The War in the Ukraine

It's impressive what Ukraine has achieved so far but worried when will Putin finally lose his patience and really let loose, Syrian style carpet bombing is not in anyone's interest, Any one have any update on the rumours about possibility of China brokering a peace deal?

Deino said:

Really? Come, we surely can disagree on so much, but to claim, this is repairable is far from anything realistic. Even if the inner hull is not broken - what I cannot imagine - it is so much damaged that repairing it is either not possible or economical doable.

IMO this is just a wreck.

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Repairing it to become a static training ground in a naval academy could be interesting but putting that husk back in the sea, ''repaired'', would end with no sailors feeling safe in that ship even if it's hardly feasible...

eprash said:

It's impressive what Ukraine has achieved so far but worried when will Putin finally lose his patience and really let loose, Syrian style carpet bombing is not in anyone's interest, Any one have any update on the rumours about possibility of China brokering a peace deal?

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You are assuming that Russia has the ability to Carpet Bomb Ukraine. They don't. They lack enough planes, only 800 fighter jets in the whole air force, plus those jets they lack the ability to destroy Ukrainian air defenses, so their only option is to fire missiles from a distance. So, they are very careful about attacking so that they don't run out of precious missiles.

At this point Russia and Ukraine is pretty much equal in terms of military strength with Ukraine equalizing their weakness by fully moblizing million of men and getting huge number of weapons and money from the west.

The only advantage Russia has is their pool of men is larger, if they mobilize, which they are not doing. They have a huge stockpile of soviet weapons, which they are slowly bringing online, and they have a vast industrial complex for making weapons, which they are also ramping up as well.

But on the flip side, Ukraine's western backers are also ramping up weapons production. So, now its race of who can produce more first, build a more powerful army and defeat the other.

Biscuits said:

Those pictures just show holes and minimal deformities around them. If there was fire, the damage might have warped the interiors into being unusable, but if fires were quickly controlled or there were no fires, there's no reason it could not be repaired.

Repairable or not would fully depend on internal structure warping. I don't see any reason except ideological fervour where one would so easily assume "this is just a wreck". The Bonhomme Richard looked significantly worse than that, and there were serious discussion on repairing it, before they decided it would be uneconomic and scrapped it.

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Storm Shadow missiles have 450kg BROACH warheads designed to penetrate bunkers. That’s three times the warhead size of the Neptune missile that sank the Moskva cruiser. Penetration of the inner hull is a very reasonable proposition.

Repairing the submarine is theoretically possible: after all, the US put back sunk BBs back to service in WW2. Whether it is practical, difficult to say.

Zichan said:

Storm Shadow missiles have 450kg BROACH warheads designed to penetrate bunkers. That’s three times the warhead size of the Neptune missile that sank the Moskva cruiser. Penetration of the inner hull is a very reasonable proposition.

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Bunkers are made of concrete, much weaker than the steel hull of a submarine which needs to continuously hold several atmospheres of pressure.

The most important thing was that the submarine was in dry dock. Most damage is done by sea water, which gets everywhere and corrodes things.

Here's the damage done to the USS Cole, which was in water at the time.

It was successfully repaired and went back to service.

As others have pointed out, cruise missiles don't carry shaped charges so any damage is going to be superficial. Replace the damaged panels and it'll be as good as new.

Russia has roughly the same amount of strategic bomber capacity as the US. Just put that into your head. 55x Tu-95MS, 63x Tu-22M3, and 16x Tu-160. Compare that with the US's 72x B-52, 62x B-1, 20x B-2. And the Russians continue to pump money into it, with two Tu-160 under construction, and programs to upgrade the Tu-160, Tu-22M3 and Tu-95MS all in advanced stages. If they wanted to destroy a city with just conventional bombs they could do it.

Ukraine's air defenses do not cover their entire airspace. Most of them are centered in the capital or close to the line of contact. If Russia wanted to methodically lay waste to their cities one by one they could do it. But why bother. Would be much simpler and cheaper to just throw a tactical nuclear Kh-102 at it and do the same job much cheaper. It is just that this isn't that kind of conflict.

I also do not get your talk about the numbers of Su-34s. The Russians made 148x of them. Plus they have 80x Su-24M2. Compare that with 219x F-15E in service in the USAF. The Russians aren't even using half those Su-34 aircraft in Ukraine.

Abominable said:

Bunkers are made of concrete, much weaker than the steel hull of a submarine which needs to continuously hold several atmospheres of pressure.

The most important thing was that the submarine was in dry dock. Most damage is done by sea water, which gets everywhere and corrodes things.

Here's the damage done to the USS Cole, which was in water at the time.

It was successfully repaired and went back to service.

As others have pointed out, cruise missiles don't carry shaped charges so any damage is going to be superficial. Replace the damaged panels and it'll be as good as new.

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BROACH warhead is multi-stage: first stage is a shaped charge designed to penetrate armour. Let’s use some common sense here. Submarine hull is not particularly thick (60-80mm) and could be defeated even by 30mm cannon under some conditions.

A Mk50 torpedo has a warhead of just 45kg and that’s quite enough to sink a submarine.

Zichan said:

A Mk50 torpedo has a warhead of just 45kg and that’s quite enough to sink a submarine.

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There's no question the submarine would have sunk had it been in water.

gelgoog said:

Russia has roughly the same amount of strategic bomber capacity as the US. Just put that into your head. 55x Tu-95MS, 63x Tu-22M3, and 16x Tu-160. Compare that with the US's 72x B-52, 62x B-1, 20x B-2. And the Russians continue to pump money into it, with two Tu-160 under construction, and programs to upgrade the Tu-160, Tu-22M3 and Tu-95MS all in advanced stages. If they wanted to destroy a city with just conventional bombs they could do it.

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How many of them can still fly?

supersnoop said:

Remember in the Georgia war when Su-25 attacked the Tbilisi aircraft plant? Why would history matter?
(assuming you know the connection between Su-25 and Tbilisi)

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Of course i know because that's the plant which produces literally all Su-25's.

I just feel sad that it has to end like that.