If the F16 Ukranian pilots got trained to even half this level, the Russian pilots are toast...
Some real nice F16 'hunting-evading' stuff.

Equally unconvinced the bridge is the right target.

Making some assumptions on what is being made available.

Perhaps AGM-88 can help destroy air defenses (improved integration over MiG-29)

Maybe AGM-154 can attack things that are combustible or relatively delicate compared to a bridge

AMRAAM might help prevent the Russian Air Force from getting close enough to launch glide munitions

Not clear we expect AIM-9M to be an early focus.

Happy to be roasted.

Hitting the bridge is a coup and sends a message to Russia that they can't win.

Just spit ballin' here.
Taking out one side of the bridge also creates a great bottle neck that the Ukrainians can use to their advantage.
My expectation is that they will go for a combined attack both air and sea now that the Rusk Navy has been removed from the picture.
The drones have increased massively in size and as we saw on one attack they kept targeting the same point on a ship until it sank.

A combine air and sea attack on a designated set of spans may have the desired effect and the confusion of a joint raid gives the opportunity a greater chance of success.

More photos from Morozovsk airfield after the attack.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....77d0159f0f.png

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7a36e36fc0.png

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....67c073903c.png
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Re the F16's.
In my opinion the F16 gives the Ukrainian military the ability to dominate the airspace over the combat area. So now where Russia was unopposed it has an additional threat to contend with. To counter that threat it needs it's own fighters to cover the bombers and troops on the ground. Fighters it doesn't have in large numbers. So very quickly Ukraine can go from contesting the airspace to superiority and then supremacy. Only two things I can see that might be a problem. Number of F16's (and pilots) to account for losses and take the fight to the enemy. Losses from ground missiles and airbase attack from drones.
It would make sense for Russia to try and hit the airbases the F16's operate from with missiles and drones and when the F16's are operating over the battlefield engaging with cheap ground to air munitions. Ukraine has already proved these tactics against Russian air assets successfully.
As for training that's all well and good but the biggest teacher is air combat so you have to engage the enemy, take losses to learn the trade so to speak.
To quote Hub Zemke from WW2 "The first time I knew I was in combat was when I saw my wing man going down in flames".
So can Ukraine consume those losses and still be effective?

Thanks for your compliment.

You seem to think in kg "explosives", I think in capabilities to sort out, organize and perform an attack at this scale.

Of course, just a small (accumulated) load of explosives won't impress the road/railway spans by itself.

However (going for the only reasonable target, being the arch bridges itself), just flying from the side into the suspension cables/rods and gravity will be your friend to get the road/railway spans of the arch bridges down. Do the same from the side with the arches and, even when one arch tumbles (partially) over, the bridge is toast and repair will take a long time. Add some help (maybe as a start) to destabilize the road/railway span by sending in some Cessna scale drones, full of petrol and heating the span, will destroy its structural strength to carry any load. And, I can imagine the Ukraine engineers have their own fantasies about these things.

We should not forget, that bridges are strong in the vertical, but the sideways load strength is largely to accommodate wind forces.

I think, with the bridge (the arch part), you have 2 options: Just pulverize with a huge amount of explosives, or use the surgical approach and damage the critical parts that much, that gravity takes over. I'd go for the latter option. Much cleaner AND Russia does have the challenge to clean up the remnants before it can rebuild anything. See how long it takes in Baltimore, in peace time.

All I see is a prat with no gloves and his sleeves rolled up.

Mog

Looking at these photos I get the impression, that this might not be only a storage location, but also an assembly facility. The amount of bombs (?), only "partially" opened, doesn't look that realistic to me when the bombs go off in one huge explosion. Then all and everything would be pulverized and no partially assembled bombs would be visible.

Or maybe these are the remnants of rocket types of ammunition, without warhead and the fuel being cooked off, or so.

Can anyone identify those weapons?

Mog

the ones on top picture look a lot like KAB-500SE's.
The rest are so toasted that its anyones guess.

Funny detail, the photos are marked as "Dossier of a spy", but I am still perplexed how it is possible that military object was photographed and put online so the enemy can evaluate the damage and other valuable data. No OpSec at all, or what?

Wind forces will be monstrous..

Your capabilities thinking reminds me of a joke ( which I have modified )

Thinker: You just need to hit the cables and it will bring the bridge down.

Operator: But they're only 15 cm wide, we need to cut 10 of them, bridge is 300 km away and the drones have 3-4 seconds reaction time-lag and it will need to be done at night. How do we do all that ?

Thinker: Look, I've done the difficult work with my concept thinking. It's up to you to sort out the little details.

You're starting again with your wild, non-specific suggestions. How does this huge amount get delivered accurately to the precise point to collapse the bridge. ?
How? Russia has maybe seven times more combat aircraft and it cannot dominate the FEBA because there is too much accurate anti-air.
Their successes come from glide-bombs dropped 30/40 km behind the front-line, or ballistic/cruise-missiles fired 300 km behine the front-line.

As has often been said, the F 16 is not a wonder-weapon, not a miraculous game-changer.

Abrams tanks being re-introduced.
 

Per Denys Davidov video, Abrams coming back to the front-line after modifications with added ERA and armoured skirts. I wonder what the weight is now.


