategic level strike, such as we saw yesterday.

Now that he's put this theory out there... I think we've all seen a Grim strike before.  Remember the precision strike on the HQ southwest of Izyum that nailed all kinds of senior officers?  Remember that I doggedly stuck to my guns and said the one hit on the HQ was a PGM and the other hits were to camouflage it?  Remember at the time I speculated that Excalibur was used for the precision strike and Tochka-Us for the others?  Well... I think I got all that right except it was a Grim instead of Excalibur.

I'm sure someone here will think of another situation where we scratched our heads about what Ukraine used for a strike.  There certainly are some others that were puzzling at the time.

Steve

Interesting you mention that, Bellingcat noticed a private jet. Could this have been a potential decapitation strike as well?

 

 

 

[Beleg85]

2 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Interesting you mention that, Bellingcat noticed a private jet. Could this have been a potential decapitation strike as well?

Crimea is popular holiday destination, so probably at least several Russian high officials have dachas there- no reason not to use military airport if you are one of them... But ofc target were regular aircrafts; hitting anybody other than Putin would not justify precious missiles.

"There’s the obvious damage, but also consider what can’t be seen: blast pressure damage, shrapnel damage, etc. Aircraft that may look intact may not be airworthy at all."

Does anybody knows if airplanes also have car-like autoalarms ringing whole bloddy day after slightest change of pressure?

 

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, akd said:

Interesting account of the initial push out of Crimea to Kherson by a paratrooper in the 56th Guards Air-Assault Regiment:

Well, that was a pleasant read.  Not.

Obviously this is not surprising to anybody at this point, but it is still astonishing how ill prepared the Russians were at the most basic level.  Corruption and near zero concern/compassion up and down the system is to blame, obviously.  Even my pre-war sense that Russia would absolutely suck at fighting a real war was by comparison "optimistic" to what they really could do.

Steve

[Calamine Waffles]

I don't know why people still think it's a loitering munition. I'd like them to tell me about the ones that can make 20 m craters in airfield tarmac.

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Crimea is popular holiday destination, so probably at least several Russian high officials have dachas there- no reason not to use military airport if you are one of them... But ofc target were regular aircrafts; hitting anybody other than Putin would not justify precious missiles.
 

Pulling off a decapitation strike at an airport from 100s of KMs away would be very difficult to time.  Better to strike a terminal or some other place where the target might be stationary for a while.

I saw some discussion about the peculiar plane that took place prior to the strike.  I lost track of it.  It's some sort of customized civilian aircraft that seems to have been based there.  I didn't read the discussion thoroughly, but I got the impression the theory was it was EW or Intel related, not for ferrying important people.

Steve

[akd]

Even better quality image clearly shows craters layered on craters, definitely suggesting munition stockpiles were struck.

Note: you can see the skewered car in upper left of lower image.

Edited August 10, 2022 by akd

[FancyCat]

 

 

 

[Calamine Waffles]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Pulling off a decapitation strike at an airport from 100s of KMs away would be very difficult to time.  Better to strike a terminal or some other place where the target might be stationary for a while.

I saw some discussion about the peculiar plane that took place prior to the strike.  I lost track of it.  It's some sort of customized civilian aircraft that seems to have been based there.  I didn't read the discussion thoroughly, but I got the impression the theory was it was EW or Intel related, not for ferrying important people.

Steve

AFAIK it's a Tu-134UB-L

https://theaviationist.com/2020/02/15/unique-russian-tu-134-ubl-nato-reporting-name-crusty-b-nicknamed-black-pearl-intercepted-over-the-baltic/

[Battlefront.com]

40 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

  Hrim has a 500 kg warhead, so the resulting blast would be significantly bigger than from artillery shells, which wasn't noticeably so in the video IIRC

Yesh... yeah, a 500kg warhead is likely to have several hundred KG of explosives.  That's a lot more than the 50kg tucked into a HIRAM. 

OK, I take it back.  A 500kg strike on that building would have destroyed the entire structure, not just blown out the lower floor.  So the Hrim was not used in that HQ attack after all.   I return to my Excalibur theory

Steve

[acrashb]

3 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

That is one way to look at it. The other is that they are not suited to the requirements of modern war.

