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Posted on 10/08/2022 6:53:37 PM PDT by Widget Jr
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Attack On Kerch Bridge: Initial Geolocation Of Damage
🇷🇺 This will undoubtedly go down in history as a textbook conventional strategic strike on vital infrastructure. Yet we do not yet know how it was achieved. The fog of war is still thick, just hours after the attack.
Ahead of fresh satellite imagery, I have made a first pass at geolocating the damage, caveats apply. It appears to be south of the steel arches over the shipping lane.
At least three spans of road appear to have collapsed into the sea. There are two sets of lanes and only the inbound (towards Ukraine) one appears to have been hit. It is unclear whether the other lane is survivable.
There is no doubt that this attack, the day after Putin's 70th birthday, is a major success for Ukraine. Supplies in and out of Crimea will be disrupted. However, it seems likely that the remaining set of road lanes may be usable within a relatively short period of time.
Damage to the rail sections is harder to determine. Heat damage may have affected the steel structure.
Means of Attack
Early theories are that the bomb was inside a truck, although this does not necessarily match the extent of the damage. Possibly the roads were poorly constructed?
I do not think explosive boats, such as the one found in Sevastopol on September 21 are likely. In general, explosive boats attack pillars not the center of spans of bridges.
The bridge is defended by natural geography, patrol boats, aerosol generators and likely air defenses. Two radar decoy barges were previously deployed but these have since been removed.
The fire was recorded on the Meteosat-9 weather satellite, operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). This was noted by ar_etsch on Twitter.
Russian Navy Increases Activity
In an apparent response, the Russian Navy has increased activity around Sevastopol. It is possible that some ship movements are between Novorossiysk and Sevastopol. The boom across the harbor entrance remains closed however, showing a heightened level of alert since the explosive USV surfaced on September 21.
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Updates pending.
Ukraine blew a hole in a bridge and you’d think they just took Moscow!
Bridge is already open to trucks and traffic as well as trains.
But it sure makes the “mighty Russians” look pretty bad.
8.5 for style points.
Exactly.
Exactly. Sweet balls Marie..
Well thank god for this genius to tell me where the explosion was. I could have been searching around bootlessly for hours on Google maps and probably couldn’t have narrowed it down closer than 25 ft or so. /sarcasm
Party pooper. We were all having such fun gloating that finally Putin was at the end with no moves left except to blow the West to smithereens.
The Ukes haven’t taken Moscow!?
I’ll admit I haven’t been paying close attention, but from the tone of the US media coverage, I thought that was a done deal . . .
Frankly everything makes Russia look bad - that’s the trend.
I guess I am missing something here: Seems like the truck could carry around 45,000 lbs. of explosives (ammo?). Granted it was not an obvious military vehicle. And, there is considerable commentary that the PATTERN of the blast and damage doesn't match a truck bomb.
OTOH, while vehicles going over the bridge get screened, bribes are pretty much the norm for Russia.
It will be hit again.
Would you want to be on it?
There was a post yesterday about the bridge bombing that now has over 200 comments. Don’t remember the name, but comment #81 has the best video of the bombing I have seen. It shows three white trucks coming down from the slope of the high bridge. As it reaches the level road suddenly explodes. Some think it was a suicide bomber. There were 2 trucks and 2 cars going the other way. Three people died, probably 2 in one of those 4 other vehicles. The one thinkg I find strange is why there was a big quantity of spray over everything from the right side. Did a bomb hit the water on that side or did the original truck explosion kick up spray from below that got blown over from a strong wind. If the truck was headed toward Russia, then the wind might have been from the south. If headed toward Crimea, then the wind might have been from the north. There were 3 chuncks of 2 land highway taken out. Two were close together and were probably from the truck. The third was some distance away and might have been from some other explosion. That separation shows up in some of the other twitter videos.
The fire on the rail line apparently occurred when the explosion of the truck set a or some oil tankers on fire. The fire was out by mid day. Apparently one of the two rail lines was not badly damaged and they were testing it by running a train with an engine, 14 boxcars, and a tank car over it. They predicted having a passenger train run over it this evening. This bridge project was Putin’s baby. No doubt that is why it was bombed on his birthday. It is the longest bridge in Europe. Four traffic lanes and 2 rail lines. Putin was proud to have finished in 2019 a project that took more than a century to build.
For now, the Government of Ukraine is denying they blew up the bridge while happy it happened. One more piece of a confusing puzzle.
I doubt it.
It Would appear in retrospect that there was damage to rail cars but not to the railway bridge.
The destroyed roadway spans are not nearly as important to military logistics as the railway spans.
It looks like another effort must be made
The Ukrainians are happy as this is a public and significant impact to the Russian war effort. At a minimum, bridge vehicle traffic throughput is reduced by 50%, there are unknown, but probable impacts to rail traffic.
Russia has clear logistical problems that limit their operational reach. This make those worse. So yes, the Ukrainians have plenty to be happy about.
As stated prior you’d think Ukraine military just took Moscow by A blast at A bridge.....so as usual Ukraine propaganda machinery always over estimates every battle or attack as favorabe to them in order to keep their militray soldiers in the fight and the public in check............Yet any map on land territory clearly remains that Russia’ has gained most all of their eastern landbridge they have sought. .....how much of that they will determine is necessary to secure their border areas and ports etc. is still undetermined..... Either or this conflict will not end until negotiated.
More of a black eye than a deep wound, perhaps.
However, there’s likely to be hidden damage to the rebar & concrete in both the rail section and the remaining 1/2 the roadway, leading to accelerated fatigue with use*, and necessitating eventual replacement of the affected spans. How eventual would be the question.
*Granted it was early a.m., but I found the light traffic on the bridge interesting. These days, major but rural Interstate bridges in even my region (mid-South US) are typically much busier at that time.
Anyway, this does demonstrate one of the several strategic reasons why Pooty wants SE Ukraine, even though it means taking some considerable territory not pro-Russian: That bridge is just too vulnerable. If the Ukies had a proper weapons supply in general, instead of weak stream Biden, that bridge would be toast.
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