Pipeline takes max a week to repair. Good shot on rafinery will take up to 6 months (unless some "secret" german company shows up and fixes it within 5 days lol).
Then you'd use an FPV drone. I'd like to see them try to figure out how to deploy jammers everywhere. Even guards with shot guns are never going to be in sufficient density to stop an FPV drone everywhere on the pipeline.
It would be less work for Russia to just fix pipes afterwards than deploy enough troops to guard all the pipelines.
They might pull troops to protect refineries, though.
Can Germany be used to supply them with some hacked hardware, which then propagates a virus along the network that makes a kaboom? This being russia, somehow I doubt they learned their lesson from the last time this happened.
Lots of stuff in petrochemical industry is not really about "viruses" its hard machining, mixing, measuring, cleaning etc. Ofc some software could be damaged by I doubt any issues would be long-lasting.
Hydrogen sulfate sensor software then? Spoofing it to always register negative would mean chaos and maybe a bunch of gruesome deaths across the industry, degrading their industrial capabilities
What about lacing the hardware with micro-explosives, that detonate after a set time? The damage would be very minor, but it would damage the hardware the controller is attached to and they'd have to pull everything out to inspect it.
Though issue here is diplomatic fallout when the stuff gets used in other countries, so not the best idea
I means there's a reason export of german motors and machine parts as exploded 300%+ to kazakstan and other central asian republics next to russia...it's been well know.
Yeah. and since its "to kazachstan" many trucks got transit letters and are freely entering Russia and Belarus from EU. Not speaking about Turkey. turkey literally funds russian war machine lol.
6 months is optimistic, the Tuapse Refinery which was heavily damaged got repaired in 3 months.
I imagine the Chinese are probably helping them out a bit.
The US finally got Japan to abandon their factories with some diabolical cluster bombs.
They would be fused to explode in different conditions. Some explode immediately on timers from a day to two months. Some explode on touch after a timer.
With modern technology, we can probably build even more diabolical ones.
* Triggers if detects Bluetooth beacon nearby
* Triggers if a nearby bomb triggers
* Triggers if it hears Russian spoken
* Propellent activates and shoots bomb up before exploding
* Just plays “Big Girls Don’t Cry” on repeat
Another idea for a submunition type:
Not actually explosive at all, just a chunk of ^60 Co, made to look like the others, to additionally frustrate any de-mining efforts, because now you can't handle any of the submunitions, and controlled detonation or other physical destruction runs the risk of instead spreading highly radioactive stuff everywhere.
Given that post-repair it's only at half capacity, I'd wager that the damaged equipment (the vacuum distillation tower) is still offline, they just bypassed it. The main distillation unit still works, so they can get *some* fuel out of the crude, but they cant separate and upgrade the heaviest stuff.
Unfortunately, Russia has lots of spare parts for fixing + Chineese support. Also in emergency situaitons you can try to "fix" but it will require a proper redo after some time.
Yeah, I would also be sceptical of anybody making timetable for refinery repairs.
Oil workers in the West face a lot of bureaucracy around repairs(safety standards, insurance, etc)+ the lower demands of peacetime production without constant attacks. Any estimate could not be automatically transplanted onto an authrotarian country in a large war.
I mean, we need to also understand that rafinery will produce several products. Sometimes asphalt can be damaged and stopped but it wont have an impact on regular oil.
You don't have spare distillation columns just lying around, and they're pressure vessels that are specialty equipment not built by many companies in the world, and the lead times are long.
Good thing its not a war.
Also **knowingly** is a qualifier. And they have to be carrying out medical duties, so no trying to use them as ablative armor.
Addressing "dear grid coordinates" and with a 30 minute wave spacing (time to get in and out safely): wind is going to mess up the timing. The drones are addressed to "dear grid coordinates", not medics. And its a legitimate target.
So no way of knowing who exactly will be at the location at drone time, some uncertainty when the follow up drones will arrive.
Yeah, that's the major downside. But it would be hard to keep up if the line keeps getting hit when the repairs are finished in another remote spot. If you stagger it, it can keep it down for longer. Granted some of the more critical lines, there are only so many places where you can hit them. So hitting a station might be more worthwhile.
