Blyatskrieg

[Grumble]

The NY Times have been told it was the lorry
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/08 ... e-war-news

[EACLucifer]

The NY Times have been told it was the lorry
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/08 ... e-war-news

I've seen the slo-mo where the blast starts before anything happens to the lorry.

And with Dzhankoi, it was claimed it was special forces, with a later claim of missiles.

I suspect Ukraine want to maximise paranoia on the Russian side. If nothing else, checking every vehicle and train wagon really slows things down.

This is not to say it is definitely a missile, but that there's some things pointing that way.

[Bird on a Fire]

It's the kind of narrative that gets made into epic movies, blowing up bridges. And these days we can watch phone videos in almost real time.

It's like when the telegraph was invented. What is it with Crimea and driving innovation in war reporting?

[Herainestold]

Apparently the Russians have restored train service across the bridge, which is the essential logistical service for the war.

A huge propaganda victory for Ukraine, but a major escalation and a further step towards nuclear Armageddon.

[Woodchopper]

Now they've analysed it frame by frame, the video does appear to show something flashing bright while the truck still in frame and perfectly intact.

That rules out the truck. The poor bastard's home is being searched like he's an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Claim here that this assessment is not correct: https://twitter.com/warnerta/status/157 ... J2aSJg1LmA

I don’t know who is right.

[Grumble]

Now they've analysed it frame by frame, the video does appear to show something flashing bright while the truck still in frame and perfectly intact.

That rules out the truck. The poor bastard's home is being searched like he's an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Claim here that this assessment is not correct: https://twitter.com/warnerta/status/157 ... J2aSJg1LmA

I don’t know who is right.

I think it would have to be high speed footage for the camera to have caught it accurately. A split frame makes sense.

[Martin_B]

Apparently the Russians have restored train service across the bridge, which is the essential logistical service for the war.

A huge propaganda victory for Ukraine, but a major escalation and a further step towards nuclear Armageddon.

Really, Henny Penny? On both tracks? I highly doubt that. They may have reviewed the southern set of tracks and deemed it capable of service, but the northern set would be out of action for a while. So, the rail capability of the bridge will be 50% of what it was before (and possibly a bit less, as they may need to reduce speeds/loads on the southern set of tracks until the bridge's strength has been fully assessed/proved).

Of course, the Russian army may not care about safety (they don't seem to care about the lives of their soldiers) so they may start pushing the use of the rail line even more, which could mean another rail disaster may happen, which doesn't even need the Ukrainians to fire another missile/drive another truck bomb.

[TimW]

The top side of the road bridge looks pretty scorched on the satellite photograph. Much more than what we’ve seen of the underside.

Yes, that helps, cheers. And I suppose there's a properly damaged bit in the water.

[jimbob]

No sign of blast damage.

Where is the blast damage? Apart from a few barriers, have I missed it?

The top side of the road bridge looks pretty scorched on the satellite photograph. Much more than what we’ve seen of the underside.

https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/15788 ... OmOikodd7Q

But couldn't the burning fuel from the train have done that?

[lpm]

There's quite a big gap between the road bridge and the rail bridge. Some photos mislead. The train fire didn't have any impact on the road.

[Grumble]

No sign of blast damage.

Where is the blast damage? Apart from a few barriers, have I missed it?

Not an expert remotely, but the bridge sections were blown off their supports. That’s fairly convincing blast damage to me. A blast against a flat chunk of concrete is a bit different than one against a house or structure with vertical bits.

[Woodchopper]

There's quite a big gap between the road bridge and the rail bridge. Some photos mislead. The train fire didn't have any impact on the road.

I agree.

To me it looks like a massive explosion on or above the road.

[Martin Y]

Why have they got a phone pointing at a monitor? Make it seem unofficial and true?

So far as I know it was unofficial and probably true. The stuff that made it onto twitter was from somebody's phone and if you look at the background you can see they're in some kind of control room with a wall of monitors showing what appear to be multiple camera views of the bridge. I can't understand the discussion on the sound track but it may add context.

The picture looking down the road has one frame which shows the moment of the explosion. The top 80% or so of the frame is normal but the bottom part is just white from the flash of the explosion. That's parts of two different camera frames, one before and one after the detonation. The scan of the phone's camera and the monitor's display rate are not synchronised so that kind of switch in the middle of a frame results. You only notice it so clearly when something obvious changes.

[lpm]

It's totally mad that we're all sitting at home with this volume of intelligence. The Russians didn't seem to care that people were driving up to the explosion site, filming everything, and broadcasting it all on social media.

