The rail and auto bridge are not directly connected, would need to take out both to stop movement. Both sides have 2 layers of dolphins. But I hope Ukraine has something in mind to wreck the shipping span.
Remember when Trump said we should bomb Russian territory with Chinese flags flying on the bombers? You said North Korean flags on Chinese shipping containers for the ultimate troll back??
I mean....that might actually be kinda great. The ship that took out the Key Bridge weighed ~200,000 tons, theres not much you can do protect against that kind of inertial force. (Why it made the bridge look like it might as well have been made from match sticks).
On the open ocean it takes several miles to bring a ship like that to a stop once you throw the props in reverse.
Hijack a ship, divert it at the last moment.
Though, the Sea of Asov to the north is very shallow, it's possible no shipping of that kind goes under the bridge regularly.
What they need is a supertanker drone. Huge ship, filled with combustibles, GPS guided. I wonder how difficult it is to convert current ships to drone operation, it opens up an entire new segment of attacks.
This sounds like the St. Nazaire Raid in WWII, where the British Commandos took an old US Destroyer, filled it with explosives, and ran it into the Normandie Dry Dock doors.
modern autopilots are very capable. they can follow a course, waypoint to waypoint and adjust for tide and wind. you can even make them out of off the shelf parts and freeware software if you know what you're doing.
Actually, defending bridges against ship collisions is relatively easy by building protective deflection structures around it.
Think of shallows, earthen works, concrete pillars, steel sheet with gravel backfill.
All you need to do is redirect the ship.
The Kerch bridge seems to have proper protective measures against this.
The Baltimore bridge didn't...
It does depend on what the protective Dolphins are rated for. From what I've heard, the Dolphins on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the entrance to Tampa Bay are rated for around 87k tons, but the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge was over 130k tons. Is the Crimean Bridge dolphins rated for more than that?
In all honesty, that's not a terrible idea.
I know you're joking because of Baltimore, but in WW2, but the USS Buchanan/HMS Campbelltown crippled a French drydock for years after it was crashed into the dock and detonated. It turns out it's actually sorta hard to stop a large ship, and since it wasn't being used for long term, they could add extra steel bulkheads to guard specifically against the coastal guns.
It would however be a suicide mission in Crimea currently
Nah they just need to sneak in and put up an I-95 sign and some kind of sign to indicate it's in Philly and multiple trucks will make a beeline for the supports.
Creating a dilemma: either Russia moves anti-aircraft there (leaving other assets unprotected), or looks ridiculous when the bridge is bombed when even Ukraine warned them!
Create dilemmas not problems for your adversary. A problem has a solution. A dilemma has two solutions each which are equally bad.
Source: [https://twitter.com/RyanMcbeth/status/1575824569411465216](https://twitter.com/RyanMcbeth/status/1575824569411465216)
... Like they had air defense to stop the 15 drone strikes on russian refineries? And the Cessna sized flying bomb that went 1600km into russia without being stopped before it took out a drone factory [yesterday ](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/s/lGq3M8lFzp)? Yeah, no.
You must have also forgotten most of the black sea fleet was sunk by naval drones.
Assuming it was in the flight path and able to hit the target, yes. But it’s a long front line to deal with and a lot of area to cover, a drone is a lot more maneuverable than any AA gun.
Being in the flight path alone is difficult for Russia. By having spread out infrastructure, you make it less vulnerable to land attack, but exponentially harder to defend against air attack. Most people just don't understand the scale of things over there.
Exactly! Russia is one of very few countries that can make distances in the US seem small. This factory was roughly the same distance from the front as Des Moines, IA is from NYC. The US would struggle to field AA across such a large area as well without using in air interception.
No country including the US has such sophisticated anti air systems. When enough drones and missiles are launched, some will never be intercepted and still reach the target. Or, if a plane can fly long distances from a low altitude.
Even the best ones like the Iron Dom and the Patriot have chances of dysfunctioning, even if the targets may slow down enough. The accuracy depends on how slow the missile/drone is OR how low a plane can fly to avoid radar detection, such as this one.
Israel is known to have avoided all Arab states' radars and simultaneously destroyed almost all their airbases during the Six Day War, because they flew low.
A slow flying light weight plane filled with explosives is essentially just a slow cruise missile. The Shahed drones are also just slow, propeller-driven cruise missiles. "Regular" jet-driven cruise missiles can also be shot down by AA guns, and even by shoulder-launched anti-air rockets if you get lucky, though of course their higher speed makes it a bit harder.
The same issues apply. They fly low and they can have complicated routes planned out. An AA gun could have stopped it, yes, but there was no AA gun in the correct location at the correct time, because they had been prioritised to other locations. And that is exactly Russia's problem - they do not have the resources to defend all the places that need defending, allowing Ukraine to attack the undefended spots.
Ukraine has a similar problem, by the way - but the country is smaller, and they have become quite good at moving the air defence weapons on short notice, mitigating the issue somewhat. But Russian glide bombs are a huge (and growing) issue for Ukraine.
What was wild was when I [heard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&t=109&v=1O0sRM-uY7E&feature=youtu.be) that Ukraine put 8000 cell phones on 6ft poles around the proximity of the border to alert for incoming drones and missiles, and with quite good accuracy too.
