NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On June 20 2023 02:20 Taelshin wrote: @maybenexttime I'm actually living here with you right now in this instance of time. The Russian's as far as I can tell Controll the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. I feel like you have information your withholding, Perhaps you'd enlighten a fellow same-time traveler.
As for the dam, we know for a fact that someone blew it up.
Was this confirmed somewhere? I thought it was still very much up in the air whether the explosives were used, or if months of neglect and lack of maintenance caused a structural collapse (and yes, Ukraine's Himars strikes certainly didn't help either; although unlikely to have had a large impact in structural integrity of the dam).
This guy (not an expert or structural engineer though) made a reasonable explanation of how the dam could've collapsed without explosives:
His reasoning of widening of the Dnipro river downstream not having immediate benefits for the Russian army is obviously wrong though, as Russians already started moving their units from the Kherson region to the Zaporizhzhia region.
The US thermal signature satellites (used for detecting missile launches) detected the explosion.
It's certainly an exhaustive article and probably the best up-to-date theory that we have. It's unfortunate that we don't get much more than "the official said", or "the expert said" in terms of sources. But I guess it's expected since without access to conduct a proper investigation it's almost impossible to be certain.
My only open question is what was the dam doing in the days leading up to the collapse. Satellite images show it in not that great of a state, with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam (from what I can understand, this is very bad for a dam).
The satellite images the nytimes obtained show that very clearly (top-right image). Even the road going over those turbulent waters is destroyed, seemingly eroded away (this was not destroyed by Himars back in August afaik). That's why the theory presented in the video I linked seemed plausible to me.
with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam
Thing is that would also be consistent with an intentional detonation. Load up the waters behind the dam above normal capacity for maximum impact then detonate = Profit... until it floods your own side more than your troops were warned.
with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam
Thing is that would also be consistent with an intentional detonation. Load up the waters behind the dam above normal capacity for maximum impact then detonate = Profit... until it floods your own side more than your troops were warned.
Yes, agreed. The only thing is that this wouldn't be consistent with current most likely theory of explosion happening in the early hours of Jun 6th, but instead it would've had to happen a few days, or a week before that.
And then there's also the Russian command literally bragging on audio tape about blowing up the dam themselves, and only backtracking after it became clear the humanitarian effects were slightly bigger than they were expecting.
with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam
Thing is that would also be consistent with an intentional detonation. Load up the waters behind the dam above normal capacity for maximum impact then detonate = Profit... until it floods your own side more than your troops were warned.
Yes, agreed. The only thing is that this wouldn't be consistent with current most likely theory of explosion happening in the early hours of Jun 6th, but instead it would've had to happen a few days, or a week before that.
Why?
Step 1: fill dam to overflowing. The Russians quite clearly did this. Clearly some of the damage, such as washing out the road on top of the dam, may be caused by this. It is *possible* this was also the cause o
with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam
Thing is that would also be consistent with an intentional detonation. Load up the waters behind the dam above normal capacity for maximum impact then detonate = Profit... until it floods your own side more than your troops were warned.
Yes, agreed. The only thing is that this wouldn't be consistent with current most likely theory of explosion happening in the early hours of Jun 6th, but instead it would've had to happen a few days, or a week before that.
Why?
Step 1: fill dam to overflowing. The Russians quite clearly did this. Clearly some of the damage, such as washing out the road on top of the dam, may be caused by this. It is *possible* this was also the cause of the dam breaking, but there is also evidence of:
Step 2: blow up dam. Seismologists saw spikes consistent with explosions, there's heat signatures consistent with explosions from satellite imagery, there's a satellite image of a suspicious vehicle stopping on the dam, just before it blew up, there's second-hand reports of Russians bragging about blowing up the dam, and there's the law change specifically to prevent investigation into what happened.
Yes, the evidence is all circumstantial, but there's a lot of it by now...
It's even possible that it's a combination of incompetence and intention. First they install explosives but without a specific plan to use them, then they mess up and the dam starts to erode, then they decide to blow it up because fuck it and forget about it and also the Ukrainians are knocking at the door anyway.