Back in the day Ukraine would be desperate for a structural assessment of the damage and would be poring over indistinct aerial photos or sending a spy into the Moscow offices of a structural engineer.

[Martin Y]

It is crazy, really. A generation ago it would be like a LeCarre story where one grainy black and white negative got smuggled out of Russia and analysts pored over it to work out what it really showed and if it might be something Karla faked. Now some dude in the bridge control room can't wait to send videos the world.

We still have to bit where we pore over what the details really show of course but now it's all about data compression Chinese whispers as the image goes from camera to recorder to screen to phone camera to phone memory to twitter upload to twitter stream to us, and it gets reprocessed and data compressed at every step.

[TimW]

It's not so unusual. Road deck rises in the middle to get over the part where ships can go under. Trains can't climb steep inclines so the rail line is higher than the road deck much earlier. Lower road deck is probably cheaper to build but also exposes road traffic to lower wind speeds than a higher and more exposed deck would.

Thanks, saved me asking some stupid questions.

[jimbob]

It's totally mad that we're all sitting at home with this volume of intelligence. The Russians didn't seem to care that people were driving up to the explosion site, filming everything, and broadcasting it all on social media.

Back in the day Ukraine would be desperate for a structural assessment of the damage and would be poring over indistinct aerial photos or sending a spy into the Moscow offices of a structural engineer.

Yes I have said that to some colleagues.

Not only do we have better intelligence than millitaries in other conflicts, we probably know more about Russian troop movements than Many WWII generals did about their own troops

[Woodchopper]

Photo of the railway line.
https://twitter.com/tendar/status/15790 ... tmNyRtZipA

[lpm]

Impossible to tell what happened to the girders beneath.

Come to think of it, how do experts determine whether the structure is unsound? How can you check what's happened inside concrete?

[Martin Y]

Photo of the underside of the bridge. No sign of blast damage. Probably not a boat. https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/ ... YTL2MGLoNQ

Yes, that does imply the explosion was above, and we can see daylight through a hole in the road deck, which appears to be toward the inside lane where the truck was driving.

[Gfamily]

Photo of the underside of the bridge. No sign of blast damage. Probably not a boat. https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/ ... YTL2MGLoNQ

Yes, that does imply the explosion was above, and we can see daylight through a hole in the road deck, which appears to be toward the inside lane where the truck was driving.

The clip on the BBC report ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63192757 ) shows a lot of 'something' flying over the bridge from the right.

[Woodchopper]

Photo of the railway line.
https://twitter.com/tendar/status/15790 ... tmNyRtZipA

Clearing the debris: https://twitter.com/sami_viitanen/statu ... 4-2gbai8gw

[EACLucifer]

Photo of the underside of the bridge. No sign of blast damage. Probably not a boat. https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/ ... YTL2MGLoNQ

Yes, that does imply the explosion was above, and we can see daylight through a hole in the road deck, which appears to be toward the inside lane where the truck was driving.

The clip on the BBC report ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63192757 ) shows a lot of 'something' flying over the bridge from the right.

That's what I mentioned earlier. I was wondering if it was unburnt fuel from a thermobaric warhead, though not all thermobarics use solid fuel.

I can't find where I saw the footage previously, and the BBC's media player doesn't allow very quick pausing and frame by frame, but I think the flash started more than a frame before the truck was enveloped, which would suggest it wasn't a split-frame issue either.

The truck in question was also apparently inspected before the crossing, and while that doesn't mean a huge amount, it does make it smuggle in a really large bomb.

I think Ukraine want people to get it wrong how it was done, and anything that makes the Russians slow down their traffic over the bridge with paranoid inspections would be good for them. Meanwhile the Russians don't want to admit the possibility that Ukraine's conventional military hit that bridge. They'd rather claim it was a suicide bomber, and associate the Ukrainians with perceptions of terrorists.

[jimbob]

^^

Yes. When the NYT carried that story - I thought it certain that he'd spoken to the NYT, and pretty likely that he was an intelligence official working for Ukraine... and also likely that he was working for Ukraine when speaking to the NYT.

Send the Russians on a paranoid wild goose chase and one that would impact their supplies even if the bridge magically was repaired tomorrow.

[jimbob]

^^

Yes. When the NYT carried that story - I thought it certain that he'd spoken to the NYT, and pretty likely that he was an intelligence official working for Ukraine... and also likely that he was working for Ukraine when speaking to the NYT.

Send the Russians on a paranoid wild goose chase and one that would impact their supplies even if the bridge magically was repaired tomorrow.

A paranoid wild goose chase that not only focusses attention in the wrong place but also will annoy those being searched. Another drip drip drip on the morale.