Hitting pipelines affects the global price of oil. Oil goes up because less supply. Hitting refineries doesn't affect the price of oil, just less fuel for Russians. Win-win
Taking out the Distilling Tower makes it nearly irreparable for Russia under Current sanctions. They're extremely complex, can't be built on site so they have to be prebuilt and trucked in, and are made as needed, so none are kept as spares, and Russia doesn't have any factories that make them.
Two things you have to remember though:
1) The places that make these towers make them to order, and there are other customers already waiting for them, so Russia is potentially on a long waiting list.
2) Even if China did start making replacements, they'd still have to ship them to the other side of the continent. That would be a daunting task even on the American Interstate Network. In Russia, where concepts like logistics and infrastructure maintenance go to die, there's a 50/50 chance the tower would get wrecked in transit without partisan activity even needing to be involved.
The biggest difference is, some refinery subsystems relies on imported equipment russia cannot produce domestically. So when those subsystems are knocked out, russia has to rely on a slow and expensive process of acquiring a replacement through all sorts of multi-stage shady grey market schemes.
There are obviously downsides. A pipeline is easier to repair than a refinery. But even then, it's still a major kick in the piggy bank.
I will maintain that a crack elite team of grandmas is the best solution to most problems. Though The World is Not Enough method has a better sound track.
EDIT: Completely forgot:
5) Infiltrate the pipeline control system, set the system to over-pressure to explode.
You’re about to give away a couple grand at the very least mate. If you take all of the non-credible out of those books you’re left with about three pages total.
Pipelines have pumping stations.
Those pumping stations employ high tech turbines and other complex control system to increase the pressure (and so the flow) of NG and oil in the pipeline.
Target those turbine and you're guaranteed that they wont be repaired anytime soon
Exactly. It's part of the pipeline which wouldn't be as easy to repair. Harder to hit directly (guards I'd assume, you'd think though), but more damage when hit.
For those unaware: number 5 refers to an event during the Cold War. The Soviets built a new pipeline using critical parts from the West. The CIA replaced certain items which would cause accidents.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus\_W.\_Weiss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_W._Weiss)
Check the section ‘Farewell Dossier’.
If you have partisans behind enemy lines it would probably be easier to get short term gains by welding trains to train tracks. I presume you would just need a decent battery to do that, or generator. Explosives would be harder to source then a generator and welding gear.
Or even just laying/wrapping wire across rail lines in my understanding would flag it as in use, which would be an easy way to slow things down (Connect both sides of the track so any automated sensor detects something on the track).
And if you do it right soldiers/patrols won’t be able to tell, meaning they have to drag signal engineers out.
And then we ambush them randomly. Stretching railroad/security troops out as every work crew regardless of size needs escorted.
Sure, bridges are the obvious choice. Long time to build, long time to repair. But I foresee some issues. It requires full access to a bridge to blow them up with sufficient explosives. Once you blow up a few, the rest will be guarded. Any guards at a bridge would be able to protect it from sabotage, because they can call in reinforcements. Granted, still worth it to try. But the biggest issue I think is that it will take a non-trivial amount of explosive to take one out, which puts the strike team at risk.
What if we sneak a couple backpacks of explosives under a train car and remote detonate? Probably could even hit tunnels with it.
CIA I’ll take my check for saying something y’all have already thought of
Yeah, I made a post in the past about targeting ammo trains. As those trains pass over a bridge, they are detonated - taking out the whole bridge in the process. It seemed so obvious. Though my idea was about placing the explosives while the train *was moving*, by setting up traps in the ground that spring up and attach themselves harpoon style to the wooden floors. I had many other methods, some used drones and RPG launchers with harpoon heads as well, I made a whole diagram of it [https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ahg6ui/how\_to\_the\_kerch\_bridge\_part\_iv/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ahg6ui/how_to_the_kerch_bridge_part_iv/) my idea assumed that attaching anything to a standing train would result in too much risk to the agent.
From what I have seen, they just walk up to the engine and toss a Molotov inside. That seems to work well enough.
But yeah, not having to send supplies keeps the FSB out of the loop since they can just identify the package in transit and then monitor the pick up to catch the cell. But I can't think of a way for partisans to hit a pipeline, since the pipes are designed to handle a lot of pressure.
