AlaskanAg99 said:

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They need to take out railroad bridges. All of them. Preferably while a train engine is on the tracks.

Then ammo and fuel depos.

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Bring Back the Anti-Rail Landmine

Quote:

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As Chuck de Caro proposed in Small Wars Journal, special operators could sneak deep into enemy territory, and emplace anti-rail landmines in strategic rail choke points.[4] De Caro proposed regular Semtex, but anti-rail landmines would damage, derail, or destroy the locomotive and cars in addition to the railway. Damaging, derailing, or destroying the locomotive or cars would make things much worse. Damaged, derailed, or destroyed cars or locomotives, weighing potentially over 60 tons, may need to be moved, before the train can continue or railway repairs can start. If the locomotive is derailed or severely damage, the train may need to wait for another locomotive to arrive to move the rail cars. All that delay slows delivery of the train's supplies, while also fixing the train in a known position for follow-on artillery, drone, air, or special operator strikes. Even more so if the explosion also takes out a rail bridge. Recovering from a destroyed rail bridge is a big challenge; adding a destroyed locomotive and some train cars too would be a nightmare. Military engineers would need to work even harder, and longer to recover, increasing the vulnerability to follow-on attacks.

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Thoughts? This would be even more effective if an anti-rail landmine could be deployed by drones somehow.

docb said:

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https://www.google.com/amp/story/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/liveblog/2024/3/13/ukraine-hits-russian-oil-refinery-in-wave-of-drone-attacks
That's what Ukraine needs to do to beat a bigger adversary. Keep pounding them where it hurts financially.

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It sounds like only single drones are hitting home on these refineries. The damage done, while annoying, isn't going to strategically hurt Russia long term and the refinery will be up and running again soon. Ukraine would need to send waves of drones to these places to put them out of commission and hurt Russia. All this amounts to is a propaganda act.

agent-maroon said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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They need to take out railroad bridges. All of them. Preferably while a train engine is on the tracks.

Then ammo and fuel depos.

---

Bring Back the Anti-Rail Landmine

Quote:

---

As Chuck de Caro proposed in Small Wars Journal, special operators could sneak deep into enemy territory, and emplace anti-rail landmines in strategic rail choke points.[4] De Caro proposed regular Semtex, but anti-rail landmines would damage, derail, or destroy the locomotive and cars in addition to the railway. Damaging, derailing, or destroying the locomotive or cars would make things much worse. Damaged, derailed, or destroyed cars or locomotives, weighing potentially over 60 tons, may need to be moved, before the train can continue or railway repairs can start. If the locomotive is derailed or severely damage, the train may need to wait for another locomotive to arrive to move the rail cars. All that delay slows delivery of the train's supplies, while also fixing the train in a known position for follow-on artillery, drone, air, or special operator strikes. Even more so if the explosion also takes out a rail bridge. Recovering from a destroyed rail bridge is a big challenge; adding a destroyed locomotive and some train cars too would be a nightmare. Military engineers would need to work even harder, and longer to recover, increasing the vulnerability to follow-on attacks.

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Thoughts? This would be even more effective if an anti-rail landmine could be deployed by drones somehow.

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I am in the RR Bridge construction and repair business now and was formerly LRS.

First russia has a very large rail maintenance and repair force so your targets need to be prioritized on locations requiring complexities of bridge scale or access and as said previously if you can take out the track and the train maybe you damage the cargo and now provide an obstacle to repair.

I think the limitation here is having the intel of train location with munitions capability to meet at a specific location. I would be all for giving them the long range ATACAMs and even cruise missiles for targeting all major bridges serving the theatre and even targeting trains directly.

As for sabotage, this has occurred, is risky and again limited. The weight alone of explosives required to take down a concrete steel bridge while carrying all of your survival essentials deep into enemy territory to target a likely defended target pretty risky.

