Thread by @EliotHiggins

First unrectified images of Saki Air Base in Crimea via @planet following yesterday's multiple explosions. There's clearly been a massive fire across the base following whatever happened there:

Comparison of August 9th and August 10th imagery show very large craters, many destroyed aircraft, and destroyed buildings. It looks like a direct hit on the building on the left, so whatever it was seems accurate.

Colour images via @OSINTua with black and white images from Planet of the same locations for comparison.

https://twitter.com/OSINTua/status/1557440576806608897

From what I can tell a lot of planes and ammo got blown up in one area causing a fire that spread throughout the base, although the only damage from that fire which is visible is lots of burnt grass.

I can make out three craters, at sites that appear to be used for storage, so it could be they were targeted and everything else was destroyed when whatever was stored there went up. I'll also note the craters are a similar size.

One way to interpret those craters is precise strikes from a long range munition, which suggests it's a pretty good time for Russian holiday-makers in Crimea to make use of the Kerch Strait Bridge while they still can.

There's a building that's south of the tarmac that's badly damaged, although it doesn't look like there's been an impact nearby, so it could be damage from the size of the explosion. Doesn't bode well for aircraft that appear to be in one piece on the satellite imagery.

It also looks like another building was destroyed in the attack, unclear what its purpose was.

Looking around the airbase on the August 10th imagery there appears to be at least 5 aircraft taxiing towards the runway, guess they decided it was time to clear out.

There also appears to be a private jet heading towards the runway as well.

I suspect this is the same aircraft, parked on the west side of the airbase on August 9th.

Just east of that aircraft it appears another pair of buildings were hit. Left - August 9th, Right - August 10th (via @planet)

I've looked over the whole airbase repeatedly, so I don't think I've missed anything. One thing that does stand out is there's no impacts visible that look like they could be misses, so either they used very accurate weapons or they got very lucky.

I can't think of a time Russia has lost this many air assets in one day in recent memory, and they have to be deeply concerned about Ukraine's ability to do similar strikes elsewhere, especially the Kerch Strait Bridge.

Just measured the craters best I could, they seem about 20-25m wide, which would mean a pretty big munition.

New images from Maxar shows a few more details, it looks like more structures near the destroyed aircraft were also damaged and destroyed. Unclear what their function was:

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1557693842727604224