Ukraine

[CollinR]

The Beeb is showing a picture of what could be the bow if a boat under the bridge a moment before the explosion.....

[Peerie Maa]

The trestles appear to be intact. The deck has been bounced, displaced sideways and fallen. So whatever happened was not what was tried on those failed examples of yours.
Any charges on the top of the trestles powerful enough to do that would have probably displayed lots of tarmac, which has not happened
Attachment 120997

I'm not sure what you're saying here but I have offered no explanation as to what series of events caused this result other than to suggest blowing it from atop the roadway would be the least efficient (although not least likely) way to achieve definitive results. I would expect tons of explosive regardless if truck borne or delivered by a missile to dislocate plenty of structure but not be a killing blow. We have never disagreed there but again, neither you nor I can be entirely sure what delivery system or systems were definitively used here. The use of a truck makes sense in the context we have been provided but at my limited capacity to understand the event, there's no way to be sure how this was accomplished except to say the railway is clearly damaged but still standing.

And I have given engineering based arguments indicating that the evidence does not indicate explosives below the road way.

I speculated earlier that shoddy build or poor oversight during construction makes the bridge more vulnerable but I can't prove that either. In fact at this time I don't think it's within anyone's purview to do more than speculate on delivery mechanisms. What I have advocated is that it's very hard to take a bridge down from the top of the roadway and I believe the videos I linked show how charges are typically set and they always start at the foundation and attachment points when that option is open. I don't argue that it wasn't a truck although as others have said, the idea that the driver leaped from the vehicle prior to detonation seems at least a bit fanciful.

Honestly, I don't know why you've argued against the notion that the best way to demolish a bridge is to start at the supporting structure rather than doing it top down. It seems to me using a truck, which I never ruled out and think quite likely, was an expedient employed because it was the most practical way to deliver the charge as opposed to the most efficient way to actually destroy the bridge. It seems to me that if Ukrainian sappers were given free hands to blow the thing, they would have set charges where they would be most efficient. This being impractical, they did the next best thing, whatever that was, but just as likely, they used a truck, and not just any truck, rather a full sized semi. It did the trick.

The results achieved do seem to have been quite suited to purpose whatever the method was. I don't think we'll know the details until such time as history clarifies them for us. On the other hand, the notion that someone jumped from a rolling vehicle seems much less likely than using either a volunteer prepared for the sacrifice or an unwitting driver being detonated along with the truck. I don't think it's really that complicated conceptually although the number of moving parts required to get this done was surely not easy to organize.

Could a truck have achieved these results? Yes. Could a large missile have achieved these results? Yes. Could more than one device have been employed? Yes. Would set charges have been preferable to all the previous approaches? Yes, but there is no way they could have accomplished that in this situation. Where is the argument?

Where is the argument?

Jesus Nick don’t be thick. This is exactly how it’s done in the real world. I will post some more for you.

I am not arguing about the best way, I am analyzing the evidence to determine what actually happened. Which you do agree was quite effective, all things considered.
P.S. where did I say jumped from a rolling vehicle? You assume too much.

[Decourcy]

Potatoes patatoes….who cares how it was blown up, let’s all just celebrate that it was blown up!

[johnw]

Gen. Wesley Clark on, among other things, why nuclear weapons don't win battles:

[John Meachen]

Potatoes patatoes….who cares how it was blown up, let’s all just celebrate that it was blown up!

Agreed.On another forum I saw the pic from the road bridge side and a comment in the style of the Fat Controller telling Thomas the Tank Engine that the replacement bus service wouldn't be all that great either.The actual words were a bit earthier.....

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I fear that the temperatures reached on the rail bridge may not have been high enough. But a very commendable effort.

[Osborne Russell]

Russia annexed Donbass etc.

So I guess it's a war on Russian territory now.

NATO is reluctant to admit a member already at war.

NATO has not been confronted with such a situation before. So they should stand still, crossing their legs and squeezing hard until they finally P themselves.