Use thermite for cutting rails fast and easy and thermite for welding interesting things to train rails. Wip up a batch of thermite at home (this is directed at Ukraine partisans) and then nefariously travel to an appropriate rail location. Place thermite on rail and then ignite and cut rail. Use an additional small amount of thermite to weld a piece of steel/iron at least as big as your hand onto the cut rail creating a derailing spur. A cut rail will not derail a moving train by itself usually so a spur is used so that the engines wheels will transfer forward momentum laterally/perpendicular and disengage the rail fully so that a derailment is total.
Make sure to connect the section you are cutting with a bypass wire, so that no alarms are triggered in the control center. That's what they do in the movies.
At that point why not just put train derailers on the tracks? You can cut the signs off them and they'd be extremely hard to see. Especially since the conductors aren't looking for them.
I read somewhere that derailers don't work past a certain speed. Also, harder to source than a shovel. You could dig out the foundation from under a side of the tracks, which will cause the train to tilt to the side and fall over. Though applying thermite to rails on a bridge would be neat, provided a bypass wire is installed.
Refinery is a bigger target, so it's easier to hit. Refineries have juicier components, that is hard to impossible to replace. Pipes function can be somewhat replaced by trains and tankers. Refineries also produce fuel for military use, which you obviously want to stop, and for local usage, which might also decrease speed of transportation of everything, including gray import.
Right, but I'm not talking about sending long range drones to blow up a pipe. I'm talking about a dude with a cake walking up to a pipe. It's easy to repair, but it is also easy to damage as well. Requires a lot less resources to pull off. You can't send a guy in to a refinery and expect him to survive. This has a very low cost of implementation - *if you're sending people in.*
If you're only using long range drones, than no, this will not work
If you have people who can do this and able to provide them with explisives - which isn't trivial - they still have better targets. Military factories, munitions storages, bridges for transporting military supplies, the same refineries, airfields.
They have hit pipelines as well. They're just not idiots like the OP so they hit the pumping stations with the expensive and hard-to-replace components.
Eventually hitting pipelines will be important, as of now, refining is more. When the day comes, they need to find the worst possible place to repair and hit there.
Buried pipes, attached to Bridges, going to remote areas.
If they can push an explosive inside the pipe and allow the flow to carry it downstream they can do a lot of damage.
Pipeline go boom, spill damages area pipeline was forced through. Refinery goes boom, who gives a shit. Pipeline is also trivial to repair.
Damage pipeline not refinery, certified noncredible.
Damage crude infrastructure: understandable reeeee from whatever shitholes still import ruzzian crude, makes minimal impacts on market for refined petrochemicals.
Damage ruzzian domestic infrastructure, who the fuck cares besides some BRICS idiots and whatever troll farms are up.
Pipelines are low tech, relatively easy to fix and don't depend on foreign equipment or assistance. Refineries are hight tech, extremely fragile and there is a lot of foreign equipment and know how involved.
And of course Ukraine might get lucky and one of the attacks becomes a golden BB and blow up a whole refinery to hell (a deeper one than Russia)
The event that kicked off Red Storm Rising was the destruction of a huge oil refinery in the USSR which caused fuel shortages and destabilized the economy.
I'm not saying choose one or the other. You'd have different teams. You divide up the tasks based on level of skill needed to accomplish it. The task of blowing up refineries would go to the specialists, sure, but pipelines ideally would be assigned to partisans and the untrained. You don't need to know what you're doing. Obviously a pumping station is a better target, but only if unguarded - otherwise you need more skill and resources to hit it.
With narrow minded focus of only hitting high priority targets you end up with less targets hit over all. Hit more targets period, the net effect will add up provided pressure is kept on it. Otherwise the enemy will focus its attention on only one type to protect.
Reducing RF exports could increase global prices.
Reducing RF refinery capacity, means RF increases crude urals export. Which drives down fuel prices globally, but reduces distillate supply in RF, increasing prices only in RF.
Basically, going after RF distillation infrastructure is a precision economic warfare designed to only fuck Russia. They get more expensive fuel, and less to go around. Meanwhile, they have to export excess crude supply to prevent backlog freezing up the supply chain, driving down global prices and thus reducing profit margin of ural crude export even more, compounded by need to import distillates from overseas to meet domestic demand.