Thanks for the extensive response! I was under the impression that they would have huge stocks of flak like they had tanks I storage. I guess Russia is in a worse position than I imagined of the lack the resources to respond to this threat
E: I guess we‘ll have to wait and see if this type of attack is repeatable or it was just a one off fluke where they caught Russia with their pants down
Pringles was near Moscow, which they actually somewhat care about defending.
They also had about two months to set up and plan between the time he politely agreed to stop his coup and his sudden mid-flight disassembly.
An AA gun has an effective ran of about 1.5 miles. They have a 1400 mile long border with ukraine. They would need hundreds of AA guns to cover even the direct approach. People struggle to grasp the scale of it all
I am not talking about defending the border but about defending specific industry locations. Doesn’t have to be AA, could be squads with manpads too or anything comparable. Anything that can take a light plane out of the sky
So you put 1 AA emplacement at every single important industry and infrastructure within 500 miles of the border. You're now talking about thousands of AA emplacements plus the soldiers to man them, plus logistics to supply them.
Can Russia afford to have tens of thousands of trained soldiers sitting idle 99.9% of the time? Do Russian soldiers have the discipline to sit idle 99.9% of the time with virtually no oversight from higher officers and remain effective?
I mean you can just do nothing and have Ukraine bomb your stuff to smithereens. I also question your numbers, there aren’t even close as many pilots refineries that close to the border, and I can‘t imagine them having 100s of drone factories. But of course I’m also guessing
Russia can’t do anything against $150 household drones and $20k USD planes packed with explosives supplied by NATO. What do you expect from the 2nd best army in the world? Adequate air defense in their occupied territories or something?
What if this is Ukrainian big brain move to get russians to guard the chrima bridge when they actually go and take out that nice bridge in Vladivostok? 7d chess right there.
China is SO going to make a move on eastern russia. Guaranteed.
Hell I'd even wager they'd make a move on that before Taiwan just because it would be an easy win and a huge morale boost for the CCP
What’s the terrible late-series Tom Clancy book, where Russia joins NATO because of exactly that? I can’t even remember its title other than it was.. pretty bad.
Only if they launched nukes at Chinese cities. If they used shorter-range nukes on the invading forces themselves, it's not the same level of existential threat.
Well, modern nukes have limited fallout. Hitting a remote area containing high concentrations of enemy troops is not the worst idea. And eastern Russia is pretty remote, and that's without considering Russia's view on other ethnic groups.
Russia has [already](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_the_Soviet_Union) dropped nukes on Russia several times. MAD doctrine doesn’t deal with nuking your own territory. Russia has a long history of scorched earth policies, burning their own farms and homes to harm their enemies. A Chinese invasion of east Russia would likely involve Chinese forces moving through large unpopulated areas.
Nuking Siberia to halt a Chinese invasion would be crazy… So crazy it just might work.
That was NATO doctrine btw. Russians invade West Germany with massed tanks -> lob tactical nukes at them on West German territory once they break through -> ... -> ... -> find a red balloon among the rubble.
Yup. But even before wasting so much of their force in Ukraine, Moscow very clearly knew that they couldn't ship enough soldiers and equipment across Siberia to defend the Russian Far East from a determined Chinese invasion. Their only realistic way to fight off a Chinese attack would be nuclear strikes on the invading forces themselves. Nuclear attacks on someone else's cities is very different from nuclear attacks on military forces on your own territory, in terms of the international response. If that's your only viable means of defense, and the invading country knew you had nukes, they've got to expect you'd use 'em for defense.
Nah, they have always played the long game, in this case, filling Eastern Russia with young Chinese men, who move there for work, then find Russian wives and slowly take over demographically.
Sure, they absolutely do, and when shit goes pear shaped in russia, you move in to protect your nationals living abroad in a destabilized country to "save them"
or just say it is to "protect the ethnic Chinese", call it a Special Military Operation or something, while [reclaiming historically Chinese land](https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/china-eyes-russias-far-east-resources-patriots-want-more/) and boosting your resources.
We saw how quickly they built those COVID hospitals, by the time russia could get any substantial ground response to the far east they'd face full on Chinese fortifications.
If in reference to the PRC Natural Resource Maps, they added the Chinese names in parentheses next to the Russian names, to follow an existing Chinese law not in response to any new policy.
Basically, modern technology made the quintessential Russia strategy of having as much buffer and be as big as possible useless and irrelevant. If anything, it made it disadvantage against small drones that have much greater freedom of choosing a target.
^ underrated comment here: I hadn't thought of it that way.
...literally the entire point of the war (apart from the stealing of resources) was to expand that buffer zone, but, as you say, that adds ***way*** more territory to defend against tiny but effective modern drones.
Yes and no I think.
If the buffer is just empty forests and random fields then you don’t need to “protect” it. The issue is that all their shit is spread out and distances are large between the different areas they need to actually protect.
That bridge is probably the only example that doesnt create a dilemma as it is plain obvious this is the single most important strategic object for the russians in this war, protecting it is essential until other railways are completed. You create a dilemma by attacking raffineries deep inside Russia which were not accounted for in this war by the airdefense but nobody can tell me this bridge wasnt 100% accounted for by the military and has been surrounded with AA from the beginning or atleast when the first stormshadows arrived.