[Garth Jones]

Russia annexed Donbass etc.

So I guess it's a war on Russian territory now.

NATO is reluctant to admit a member already at war.

NATO has not been confronted with such a situation before. So they should stand still, crossing their legs and squeezing hard until they finally P themselves.

Since NATO and the US aren't recognizing Russia's 'annexation' the fight, to everybody but Russia, is on Ukrainian land. So the west keeps on supplying Ukraine with high tech goodies, training, etc. etc. until they drive the Russians out. Once the fighting stops, NATO admits Ukraine. No need for excessive leg squeezing.

[Tom Montgomery]

[George Jung]

Since NATO and the US aren't recognizing Russia's 'annexation' the fight, to everybody but Russia, is on Ukrainian land. So the west keeps on supplying Ukraine with high tech goodies, training, etc. etc. until they drive the Russians out. Once the fighting stops, NATO admits Ukraine. No need for excessive leg squeezing.

Butbutbut... some of us needs the exercise!

[Tom Montgomery]

[Osborne Russell]

Some say the concept of a tactical nuke is bogus. They're smaller -- so what?

Blast radius of "heavy damage and casualties" is 2.5 miles for a tactical; 5 for a Hiroshima-size strategic. Tactical is 5 kilotons; Hiroshima was 16.

Why should anyone consider a two-mile radius not strategic? Why was the target chosen? Even a fairly far gone nut case wouldn't drop two kilotons on cabbage fields. Two kilos on Kiev would be strategic.

A state threatening such must be neutralized because the threat needs to be neutralized. Russia's nuclear capability needs to be put under NATO supervision indefinitely.

In 2017, then-Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten took exception to the idea that tactical nuclear weapons are really in a different category than strategic nuclear weapons. Hyten, who was at that point overseeing U.S. nuclear weapons as the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, described how the United States could respond if another country used them.

“It’s not a tactical effect, and if somebody employs what is a nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapon, the United States will respond strategically, not tactically, because they have now crossed a line, a line that has not been crossed since 1945,” Hyten said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...clear-weapons/

[Osborne Russell]

Since NATO and the US aren't recognizing Russia's 'annexation' the fight, to everybody but Russia, is on Ukrainian land.

The war is about Russia's claims. If they are defeated, they will renounce those claims, to Ukraine, Belarus, NATO and each member nation individually. Non-negotiable. The forced renunciation will be enforced by collective force, including Ukraine's.

So the west keeps on supplying Ukraine with high tech goodies, training, etc. etc. until they drive the Russians out. Once the fighting stops, NATO admits Ukraine. No need for excessive leg squeezing.

Why end the war quickly and decisively when you can let Ukraine suffer on to certain victory, and then make them our strategic Russia-countering pledged to mutual defense ally?

No need for excessive leg squeezing.

It's the very thing. Fingers crossed, legs crossed, needing to pee really bad, must wait for Ukraine to win alone.

[Tom Montgomery]

A state threatening such must be neutralized because the threat needs to be neutralized. Russia's nuclear capability needs to be put under NATO supervision indefinitely.

Wait a few more months. I believe the threat will be neutralized internally. I do not believe Putin will be President of Russia 12 months from now. Putin has unnecessarily exposed the Russian military as a paper tiger. All due to his ambition and hubris. That will likely be fatal for him.

[skuthorp]

This from people I don’t usually agree with:

A Moment of Strategic Clarity


https://www.rand.org/blog/2022/10/a-...c-clarity.html



by Raphael S. Cohen and Gian Gentile
October 3, 2022

Russia's “partial mobilization” and its sham referendums to justify the annexation of four provinces in Eastern Ukraine create new sources of uncertainty about the future course of the war. Yet Russia's actions should also produce a rare moment of strategic clarity for Ukraine's partners: No viable path to negotiated peace remains, and any result short of Ukrainian victory will be, in the long run, a worse outcome for the rules-based international order…..

