It's time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
I had a great time last weekend at Miramar, and expect to get photos up over the next few weeks. As a down-payment, have the last two currently on my cell phone:
I have learned a valuable lesson about the amount of sunscreen necessary for Miramar
On the way out, my plane flew over the Port, giving me one last look at my favorite place
2018 overhauls are Secondary Armament Parts one, two and three, my reviews of Mystic Seaport and Albacore and Battlecruisers Part 3. 2019 overhauls are Fouling, Naval Ranks - Warrant and Enlisted, Four Years Ago, Riverine Warfare - China Part 1, the McKinley Climatic Laboratory and HMS Warrior. 2020 overhauls are the Arleigh Burke Class, Territorial and International Waters, Falklands Part 24 and Pictures - Iowa Aft Living Spaces. 2021 overhauls are Liberty Ships Parts two, three and four and Pictures - Iowa Main Battery Plot.
Comments
The sailor accused of starting the fire that destroyed the Bonhomme Richard has been found not guilty, in a court martial.
Regarding the explosions in Nord Stream I and II, was this a diving team going down the 60 to 80 meters to set explosives or would this have been done with an internal pig that had been moved down the pipeline? Or was it rather a sub?
If it had been a mechanical pig, would it have been able to pull enough explosives along to the predetermined spot?
If the explosives were attached externally, how does one then detonate them? Did the perpetrators (cough cough) run a detonation line back to territorial waters??
I know Bean had a recent article of interesting U.S. capabilities with its sub force throughout the years, are we to assume that the perpetrators (again cough cough) have the capability to do such actions without parking a vessel on the surface for a couple of hours?
@Neal
Speaking to people who work with gas pipelines: - Pigs are moved along the pipelines by gas flow. Neither pipeline was flowing gas so pigs were not able to be used.
- Well... in theory you can get a pig partway along a non-flowing pipe if you just pump more and more gas behind the pig and compress the gas at the other end. But this produces a big pressure rise at the other end, and the Germans would have noticed this as it was happening. -The idea that it was all accidental isn't completely ruled out yet. Pipelines do blow up occasionally, and leaving them sitting without flow is about the most dangerous case.
Neal:
Timer.
Doctorpat:
True, but both pipelines at about the same time really does look deliberate.
Still the part about basically no one actually having any reason to blow it up (unless Putin has decided to live up to his Putler nickname and do scorched earth).
@Doctorpat: I presume that if someone wanted and had access, they could make a subcaliber self-propelled "pig" that wouldn't need gas flow to get where it is going. That would obviously require a great deal of planning and expertise.
I expect we'll learn soon enough whether the explosion was internal or external.
Yes a timer would do the trick, just was mulling over the idea of being able to, if so desired or needed, disable it had it been set some time ago...weeks or months for example.
True about the two different explosions. As the old joke goes, once an accident but twice looks like a habit.
@doctorpat Do the pipeline operators have something like John mentioned to inspect the inside of the line before they pressurize it and start the flow? If so, I wonder if that could have been used to have placed the charges.
According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Sweden announced on Monday evening that one of two damaged areas is one again leaking. This is certainly unexpected as the authorities had thought there was no longer pressure and flow in the line.
Sweden is prohibiting passage in the area although it has not yet stated how much of this area is in the Swedish economic zone and how much is in Denmark's.
I'm curious as to who is heading the investigation and even more curious as which, and how many, parties have standing.
Wouldn't the easiest way to blow up one of those pipes be by driving an RC toy into it, carrying on its back a balloon full of air, a needle, and a spark plug?
I see no reason you couldn't do a motorized in-pipe vehicle, but that's no longer a "pig" and speaks to much longer planning horizons.
The pipes still bubbling out gas? No idea myself but the speculation I've heard is:
Only way gas can still be pouring out is if the Russians still have the taps open.
Western pipeline experts won't go near it while it has tonne's (literally) of explosive gas bubbling to the surface.
So while the Russians are happy to throw away all that gas, nobody can inspect the damage for the likely cause.
Which might be why they are doing this.
Ukraine now has a navy again, sort of. The corvette <a href="https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/10/turkish-shipyard-launches-hetman-ivan-mazepa/"Hetman Ivan Mazepa" was launched two days ago in Istanbul. "Launched" is still a long way from complete and/or operational; it is unlikely that the ship will play any role in the current conflict.
It does seem to be the sort of small multimission warship ideally suited to the needs of a nation like Ukraine - helicopter, decent radar, antiship and air defense missiles, a CIWS, modest antisubmarine capability, and the obligatory OTO Melara 76mm gun.
The Ukrainians have ordered at least two and possibly as many as six ships from Turkey; I can't find a straight answer for that. With six, they would have rough parity with what's left of Russia's Black Sea Fleet (excluding submarines).
The original Hetman Ivan Mazepa was a leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks; there's probably a message in that.
I mean, which requires long planning horizons, the RC toy, the spark plug, the balloon, or the air? Seriously, making a metal pipe full of methane blow up doesn't seem a big achievement if you've got access to go inside. Could even be done by undercover agents at either end. It's like a truck full of ammo, the explosive is already there, and air is plentiful at the ends.
RC toys are reasonably good for trying to kill targets a few hundred meters away. They can be reasonably ruled out when the explosion was dozens of kilometers away from one end of the pipeline, and much further from the end controlled by the people who actually conducted the attack.