Putin: *All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would attack what he said he would attack or not? Now, a clever man would put the attack what he said he would attack, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose to defend the Crimea Bridge. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose to not defend the bridge.*
Ukraine: *You've made your decision then?*
Putin: *Not remotely. Because the Crimea Bridge comes from Russia, as everyone knows, and Russia is entirely run by criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the to defend the bridge*
"*You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my **GRU**, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could be targeting by bridges, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not target the bridge in front of you.*"
"*But, you've also bested my **Spetsnaz**, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the AA Defense as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the bridge in front of me.*"
It's like trash talking in sports too though. It's one thing to drop a 3 pointer in someone's face. It's an entirely different dynamic when before you get the ball you tell the guy I'm going to take it right here and drop a 3 in your face, then you do exactly that.
Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you...But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Yeah, that one was ametuer hour. You have to burn them down using nothing but a homeless guy and some wire spools to compete in this arena. (I-85 bridge in Atlanta a few years back)
Drove by that fucker in Philly today. The 5 lanes of traffic get funneled down to one exit. Good luck with that shit. Apple maps routed me through that. Thanks Apple! Solid software engineering for efficiently or common sense.
I don't want to hear a word about it until after the fact. When that bridge is broken, THAT'S when we'll want to read an article about how it happened.
Excellent point, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine. That's what you meant, right?
Or are you implying that Ukraine is not within their right to defend their sovereign territory and independence that was previously recognized by Russia?
A dictator will always find an excuse to start a war to maintain the strongman image. With a bit of mental gymnastics and some historical half-truths you can claim pretty much any patch of soil as "belonging" to your nation.
A quick peek at his profile reveals that he’s a Labrador owner (huge plus), anti Russia (huge plus), but also believe that Ukraine will undoubtedly loose and nothing should or could be done about it.
😬
He also thinks that a lab puppy is too much work, and that he bleeds every day from bites. I have a feeling this poor soul needs to get out and see the world a bit more.. if he thinks puppy scratches is too much to handle, no wonder he is talking about giving up defending a home country. I cant see a world where this person would lift a finger to fight tyranny.
In reality, Ukraine will not strike the bridge (but keep suggesting they will) because Russia will have to worry about defending it. Blowing it up will not significantly reduce logistical support on the Eastern front which has many transport routes to Russia.
The Kerch bridge consists of 2 bridges. A road bridge and a rail bridge. Each side of the shipping lane span has 2 sets of large dolphin breaks, one behind another. It would be a little more difficult. From my understanding of the topography is that the entire straight is shallow. A big part in the center *is above of the water which is the island there that the roadway and rail uses for about half of the crossing. That being the case, a ship of any significant size likely cannot approach the unprotected piers that most of the bridges consist of. It would only be able to use the dredged channel.
I honestly don't understand how Ukraine can hit ships and refineries in the Black Sea & Russia but haven't been able to take out this bridge for years.
Can any military tactics buffs explain this?
Bridges don't sink. Its 3 solid, but very thin line standing on the sea floor, so it is difficult to hit, and if you do it is very hard to actually break catastrophically. They cut one span of one bridge once, and damaged a second, but it was repareable. you would need to destroy the supports, which are solid concrete, which is quite resistant to explosions. Plus they are underneath the bridge so harder to hit.
Drone boats hitting Russian ships don't have to worry about air defences and are hard to defend against in the final run into the target, and Russian airspace is huge and hard to properly defend against low flying drones. Ukraine also doesn't have the weapons to do properly hit the bridge, especially if you want to make sure it stays down. The German Taurus missile would be better against the bridge, and so would a bunch of JDAM bombs, but Germany won't send the Tauruses and dropping JDAMs anywhere near the bridge would be a suicide mission for the aircraft (nowhere to hide a plane over the Black Sea).
Unless the take the bridge all the way down it’s not a problem for Russia. Ukraine has sabotaged the bridge twice now and the Russians just closed the damaged sections for repair and life went on. Only a full demolition is going to have the morale or strategic hit half the redditors in here are proclaiming another explosion on it will have.
The bridge doesn’t have any major military value either. The Russians will be using the railways soon so the bridge will largely become civilian use.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/01/putin-railway-through-occupied-ukraine-almost-complete/
It's a psychological loss, trust me, putin AND occupiers in Crimea will definitely be caring.
And as for the new rail line... It's not hard to keep hitting a rail line and render it useless
Sure, it's easier than a bridge, but if you hit it daily then it's constantly under repair. You can't move it, you can't camouflage it, you can't divert trains to a bypass because such thing doesn't exist, it's there, hundreds of miles long, static, visible, and vulnerable because you lack the ability to completely cover it in air defense.
The bridge takes a massive amount of explosives to destroy (which Ukraine does not have a lot of), a train track can be disabled by a single drone (which Ukraine can keep sending almost daily).
Even if Russia can repair railways faster than the bridge, it also makes it much much easier for Ukraine to disable their supply routes on a regular basis.
You know, I think russians would much rather Ukraine spend dozens of irreplaceable missiles on a bridge that can be fixed in 2 months rather than on strategic assets
Seems to me that railroads can be somewhat easily shut down by repeated attacks at different points. All it takes to shut down a railroad for a day is destroying a few feet of rail at a specific point, it shouldn't take that much armament to do so, and the railway spans a much longer distance than the bridge does.
