Multiple loud explosions have rocked a Russian military airfield in occupied Crimea:
Evidently the explosions shattered windows for a kilometer around.
No windows within 1 km of today’s Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian airbase in Crimea survived.
The Ukrainian Army has sent a powerful message to the Russian.
Crimea is now within reach. pic.twitter.com/OKkWxs7zRl
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 9, 2022
Russian military assets blowing up in Ukraine isn’t news, especially now that they’ve fielded HIMARS. What is news is these strikes are a good 200 kilometers from the front line.
As images of large explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea flashed across social media, the Russian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday claimed they were the result of “several aviation munitions destroyed” at the Russian Navy’s Saki Air Base near the village of Novofedorivka.
The incident occured [sic] about 3:20 p.m. local time, according to an official Ministry of Defense (MOD) statement.
Snip.
A senior Ukrainian military official with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces were behind the explosion.
“This was an air base from which planes regularly took off for attacks against our forces in the southern theater,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. The official would not tell the Times what type of weapon used in the attack, saying only that “a device exclusively of Ukrainian manufacture was used.”
A top Crimean official earlier on Tuesday confirmed there were several explosions in Novofedorivka.
“So far, I can only confirm the very fact of several explosions in the Novofedorivka area. I ask everyone to wait for official messages and not to produce versions. Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of Crimea, said on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.
Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the administration of the Saki district, also reported explosions at the airfield, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS.
“Our airfield is exploding. Explosions at the airfield. Here all the windows were broken,” Kazmirova said.
The regional health ministry “reported that ambulances and medical aviation were sent to the site of the explosions, information about the victims is being specified.”
Saki Air Base, which Russia occupied when it took over Crimea in 2014, is home to the Russian Navy’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment (43 OMShAP). This regiment flies 12 Su-30SMs, six Su-24Ms, and six Su-24MRs, and came to prominence during several encounters with NATO forces in the Black Sea in 2021.
U.S. officials have told The War Zone in the recent past that targets in Crimea are fair game for Ukrainian forces using advanced U.S. weapons. The U.S. sees Crimea as illegally occupied by Russia and no different than the territory it holds in eastern Ukraine. As such, all military targets are fair game, as well as critical infrastructure it relies on to keep its war machine and occupation efforts running.
While some Ukrainian officials claim their military carried out an attack on the base, it is not unheard of for major accidents at Russian ammunition supply depots to occur, although the chances of that being the case are relatively slim in this instance.
However, Novofedorovka is about 124 miles (200 kilometers) from the front lines.
The Saki Air Base seems to be well beyond the range of Ukraine’s long-range fires.
Ukraine has 16 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S. as well as three M270 systems provided by the United Kingdom.
Both can fire a variety of 227mm rockets, including Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) types made by Lockheed Martin, as well as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. So far, the U.S. has only provided Ukraine with an unpublicized amount of M31 rockets with 200-pound class unitary warheads, which are GPS/INS guided and can hit targets at a distance of around 43 miles (70 kilometers.) The Biden administration is reluctant to provide longer-range and harder-hitting ATACMS out of concern that it might rile the Russians. In particular, it could provide a means for Ukraine to execute precision strikes on a large variety of targets well into Russia.
200km is well beyond the range of the missiles we’ve publicly given Ukraine (and of the UK-supplied MLRS system, but within the range of the ATACMS missiles we haven’t announced we’re supplying.
It’s possible this was a long-range drone strike, as 200km is well within the range of the Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones that Ukraine is known to possess. It’s also possible that Ukraine has developed their own long-range missile system. After all, Germany had V1s and V2s that could attacked at that range all the way back in 1944. And it’s also possible that this was a ship-launched attached fired from closer in.
Whatever the actual weapon used, there seem to be very few locations in Russian-occupied Ukraine safe from further such attacks.
Tags: Crimea, Foreign Policy, HIMARS, Military, Novofedorovka, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Saki Air Base, Ukraine, video
Russians have been using their antiship missiles in secondary land attack modes, and Ukraine’s Neptune has a reported range of 280km. How likely is it that given the common Soviet design heritage the Neptune has a secondary land attack mode – or at least it does now?
They might have used their Neptune Missiles, configured to hit land based targets (Missile range: From 7 to 280 km)
[…] makes you wonder, […]
The possibility that the Russian munitions dumps spontaneously self-detonated can’t be ruled out, nor can the potential that the Ukrainians were trying for a PR shot and managed to set off poorly-stored, out-of-date munitions.
Russian ordnance is usually very low quality of manufacture, poorly designed in terms of safety (their bias is towards “ensure boom”, rather than “handling safety”), and stored as though they thought it was inert. Russian ammo depot storage policies and Standard Operating Procedures make US military forward-deployed field Ammunition Handling Areas look like they were designed by anally-retentive detail freaks, because they were. That’s a huge part of the reason why former Soviet and now Russian depots are constantly blowing up–They store stuff out in the open, they store stuff too close, and they put things together that should be separated. If you’re a Russian ammo depot guy, a grass fire may be your death warrant, and will almost certainly result in an apocalypse.