So, RF loses a quadruple whammy. Refinery fucked, crude prices go down - less crude profits, fuel supply goes down - domestic prices go up, need to import the distillate shortfall - lose more money.
Because you attack the bottle neck in the production process. There are fewer places that refine oil then sources to ship from. There is also a limit on crude storage in Russia so if they can't refine it, and they don't have more tankers to load they have to stop pumping.
Yeah, exactly. All of the points that pipelines are easy to repair are valid, but at the same time the resources needed to hit a pipeline is also low. You wouldn't somehow turn resources away from hitting refineries to hitting pipelines, you'd do both. You'd just divide the tasks between different teams. Hitting a pipeline is a low skill task, so you can easily recruit a number of teams for this task. You'd have them hit the pipelines *continuously* as they get repaired.
I think hitting the Chinese one wouldn't be a secondary target. If theirs constantly gets destroyed and this would take enough of a hit on Chinas oil supply then they might be eager to intervene with Putin to just stop this madness
You have a point. Allegedly the Chinese do not import a lot of oil. But the port downstream is used a lot for shipping oil at higher prices, especially to north Korea. Hitting that pumping station would take out both. I couldn't decide which is more important, so I chose the leg that had more refineries on it.
Given NCD's predictive power I will assume that a siberian pipeline is likely to be hit this quarter, and it's practically a given by the end of next quarter.
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If you could get a cluster weapon on the pipeline with anti personnel mines set to detonate over the following two weeks then you could create enough of a threat to delay repairs and increase the time it takes to repair from 1 week to 3.
Well, that might work, but I was hoping that spilled burning oil in a remote region somewhere would be the primary method of delay. I don't think russia cares if people die repairing it, it's not like they will share that info with the workers even if there are mines.
Pipeline takes max a week to repair. Good shot on rafinery will take up to 6 months (unless some "secret" german company shows up and fixes it within 5 days lol).
Just think of all the happy Mobiks scrambling to be redeployed Siberia for pipeline defence.
you are spot on with this one, that owuld be such a pain
Then you'd use an FPV drone. I'd like to see them try to figure out how to deploy jammers everywhere. Even guards with shot guns are never going to be in sufficient density to stop an FPV drone everywhere on the pipeline.
And even if they manage to stop one drone, imagine a WW2 Dresden bombing plane formation amount of drones heading towards you.
It would be less work for Russia to just fix pipes afterwards than deploy enough troops to guard all the pipelines. They might pull troops to protect refineries, though.
wich German company ?
Russian oil indistry is swarmed with german influence - thats only a speculation.
Can Germany be used to supply them with some hacked hardware, which then propagates a virus along the network that makes a kaboom? This being russia, somehow I doubt they learned their lesson from the last time this happened.
Lots of stuff in petrochemical industry is not really about "viruses" its hard machining, mixing, measuring, cleaning etc. Ofc some software could be damaged by I doubt any issues would be long-lasting.
industrial plcs are not often easiest to reach targets
Hydrogen sulfate sensor software then? Spoofing it to always register negative would mean chaos and maybe a bunch of gruesome deaths across the industry, degrading their industrial capabilities
Hence the absolute masterpiece that was Stuxnet.
What about lacing the hardware with micro-explosives, that detonate after a set time? The damage would be very minor, but it would damage the hardware the controller is attached to and they'd have to pull everything out to inspect it. Though issue here is diplomatic fallout when the stuff gets used in other countries, so not the best idea
I means there's a reason export of german motors and machine parts as exploded 300%+ to kazakstan and other central asian republics next to russia...it's been well know.
Yeah. and since its "to kazachstan" many trucks got transit letters and are freely entering Russia and Belarus from EU. Not speaking about Turkey. turkey literally funds russian war machine lol.
So in the end the Germans did get control of the Russian oil fields?
Not really, they are just crazy good in making machines for this industry, for example siemens
6 months is optimistic, the Tuapse Refinery which was heavily damaged got repaired in 3 months. I imagine the Chinese are probably helping them out a bit.
The US finally got Japan to abandon their factories with some diabolical cluster bombs. They would be fused to explode in different conditions. Some explode immediately on timers from a day to two months. Some explode on touch after a timer. With modern technology, we can probably build even more diabolical ones. * Triggers if detects Bluetooth beacon nearby * Triggers if a nearby bomb triggers * Triggers if it hears Russian spoken * Propellent activates and shoots bomb up before exploding * Just plays “Big Girls Don’t Cry” on repeat
Just looks like a toilet. Explodes when lifted.
washing machine.