Drones. Currently the aerial ones are limited to payload and range. Will be interesting to see if Ukes are developing something to run on the rail that could cut track and get a derail. This could possibly be delivered by drone or placed several KM before target increasing the capabilities of a team.

I suspect at this point in the war the orcs are transloading off their trains farther from the front already to protect from such attacks.

Its interesting that the orcs have not done this to the rails in western Ukraine with their cruise missiles…..guess they want them for apartment buildings.

docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

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Doc is spot on. This is NOT just a process upset. This is major damage. Takes a while to fix them every time and then more are coming. This strategy is not propaganda and brings the war home to the RuZZian terrorists.

Edit to add Eliminatus is spot on also.

rgag12 said:

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All this amounts to is a propaganda act.

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The only thing in your post that is factually correct... About your post.

Gilligan said:

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docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

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Doc is spot on. This is NOT just a process upset. This is major damage. Takes a while to fix them every time and then more are coming. This strategy is not propaganda and brings the war home to the RuZZian terrorists.

Edit to add Eliminatus is spot on also.

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Agreed, it takes a while to fix them in the ideal environment. How much longer will it take in a country with stretched wartime logistics and demographics suggesting a shortage of the needed skilled laborers?

📷 Russian drones freely operating in the rear of Ukrainian Army, destroying valuable assets more frequently than usual in the recent days. It signals either a lack of means to counter these drones, lack of ammunition for AA, or the army became more careless under Sirskyi. https://t.co/OSYngJ4mh6

— MilitaryLand.net (@Militarylandnet) March 13, 2024

Small unit cohesion in action.

Birthday in a trench 🎈🎁 pic.twitter.com/3TYLImpYg6

— Oriannalyla 🇺🇦 (@Lyla_lilas) March 13, 2024

JFABNRGR said:

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agent-maroon said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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They need to take out railroad bridges. All of them. Preferably while a train engine is on the tracks.

Then ammo and fuel depos.

---

Bring Back the Anti-Rail Landmine

Quote:

---

As Chuck de Caro proposed in Small Wars Journal, special operators could sneak deep into enemy territory, and emplace anti-rail landmines in strategic rail choke points.[4] De Caro proposed regular Semtex, but anti-rail landmines would damage, derail, or destroy the locomotive and cars in addition to the railway. Damaging, derailing, or destroying the locomotive or cars would make things much worse. Damaged, derailed, or destroyed cars or locomotives, weighing potentially over 60 tons, may need to be moved, before the train can continue or railway repairs can start. If the locomotive is derailed or severely damage, the train may need to wait for another locomotive to arrive to move the rail cars. All that delay slows delivery of the train's supplies, while also fixing the train in a known position for follow-on artillery, drone, air, or special operator strikes. Even more so if the explosion also takes out a rail bridge. Recovering from a destroyed rail bridge is a big challenge; adding a destroyed locomotive and some train cars too would be a nightmare. Military engineers would need to work even harder, and longer to recover, increasing the vulnerability to follow-on attacks.

---

Thoughts? This would be even more effective if an anti-rail landmine could be deployed by drones somehow.

---

I am in the RR Bridge construction and repair business now and was formerly LRS.

First russia has a very large rail maintenance and repair force so your targets need to be prioritized on locations requiring complexities of bridge scale or access and as said previously if you can take out the track and the train maybe you damage the cargo and now provide an obstacle to repair.

I think the limitation here is having the intel of train location with munitions capability to meet at a specific location. I would be all for giving them the long range ATACAMs and even cruise missiles for targeting all major bridges serving the theatre and even targeting trains directly.

As for sabotage, this has occurred, is risky and again limited. The weight alone of explosives required to take down a concrete steel bridge while carrying all of your survival essentials deep into enemy territory to target a likely defended target pretty risky.

Drones. Currently the aerial ones are limited to payload and range. Will be interesting to see if Ukes are developing something to run on the rail that could cut track and get a derail. This could possibly be delivered by drone or placed several KM before target increasing the capabilities of a team.

