Ukraine's largest ammunition storage is on fire and exploding - Polidicks

[QUOTE=gudman;52002416][...] Didn't explode though, detonator didn't set it off it seems like. Probably didn't cause too much damage.[/QUOTE] It's still a big problem, since assuming it didn't burn out completely that's still a large and probably unstable bomb sitting somewhere in the landscape.

[QUOTE=Ta16;52002501] Munitions that are left out in the open can become less stable, making them much more dangerous to handle or it can cause the weapon to fire improperly and become a danger to the crew. Remember those vidoes of ISIS guys with old soviet mortors and they'd drop a 50 year old rusted out round into a mortor tube and it exploded killing everyone? Same thing.[/QUOTE] I thought that many of those were a result of booby-trapped rounds left by ISIS' opposition?

holy shit, it looks like the nuke from the beginning of FEAR 2

Jesus Christ, I hope nobody was hurt.

[QUOTE=Hanso;52002663]How do you even handle a situation like that? Wait for everything to stop blowing up? It seems extremely dangerous for anyone to try and deal with it.[/QUOTE] Depends on what it is, if it's like 1.4s (Small arms) or something and the fire chief thinks it's doable they'll try and fight it. If it's 1.3 (Mass fire) or above (1.1 / 1.2 etc.) everyone evacuates. US Magazines are designed and built to strict requirements, for example firebreaks must be at least 50' around the magazine, barrier walls must be so thick and so high etc. This is to prevent the Ordnance within the magazine from causing 'Sympathetic Detonations' in surrounding magazines in the event such an incident occurs. [QUOTE=Ghost656;52002342]Yes because several warehouses catching fire at once isn't suspicious at all. Clever observation.[/QUOTE] Unless they have actual proof of a saboteur I highly doubt this was Sabotage. The Ordnance is stored in such a manner that if a round was dropped or someone was careless with their cigarette butt the mass of artillery rounds nearby could easily cause what we call a 'sympathetic detonation' which means a unintended detonation caused by a nearby explosion, a chain reaction basically. I doubt any of their stowage areas are properly sited either. Judging by the photos they do not instill me with confidence in their ability to safely handle, maintain or even safely be around ammo or any sort. [t]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/totalitat/67886964/6989/6989_900.jpg[/t] And let's be fucking honest, if you accidentally caused the detonation of roughly 100 million euros in ordnance and probably greatly hurt the Ukrainian military would you tell people the truth? This is a massive fucking embarrassment for Ukraine, I'd throw Russian under the bus too. [QUOTE=Zero-Point;52002916]I thought that many of those were a result of booby-trapped rounds left by ISIS' opposition?[/QUOTE] Oh no doubt, but I just said using ordnance in poor material condition is the 'same thing', though I imagine at least a few ISIS weapon crew casualties are due to shitty ammo.

[QUOTE=Ta16;52003160]And let's be fucking honest, if you accidentally caused the detonation of roughly 100 million euros in ordnance and probably greatly hurt the Ukrainian military would you tell people the truth? This is a massive fucking embarrassment for Ukraine, I'd throw Russian under the bus too.[/QUOTE] I believe Ukraine's military is incompetent, but I also believe Russia wouldn't pass up an opportunity to make Ukraine look bad. Especially an easy opportunity, judging by the pictures of the depot that have been posted and how comically dangerous it looks. Can anyone verify that those pics really are of this particular depot?

[QUOTE=Psychokitten;52002337]The Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios said the explosion and fire were caused by sabotage at 3am local time.[/QUOTE] Ukrainian military says it was sabotage rather than Ukrainian military fuck up. really I wouldn't believe Russian or Ukrainians lmao, they'd just blame eachother. [QUOTE=Ta16;52003160]Unless they have actual proof of a saboteur I highly doubt this was Sabotage. The Ordnance is stored in such a manner that if a round was dropped or someone was careless with their cigarette butt the mass of artillery rounds nearby could easily cause what we call a 'sympathetic detonation' which means a unintended detonation caused by a nearby explosion, a chain reaction basically. I doubt any of their stowage areas are properly sited either. Judging by the photos they do not instill me with confidence in their ability to safely handle, maintain or even safely be around ammo or any sort. [t]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/totalitat/67886964/6989/6989_900.jpg[/t] And let's be fucking honest, if you accidentally caused the detonation of roughly 100 million euros in ordnance and probably greatly hurt the Ukrainian military would you tell people the truth? This is a massive fucking embarrassment for Ukraine, I'd throw Russian under the bus too.[/QUOTE] This, the storage was a fucking mess and it'd be way easier for the Ukrainians to claim Russians did it than them accept their own fuck up. Russia definitely has something to gain out of this but I wouldn't go 'uuu russians musta done it cause the ukrainians said they did'

[QUOTE=Psychokitten;52002430]shouldn't have had any of it out in the open that's a goddamn public safety hazard[/QUOTE] [quote]Judging by the photos they do not instill me with confidence in their ability to safely handle, maintain or even safely be around ammo or any sort.[/quote] I don't think you understand how things are in the region of the former Soviet Union...