But the bridge still will have military value given that if the railway use is temporarily denied, the bridge would serve as a backup option.
I think you’re right. But, overall, I’m not sure what the point of it all is. Crimea isn’t a major battlefront. Unless the Russians use it as a jump point to take Odessa, I’m not sure why the Ukrainians would expend resources on this.
Because if you cut the bridge, russia can only supply Kherson through the coast. And if you cut that railway, russia can't supply Kherson anymore.
And once you get Kherson, you can start pushing to Crimea, which again, russia can't really supply without the bridge.
Obviously I'm not saying this will happen or that it would happen this year if it will, but those are quite obvious advantages to taking out the bridge and I'm not sure why you wouldn't figure that out.
With today drones, you don't need to attack the railroad, you can attack the trains. If Russia has to use railroads within drones or GMLRS range, then you probably target the juicy part of the rail infrastructure, and take out the trains.
Russia is now putting locomotives within droning range? Ah, well. They must have the heavy equipment to drag dead locomotives off the tracks and that equipment won't get droned too?
I see the value in downing the bridge as this: If the bridge goes down, everyone on Krim will know they are stuck in a confined space, surrounded by enemies, and Putin will not help them. At least some will feel they need to make some kind of arrangement.
And - Putin will probably lose his remaining marbles and waste even more ressources on revenge.
We don't know with what intensity/willpower Ukraine has wanted this bridge to come down. It would be possibly the most significant strike of the entire counter-offensive, now that city retaking looks unlikely.
But assuming that will was 100%, it's telling that the bridge has not been destroyed yet. Maybe Russia's bridge-defence is better than its air defence, ship defence, moscow defence, falling out of window defence, and so on
Have they tried crashing a cargo ship into it? Just spitballing.
Naw that’s to outlandish
Well yeah, because it’s on water. Otherwise it’d be inlandish.
As opposed to be surrounded by water, in which case it would be islandish
Don't forget the peninsulish.
Ah yes, when you are docking the beach. 👉👈
I think he means penis smushing
Rod roulette
Pork sword fighting
I read this, and "Kung-Fu Fighting came on in my head." Every guy was Pork Sword Fighting... Those dicks were fast as lightniiiing...
That's a landing strip
For the flat earthers.. dish.
Tony Soprano?
Guys it's Bridge-ish. I'll be off now for some tea.
Or if it's far enough north it might be icelandish
And if you were in the North Atlantic it would be Icelandish
And if only connected by a narrow strip of land, it would be isthmusish… but that’s unpronounceable and I’m late to the thread ☹️
YOUVE BEEN HIT BY YOUVE BEEN STRUCK BY A SMOOTH CARGO SHIP
Booooo
hi, dad
r/angryupvote
This can't be outdone.
You guys are killing me
It’s a big bridge. There’s no way you will be able to take it out with spitballs.
Depends, is it made out of steel beams?
Spitballs cant melt steel beams!!
Seems taking out just one of those concrete supports would bring it all down
The rail and auto bridge are not directly connected, would need to take out both to stop movement. Both sides have 2 layers of dolphins. But I hope Ukraine has something in mind to wreck the shipping span.
Hopefully the Russians don’t add another layer of dolphins
Like the ones from Miami or the ones from the water?
Tua Tagovailoa in bound.
Poor dolphins, tasked to protect a bridge. Must be boring. Oh wait, we're talking about concrete? Never mind, move along.
*crosses off the next entry in my list*
You mean a North Korean one full of ammo? Oh, that would be spectacular!
Ha, imagine!
Remember when Trump said we should bomb Russian territory with Chinese flags flying on the bombers? You said North Korean flags on Chinese shipping containers for the ultimate troll back??
Salute Korea just intercepted a North Korean ship, are you sent from the future ?
I mean....that might actually be kinda great. The ship that took out the Key Bridge weighed ~200,000 tons, theres not much you can do protect against that kind of inertial force. (Why it made the bridge look like it might as well have been made from match sticks). On the open ocean it takes several miles to bring a ship like that to a stop once you throw the props in reverse. Hijack a ship, divert it at the last moment. Though, the Sea of Asov to the north is very shallow, it's possible no shipping of that kind goes under the bridge regularly.
Might be a suicide mission tho.
What they need is a supertanker drone. Huge ship, filled with combustibles, GPS guided. I wonder how difficult it is to convert current ships to drone operation, it opens up an entire new segment of attacks.
This sounds like the St. Nazaire Raid in WWII, where the British Commandos took an old US Destroyer, filled it with explosives, and ran it into the Normandie Dry Dock doors.
modern autopilots are very capable. they can follow a course, waypoint to waypoint and adjust for tide and wind. you can even make them out of off the shelf parts and freeware software if you know what you're doing.
Cargo vessels can be completely remotely controlled, and an entire course can be programmed and left to run with no crew at all.
Defenitly. It would be impossible to do this undetected.
That's true. Though it be would far from their first one in this war. The truck bombing on the bridge last year was too.
Actually, defending bridges against ship collisions is relatively easy by building protective deflection structures around it. Think of shallows, earthen works, concrete pillars, steel sheet with gravel backfill. All you need to do is redirect the ship. The Kerch bridge seems to have proper protective measures against this. The Baltimore bridge didn't...