I suspect at this point in the war the orcs are transloading off their trains farther from the front already to protect from such attacks.

Its interesting that the orcs have not done this to the rails in western Ukraine with their cruise missiles…..guess they want them for apartment buildings.

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The problem with trying to do meaningful rail sabotage that takes longer than a couple of days to fix is that if you can find the consequential weak points in the orc rail system, so can the orcs. They know their own weak points and they probably have surveillance cameras and/or security on or near those locations.

docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

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More detail on the refinery attacks and Russia's halt to gasoline exports. More damage than initially reported.

SWARMS
MORE

Quote:

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The problem with trying to do meaningful rail sabotage that takes longer than a couple of days to fix is that if you can find the consequential weak points in the orc rail system, so can the orcs.

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Valid point, but this may very well be assuming a level of competence that's not often in evidence.

74OA said:

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docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

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More detail on the refinery attacks and Russia's halt to gasoline exports. More damage than initially reported.

SWARMS
MORE

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Says they hit a crude tower - the first step in the process and impossible to run a refinery at all without it. It says refinery capacity is reduced by half so they probably have at least 2 crude towers. If the vessel itself is damaged, I don't see how you fix that in less than a couple months.

Putin is talking about nuclear war again.

We all know what that means.

Putin is feeling the heat

Quote:

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"From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready," Putin, 71, told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA when asked whether Russia was really ready for a nuclear war.

Putin said the U.S. understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory - or to Ukraine - Russia would treat the move as an intervention. Moscow claims to have annexed four regions of Ukraine and says they are now fully part of Russia.

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Quote:

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"Realising that things are going the wrong way, Putin continues to use classic nuclear rhetoric. With the old Soviet hope - 'be scared and retreat!'," said Podolyak, who said he believed such talk showed Putin was afraid of losing the war.

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The list of prominent Putin critics attacked or murdered by the regime grows ever longer. This is the world Putin would give us all.

DEATHS

NM, mod would probably see it as a derail.

Jack Boyett said:

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74OA said:

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docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

---

More detail on the refinery attacks and Russia's halt to gasoline exports. More damage than initially reported.

SWARMS
MORE

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Says they hit a crude tower - the first step in the process and impossible to run a refinery at all without it. It says refinery capacity is reduced by half so they probably have at least 2 crude towers. If the vessel itself is damaged, I don't see how you fix that in less than a couple months.

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Much of the materiel that builds and sustains Russia's energy infrastructure is imported. In the face of sanctions, I wonder if it can replace what this attack damaged from domestic sources or does it face long disruption while it smuggles something in?

Jack Boyett said:

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74OA said:

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docb said:

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I'm guessing Russia not allowing gasoline exports for 6 months is propaganda also? I'm sorry but you are wrong. Russia never envisioned they'd be dealing with these type of attacks when they began their special military operation that was supposed to last a week. And honestly WTF do you know about repairing an oil refinery.

---

More detail on the refinery attacks and Russia's halt to gasoline exports. More damage than initially reported.

SWARMS
MORE

---

Says they hit a crude tower - the first step in the process and impossible to run a refinery at all without it. It says refinery capacity is reduced by half so they probably have at least 2 crude towers. If the vessel itself is damaged, I don't see how you fix that in less than a couple months.

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There is no way the Russians are just repairing these refineries over night, if they are destroying crude towers and other important distillation or fractionation equipment with drone strikes they will have problems… mush less if they light some of those giant gasoline or naphtha tanks on fire.., you set a tank farm full of products tanks ablaze it may be impossible to put those fires out, it definitely won't be easy.

I suspect Ukraine will keep hitting these refineries relentlessly… it will cause major problems for Russia, especially financial export income. I suspect Ukraine is getting major help in designing these drones and that they will only get better over time.

