This is an important series of photos demonstrating a Russian S-300 missile converted to land attack with an enhanced high explosive blast as opposed to a anti-aircraft fragmentation warhead.
Where are the high speed metal fragment strikes in this photo?
Heck, you have mostly intact wooden debris that the blast generated from the building, which fell into the crater.
2/12
This is what a properly functioning S-300 fragmentation warhead looks like when detonating at night.
3/12
This is what the ~300lb 5ZH92 fragmentation warhead for 5V55K S-300 missile looks like when it fails to detonate, along with an infographic of where the warhead is located in the missile.
4/11
These are what high velocity airburst artillery fragmentation hits looks like on a brick building.
5/12
And these are what the a similar Soviet technology warhead fragments of a Buk missile fragmentation warhead look like and how they damaged Flight MH17's wreckage.
Note the consistent pre-fragmentation of a Buk warhead for anti-aircraft effect.
6/12
The ceilings & inside walls of this Ukrainian police station opposite the windows should have dozens of uniform sized high velocity fragment strikes, given the short distance from the impact crater.
It's what a 5ZH92 warhead is designed to do.
7/12
The scorch/soot marks on the previous brick wall and on the cars below are consistent with an 'enhanced blast,' AKA FAE, AKA thermobaric warhead...
...NOT a standard ~300lb 5ZH92 fragmentation warhead for 5V55K S-300 missile.
8/12
This constitutes a warhead upgrade from previous Russian land attack modified S-300 missile strikes.
9/12
Given the small size of the S-300 missile impact crater compared to others seen in Ukraine for the Mach 6.7 at engine burn out 5V55 missiles.
We are looking at an extended range semi-ballistic missile shot.
10/12
One of the Cold War gray beards I correspond with places that range at about ~150 km.
Assuming I tagged the correct Lyman (not a given).
The S-300 launcher that did that strike could be in any Russian or Russian occupied Ukrainian territory in the blue circle below.
11/12
This is Exhibit A of why a unconstrained 300km ranged ATACMS missile in Ukraine's arsenal would help defend Ukraine's civilian population from Russian missile strikes.
Like Russian artillery depots were pushed back by GMLRS 80 km.
ATACMS would push S-300 back 280 km.
12/12 End
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Remember all the professionally incompetent yo-yo naval officers & hangers on claiming FPV drones were not a threat to naval warships in 2023 WHEN I TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE?
Reality just kicked them one and all in the 'nads...
I told these professionally incompetent US navalists accounts on X/Twitter in 2023 that both containerized drones and FPV drones were a deadly threat to every naval vessel on the water they were ignoring to their crew's peril.
We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.
Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.
Corruption🧵 1/
The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.
This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.
I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.
The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.
Cruciform tail controls are all moving.
Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador. 2/
The FP-5 Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) trailer looks like a new custom build.
Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point, stated to the AP that "Fire Point is producing roughly one Flamingo per day, and by October they hope to build capacity to make seven per day."
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.
2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.
3/
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden
This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...