Massive Ukraine Munitions Blasts May Have Been Caused By a Drone (bbc.com) 102
dryriver writes: The BBC reports that 20,000 people are being evacuated from the immediate area around a munition dump in Ukraine that has gone up in flames. The 350 hectare munition dump near Kharkiv is around 100km (60 miles) from fighting against Russian-backed separatists and was used to supply military units in the conflict zone in nearby Luhansk and Donetsk. A drone was reported to have been used in an earlier attempt to set the facility on fire in December 2015. Authorities are now investigating whether someone possibly flew a drone over the facility that dropped an explosive device that caused the stored munitions to catch fire and explode. Ukrainian authorities believe that the conflagration at the facility is the result of sabotage.
memes (Score:1)
when 4chan pranks go too far
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Remember, kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
Great advice (Score:5, Interesting)
While sabotage is possible, so is carelessness from a soldiers assigned to the depot. When I was in the Army I was a member of a team who did pre ARTEP OPFOR. Supply units were horrible, the worst of the back lines units. It's boring work for the soldiers, leading to massive complacency and struggles with morale. Medical units were much more alert, much busier, and tended to have much higher morale.
Considering many of these depots are not as well constructed or older, it only takes a small accident to have a big result.
Re:Great advice (Score:5, Insightful)
The most logical cause for the fire, this based upon EU and US claims about the Ukraine government being extremely corrupt and incompetent, someone stole a bunch of arms and munitions and wanted to cover up the theft by setting the facility on fire. The likely destination of those stolen arms and munitions, the same place as so much of Ukraine's other stolen arms and munitions (the reason why the Ukraine was so incompetent in a war against it's own), where ever illegal arms merchants currently profit the most, from the Middle East to Africa, who ever is the highest bidder, whether it Saudi Arabia, the CIA, or some other despot or war lord whether or not they are pretending to be religious freaks. So likely a quick check on vehicles that left that compound in the last few weeks, will lead you directly to the culprits. It is even possible those arms and munitions might not even be leaving the Ukraine but are to be used in a new even more radical coup than the last, good luck to Ukraine's neighbours and the US will likely need to be stationing more troops around the Ukraine whilst pretending they are about Russian aggression. US control of the situation seems to be deteriorating, 5 billion plus pissed away, apart from the gold the US was able to steal from Ukrainians, watch the disappear into private coffers.
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> watch the disappear into private coffers
You are too anxious to never fail to write *The* with "Ukraine". Relax.
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Stop up-modding unproven accusations.
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What, are you getting paid by the Russians for that post? How on earth is that "The most logical cause for the fire"? You've furnished zero evidense to support your claim.
It could very well have been a Russian or seperatist drone as, in case you missed it, there is a war happening over there. I will, however, hold off judgement until there is actual evidense .
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Moldova and Poland could merge. They could call it Moland Springs. If you throw Russia in too, they could be Mulva.
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The imperialist neo-cons (Soros) lose, the rest of the world wins.
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A country at war with a despotic tiny man, having a 350 hectares ammo dump, probably deserves to have it's ammo dump asploded. Who would store that much in one concentrated place. I bet they even painted a red target on the ground to make sure they wouldn't miss it.
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It's near the frontline with the Russian troops who are shelling Ukrainian towns and villages every day as well as making ground attacks on Ukrainian positions, close enough to quickly resupply Ukrainian troops.
While large, this was probably in place from long ago, a relic of the Russian puppet Yanukovych. Since Ukraine didn't have the time or resources to move the munitions to proper storage before the Russians attacked, they used what they have.
The Russians had previously tried to attack this place late
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You are just making shit up. Russian troops are not shelling Ukrainian towns and villages every day, Quite the opposite, it the Ukies shelling the Donbas.
Re: 350 Hectares? (Score:1)
go drink vodka comrade
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I would think even the Russians (who generally have decent engineering) would have rigged an EXPLOSIVES DUMP so it would not just ... explode. The US facilities I've seen (from a distance) have numerous design features to prevent that very thing since military explosives do have the tendency to .... explode.
Concrete separators, buried shelters, operational management to keep things separated. Pretty low tech stuff.
Aside from being an earth shattering kaboom it's a giant WTF.
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If you look at it on Google Earth [goo.gl], you'll see that it's fairly spread out. There are a large number of separate warehouses (around 100?), and each warehouse has large earthen banks around it, then a large amount of empty space. That's intended to contain fire & explosions, so if something goes wrong you might lose a single warehouse but they don't spread to other parts of the complex. That's clearly not working very well. But those earthen banks and empty spaces take up a large amount of space, prob
Neglect is more likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Neglect is more likely (Score:5, Informative)
You know what else is becoming unstable? Vladimir Putin's political enemies and journalists. They're dropping like flies, literally. Earlier this week, one mysteriously flew out a fifth floor window.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikeh... [buzzfeed.com]
And just yesterday, one was mysteriously gunned down in Kiev.
https://www.adn.com/nation-wor... [adn.com]
Since the election, we've had nine prominent opponents of Vladimir Putin become unstable and expire mysteriously. Such coincidence!
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By "rebels", you mean Russians.