On June 20 2023 16:20 Mikau wrote: And then there's also the Russian command literally bragging on audio tape about blowing up the dam themselves, and only backtracking after it became clear the humanitarian effects were slightly bigger than they were expecting.
Do you have a source for this? I remember hearing the administrator of the Kakhovka region saying one thing and then changing the story later. I can't find the exact video again now, but from what I remember he wasn't literally bragging about blowing up the dam. Or maybe you're talking about the intercepted audio file of one Russian soldier bragging to another about mining the dam when they retrieved from Kherson six months ago?
with turbulent waters forming at the point of failure and water overflowing pretty much all over the dam
Thing is that would also be consistent with an intentional detonation. Load up the waters behind the dam above normal capacity for maximum impact then detonate = Profit... until it floods your own side more than your troops were warned.
Yes, agreed. The only thing is that this wouldn't be consistent with current most likely theory of explosion happening in the early hours of Jun 6th, but instead it would've had to happen a few days, or a week before that.
Why?
Step 1: fill dam to overflowing. The Russians quite clearly did this. Clearly some of the damage, such as washing out the road on top of the dam, may be caused by this. It is *possible* this was also the cause of the dam breaking, but there is also evidence of:
Step 2: blow up dam. Seismologists saw spikes consistent with explosions, there's heat signatures consistent with explosions from satellite imagery, there's a satellite image of a suspicious vehicle stopping on the dam, just before it blew up, there's second-hand reports of Russians bragging about blowing up the dam, and there's the law change specifically to prevent investigation into what happened.
Yes, the evidence is all circumstantial, but there's a lot of it by now...
The reason why is because to my non-expert eye, from the satellite images, it looked like the dam was already failing for days leading up to the total collapse.
Step 1 might not have been done with the purpose of blowing up the dam. Those cranes that open the sluice gates might've been manually operated, which means the Russian workers who were in charge of maintenance (if there even were any?) simply decided not to do it and risk getting shot by snipers from the Ukraine side. This would explain why the only sluice gate that was open was the one right next to the Russian side (creating those turbulent waters).
Step 2 is the reason why I initially said that this wouldn't be consistent with the dam failing for days before the total collapse. Because that would mean those explosives would've had to explode days before those spikes detected by the seismologists. Keep in mind that the dam collapsing should by itself produce the spikes that could be detected by seismologists, and those spikes should be different than the spikes caused by the explosion. That's why I said I don't find this evidence fully conclusive yet, because all we have so far is "experts say it's consistent with the explosion". I'd like to read a full report analyzing the seismology signals that were detected that night.
Also, just to put a disclaimer and not derail this discussion, I'm *not* interested in determining who is to blame here. That would be Russia, regardless of what happened with the dam. I am however interested in the engineering aspects of the dam failure, and as someone who follows Grady from Practical Engineering religiously, I'd really like to find out the technical details that led to this collapse.
But I understand that this is probably unrelated to the Russo-Ukrainian war in general, so I'll leave it at that.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the US to actually release the satellite imagery from their nuclear launch detecting satellite over Russia. The quality of the optics on that satellite are a state secret as they’re literally a part of the US nuclear response strategy. But there’s no reason to doubt that the US would have seen it if there was an explosion because they have a satellite in the area tasked with looking for that kind of thing.
Well that isn't good. Keep in mind the US, Germany, and Poland are the only countries that have agreed to speed up manufacturing for supplies that Ukraine will continuously need. Correct?
BERLIN, June 19 (Reuters) - Germany's armed forces only have around 20,000 high explosive artillery shells left, magazine Der Spiegel wrote on Monday citing confidential defence ministry papers prepared to convince the budget committee of the need for urgent purchases.
Countries like Germany have rushed to send supplies of 155m artillery rounds used by howitzers to Ukraine in the wake of its invasion by Russia in February 2022, running down stocks for their own defence.
Germany's military needs to build up an inventory of some 230,000 shells by 2031 to comply with NATO goals to have enough artillery to withstand 30 days of intensive combat, Der Spiegel wrote.
The defence ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The ministry aims to present the budget committee with nine contracts for the accelerated purchase of artillery and tank ammunition in coming months, Der Spiegel wrote.