[QUOTE=pentium;52003836]I don't think you understand how things are in the region of the former Soviet Union...[/QUOTE] this it's all out in the open because its the absolute cheapest way to store it

[QUOTE=pentium;52003836]I don't think you understand how things are in the region of the former Soviet Union...[/QUOTE] No excuses. Absolutely none. Either store it safely, or dispose of it.

Having been out to a munitions dump, if what's pictured here is barbaric and dangerous, then you don't want to see how the U.S. bulk-stores munitions while staging them for deployment. The dirt berms between the stockpiles are supposed to prevent a disaster like this from happening (they starve the fire and direct concussive forces upward.) A complete, collateral failing of every stockpile in the dump indicates either 1) the engineers in charge of the dump had no clue what they were doing (possible, but not likely, since this is a simple technique dating back to at least WWI that's almost impossible to fuck up) or 2) someone did [I]something[/I] to induce a collateral failure that was so large that even a more permanently constructed ammo dump wouldn't have efficiently contained (which seems eminently likely, since Ukraine and Russia have been in a quiet state of virtual war for, goodness, more than three years now?) I'm not particularly familiar with how the Soviets bulkstore their munitions, but in the U.S., most of it isn't stored in any type of underground bunker or repository to my knowledge. The closest you get are giant concrete warehouses that remind you of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc.

[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;52003895]Having been out to a munitions dump, if what's pictured here is barbaric and dangerous, then you don't want to see how the U.S. bulk-stores munitions while staging them for deployment.[/QUOTE] That's temporary though, and I'd imagine it's away from populated areas. This was a permanent facility in the middle of a populated area.

[QUOTE=Exploders;52002314]Not even a page in and we already got the first assumption that it was subjucation by the russians so they can invade Ukraine, rather than say, the ukrainians own ineptitude.[/QUOTE] Yeah, why would Russia ever want to invade? It's not like they already annexed another part of the country recently!

[QUOTE=Psychokitten;52003910]That's temporary though, and I'd imagine it's away from populated areas. This was a permanent facility in the middle of a populated area.[/QUOTE] In which case; [QUOTE=pentium;52003836]I don't think you understand how things are in the region of the former Soviet Union...[/QUOTE] Is really important. You [I]are[/I] aware that Ukraine lost about a third of it's territory to foreign aggression not too long ago? Had to invest heavily in simply organizing a coherent resistance to that aggression? Even going so far as to have civilians sending home-bought materiel to the front? And the lost land was quite a lot of their former military infrastructure? Including, most notably, something between 40 and 60% of it's industrial capital? While it's government wrestles with an internal party that would see it simply submit to said foreign aggressor? While being neck deep in international financial clusterfucation? You strike me as one of the boots that has no appreciation for logistics, that just wonders loudly why we can't drone strike every hadji.

[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;52003987]You [I]are[/I] aware that Ukraine lost about a third of it's territory to foreign aggression not too long ago? Had to invest heavily in simply organizing a coherent resistance to that aggression? Even going so far as to have civilians sending home-bought materiel to the front? And the lost land was quite a lot of their former military infrastructure? Including, most notably, something between 40 and 60% of it's industrial capital? While it's government wrestles with an internal party that would see it simply submit to said foreign aggressor? While being neck deep in international financial clusterfucation? You strike me as one of the boots that has no appreciation for logistics, that just wonders loudly why we can't drone strike every hadji.[/QUOTE] Alright alright alright I give up They're going through some shit, no need to be too hard on 'em I guess EDIT: Still, I hope they take this as a lesson and treat their ammo dumps a little more seriously, in terms of security [I]and[/I] storage.