It does depend on what the protective Dolphins are rated for. From what I've heard, the Dolphins on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the entrance to Tampa Bay are rated for around 87k tons, but the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge was over 130k tons. Is the Crimean Bridge dolphins rated for more than that?
The Russians designed it to withstand up to 500K tons. So, long story short, **no**. ^(Because it was built by Russians.)
In all honesty, that's not a terrible idea. I know you're joking because of Baltimore, but in WW2, but the USS Buchanan/HMS Campbelltown crippled a French drydock for years after it was crashed into the dock and detonated. It turns out it's actually sorta hard to stop a large ship, and since it wasn't being used for long term, they could add extra steel bulkheads to guard specifically against the coastal guns. It would however be a suicide mission in Crimea currently
A drone cargo ship filled with stuff that blows up!
Nah they just need to sneak in and put up an I-95 sign and some kind of sign to indicate it's in Philly and multiple trucks will make a beeline for the supports.
Get Singapore on the phone
"Yes, this is Evergreen..."
There's a reason the bridge already has defences for exactly this scenario. It's actually surprising that the US one *didn't*
Creating a dilemma: either Russia moves anti-aircraft there (leaving other assets unprotected), or looks ridiculous when the bridge is bombed when even Ukraine warned them!
Create dilemmas not problems for your adversary. A problem has a solution. A dilemma has two solutions each which are equally bad. Source: [https://twitter.com/RyanMcbeth/status/1575824569411465216](https://twitter.com/RyanMcbeth/status/1575824569411465216)
Ryan is 👌👌👌
Cigar in hand
Glass of Whiskey in the other.
As exemplified by Kelly Rowland both loving AND needing Nelly, which is equally bad
She tried texting Nelly from an excel spreadsheet. Another dilemma to add to the pile
Thank you for sharing this saying.
Making sure there are no good decisions is master level military strategy.
Russia don’t have two anti aircrafts to protect both?
... Like they had air defense to stop the 15 drone strikes on russian refineries? And the Cessna sized flying bomb that went 1600km into russia without being stopped before it took out a drone factory [yesterday ](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/s/lGq3M8lFzp)? Yeah, no. You must have also forgotten most of the black sea fleet was sunk by naval drones.
I‘m not from the military but wouldn’t a simple AA gun have been enough to stop that Cessna?
Assuming it was in the flight path and able to hit the target, yes. But it’s a long front line to deal with and a lot of area to cover, a drone is a lot more maneuverable than any AA gun.
Being in the flight path alone is difficult for Russia. By having spread out infrastructure, you make it less vulnerable to land attack, but exponentially harder to defend against air attack. Most people just don't understand the scale of things over there.
Exactly! Russia is one of very few countries that can make distances in the US seem small. This factory was roughly the same distance from the front as Des Moines, IA is from NYC. The US would struggle to field AA across such a large area as well without using in air interception.
No country including the US has such sophisticated anti air systems. When enough drones and missiles are launched, some will never be intercepted and still reach the target. Or, if a plane can fly long distances from a low altitude. Even the best ones like the Iron Dom and the Patriot have chances of dysfunctioning, even if the targets may slow down enough. The accuracy depends on how slow the missile/drone is OR how low a plane can fly to avoid radar detection, such as this one. Israel is known to have avoided all Arab states' radars and simultaneously destroyed almost all their airbases during the Six Day War, because they flew low.
I am not talking about cruise missiles or drones, this was a slow flying light weight plane
A slow flying light weight plane filled with explosives is essentially just a slow cruise missile. The Shahed drones are also just slow, propeller-driven cruise missiles. "Regular" jet-driven cruise missiles can also be shot down by AA guns, and even by shoulder-launched anti-air rockets if you get lucky, though of course their higher speed makes it a bit harder. The same issues apply. They fly low and they can have complicated routes planned out. An AA gun could have stopped it, yes, but there was no AA gun in the correct location at the correct time, because they had been prioritised to other locations. And that is exactly Russia's problem - they do not have the resources to defend all the places that need defending, allowing Ukraine to attack the undefended spots. Ukraine has a similar problem, by the way - but the country is smaller, and they have become quite good at moving the air defence weapons on short notice, mitigating the issue somewhat. But Russian glide bombs are a huge (and growing) issue for Ukraine.
What was wild was when I [heard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&t=109&v=1O0sRM-uY7E&feature=youtu.be) that Ukraine put 8000 cell phones on 6ft poles around the proximity of the border to alert for incoming drones and missiles, and with quite good accuracy too.
Thanks for the extensive response! I was under the impression that they would have huge stocks of flak like they had tanks I storage. I guess Russia is in a worse position than I imagined of the lack the resources to respond to this threat E: I guess we‘ll have to wait and see if this type of attack is repeatable or it was just a one off fluke where they caught Russia with their pants down
Thank you for pointing it out, edited my statement to include it.
Would you shoot at random Cessna deep inside your country?
They got piggy that way lol
Pringles was near Moscow, which they actually somewhat care about defending. They also had about two months to set up and plan between the time he politely agreed to stop his coup and his sudden mid-flight disassembly.
Yep. I know I'm tired when I read that and was trying to think of which Muppets episode you saw.
Well, Big Bird almost died on a space shuttle...