I've been talking about the Phony War for some time, i think it is coming to its conclusion.

[Osborne Russell]

Beau says, everything outside of Russia's borders would be destroyed by conventional weapons. Clear on out to their mercenaries in Africa. That means

1. All of the exclaves.
2. Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Armenia.
3. All their stuff in Syria.
4. Whatever, wherever.

Even without NATO, Beau says, America rules the skies. What use will Russia's tactical nukes be in Syria? Kazakhstan? He's going to tactically nuke the S out of Ukraine? How would it save Transnistria? US Air Force bases in Germany, Turkey and Italy? Then NATO is on his case with a quickness.

He daren't launch just one, so he might as well launch them all, and go down in the bunker with his family and a pistol. We're going to call his bluff, or not, and let him go on conquering and annexing.

A foundational premise of both the UN and NATO.

[Osborne Russell]

Wait a few more months.

Why? For want of a horseshoe, the war was lost. Putin is firing missiles at apartment buildings in a town with a nuclear reactor.. We should give . . . somebody . . . more time . . . why?

In war, if you're in position to press an advantage, you press it hard.

People speak of The West not helping the Russians "enough" after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now they speak of helping Ukraine "too much".

[skuthorp]

Beau says, everything outside of Russia's borders would be destroyed by conventional weapons. Clear on out to their mercenaries in Africa. That means

1. All of the exclaves.
2. Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Armenia.
3. All their stuff in Syria.
4. Whatever, wherever.

Even without NATO, Beau says, America rules the skies. What use will Russia's tactical nukes be in Syria? Kazakhstan? He's going to tactically nuke the S out of Ukraine? How would it save Transnistria? US Air Force bases in Germany, Turkey and Italy? Then NATO is on his case with a quickness.

He daren't launch just one, so he might as well launch them all, and go down in the bunker with his family and a pistol. We're going to call his bluff, or not, and let him go on conquering and annexing.

A foundational premise of both the UN and NATO.

I agree unfortunately it'll be all or nothing. The world might end up a very different place. In Aus Pine Gap and associated sites and maybe a city or 3

[L.W. Baxter]

anybody else get this ad at the bottom of this page? rufkm.

8D5A2374-DC1A-466E-B52E-BA60AB1A43BC.jpg

free shipping...worldwide

[Tom Montgomery]

Why? For want of a horseshoe, the war was lost. Putin is firing missiles at apartment buildings in a town with a nuclear reactor.. We should give . . . somebody . . . more time . . . why?

Ukrainian forces were shelling around that nuclear reactor as well. Wasn't it occupied by Russian forces? I accept that Russia is the unlawful aggressor and my sympathies are with the Ukrainians. But I also recognize that both sides are engaging in propaganda.

I suspect not everyone in the upper reaches of the Kremlin has a death wish. Many of them wish to survive to continue making millions off their countrymen.

[sandtown]

I agree unfortunately it'll be all or nothing.

Some of us are not OK with that . . .

This voyage of peace is dedicated to all of you . . . that you may find peace, and/or it find you.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/GoldenRulePeaceBoat/

[Nicholas Carey]

Some say the concept of a tactical nuke is bogus. They're smaller -- so what?

Blast radius of "heavy damage and casualties" is 2.5 miles for a tactical; 5 for a Hiroshima-size strategic. Tactical is 5 kilotons; Hiroshima was 16.

Why should anyone consider a two-mile radius not strategic? Why was the target chosen? Even a fairly far gone nut case wouldn't drop two kilotons on cabbage fields. Two kilos on Kiev would be strategic.

A state threatening such must be neutralized because the threat needs to be neutralized. Russia's nuclear capability needs to be put under NATO supervision indefinitely.

The difference between "tactical" and "strategic" isn't so much much yield as it is reach.

Being able to reach out touch a random target halfway around the world in 15 or 30 minutes is vastly different than being able to touch an in-theater target a few miles away.