Russian military logistics is a sad joke, and their ammunition handling and storage procedures are a big part of that joke. You want a fun time, sit down with an American EOD guy who had anything to do with the post-Soviet collapse and its cleanup. They’ll have stories for you. They will also demonstrate a mastery of profanity and obscenity, when asked how they like dealing with Soviet and Russian munitions that didn’t go “BANG” when they were supposed to.
Good on Ukraine if they actually did this, but there are good odds that this is a Russian “own goal”.
Two weeks short of six months, this grinding war-of-attrition with all its geopolitical-fiscal ramifications could persist indefinitely, pending Sino-Russian initiatives on other fronts– most particularly, a revanchist CCP move imperiling Taiwan.
Given this illegitimate Administration’s literally treasonous domestic policies –“incompetent” is not the word– we only hope that Sarajevo II does not enfold a nuclear reprise of Flanders Fields. Once that balloon goes up (candidate assassination, anyone?), all bets are off.
Kirk — thanks for the analysis. Own goal or not, it’s going to give the troops who think they’re safe something to think about.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=1973+Roseville+Yard+Disaster&t=ffcm&atb=v275-1&ia=web
Duck Duck Go is your friend. Look up the “1973 Roseville Yard Disaster”.
Media speculation is focussed on long-range missiles, but we should also consider the possibility that the Ukrainians managed to infiltrate some of their known, shorter-range weapons into Crimea and get them within firing distance of the air base.
The Daily Telegraph in the UK quotes “anonymous Ukrainian government officials” as claiming that it was done by special forces assisted by local resistance fighters:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/10/ukraine-russia-news-latest-updates-nuclear-plant-oil-crimea/
Of course, if it was an attack then the Ukrainians will probably be spreading lots of different rumours about how it was done, to keep the Russians guessing about where the next one will come from. Indeed, they’d probably do that to spread FUD even if they knew it had been an accident.
There’s at least one cell phone video taken from a beach where a light pop-pop sonic boom hits a few seconds before the sound from the explosion arrives. That suggests a supersonic (and most likely ballistic) missile. It doesn’t necessarily have to be ATACMS; it could be a Ukrainian/Soviet SRBM, possibly refitted with a Western GPS/INS system.
[…] Russian Airbase In Crimea Goes Boom […]
The size of each of the four craters is over 30 meters. That means larger warheads than ATCMS can carry.
My guess is that it was Ukrainian made GRIM-2 missiles. Supposedly they don’t have them yet, but we heard that about the Neptune missiles too, yet they sank the Moskva with them.
The only other thing that I think could do that would be bombs, and I doubt the UKR could get a bomber over there. Of course, the air defense system was supposed to be able to take out SRBM’s like the GRIM-2 but didn’t.
Maybe we’ll find out some day.
[…] and Cuban apartheid update: No power blackouts or food shortages for tourists BattleSwarm: Russian Airbase In Crimea Goes Boom, also, Is China Buying Texas Land? Behind The Black: SpaceX successfully launches 52 more […]
@John Oh:
It’s not just Russian soldiers that need to think carefully; I was within a couple of kilometers of where the Kuwaitis had all their leftover ordnance from the Desert Storm era stored, and was sitting there one night after dinner minding my own business when the whole dump started going up. The fireworks show lasted a couple of hours, and left a whole lot of work behind for the EOD guys that were still south in Kuwait with us. Story we got was that some Pakistani contract soldier was on guard duty and decided to ignore the “No Smoking” signs, leading to several million dollars worth of ordnance going high-order.
From what EOD later told me, most of that stuff was former Warsaw Pact and was what was left over after the Kuwaitis shut down operations after Desert Storm and shifted over to Western weapons again. They’d had to take whatever they could to field an army after the Iraqis invaded, and that meant “Former Warsaw Pact”, which they then stored in accordance with what their Warsaw Pact advisers told them to do. Which then led to the “ka-boom”.
You may have what could be termed an “excessive” dud rate with Western munitions, but then again… You likely won’t be dealing with having your ammo dumps going high-order on you, either.
Interesting factoid: After the Berlin Wall came down, and the two Germanies reunited, the West Germans went in to look at all the goodies left behind by the Soviets and the East Germans. Initial thought was, “Hey, windfall… We’ll sell this stuff on the open market, pure profit…”
What happened was that once they got into the storage areas and did their initial assessments, the decision was made to demilitarize in situ and forget trying to sell it: It wasn’t even safe to transport, let alone sell to anyone. It took from about 1991, when they got started, to somewhere around 2006 before they finished turning that crap into scrap steel and fertilizer.
Now, I’ll grant you that the Germans are a bit more anal than most, but when they decide they can’t even transport the stuff, let alone sell it? There might be a minor quality-control problem with Soviet-era munitions. The Soviets cheaped out on everything from fillers to fuses, and it showed.
[…] Previous stories on Ukraine hitting Russian military bases in Crimea have focused on the possibility of long-range missile strikes. As those strikes have continued, it’s now proven that some have been carried out by drone, and others appear to be the work of Ukrainian special forces or resistance fighters hitting the Russian deep behind the front lines. […]