Stockpiles running out is a long forseen problem. The difference between 20k in stockpile and 0 is probably 2-3 days of use. Send them all to Ukraine at that point.
On the manufacturing side is where it really matters now, quick google for instance:
Rheinmetall is one of the biggest producers of artillery munitions and is about to ramp up its production capacity to 600,000 from 450,000 rounds of 155mm shells per year.
They're making roughly 8.5k shells a week, going to 11.5k a week. Not anywhere enough to match the rate of consumption, but combined with other countries, Ukraine will have a few thousand shells per day to spend.
Manufacturing for war is always tricky because there’s no middle ground. Either you’re consuming huge amounts of missiles, ammo, tanks, airframes, men (they need to be trained and replaced) or you’re not. So you need to retain the capacity to produce a shitload while also not incurring the expense of actually producing a shitload.
The best option would be coordinating with your allies for compatibility and then scheduling your conflicts so that only one of you is fighting a major war at any given time. That way you can all buy what you need out of the one big factory. But that’s considered bad for national security so instead the plan seems to have been to just hope we’re done with war. Britain, as I’ve said before, literally can’t build tanks anymore.
Hopefully with enough lead time things can be scaled up so it’d be great if foes could schedule their wars at least three years in advance.
On June 20 2023 16:38 Acrofales wrote: Yes, the evidence is all circumstantial, but there's a lot of it by now...
The vast majority of criminal court cases in the west are judged solely upon circumstantial evidence. You can easily make a sound and reasonable judgement based only off of it. For instance; a camera catching someone walking into a room with a knife, exiting the room later, and then the victim is found with said knife in his chest without anyone else going in and out, is still only circumstantial evidence.
I don't see any reason why we would give Russia more benefit of the doubt than our own criminal courts. The mountain of circumstantial evidences here are all pretty damning.
Not sure if this has been posted yet, seeing as it's a day old article. Russia is filling their armored vehicles up with explosives and jerry rigging them to drive into Ukrainian positions. Doesn't seem particularly effective, based on reports
It's really hard to say. The explosion in the video in the link is so powerful that it easily could have killed everyone in that trench. 6 tonnes of TNT is a massive amount... or they might have survived, impossible to say from that video.
On June 21 2023 03:21 Silvanel wrote: It's really hard to say. The explosion in the video in the link is so powerful that it easily could have killed everyone in that trench. 6 tonnes of TNT is a massive amount... or they might have survived, impossible to say from that video.
Explosive waves travel above ground for the most part, that's why trenches are so powerful to begin with. No amount of "near misses" with artillery does anything to anyone who is within them. Same here. That explosion is huge for sure, but as long as the soldiers kept themselves to their trenches, it likely did nothing
That's not exactly true. Shrapnel and impact/fire waves are not the only things that are killing people after an explosion. There are also pressure changes which might cause fractures in the lungs and/or deadly concussion in the brain. And that explosion was MASSIVE not comparable to any kind of artillery shell. A 155mm shell contains some 6-7kg of explosives and that tank supposedly was carrying an amount measured in tonnes...
Edit: Regarding cost-effectiveness... to delivery 6 tonnes of explosives by cruise missile You would need to use around 20 CH-55 missiles. And that definitely costs more than an old (probably barely functioning) soviet era tank. Unguided bombs would be definitely cheaper, but the Russians weren't able to suppress Ukrainian air defense, so that is out of question. The reasonableness of that action rests completely on whether or not they are able to clear a trench that way. And we have no way of telling that. Ukrainians claim the troopers survived, Russians that they did not. And You cannot tell from video...
A lot of the effect can be to clear out mines as well as disable troops through the secondary effects of the shockwave produced. Thermobaric weapons are that effective beacuse they can suck the air inwards from such an explosion.
The thing is though that these would be a lot more effective to start an assult on a position than to just be an odd standoff "gee I hope this does something". Russia isn't useing T-54's as tanks just useing them for their expulsive rounds.
These tanks were produced in the tens of thousands in the late 50's to the early 80's in Czechoslovakia. they're written off as little more than scrap already.
EPT