And yield in a tactical nuke is limited by a couple of factors: for instance, we had a nuclear-capable 203mm howitzer (the M110). It had a range of c. 25 km. It's yield was limited by (1) physical size and mass, and (2) effective range -- you don't want to kill (at least, not immediately) your own guys.

I had a friend, ex-Marine, who served in Bush War I in Kuwait. He was an infantryman (got the combat infantry badge to prove it). I was visiting him on his liveaboard, and he had his Marine infantry manual sitting on the shelf. Which I started perusing.

What scared me was this: there was an entire chapter devoted to how one requests deployment of a tactical nuclear package.

The fact that a low level grunt is expected to know that should scare you beyond belief.

[sandtown]

The difference between "tactical" and "strategic" isn't so much much yield as it is reach.
The fact that a low level grunt is expected to know that should scare you beyond belief.

Sane people are indeed scared beyond belief.

But there do not seem to be many of them here floating around the Blige.

[sandtown]

O R wrote, sigh, . . . "A state threatening such must be neutralized because the threat needs to be neutralized."

Including the numerous nuke threats issued by the hyper-power . . . ??

Once again, your jingoism is showing !!

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Russia seems to be using some of its large stock of “dumb” missiles in attacks on Ukrainian cities.

[ERGR]

Waisting military resources on terrorising civilians is a way to lose a war. I hope the Ukrainians don't answer in kind; they need to use their resources where it has the greatest effect, which primarily is to defeat RF air force assets, artillery or logistics whether the targets are in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus.
/Erik

[George.]

The difference between "tactical" and "strategic" isn't so much much yield as it is reach.

The difference is in the intended effects. Tactical is when the aim is to change the situation in the battlefield. Strategic is when the aim is to terrorize the enemy into giving up.

A Hiroshima-size bomb on a Ukrainian troop concentration would be tactical. A 5-kt bomb detonated over, say, Kharkiv would be strategic.

[skuthorp]

Dozens of Russian missiles hit multiple Ukrainian cities

Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and several other major cities have been hit in a barrage of missile attacks, hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian forces of “terrorism” over an explosion on a bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...issile-strikes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5i-HCrEhGM&t=1s

So the ego of one man may destroy us all yet.

[Oyvind Snibsoer]

Russia is retaliating by bombing civilian targets of no military or tactical value. Because that is all they are capable of. Aim a missile at a big urban center and you're bound to hit something.

[WX]

Sane people are indeed scared beyond belief.

But there do not seem to be many of them here floating around the Blige.

That is because you are reading into what they post what you expect to see and not what is actually written. Empathy and respect for how Ukraine is dealing with the invasion is not a love of war or violence.

[gypsie]

"On a scale of 1 to 10, the Pentagon rated the Ukrainian defence forces at 12".

It's tough, but hopeful

[WszystekPoTrochu]

Sane people are indeed scared beyond belief.
But there do not seem to be many of them here floating around the Blige.

Being scared does not automatically mean being submissive, being submissive does not automatically mean being scared.
You claim to have military experience, you should know that.

[gypsie]

That is because you are reading into what they post what you expect to see and not what is actually written. Empathy and respect for how Ukraine is dealing with the invasion is not a love of war or violence.

Well said.

[skuthorp]

One can only die Sandy, and no one get's out of here alive. But there are worse things than death I'll allow. The religious should probably be the most scared I reckon…….

[George.]

Sorry, Nick:


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63192757

"I've seen plenty of large vehicle-borne IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in my time," a former British army explosives expert told me. "This does not look like one."


A more plausible explanation, he said, is a massive explosion below the bridge - probably delivered using some kind of clandestine maritime drone.


"Bridges are generally designed to resist downwards loads on the deck and a certain amount of side loading from the wind," he said. "They are not generally engineered to resist upward loads. I think this fact was exploited in the Ukrainian attack."



Some observers have noted that in one of the other security camera videos, something that looks like the bow wave of a small boat appears next to one of the bridge supports, a split second before the explosion.