[QUOTE=Psychokitten;52004104]Alright alright alright I give up They're going through some shit, no need to be too hard on 'em I guess EDIT: Still, I hope they take this as a lesson and treat their ammo dumps a little more seriously, in terms of security [I]and[/I] storage.[/QUOTE] Sure, I agree, and they probably will. It's a hard lesson to ignore, [B]their largest munitions depot exploding.[/B]

in 2014 we got explosion of like 50 ton munition storage depot (so that's like 3000 times less than it's supposed to be in this Ukr depot) that caused 2 days later another nearby 13 tons storage depot to blow too (1.2 km from epicenter of 1st explosion) contaminated area is approx 1-3 km around each and btw. those all were depots inside shielded (relatively) buildings ... in fact several more depots didn't explode thankfully due to sturdy roofs (they found artillery shell jammed half way in in the roof of nearby depot full of mine ordnance) if it exploded or went thru, the 3rd depot would go off instantly too army pyrotechnic disposal engineers keep cleaning the areal, surrounding fields and forest since nearly non-stop (3 years) and it's still not safe in the nearby area ... so for the Ukr depot, imho the area within 10-15 km radius will be dangerous for 10 years minimum unless there is huge effort for cleanup (which i doubt considering the corruption) yet the contaminated area might be larger if strength of the explosion ejected ordnance or rockets flight time was longer than seen in videos

[QUOTE=Ta16;52002501] Munitions that are left out in the open can become less stable, making them much more dangerous to handle or it can cause the weapon to fire improperly and become a danger to the crew. Remember those vidoes of ISIS guys with old soviet mortors and they'd drop a 50 year old rusted out round into a mortor tube and it exploded killing everyone? Same thing.[/QUOTE] I'm not going to defend shitty practices (in Russia they're stored the same way - just look up on Youtube, our ammo depots go pop every summer). Judging from the pictures - there're black markings on some boxes and individual shells, which means they have no explosive materials in them. But then you see barely roofed stacks of boxes of live ordnance and soldiers goofing around near them. Fuck's sake man, when you see that you've got to think that it's only a matter of time before something goes off, how can no one give a shit?

Trump and Vlad personally lit the blaze

Likely theories: a) freak accident b) sabotage by Russians c) sabotage by DPR or LPR d) false flag by Ukraine considering the scale of the accident, I think it's obvious which option is most likely. Sabotaging ammunition and supplies is like... Guerilla warfare 101.

Does anyone believe the Ukrainian military is really so incompetent that they don't have measures to prevent all of their ammo from blowing up in case of an accident? This isn't just a careless cigarettes.

[QUOTE=Rubs10;52006341]Does anyone believe the Ukrainian military is really so incompetent that they don't have measures to prevent all of their ammo from blowing up in case of an accident? This isn't just a careless cigarettes.[/QUOTE] Yes. [t]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/totalitat/67886964/5331/5331_900.jpg[/t] Besides, it's happened several times before in Russia in recent times so it's wouldn't be surprising if it happened in Ukraine too. [url]https://www.rt.com/news/ammunition-depot-blasts-russia-888/[/url] [url]http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/13/russia.army.depot.explosion/[/url] [url]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-shells-explode-as-fire-burns-ammo-depot/[/url]

[QUOTE=Exploders;52002314]Not even a page in and we already got the first assumption that it was subjucation by the russians so they can invade Ukraine, rather than say, the ukrainians own ineptitude.[/QUOTE] Bulgaria shilling for Russia I'm not surprised

[QUOTE=Marbalo;52006753]Do you know anything about Ukraine? This forum is fucking amazing, seriously.[/QUOTE] Accidentally starting catastrophic fires in 3 separate warehouses at the same time is a remarkably improbable level of incompetence, even for the Ukrainian military (bless them - I am pro Ukraine but they are not in a good state)

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52006838]Accidentally starting catastrophic fires in 3 separate warehouses at the same time is a remarkably improbable level of incompetence, even for the Ukrainian military (bless them - I am pro Ukraine but they are not in a good state)[/QUOTE] This, I don't believe the sympathetic detonation theory either because the distance between the warehouses is just too big. You can see several of them exploding with quite some distance between eachother.

All those fucking missiles, man: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWoHZwyK_x4[/media] And the fire seen from a drone: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtvqdttbM3o[/media] Those missiles are unarmed and with no tracking abilities, right?.

They're just being propelled by solid fuel that's cooking off. The warheads, if they're even fitted to the missiles, aren't live (fuses are certainly not fitted) though I imagine they could still detonate under the right conditions and they definitely wouldn't be capable of tracking anything since the electronics will be dead, if not from storage then the heat. The path of least resistance for the burning fuel is the rear of the rocket where it's intended to vent, which causes it to "launch", but you can tell every bit of guidance each missile has is dead by the way some of them are veering about wildly - the control surfaces aren't even trying to stabilize them.

Um. Not to be that ass that shits on Soviet/Russian hardware but I doubt they even have tracking systems at all, especially if they're grad rockets.

christ, the explosion at 2:06 turned my volume way down before it reached the cameraman

[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;52008292]Um. Not to be that ass that shits on Soviet/Russian hardware but I doubt they even have tracking systems at all, especially if they're grad rockets.[/QUOTE] You're probably correct on that point as well but surely they don't have fuses in them? I don't know if Grad rockets have removable warheads.