That's a bit unfair, and we don't know enough to determine if it is correct.

If someone does repeated mag dumps, which happens in panicked or semi-panicked or simply incompetent suppressive fire, in an AK-47  the front handguard will eventually smoke and burn.  Do the same thing on an M-16 FOW and the gas tube will melt and explode.  Also, both gun's barrels will be ruined (particularly in the important throat area) and at best will be dramatically inaccurate afterwards.  Does this mean they aren't suited to modern war, or were they used in an unapproved and unreasonable manner?

So the PzH 2000's were either abused or, as you say, inadequately designed (or perhaps manufactured).  But we don't know which.  You can bet the designers know and are either developing modifications right now or pushing additional training recommendations.
 

[akd]

What initially appears to be one large crater here actually seems to be two overlapping larger craters with even more smaller craters overlapping:

IMO, the areas of light grey tarmac that show somewhat irregulars lines and squares of dark grey (like in front of the rusty-roofed structure here) are stockpiles of dumb bombs.  They correspond perfectly to the cratering in this case.

Edited August 10, 2022 by akd

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, akd said:

What initially appears to be one large crater here actually seems to be two overlapping larger craters:

IMO, the areas of light grey tarmac that show somewhat irregulars lines and squares of dark grey (like in front of the rusty-roofed structure here) are stockpiles of dumb bombs.  They correspond perfectly to the cratering in this case.

Here's a question... if a 500kg warhead hit that building, would there be discernible secondary craters?  Wouldn't it either instantly detonate the munitions or perhaps throw them clear of the ground before they detonated?

A 500kg warhead would explain the impaled car.

Steve

[DesertFox]

Analysis using NUKEMAP. Aprox. 500 tonnes of explosives going boom at each of the three craters.

 

 

[Beleg85]

21 minutes ago, akd said:

What initially appears to be one large crater here actually seems to be two overlapping larger craters:

No way the aircraft from first photo opposite the former building get unscathered.

Unless they repositioned some of aircrafts back into stage areas protected by berms before photo was taken; this could also explain strangely intact state of some of them and smokey signs on tarmac. Unlikely theory, but given how they reacted at Chornoboivka not entirely impossible.

 

Ok, if these are not again soundwaves from airplanes then this may be something interesting. However, this guy is known to make some big claims already before.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Analysis using NUKEMAP. Aprox. 500 tonnes of explosives going boom at each of the three craters.

Well, 0.5kt is equal to 500,000 pounds of explosives.  A Hirm-2 has maybe around 500 pounds of explosives.

MAYBE an explosion from the buildings might get the count up there, but the buildings don't look big enough to hold that quantity of munitions (probably 1000+ dumb bombs).  However, the third crater, out in the open, certainly didn't hit anything like that.

So, I think that guy's assessment is way off.

Steve

[DesertFox]

10 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Ok, if these are not again soundwaives from airplanes then this is something big.

Must be one hell of a cigarette smoking bunch these guys...

[MikeyD]

About the two mysteriously intact aircraft. They could be decoys. Russia does employ decoys, there's footage of a decoy S300 missile battery a couple pages back.

[Beleg85]

6 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Must be one hell of a cigarette smoking bunch these guys...

No filter, that's for sure...

1 minute ago, MikeyD said:

About the two mysteriously intact aircraft. They could be decoys. Russia does employ decoys, there's footage of a decoy S300 missile battery a couple pages back.

Interesting. However, they would almost certainly be blown away immediatelly.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Beleg85

[DesertFox]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So, I think that guy's assessment is way off.

All NUKEMAP parameters incl. blastwave pressure and effects perfectly fit the picture. We´ll learn eventually.

[The_Capt]

21 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Analysis using NUKEMAP. Aprox. 500 tonnes of explosives going boom at each of the three craters.

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Ok, if these are not again soundwaives from airplanes then this is something big.

Ukraine did say they were "just getting warmed up"

The theory that Ukraine has been building up a stock of Hrim-2 rockets for a short but expansive attack on Russian bases way to the rear is looking to be less theory.  Even 10 set aside means they can hit at least three airbases.

Steve