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No, I mean rebels. They're supported by Russia, sure. But these people are former Ukranian citizens, so 'rebels' would be the correct word to describe them.
If you haven't followed this conflict from the start. Some of the eastern province attempted to secede from the Ukrain, directly after the former president was overthrown. The people who did this were at the time Ukranian citizens, so regardless on whether they're supported by Russia, China or the spaghetti monster, the correct word would be rebel.
Either
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You are right. There was no South Vietnam when the US was fighting its dirty war.
You can call them "rebels", but they were fighting for the US, just as the Ukrainian rebels are fighting for Vladimir Putin.
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I dont. In the last Ukrainian election pro Western candidates won by overwhelming margins. One can spin conspiracy theories all day that the Ukrainian uprising was US sponsored but there's just no evidence of that.
What there is evidence of is Russia invading Crimea and providing quite a lot of "aid" to the "rebels" (if by "aid" and "rebels" you mean the Russians rolling troops, artillery, and tanks in to fight the Ukrainians). The Ukrainians are fighting to preserve their borders here. End of story.
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Either that or there also wasn't any 'south vietnamese' government during the Vietnam police action, which was at the time heavily supported by the US, but just a conflict between North Vietnam and the US.
Nearly right. The "South Vietnamese" government was an illegal and illegitimate device conjured up by Washington to justify its violent intervention. There was a nation called Vietnam. After international talks, an election was scheduled for Vietnam. Washington decided that the Communists were certain to win the election, so it engineered a "rebellion" by a newly-invented entity called "South Vietnam". Insofar as it ever existed, South Vietnam must have seceded from Vietnam, just as Washington maintains Cri
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Tha
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Possible. But what if he didn't have any real dirt on Putin and was just disgruntled.
If that was the case he would not be of any use to Poroshenko in any other way than a way to make Putin look bad.
Not saying either scenario is true, it may well be that Putin was behind this; it's just that people jumping to conclusions without any further evidence, that rubs me in the wrong way.
Re: Neglect is more likely (Score:1, Troll)
Go suck Putins dick commie looser
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And during the US election you threw vitriol at anyone bringing up the number of deaths and "suicide by two gunshots in the back of the head" surrounding the Clintons.
What makes those claims absurd conspiracy theories and yours about Putin not?
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I think you answered your own question, in a roundabout way.
Oh, I think the question was answered well enough by your answer. That discomfort you feel is called cognitive dissonance.
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Please keep your political propaganda to yourself. The former poster had a very good point about those old Soviet munitions. The media does not report it, but such fires and blasts have happened many times in the recent years within Russia itself. So that was a good point IMO. In reality, we probably will never find out the truth about what happened there.
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I follow Russian news, and I can tell that there is a massive fire and blasts like this one in Russia on a regular basis. I don't know if this reflects more on the poor governance in that part of the world or on the fact that many of those munitions are long past their prime. Have a look at these rusted grenade shells (pictures from Ukraine):
http://bmpd.livejournal.com/25... [livejournal.com]
or carelessness maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a number of ammunition depot explosions over the last 15 years in across Eastern Europe. 2 in Serbia, 6 in Bulgaria since 2000, Gerdec in Albania, Cobasna in Moldova, Ukraine itself in 2015. Cold War explosives are becoming unstable and they tend to explode on their own, especially when there is insufficient money to maintain proper storage.
My father told me a story from the cold war, specifically the Nicaraguan civil war in the 70's. He was an officer in Somoza's army at the time. They found a cache of explosives and improvised bombs left behind by the rebels, and he and others were in charge of destroying them (a controlled explosion.) Alas, some pro-government reporters were demanding (yep, demanding) the troops to "re-arrange" the explosives to take better pictures.
My dad, as he told me, had a bad feeling about it (given how badly improvised explosives and old ammo could be) and left the site to report the anomaly. Just after walking a hundred yards or so, BOOM!. People without limbs, eyes popped like water balloons by the shock wave, flesh splatted everywhere.
Ammo and things that go kaput, you gotta respect that volatile shit.
Okay, we're gonna have to start disambiguating (Score:2)
Was it a commercial multi-copter "drone" or a military UAV "drone"?
For those who aren't aware of this... (Score:3)
Kharkiv, Ukraine is the home of one of the largest tank manufacturing facilities in the world, for the Morozov Design Bureau, the designers of the T-34,T-54,T-64 tanks. There are quite a lot of deactivated ex-USSR tanks there:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
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I highly disagree with your statement. Kharkiv may have been one of the largest tank factories when the USSR existed, but today Kharkiv is a shell of a former self. For example, Thailand had signed a contract to purchase 50 of Ukraine's latest T-84 "Oplot" tanks. The Kharkiv factory was producing those tanks at the rate of between 0 and 5 tanks per year. Facing the prospects of waiting for decades for the tanks that they ordered, Thailand is now talking to the Chinese tank manufacturers to order more tanks.
