The missile attack on Przewodow has become a Rorschach test for how strong the West’s de-escalation faction’s "directed cognition" is in dealing with Reality in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The “It was a Ukrainian missile” narrative doesn't match reality. This🧵will explain
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...why.
**Directed cognition, in rough layman terms, means making a quick & incorrect analysis from limited data and only picking more data to support that analysis.
The way to cure a directed cognition conclusion is to audit all the available data.
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To do this I’m going to walk you through 5V55K missile design, fuzing, weapon effects, and some Ukrainian evidence. I'm going to leave radar & electronic warfare for another thread.
Below are infographics of the 5V55K & a data table.
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The 5V55K is a command link guided missile with a peak velocity of Mach 6.7 and a ~300lb warhead similar to the Buk warhead that downed the MH-17.
The 5V55K can be steered in any direction you want with the radio uplink from the 5N63 FLAP LID.
ausairpower.net/APA-Grumble-Ga…
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The Ukrainian MoD video in this tweet & photo below shows a night time engagement and proper functioning of a S-300 missile proximity fuze and fragmentation warhead.
The spherical explosion/fragmentation was designed into the missile warhead for
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..hyper-to-supersonic close passes.
Most current Western surface to air missiles have three fuze functions.
o Proximity
o Super quick impact
o Time
The proximity function is to set off a large fragmentation warhead so the fragments can destroy the target. The impact fuze
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... is for backup/secondary ground attack.
The time function is so the missile detonates when it misses as a safety measure.
Mid-to-late Cold War Era Soviet designed SAM's generally did not include this time feature, reasons.
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Below you see what fragments from a Buk warhead did to a MH-17 wing over Donbass and one of the "hour glass" shaped fragments looked after impact.
The wide dispersal between impacts was due to the missile/airliner closing velocities interacting w/the warhead fragment burst.
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These two photo clips show the 5V55K's "5Zh93" warhead in situ with a wartime shoot down on the left and a pre-war post launch accident Ukrainian police investigation.
The fuzes in both situations failed.
The shot down missile broke apart without the impact fuze being
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...initiated and in the pre-war photo it was never activated.
When you are firing the 5V55K in the ground to ground mode the proximity fuze function is deactivated, if only to prevent it being jammed & detonating before target impact.
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All of that previous data was to give you background to understand what you are going to see below, a July 2022 Russian land attack S-300 missile strike in Mykolaivska.
No 300lb fragmentation warhead built by mankind can dig a hole like that.
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t.me/mykolaivskaODA…
Almaz data and videos of the 5V55K show the 5V55K burn duration is around 8-10 seconds to reach Mach 6.7, roughly 2.1 kilometer per second
What you are seeing with the S-300 crater is mach 5(+) missiles dig deep holes and move a lot of dirt at near peak F = M*(V^2) impact.
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To calibrate your eyes to the "effective explosive power" of that impact, see this WW2 weapon effects diagrams.
Go back and look at the man in the Tweet 10/ photo clip versus what you see in the diagrams below.
The 5V55K doesn't carry 4K of explosives, just velocity.
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The "Przewodow Narrative" claims that it was an errant Ukrainian S-300 launcher fired a 5V55K missile from a nearby SAM base (see maps) that landed in a Przewodow Poland field.
Nearby 5V55K launches would be hypersonic into Poland.
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mil.in.ua/uk/articles/sy…
Let us test that narrative with the previous data and photographic evidence of the 5V55K missile impact site.
A 5V55K missile that missed its target would have air burst over the ground from its proximity fuze.
There is no evidence of top down fragment strikes in this photo
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This @wartranslated video shows the effects of top down GMLRS fragmentation from a 200 lb M31A1 AW warhead on a Kamaz truck.
Nothing like that damage is on the tractor and cart.
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Now for Ukrainian evidence.
The photo in this tweet shows another view of the 5V55K impact crater. Again, no evidence of airburst fragmentation.
Also, If a "5Zh93" warhead popped in the crater, you would see the 4-wheel cart tires being shredded.
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The cart tires are directly over the crater.
The 5V55K's warhead was steel, not tungsten like the M31A1 AW, but massed 100-lbs more.
Even the decayed supersonic, very long range impact that caused that crater would have initiated the impact fuze train function.
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So that photo all but rules out the "nearby Ukrainian 5V55K missile launch" narrative.
The crater is too small and there is no fragmentation damage on the tractor and cart consistent with a "5Zh93" warhead in airburst or impact modes.
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Even the idea of a partial functioning solid rocket motor from a nearby Ukrainian 5V55K missile launcher is a nonstarter based on this thedrive -dot- com article.
There would have been burning defective solid rocket fuel all over the Przewodow crater.
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thedrive.com/the-war-zone/r…
Now some more Ukrainian Evidence via this Oleksii Hetman Facebook post that both details S-300 missile self-destruct & how the Russians modify 5V55K warheads for land attack use of same.
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facebook.com/alexeyhetman/p…
Everything about the Przewodow missile strike weapon effects is consistent with a 150km(+) flight Russian land attack modified 5V55K aimed at Ukraine's power interconnect with Poland fired from Belarus.
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Polish NSC says it was a Ukrainian missile. They claimed earlier to have NATO E-3 tracking data.
I call Bulls--t.
The idea that a 1977 vintage rotating radar antenna looking the wrong way 4.5 of every 6 seconds can track a mach 6.7, low RCS, crossing target is risible.
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