Exactly. That is also my thinking. But what Andrei Martyanov is saying is that everything above ground was also destroyed. Which is not something that corresponds with that black and white video in which there are no big explosions on the surface.
Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine
- Thread starter bjorb
- Start date
Exactly. That is also my thinking. But what Andrei Martyanov is saying is that everything above ground was also destroyed. Which is not something that corresponds with that black and white video in which there are no big explosions on the surface.
I don’t think you necessarily need big explosions on the surface to destroy “everything“ above ground. We are talking about hypersonic missiles here that derive much if not most of their power from high speed and weight and not necessarily from explosives. Much like small comets or asteroids fragments hitting the earth’s surface (although in that specific case still quite a bit slower then that). So, a shockwave of it hitting could have already been enough to destroy “everything“ above ground. While probably not necessarily needing to destroy the buildings visibly all too much. I would presume you wouldn’t see any explosion there even though it was devastating. Also remember that the weapon came with 6 salvos of 6 individual projectiles (36 projectiles) all fairly close to each other. Which makes this A LOT more destructive.
msasa79
Jedi Master
Going with basic logic plus taking into account consistency of what Russians want and do to achieve that, it's rather easy to deduce that if NATO fired long-range missiles into Russia proper were to be established fact on the ground, then Russia most likely won't settle for anything less than a DMZ wide enough to keep those missiles from its territories, i.e. 500+ km from the borders which by quick inspection of the map basically means the whole of Ukraine.
Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it seems like a pretty basic logical conclusion based just on observation of what's been going on. Wouldn't such a thing cross some minds of the guys in the West?
In fact, I think the Russians hinted at exactly that on more than one occasion quite clearly. One would think that this should at least cross the minds of some people with brains in the west. It is pretty obvious. Maybe they don’t really mind if Russia either demands a demilitarized zone equivalent to those ranges or gets those territories under full control, because it further plays into their “Putin is the next Hitler swallowing up ever more territories, coming closer and closer to “civilized“ Europe“ nonsense?
Well, as you said, the warheads were probably designed to pinch through the surface like a needle and deliver most of the damage underground. If that was the case, then you wouldn't have a shockwave on the surface. And you need an explosion for a shockwave. No explosion, no shockwave, no big destruction on the surface. That corresponds to what we saw on the video.
officially, the weapons in use so far have a max range of 300kms. But yeah, lots of Ukr. territory as a buffer zone.
I think in this case it was essentially a kinetic weapon. Moving at that hypersonic speed, the impact of the projectiles would have caused significant and widespread damage surpassing the destructive force of TNT (per kg of weight), with little observable 'explosion'.
Accurate?
If Russia also wants a buffer zone that protects Belarus, then almost the whole of the West of Ukraine will be covered using 300km max range of the weapons as a guide from the Belarus border. One could imagine that Lukashenko would insist on that and that Russia would take that into consideration.