The pipe is full of just methane; the air is behind seventy meters of water. You can bring air with you, but you'll need to bring quite a bit of it - very roughly 0.4 kg of oxygen for every kg of TNT equivalent effect you're going for (assuming optimal mixing). A balloon won't do it.
A compressed air tank might, or better still compressed pure oxygen, but compressed-gas tanks weigh more than the gas they contain, so you'd be better off just bringing TNT (or C-4 or whatever).
Also, the methane in the pipeline is under pressure, so if you start a fire at the ends where it above ground and exposed to air, you just get a giant flamethrower, akin to a blowout in a natural gas well. Except, aimed straight at your infrastructure and a giant flaming arrow pointing at "these idiots done it!". Not a detonation propagating into the pipe, because there isn't a detonable mixture in the pipe and isn't going to be.
Ok, math time. Suppose we want 100 kg TNT's worth of boom. Round it to about 50kg oxy. At 10 bar, 5 degrees C, oxy is about 14 kg/m3. Say we bring about 4 m3, that's a sphere about 2m in diameter. But, AIUI, pipelines are pressurised at about 17 bar, so a 1m party balloon full of oxy should just about do the trick.
Unless I lost some zeroes along the way, and never minding the logistics of getting the balloon into the pipe, you definitely aren't better off bringing C4.
As for the platform, would it need anything beyond an electric scooter's worth of batteries and motor?
@AlexT: 1.7 meters diameter, actually, and the pipelines are only 1.1 meters diameter.
Plus the difficulty of arranging for the inflated-but-compressed balloon to be inside the pipeline under pressure while you and your crew are outside the pipleine in ambient air - are you imagining a five-meter airlock in which the balloon will be compressed down to size, or are you imagining a tank of compressed oxygen to inflate the balloon in situ (in which case why bother with the balloon), or a custom oxygen feedthrough in the pipeline with a quick-disconnect fitting?
Plus getting the time delay right between oxygen release and ignition, so you get detonation rather than deflagration. I do oxygen/methane explosions professionally; that's something that really requires trial and error to do right.
Plus have you calculated the aerodynamic drag in trying to tow a train of large balloons through methane at ~24 kg/m^3 in a constrained environment, and what that will do to the battery requirement for your crawler over a distance of hundreds of kilometers?
And all of this will be something completely new, thus lots of opportunities for error on your first trial. Seriously, just buying 100 kg of TNT and being done with it will be easier. Anybody who is in a position to access a pipeline terminal, will have access to TNT and professional demolitions expertise.
@AlexT: 1.7 meters diameter, actually, and the pipelines are only 1.1 meters diameter.
Plus the difficulty of arranging for the inflated-but-compressed balloon to be inside the pipeline under pressure while you and your crew are outside the pipleine in ambient air - are you imagining a five-meter airlock in which the balloon will be compressed down to size, or are you imagining a tank of compressed oxygen to inflate the balloon in situ (in which case why bother with the balloon), or a custom oxygen feedthrough in the pipeline with a quick-disconnect fitting?
Plus getting the time delay right between oxygen release and ignition, so you get detonation rather than deflagration. I do oxygen/methane explosions professionally; that's something that really requires trial and error to do right.
Plus have you calculated the aerodynamic drag in trying to tow a train of large balloons through methane at ~24 kg/m^3 in a constrained environment, and what that will do to the battery requirement for your crawler over a distance of hundreds of kilometers?
And all of this will be something completely new, thus lots of opportunities for error on your first trial. Seriously, just buying 100 kg of TNT and being done with it will be easier. Anybody who is in a position to access a pipeline terminal, will have access to TNT and professional demolitions expertise.
Alexander Nowak, Russia’s minister of energy, said today that Nord Stream 2 is operationally capable and could be brought on line in a timely manner should it be necessary.
I realize that some of that language is a bit oblique, but take it for what you will.
He also demanded that Russia be a party to the investigation(s).
John Schilling:
Oxygen in liquid form might be better.
Neal:
That implies that either Russia knows more than they should or they're making things up.
With Russia I could believe either one.
First it was a pipeline...now it's a bridge. Pretty soon it is going to start looking like an infrastructure problem.
Interesting though that the Russians are claiming the rail will be soon back in service while road repairs will be "some indeterminate time." They need to hire a better PR firm.
For the experts here, could the road portion actually have been felled by a truck bomb or would it have to have been something underneath? Wonder if it was timed with the train passing on the upper span or if that was coincidence?
That makes sense to me, given what we've seen of the aftermath. The automobile side of the bridge is pretty much completely destroyed, with multiple segments collapsed into the water. The rail bridge, at least on the surface, seems mostly undamaged. Indeed, the Russians were running test loads across the bridge last night.
From the "lighter side": Listening to "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" (G Lightfoot) and the lyric "With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty," struck me as "well, of course, haven't you read Naval Gazing?" (Either way you interpret that, whether the Edmund Fitzgerald weighs less than "twenty-six thousand tons" or the load added "twenty-six thousand tons", but the first interpretation is the one that's supposed to shock, but it doesn't shock me)
@Neal: CatCube, who is a structural engineer by trade, posted a pretty comprehensive writeup on Data Secrets Lox. And I'be seen similar analyses elsehere. Bottom line, yes, truck bomb on the road span, not demolition charges on the substructure.
@Ian
I read that as a straightforward statement of cargo load, with some extra words tacked on to make the song scan.
Methinks that the russian claim that "the rail will be soon back in service" is only a tad optimistic.
https://twitter.com/maksnafofella/status/1579540950375768065
Thank you @John. I will take a look.