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Well sure they have issues. Ukraine's economy is quite poor so they can't spend much on their military. They are also presently at war with Russia and their weapons factories are often close to the Russian border and sometimes used to buy parts and materials from Russia proper (the relations date back from the USSR). So of course they're having a hard time fulfilling the order. But AFAIK the Ukrainians have always fulfilled their weapons deals in the past. There may be delays but they've always done their p
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issues would be an understatement. iraq of all countries was so angry about the quality of apcs made there that they have returned half of the delivered apcs and cancelled the order.
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That's one reason why weapons clients prefer to buy battle tested equipment which has had a large production run. It means the kinks have been ironed out.
One way to prevent these issues is to have someone from the client physically present on the production facility to inspect the vehicles before delivery.
Asymmetrical warfare and rules of engagement. (Score:1)
Russian ammo dumps are now fair targets.
Re:Asymmetrical warfare and rules of engagement. (Score:4, Insightful)
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While that maybe true. Ukes will now have free hands to fly quads over rusky ammo dumps and 'return the favor'. It wasn't a good move.
I think the ruskys want a puppet government back. Neutral won't be good enough, Putin's buds need to get their 10%+ of Ukrainian GDP.
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Realize the Russians are not trying to win this war. They want to pressure the Ukraine government to stay away from the EU/NATO (...) As soon as the Ukraine gov gives up the war will disappear.
That is to win the war, just not by military means. You make it sound like Kiev could stop, then Russia could stop, then things would be fine. Ukraine is the second poorest country in Europe, only beaten by tiny Moldova. They need good trade relations either with EU to the west or Russia to the east. Traditionally it's been east. They were in talks with the EU to open up to the west. The president was trying to halt those talks and instead make a new deal with Putin, which lead to the revolution and a pro-w
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You are making shit up. If Russia wanted to take any Ukranian land, it would have been taken. What is it with Slashdot today - people just saying random shit without any grounding in reality.
Re:Expect Russia to take advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, except for the whole thing with Crimea, "independent contractors" fielding equipment straight out of russian military depots, and even those little green men fielding weapons only produced for russian special operations units. Or the whole dismantling and transferring to Russia certain production facilities for ceramics needed for the production of new engines for fighters etc.
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If Russia wanted to take any Ukranian land, it would have been taken.
Even Russia cares about international opinion. Not necessarily about what it looks like today, but what it will look like next week. They need to maintain plausible deniability, so they are not simply rolling over them.
In a world which contained no countries but Russia and Ukraine, there would be only Russia.
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Putin doesn't care in the slightest about public opinion. Being feared and hated by the world is as good as being respected in his book.
Fear is a kind of respect. Not the best kind, but still better than no respect in the realm of international politics. But that fear comes from respect. If Putin comes off as an incompetent schmuck then people will stop fearing him so much. But ruthless and competent is something to fear.
Trump, on the other hand, has the biggest gun in the room in his hands, so even his incompetence is scary.
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He even burnt my toast this morning.
IoT (Score:2)
"He even burnt my toast this morning."
I always thought having an internet connected toaster was a stupid idea
the truth is out there (Score:1)
Wow (Score:2)
It's like a real-life version of an episode of Hogan's Heroes!
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Meep meep - >>BOOM!
Let's put tons of ammo together in a massive pile (Score:2)
I mean what could possibly go wrong, right?...
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Where do you propose they store it? In shoeboxes in the various soldiers' homes? That would be as distributed as possible, right?
Ammunition depots are a fact of logistics. Ammunition has to be guarded, so you lump it together in as many places as you can afford to guard, and no more.
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Raises hand. I'll take all the 7.62x54 they have to spare. And a couple of Dragonoves.
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not that kind of ammo, sorry. mostly tank and howitzer shells, also some tactical ballistic missiles and SAMs. nice fireworks, but nothing you'd want to keep at home.
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Speak for yourself.
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Ammo ages. When it happens the propellant leaks nitric acid which reacts with the propellant and the casing, heating it up, which accelerates the aging and leads to a positive feedback loop that ultimately causes spontaneous combustion, which was the most probable cause for that explosion in the Ukraine. Think again.
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I would expect any significant ammo storage facility to consist of a series of bermed bunkers with enough concrete or earthworks to contain or redirect blast forces up, far enough away from the next bunker that any fire wouldn't easily spread to the next one.
At a minimum this could be hand-dug trenches lined with sandbags and sheet metal roofs and at maximum concrete bunkers.
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Like you said, nothing could go wrong. Just take a look at how well the ammo was stored:
http://bmpd.livejournal.com/25... [livejournal.com]
yeah, right... (Score:2)
Ukrainian authorities believe that the conflagration at the facility is the result of sabotage.
Smells just like the yellow journalism writing about the USS Maine in Havana's harbor.
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> Shelling civilians doesn't look good
But it has looked fine to the civilised world so far. Why bother now?
Ukraine's governance, the civil war, and some pics (Score:2)
To be honest, I doubt we will ever find truth about what happened there. On one hand, this ammo depot is located in the region that borders Russia and Ukraine's pro-Russian separatist region of Donbass, and therefore, we can assume that there is a good chance that the fire was set off as an act of sabotage by Russians or by Ukraine's rebels.
On the other hand, considering the extremely poor, inept, and corrupt governance that all of Ukraine (including its military) have experienced in the last 25 years, I wo
Not the first time (Score:1)