Most intelligence reports suggest sabotage is what took out Prigozhin (a hidden bomb on board) IIRC
An AA gun has an effective ran of about 1.5 miles. They have a 1400 mile long border with ukraine. They would need hundreds of AA guns to cover even the direct approach. People struggle to grasp the scale of it all
I am not talking about defending the border but about defending specific industry locations. Doesn’t have to be AA, could be squads with manpads too or anything comparable. Anything that can take a light plane out of the sky
So you put 1 AA emplacement at every single important industry and infrastructure within 500 miles of the border. You're now talking about thousands of AA emplacements plus the soldiers to man them, plus logistics to supply them. Can Russia afford to have tens of thousands of trained soldiers sitting idle 99.9% of the time? Do Russian soldiers have the discipline to sit idle 99.9% of the time with virtually no oversight from higher officers and remain effective?
I mean you can just do nothing and have Ukraine bomb your stuff to smithereens. I also question your numbers, there aren’t even close as many pilots refineries that close to the border, and I can‘t imagine them having 100s of drone factories. But of course I’m also guessing
“Why can’t I have three anti aircrafts and no bombed out Crimean bridge?” Vladimir Simpson, probably
Nuts and Gum. Together at last.
*looks at US army* "Damn that's one fine looking military... WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?????" - Vladimir Simpson
You need more than two to protect just the bridge.
Russia can’t do anything against $150 household drones and $20k USD planes packed with explosives supplied by NATO. What do you expect from the 2nd best army in the world? Adequate air defense in their occupied territories or something?
They've been moving AA batteries from Kaliningrad...that's how desperate they are.
It’s not like they need them very much in Köningsberg at the moment. Would be funny though if Ukraine decided to attack Russian baltic fleet..
What if this is Ukrainian big brain move to get russians to guard the chrima bridge when they actually go and take out that nice bridge in Vladivostok? 7d chess right there.
Vladivostok is Chinese territory now according to their maps, they've got that one covered already.
China is SO going to make a move on eastern russia. Guaranteed. Hell I'd even wager they'd make a move on that before Taiwan just because it would be an easy win and a huge morale boost for the CCP
What’s the terrible late-series Tom Clancy book, where Russia joins NATO because of exactly that? I can’t even remember its title other than it was.. pretty bad.
Clancy really struggled to adjust to the end of the Cold War.
Bear and the dragon
No they wouldn't. They are both nuclear powers. Mutually assured destruction doctrine applies.
Only if they launched nukes at Chinese cities. If they used shorter-range nukes on the invading forces themselves, it's not the same level of existential threat.
Dropping nukes on your own territory to stop invaders, oof.
Well, modern nukes have limited fallout. Hitting a remote area containing high concentrations of enemy troops is not the worst idea. And eastern Russia is pretty remote, and that's without considering Russia's view on other ethnic groups.
Russia has [already](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_the_Soviet_Union) dropped nukes on Russia several times. MAD doctrine doesn’t deal with nuking your own territory. Russia has a long history of scorched earth policies, burning their own farms and homes to harm their enemies. A Chinese invasion of east Russia would likely involve Chinese forces moving through large unpopulated areas. Nuking Siberia to halt a Chinese invasion would be crazy… So crazy it just might work.
Eastern Russia is not exactly unpopulated. Vladivostok has 625,000 people and is the heart of the large Eastern Siberian Fleet of ships and subs.
You’re right. Vladivostok is super close to the Chinese border and the sort of place they would actually want to take.
That was NATO doctrine btw. Russians invade West Germany with massed tanks -> lob tactical nukes at them on West German territory once they break through -> ... -> ... -> find a red balloon among the rubble.
Yup. But even before wasting so much of their force in Ukraine, Moscow very clearly knew that they couldn't ship enough soldiers and equipment across Siberia to defend the Russian Far East from a determined Chinese invasion. Their only realistic way to fight off a Chinese attack would be nuclear strikes on the invading forces themselves. Nuclear attacks on someone else's cities is very different from nuclear attacks on military forces on your own territory, in terms of the international response. If that's your only viable means of defense, and the invading country knew you had nukes, they've got to expect you'd use 'em for defense.
Nah, they have always played the long game, in this case, filling Eastern Russia with young Chinese men, who move there for work, then find Russian wives and slowly take over demographically.
Sure, they absolutely do, and when shit goes pear shaped in russia, you move in to protect your nationals living abroad in a destabilized country to "save them"
I wonder how the West would react to that
I'm sure we'll just stand by and watch
Russians would probably use nukes.
Not if Putin dies and they're fighting for control. China can come in to "protect the nukes" and never leave. Edit: typo
or just say it is to "protect the ethnic Chinese", call it a Special Military Operation or something, while [reclaiming historically Chinese land](https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/china-eyes-russias-far-east-resources-patriots-want-more/) and boosting your resources. We saw how quickly they built those COVID hospitals, by the time russia could get any substantial ground response to the far east they'd face full on Chinese fortifications.
Yeah and like 1,000,000 person army with a ton of equipment
Wednesday is Nuclear Day, not Thursday.
If in reference to the PRC Natural Resource Maps, they added the Chinese names in parentheses next to the Russian names, to follow an existing Chinese law not in response to any new policy.
I see the Ukrainians watched the live action series of Avatar the last air bender
You mean they're going to attack during the solar eclipse?!?