From 7:00 talking about improving tank kill-resistance

Opsec died with Social Media.
See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Th...document_leaks

Obviously we wait and see as to how Ukr uses its new aircraft. We also wait for a Ruzzian response. Of further interest is the longer term capability increase for Ukr with the incorporation of the SAAB 340 and Mirage 2000-5. Any AWACS/datalink support to the new airframes could be a major game-changer given the already proven potential of the Viper. The next 12 months are going to be, possibly, decisive. 🤞🏻

SU-34 attacked at Morozovsk.

Might buff out will a lot of effort…..

Video….

ussians are reporting in the Kursk insertions claiming that The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is about to fall into the hands of Ukrainians.

Meanwhile amid reports of "a sabotage and reconnaissance group breaking through into the Kursk region", local residents are being called and asked to evacuate immediately

Local media are writing about this. Also, according to the press service of the regional government, residents of Kurchatov are being told by phone about the imminent seizure of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant.

"In fact, the calls are being made by the Center for Informal Information and Psychological Operations. This information is not substantiated in any way. We ask residents not to give in to information provocations!" Stressed Russian officials.

They state after assuring having repelled the "saboteurs" now confirms the fights and says that "reserves are being sent there right now".

Russian complete panic and cope continues. This is getting more interesting by the minute.

This is what we know so far..
brigade + incursion into Kursk.
Sp far its 7km deep... (rRssian Kharkiv maxed out at 6.5).
the UKR forces are still advancing..
russia is rushing the 22nd brigade? to the front along with air cover.. Ukraine is wrecking everything with drones.
rRssian TG and social media proves they were not ready for this…..

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ddfdf5b60a.png

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....66c5eb4fc.jpeg
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Ukrainian artillery has destroyed several convoys of armoured vehicles heading to reinforce the Kursk area of Russian forces.

Russia's back is not against a wall, until you get to Petrapavlovsk. The Kremlin's back isn't against a wall, sadly, a brick backstop behind a firing line would be appropriate but is not likely. Even Putin's back isn't against a wall, it may end up above a pavement pizza, or in a shallow ditch, or in a basement in Yekaterinburg, or downstairs Ulitsa Lefortovskiy Val, дом 5, Moscow, 111250 but a wall is not high odds. Last occasion a leader led his country on such a disastrous enterprise, it ended in a smoking ditch. (time before, it was an island in the middle of the Atlantic. This is a war of choice, by Vlad, and while demographics may have set some timescale, it was still an option, and Vlad took Door No. 1. Pity.

The Kerch bridge being dropped would result in the railway tracks becoming critical for continued Russia criminality in Ukraine, at least anywhere outside of 100km +/- of a Russian gas station that hasn't let the smoke out of the tanks yet. Dropping the centre span over the navigable waters of the strait would be one big sanction against R-O-D as a useable port, as well as much of the Caspian, so, "splash 1" seems to be cost effective. That would leave Vlad impaled on his own ego, with the Baltic looking unfriendly to his regime, and his remaining maritime LOCs being around Kola, or PetraP, or Vladivostok. Overall, that would suck biggly for Vlad's popularity.

Vlad did that all by his ownsome. It was his numpties that dropped the main agricultural reservoir from a notable body of water to caked n' baked earth. Apparently consequences don't rate assessment when you become a dick-
tater.

The donated military stuff from Russia may be able to be sold off to Eritrea or Botswana, although Botswana has a couple of Cessna 172's so probably is better off without any of Vlad's aero gear. The last 2 years has suggested that the days of arty being king of the show may have just been dethroned, a FPV drone with a $50- RPG head is cheaper to produce than the amount of arty rounds needed to take out the same target at the same range today. The majority of T-72's and T-80s that are in Ukraine are well ventilated now, and need new decor and some bondo.

Strategic withdrawal makes some sense, I would imaging Ukraine is not happy with any turf they have given up to the crime syndicate. doubt that it was by choice or a cunning plan from Baldrick, but due to necessity, and that necessity was borne of the vaccilation of the supply of munitions and the loopy, bat dropping crazy constraints of giving sufficient munitions to draw out the defeat of Ukraine and kill far more Ukrainians along with a few more Russians over the losses that would have incurred from a robust compliance with the intent and explicit wording of the UN Charter. Personally, our own politicians are a disgrace in general.

The F-16's are a complication to Vlad, but are not going to alter what is needed to be achieved on the ground. They are tactical aircraft, but can probably achieve more strategically than tactically, complicating Vlad's career choices. An F-16 against an R-77 is not going to end well for some newly painted tin, but will increase the probability of more fratricide by Russia, and occasionally own goals by Ukraine as well. Lots of opportunity for promotions on the squadron I fear.

It occurs to me that the trick to dropping the Kerch bridge without using massive amounts of explosives is to target something going over the bridge that contains massive amounts of explosives.
An ammo train or truck convoy - hit with a number of drones - could make a really, really big boom that would make the bridge unusable for an extended period.
The catch being of course knowing when something like that was going to cross the bridge. It would take some pretty good intelligence to find out when such a target of opportunity would be crossing.
OTOH, the Russians haven't been showing a great deal of expertise at keeping things secret, so perhaps a few good sources could provide the necessary information.