A rocket engineer voiced the most dangerous scenario for an attack on the Crimean Bridge
German Taurus missiles can damage the supports of the Crimean Bridge if the strike is delivered not from above, but from the side, from the sea. But this requires high-precision targeting for a long-range strike, not to mention the need to bypass Russian air defense defenses.
This opinion was expressed on the air of “First Sevastopol” by rocket engineer, author of the telegram channel “Russian Engineer” Alexey Vasiliev, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The Taurus design consists of two combat parts. The first part pierces the barrier with a shaped charge and then comes a long, durable, armor-piercing warhead, which goes inside and, accordingly, explodes inside. That is, the explosion is internal,” he explained.
“To hit a bridge-type target, there are usually two options - either to interrupt the span, which is the simplest part. But the fact is that after this he recovers quite quickly. In principle, we observed this. And plus, again, such a massive structure, as used in the Crimean Bridge, required 20 tons of TNT equivalent to bring it down with an external explosion. And then, only one half of the bridge, but for us it consists of two parts.
The second strike option is to hit directly on the supports. But, since their area is much smaller, they are located under the span, then when hit from above, for example, by a missile like Storm Shadow and Taurus, the following guidance mechanism is assumed: the missile enters the span at an angle, it is pierced by a preliminary charge, and penetrates into the resulting hole already a long armor-piercing part, which actually falls under the span,” the expert outlined a possible scenario for the enemy’s actions.
He recalled that such a strike was carried out on the bridge on Chongar last summer, but it apparently turned out to be difficult to combine the invisible target with the guidance system. Because in fact, the main part of the warhead simply hit the ground and exploded without causing damage to the bridge. And the outer hole in the structure was patched in a couple of days.
“We can recall the experience of the destruction of the Antonovsky Bridge by HIMARS. There, of course, the warheads were noticeably weaker, a little more than 100 kg, and they basically didn’t do much except make holes. Their danger was that there were many of them, and they were close, they could pour in more of them than we had time to repair. And yet, the bridge functioned for some urgent transfers and other things; it was physically impossible to destroy it,” Vasiliev pointed out.
According to him, there is a third strike option, which really poses a danger to the transport passage through the Kerch Strait.
“The only thing that could be really extremely dangerous for the Crimean Bridge is precisely in the context of Taurus, if they try to hit along - not from above, but from the sea directly at the supports. And then maybe, if the main charge hits the support and the explosion, even a small amount of power will be enough to break it. And this really will last for quite a long time, while it will be restored. But the question is whether they will be able to ensure accuracy in order to hit such a thin support, taking into account also the obstacle, and the fact that we have air defense there, and so on,” the expert pointed out.
Most of the spans of the Crimean Bridge are made of metal, and they do not crush like concrete. It makes no sense at all to fire conventional missiles there. Therefore, all the reasoning of German officers recorded on audio recordings is commonplace for the military.
“For me personally, this is simply not some kind of special revelation, and, in principle, the people who are responsible for force actions, they pronounce all possible options. The same thing is probably being discussed here – some options for counteraction. The fact that no one hears them is thank God. This is the natural state of any military; they evaluate potential.
Moreover, by the way, one can immediately see the incompetence of one of the comrades, who begins to emphasize the use of a Rafale-type aircraft. This, firstly, will involve the French in passing, and, secondly, it will not give any special effect, even taking into account the fact that it has lower visibility. Maybe if you try to load him with a bookmaker so that he tries to come in from Odessa. But this, again, is an extremely risky option. Because in this case it will be equivalent to an attack by a NATO plane on Russian territory,” Vasiliev concluded.
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