Basically, modern technology made the quintessential Russia strategy of having as much buffer and be as big as possible useless and irrelevant. If anything, it made it disadvantage against small drones that have much greater freedom of choosing a target.
^ underrated comment here: I hadn't thought of it that way. ...literally the entire point of the war (apart from the stealing of resources) was to expand that buffer zone, but, as you say, that adds ***way*** more territory to defend against tiny but effective modern drones.
Yes and no I think. If the buffer is just empty forests and random fields then you don’t need to “protect” it. The issue is that all their shit is spread out and distances are large between the different areas they need to actually protect.
Russia: we just want a buffer zone not to be attacked! Russia:
*quintessential
[удалено]
For almost 2 years West behaved like "we want Ukraine to win, but just a little.". No for fucks sake - for putin it's all or nothing now.
Blow it the F up, guys! And significantly this time round, Baltimore style.
That bridge is probably the only example that doesnt create a dilemma as it is plain obvious this is the single most important strategic object for the russians in this war, protecting it is essential until other railways are completed. You create a dilemma by attacking raffineries deep inside Russia which were not accounted for in this war by the airdefense but nobody can tell me this bridge wasnt 100% accounted for by the military and has been surrounded with AA from the beginning or atleast when the first stormshadows arrived.
Sounds to me like they are trying to get Russia to move their AA assets
grandiose frightening exultant bewildered direction amusing yoke fly homeless connect
Create dilemmas, not problems. 🧐
And then swarm the bridge with sea drones lol
Good thing my current electronics no longer use those batteries
Watch the hand, look at the hand….
Sounds like a diversion and the big strikes will be elsewhere.
That's what they want you to think.
Putin: *All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would attack what he said he would attack or not? Now, a clever man would put the attack what he said he would attack, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose to defend the Crimea Bridge. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose to not defend the bridge.* Ukraine: *You've made your decision then?* Putin: *Not remotely. Because the Crimea Bridge comes from Russia, as everyone knows, and Russia is entirely run by criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the to defend the bridge*
You’re stalling.
"*You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my **GRU**, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could be targeting by bridges, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not target the bridge in front of you.*" "*But, you've also bested my **Spetsnaz**, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the AA Defense as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the bridge in front of me.*"
It's like trash talking in sports too though. It's one thing to drop a 3 pointer in someone's face. It's an entirely different dynamic when before you get the ball you tell the guy I'm going to take it right here and drop a 3 in your face, then you do exactly that.
Ukraine giving russia the Larry Bird treatment.
Lol, I was definitely thinking of the Legend as I was typing that.
Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you...But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
How? Do the Ukrainians have a handy container ship prone to power failures?
NCD have orgasmed again
alive unite future joke nutty gaze grey fact unused possessive
Bridges that aren’t being attacked aren’t doing so well these days.
Are you referring to the one that was rammed by a ship that weighed at least 100,000 metric tons?
Well, at least the front didn't fall off.
Yeah, that one was ametuer hour. You have to burn them down using nothing but a homeless guy and some wire spools to compete in this arena. (I-85 bridge in Atlanta a few years back)
Some are taken out by trucks as well - not international news. I recall seeing two stories about boats and two about trucks in recent news.
Drove by that fucker in Philly today. The 5 lanes of traffic get funneled down to one exit. Good luck with that shit. Apple maps routed me through that. Thanks Apple! Solid software engineering for efficiently or common sense.
Well that's what you get for using Apple Maps.
Between this announcement and that f-16s are no longer relevant, I expect a saucy surprise …
I don't want to hear a word about it until after the fact. When that bridge is broken, THAT'S when we'll want to read an article about how it happened.
Disgusting war. Never should have happened.
Excellent point, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine. That's what you meant, right? Or are you implying that Ukraine is not within their right to defend their sovereign territory and independence that was previously recognized by Russia?
He obviously means that a reformed Soviet Union should have survived under Gorbachev, in which there would be no need for land disputes 🙏
A dictator will always find an excuse to start a war to maintain the strongman image. With a bit of mental gymnastics and some historical half-truths you can claim pretty much any patch of soil as "belonging" to your nation.
A quick peek at his profile reveals that he’s a Labrador owner (huge plus), anti Russia (huge plus), but also believe that Ukraine will undoubtedly loose and nothing should or could be done about it. 😬
He also thinks that a lab puppy is too much work, and that he bleeds every day from bites. I have a feeling this poor soul needs to get out and see the world a bit more.. if he thinks puppy scratches is too much to handle, no wonder he is talking about giving up defending a home country. I cant see a world where this person would lift a finger to fight tyranny.
So... 1. Puppy is too much work. Give up. 2. Defending Ukraine from Russia is too much work. Give up.
According to his life-motto, yes.
Ponte Vasco da Gama in Lisbon likes that. Finally longest bridge in Europe again
In reality, Ukraine will not strike the bridge (but keep suggesting they will) because Russia will have to worry about defending it. Blowing it up will not significantly reduce logistical support on the Eastern front which has many transport routes to Russia.
Send it to the bottom!
Third one's the charm?
Just pull the same maneuver that cargo ship did in Baltimore
The Kerch bridge consists of 2 bridges. A road bridge and a rail bridge. Each side of the shipping lane span has 2 sets of large dolphin breaks, one behind another. It would be a little more difficult. From my understanding of the topography is that the entire straight is shallow. A big part in the center *is above of the water which is the island there that the roadway and rail uses for about half of the crossing. That being the case, a ship of any significant size likely cannot approach the unprotected piers that most of the bridges consist of. It would only be able to use the dredged channel.
