Evidence suggests a deadly explosion at a busy market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka this month was caused by an errant missile fired by Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Pretty sure they started with themselves (even if you don’t count Donbass bombings since 2014). I’m sure you have seen a video from last year of a missile striking the facade of an apartment building and shearing off a chunk of it. Back then, all media and internet screeched how it was Russian X-101 - which is easily disproven by taking a look at X-101’s payload and the actual photos of things struck by it. Let’s just say it’s significantly higher.
The actual culprit was a Ukrainian S-300 missile sent to intercept the aforementioned airstrike, and misfiring. It struck the apartment building, because AFU has been positioning their artillery (and AA batteries) between, inside and on top of civilian buildings
I may have mixed up the missiles, so apologies for that. However:
Here’s a photo from when an X-22 missile got intercepted and fell on a residential building. Note the level of destruction and keep in mind this was not a direct strike, but a partial detonation.
This is the result of a missile hit in Kiev, that was proclaimed by the media to be “Russians attacking residential buildings”. Note the level of destruction.
As you can see, there’s a pretty clear difference. Some links for reference:
I can see your evidence but I feel I need specifically a measurement of the average blast yield of each bomb, I know from the wiki that self-detonated X-55 has a yield of 200kt, but what about the smaller X-22?
Sounds too big, that’s probably the nuclear version. As for X-22:
Search results are oddly quiet about the yield, but I was able to scrounge some evidence. So X-22 has a 960 kg warhead in the newer variants, and 630-900 kg for the older ones. During the tests, the missile left an up to 22 square meters hole in the target (mock air carrier), while the shaped charge burned through the bulkheas for up to 12 meters.
FAB-500 bomb has, as the name suggests, 500 kg warhead (it’s a simple bomb, so no fancy bits, just the warhead basically). FAB-500 allegedly creates a crater 3m deep and 8m wide, with a 150-250m damage radius (sources differ). That would be shards and blastwave.
I daresay the larger X-22 would have at least as large area of damage. It was designed to be used against fairly tough targets (carrier ships), so it’s somewhat less of a “kill everything around” type. But with a warhead this big? We can do the math.
Side note: searching this stuff on Google specifically yields ukranian resources. I’m sure there’s no bias.
Wait, just so I don’t confuse myself, the first photo, the one with the larger blast, was actually a Ukrainian X-22 or the S-300, while the second photo was that of a regular Russian X-55 attack?
Pretty sure they started with themselves (even if you don’t count Donbass bombings since 2014). I’m sure you have seen a video from last year of a missile striking the facade of an apartment building and shearing off a chunk of it. Back then, all media and internet screeched how it was Russian X-101 - which is easily disproven by taking a look at X-101’s payload and the actual photos of things struck by it. Let’s just say it’s significantly higher.
The actual culprit was a Ukrainian S-300 missile sent to intercept the aforementioned airstrike, and misfiring. It struck the apartment building, because AFU has been positioning their artillery (and AA batteries) between, inside and on top of civilian buildings
Wait, can you give me a source on that
I may have mixed up the missiles, so apologies for that. However:
Here’s a photo from when an X-22 missile got intercepted and fell on a residential building. Note the level of destruction and keep in mind this was not a direct strike, but a partial detonation.
This is the result of a missile hit in Kiev, that was proclaimed by the media to be “Russians attacking residential buildings”. Note the level of destruction.
As you can see, there’s a pretty clear difference. Some links for reference:
X-55/101
X-22
S-300
Yeah, I’ve always wondered about this one. People seem to really underestimate the power of 500kg of high explosive. For reference, this is the explosion from a 250kg WW2 era bomb: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wwii-era-bomb-explodes-in-england-in-unplanned-detonation/
I can see your evidence but I feel I need specifically a measurement of the average blast yield of each bomb, I know from the wiki that self-detonated X-55 has a yield of 200kt, but what about the smaller X-22?
Sounds too big, that’s probably the nuclear version. As for X-22:
Search results are oddly quiet about the yield, but I was able to scrounge some evidence. So X-22 has a 960 kg warhead in the newer variants, and 630-900 kg for the older ones. During the tests, the missile left an up to 22 square meters hole in the target (mock air carrier), while the shaped charge burned through the bulkheas for up to 12 meters.
FAB-500 bomb has, as the name suggests, 500 kg warhead (it’s a simple bomb, so no fancy bits, just the warhead basically). FAB-500 allegedly creates a crater 3m deep and 8m wide, with a 150-250m damage radius (sources differ). That would be shards and blastwave.
I daresay the larger X-22 would have at least as large area of damage. It was designed to be used against fairly tough targets (carrier ships), so it’s somewhat less of a “kill everything around” type. But with a warhead this big? We can do the math.
Side note: searching this stuff on Google specifically yields ukranian resources. I’m sure there’s no bias.
Baidu meta
Wait, just so I don’t confuse myself, the first photo, the one with the larger blast, was actually a Ukrainian X-22 or the S-300, while the second photo was that of a regular Russian X-55 attack?
Larger blast was X-22. The one with a small hole on the facade is S-300 - anti-air missile that failed. I didn’t post X-55 attacks
Oh, okay. Thanks for clarifying…
No problem! I should keep better track of sources tbf