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Ukranian War Mystery 01 Oct 22

I am a recently retired Combat Engineer. Amongst other things, I know about digging holes, using explosives, putting explosives in holes i’ve just dug and how this is all used in a combat setting. I’m not a world leading authority, but I think I know a bit more than the average person. I’ll be touching on some other subjects and i’ll try to highlight where my knowledge may be lacking.

The Truck

First I wanted to find out about the truck. From what I can ascertain the truck is a Kamaz 4310:

Someone commented that it was a normal truck, however the there are some features that show this is a military vehicle:

The truck type is relevant as it gives us a comparison to measure the mines.

The length of a Kamaz 4310 is listed variously as ~7.4m, 7.65m & 7.895m presumably due to different variations. I’ll use a group average of 7.65m (7650mm).

I drew a box the length of the truck and extended it so it crossed the trench. Counting the mines in one row that fit inside the box (I went for a conservative 15 mines), divided by 7650mm should give an approximate size of one mine:

7650mm / 15 = 510mm or 20" diameter of 1 mine.

The Sea Mines

This higher resolution image shows the mines in better detail:

Compared with other images of sea mines:

There are clear similarities most notably, they are spherical in shape, have a lid or cap, and have obvious protrusions. these protrusions on sea mines are called ‘Hertz Horns’ and act as a method of initiation on contact with a ship.

I tried to use the above estimated mine size to identify the type of sea mine, however I couldn’t find extensive information on Russian mines. Perhaps this will help somone else assist in identification. If anyone knows of any resources please share!

What I did find was that sea mines are generally black or grey in colour (of course the colour could have been changed) and are generally twice the size in diameter (~ 1m/40")of our estimated sea mine size. Mines do come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so this does not disprove the sea mine theory.

The other prevalent theory, especially on Telegram, was that the mines were in fact chemical containers and the site was to be used for some kind of chemical attack. Considering this I thought that maybe the hertz horns were in fact lifting points, and the circles visible on top, some kind of lid for a filling point. A bit of googling lead me to Horton spheres. Horton spheres are often used for oil or gas storage due to the fact pressure is exerted equally against all of the inside surfaces. They come in a broad range of sizes:

Could the mines be small Horton spheres for containing pressurised chemical agents? Smaller storage vessels would make sense in case of a leak — only a smaller amount of gas would escape.

Another possibility is a septic pump tank:

However these tend to be larger than our estimated mine diameter.

The Hose

This image shows the mines in situ, with what appears to be a hose laid both above and below the mines:

I’m in complete agreement with this assessment. The way the hose has been laid is good explosives practice — it provides multiple points of contact with the mines to ensure initiation/destruction of all the mines. Sea mines and pressurised metal containers both tend to have a thick metal construction to prevent corrosion and leakage and provide shrapnel in the case of sea mines. My experience of Detonating (Det) Cord (both commercial and military spec) is that it is much thinner, like a household electrical cable and would not provide the explosive force required to cut thick metal. Det cord would be probably be used to initiate the hose, which would act as a booster charge for a main charge of the sea mines, or to cut open the containers if they do not contain explosives.

The Theories

There have been a number of Twitter and Telegram posts with theories about what is happening, here’s my assessment on some of them.

Caveats

I’m not an intelligence analyst.
I’m not an expert on Russian doctrine.
I’m not a Russian truck expert.
I’m not an expert on Sea mines.
I’m not a CBRN expert.
IMINT analysts know that there are limitations in viewing the 3D of real life in 2D images. The source is a video of a video. This may increase margins of error in perspective and other aspects of the footage. I am not an IMINT analyst.
This could be a crazy Russian doing crazy Russian stuff.
It could be Russian forces activity that is being poorly planned & executed.

Further imagery will hopefully provide more information so better assessments can be made.

I also noticed some potential signs other activity in the area — Possible excavation on the left of the picture (Blue rectangle) and some possible impact craters (Red squares).

I’ll be interested to see how this develops.

Final Thoughts

I have a bit of military knowledge that others may not have, so I thought I would apply it to this video in the hopes that some of my ideas may assist others in finding out what is going on here. On the flip side, potentially this has lead to some bias. Hopefully some further drone or satellite imagery will assist in a better assessment.

Slava Ukraine

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