Video of LukOils NORSI Refinery on fire … this is huge.. that's gonna leave a dark brown skid mark in someone's underwear

https://news.sky.com/video/ukraine-war-production-at-one-of-russias-largest-oil-refineries-halted-due-to-drone-strike-13093182

Pictures from the Volgograd Refinery fire in February after a Ukraine drone strike… these are not minor fixes… if Ukraine keeps this up Russia will have major issues with supplying its own people with motor fuel, much less export fuel for sales and or use in the war

https://news.yahoo.com/drone-strike-ignites-fire-major-102500488.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Good recap on how these drones strikes were coordinated with the free Russian cross border raid

If the goal was to 'engage as many Russian forces as possible' then I guess, yeah, it was a blazing success.

🇺🇦🇷🇺🚨‼️ The total annihilation of the Ukrainian group that tried to go into Russia again.

-> They already got attacked on their way in.

Russians were ready.

PS: The Ukranian psy op videos show allegedly this place full with deep snow. As we see, nope it’s a fake. https://t.co/RV68mkJe0f pic.twitter.com/y7hMXnfefF

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) March 14, 2024

He seems to even imply the IL-76 was shot down by the Russians taking off, who were confused about whether it was a drone from Ukraine. That seems…a little silly, at best.

recently released US National Intelligence 2024 Report put a lot of emphasis on how Russia is able to remain in the fight due to their energy production and exports regime

take that out, and the NORKS and CHINESE may be a lot less likely to give away their military for free...

Willy gives a good breakdown of the attack on the helicopters in the first 5 minutes. Choppers were approximately 50km behind frontlines. "Something has changed" in Russias ability to hit high value targets in recent weeks. He ponders if it is better UAV capability, lack of Uke ability to deal with UAVs due to munition limitations, or even worse, increase leaks from new military staff from recent reshuffling.

Yeah. Something has changed. Russia has been able to hit a HIMARS, Patriot launchers, and now these in recent weeks. Ukraine needs to clamp down fast.

Lord Dildo will be posting this one soon

Plane was “slightly damaged” after a rapid unplanned altitude goodwill adjustment event. Crew survived, and plane will be good as new in two days.
Anyone claiming anything else is discrediting the glorious Russian military and subject to jail!

Source: Russian MOD (maybe) pic.twitter.com/YCDeIbRjCq

— PK186 (@PhilK186) March 12, 2024

That plane debris in the open field is not an IL-76. Not sure what the relationship is in that X post.

The Il-76 with the engine problem crashed in the trees, and appeared to be under pilot control but missed short of the runway. Maybe they lost both of those engines, was overweight, or incorrect flap settings, or combination thereof.

JFABNRGR said:

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That plane debris in the open field is not an IL-76. Not sure what the relationship is in that X post.

The Il-76 with the engine problem crashed in the trees, and appeared to be under pilot control but missed short of the runway. Maybe they lost both of those engines, was overweight, or incorrect flap settings, or combination thereof.

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Should have put on a winky emoji on the bottom tweet.

The Tendar second video shows something falling off the plane- engine ?

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Yeah. Something has changed. Russia has been able to hit a HIMARS, Patriot launchers, and now these in recent weeks. Ukraine needs to clamp down fast.

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Military aid hands down. With Congress in gridlock, guided American AA munitions have to be exhausted at this point. At least the discretionary pool. Ukraine has always battled with an extremely finite number of them and target selection would be tough. This isn't a problem of targeting incoming Russian munitions as much as keeping the skies clear of Russian eyes. Which I think is the biggest change. Russian observation drones are able to pierce DEEP into Ukraine in numbers I haven't seen since the invasion.

Can't count out bad luck sometimes either. Sometimes you just zig when you should have zagged. Russia has been hunting these assets since they showed up and if I look at it objectively, I am truly surprised it took them this long to hit a HIMARs.

Russian moles is also very possible but we sitting at our computers simply have zero ways to quantify that so we can only speculate for now, at best.

Just flag it and let him take the ban

Aye. Good point. Broke my own rule of engaging in pointless discussion.