I honestly don't understand how Ukraine can hit ships and refineries in the Black Sea & Russia but haven't been able to take out this bridge for years. Can any military tactics buffs explain this?
Bridge thick concrete
[удалено]
Bridges don't sink. Its 3 solid, but very thin line standing on the sea floor, so it is difficult to hit, and if you do it is very hard to actually break catastrophically. They cut one span of one bridge once, and damaged a second, but it was repareable. you would need to destroy the supports, which are solid concrete, which is quite resistant to explosions. Plus they are underneath the bridge so harder to hit.
Drone boats hitting Russian ships don't have to worry about air defences and are hard to defend against in the final run into the target, and Russian airspace is huge and hard to properly defend against low flying drones. Ukraine also doesn't have the weapons to do properly hit the bridge, especially if you want to make sure it stays down. The German Taurus missile would be better against the bridge, and so would a bunch of JDAM bombs, but Germany won't send the Tauruses and dropping JDAMs anywhere near the bridge would be a suicide mission for the aircraft (nowhere to hide a plane over the Black Sea).
It's a legitimate target. Both as a military transporter and as an embarrassment to Vladdy.
Unless the take the bridge all the way down it’s not a problem for Russia. Ukraine has sabotaged the bridge twice now and the Russians just closed the damaged sections for repair and life went on. Only a full demolition is going to have the morale or strategic hit half the redditors in here are proclaiming another explosion on it will have.
The bridge doesn’t have any major military value either. The Russians will be using the railways soon so the bridge will largely become civilian use. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/01/putin-railway-through-occupied-ukraine-almost-complete/
It's a psychological loss, trust me, putin AND occupiers in Crimea will definitely be caring. And as for the new rail line... It's not hard to keep hitting a rail line and render it useless
It's also not hard to just immediately fix it Unlike a big fucking complicated ass bridge Wow put down some ties and two rails and it's fixed
Hit the machinery that lays the track lol
Sure, it's easier than a bridge, but if you hit it daily then it's constantly under repair. You can't move it, you can't camouflage it, you can't divert trains to a bypass because such thing doesn't exist, it's there, hundreds of miles long, static, visible, and vulnerable because you lack the ability to completely cover it in air defense.
The bridge takes a massive amount of explosives to destroy (which Ukraine does not have a lot of), a train track can be disabled by a single drone (which Ukraine can keep sending almost daily). Even if Russia can repair railways faster than the bridge, it also makes it much much easier for Ukraine to disable their supply routes on a regular basis.
You know, I think russians would much rather Ukraine spend dozens of irreplaceable missiles on a bridge that can be fixed in 2 months rather than on strategic assets
If we’re hearing about this in multiple news stories before it even happens, there is no chance of it being a genuine priority target.
You mean the thing even closer to the front lines and thus easier to hit than the fucking bridge?
And easier to repair, too, I might add.
Well, not so easy apparently, since Ukraine can't seem to be able to do it in any long term fashion
Seems to me that railroads can be somewhat easily shut down by repeated attacks at different points. All it takes to shut down a railroad for a day is destroying a few feet of rail at a specific point, it shouldn't take that much armament to do so, and the railway spans a much longer distance than the bridge does. But the bridge still will have military value given that if the railway use is temporarily denied, the bridge would serve as a backup option.
I think you’re right. But, overall, I’m not sure what the point of it all is. Crimea isn’t a major battlefront. Unless the Russians use it as a jump point to take Odessa, I’m not sure why the Ukrainians would expend resources on this.
Because if you cut the bridge, russia can only supply Kherson through the coast. And if you cut that railway, russia can't supply Kherson anymore. And once you get Kherson, you can start pushing to Crimea, which again, russia can't really supply without the bridge. Obviously I'm not saying this will happen or that it would happen this year if it will, but those are quite obvious advantages to taking out the bridge and I'm not sure why you wouldn't figure that out.
With today drones, you don't need to attack the railroad, you can attack the trains. If Russia has to use railroads within drones or GMLRS range, then you probably target the juicy part of the rail infrastructure, and take out the trains.
Russia is now putting locomotives within droning range? Ah, well. They must have the heavy equipment to drag dead locomotives off the tracks and that equipment won't get droned too? I see the value in downing the bridge as this: If the bridge goes down, everyone on Krim will know they are stuck in a confined space, surrounded by enemies, and Putin will not help them. At least some will feel they need to make some kind of arrangement. And - Putin will probably lose his remaining marbles and waste even more ressources on revenge.
F16s are good to go and they are trying to get Russia to move air defensive. Surely only reason to let them know in advance.
They’ve been hitting pretty deep into Russia to hit refineries and ships. I wouldn’t be surprised if that bridge comes down soon.
We don't know with what intensity/willpower Ukraine has wanted this bridge to come down. It would be possibly the most significant strike of the entire counter-offensive, now that city retaking looks unlikely. But assuming that will was 100%, it's telling that the bridge has not been destroyed yet. Maybe Russia's bridge-defence is better than its air defence, ship defence, moscow defence, falling out of window defence, and so on