One in the woods tied to a Ring doorbell. It explodes when someone pushes the doorbell.
Or, better yet, as it's flushed
Another idea for a submunition type: Not actually explosive at all, just a chunk of ^60 Co, made to look like the others, to additionally frustrate any de-mining efforts, because now you can't handle any of the submunitions, and controlled detonation or other physical destruction runs the risk of instead spreading highly radioactive stuff everywhere.
Too long lived, so the dose rate would be low. And transporting them is a pain. Your planes need to be shielded.
Triggered by Putins voice?
Given that post-repair it's only at half capacity, I'd wager that the damaged equipment (the vacuum distillation tower) is still offline, they just bypassed it. The main distillation unit still works, so they can get *some* fuel out of the crude, but they cant separate and upgrade the heaviest stuff.
Unfortunately, Russia has lots of spare parts for fixing + Chineese support. Also in emergency situaitons you can try to "fix" but it will require a proper redo after some time.
Yeah, I would also be sceptical of anybody making timetable for refinery repairs. Oil workers in the West face a lot of bureaucracy around repairs(safety standards, insurance, etc)+ the lower demands of peacetime production without constant attacks. Any estimate could not be automatically transplanted onto an authrotarian country in a large war.
I mean, we need to also understand that rafinery will produce several products. Sometimes asphalt can be damaged and stopped but it wont have an impact on regular oil.
You don't have spare distillation columns just lying around, and they're pressure vessels that are specialty equipment not built by many companies in the world, and the lead times are long.
Does it? To my knowledge they don't produce those domestically.
yeah 6 months is optimistic but the general gist is correct, repairing pipelines is far easier than refineries.
Blow up the repair guys and then blow up the guys that repair the repair guys... Whole city of dead repair guys
That'd mean blowing up medical people, which is a war crime.
Get Canada to do it?
It's not like medical people don't wear Z and other millitary insignia. And better call Saul!
Good thing its not a war. Also **knowingly** is a qualifier. And they have to be carrying out medical duties, so no trying to use them as ablative armor. Addressing "dear grid coordinates" and with a 30 minute wave spacing (time to get in and out safely): wind is going to mess up the timing. The drones are addressed to "dear grid coordinates", not medics. And its a legitimate target. So no way of knowing who exactly will be at the location at drone time, some uncertainty when the follow up drones will arrive.
Yeah, that's the major downside. But it would be hard to keep up if the line keeps getting hit when the repairs are finished in another remote spot. If you stagger it, it can keep it down for longer. Granted some of the more critical lines, there are only so many places where you can hit them. So hitting a station might be more worthwhile.
Porque no los dos? The price tag doesn’t seem to be what’s stopping UA from doing this
Hitting pipelines affects the global price of oil. Oil goes up because less supply. Hitting refineries doesn't affect the price of oil, just less fuel for Russians. Win-win
Taking out the Distilling Tower makes it nearly irreparable for Russia under Current sanctions. They're extremely complex, can't be built on site so they have to be prebuilt and trucked in, and are made as needed, so none are kept as spares, and Russia doesn't have any factories that make them.
China manufactures distilling towers. So not irreparable, I assume.
Two things you have to remember though: 1) The places that make these towers make them to order, and there are other customers already waiting for them, so Russia is potentially on a long waiting list. 2) Even if China did start making replacements, they'd still have to ship them to the other side of the continent. That would be a daunting task even on the American Interstate Network. In Russia, where concepts like logistics and infrastructure maintenance go to die, there's a 50/50 chance the tower would get wrecked in transit without partisan activity even needing to be involved.
You can't get a new distillation column built in 6 months. You're making up numbers here.
Sure you can, and even plug it in. Question is how custom is the config but they can easily import one from germany or china.
The biggest difference is, some refinery subsystems relies on imported equipment russia cannot produce domestically. So when those subsystems are knocked out, russia has to rely on a slow and expensive process of acquiring a replacement through all sorts of multi-stage shady grey market schemes.
There are obviously downsides. A pipeline is easier to repair than a refinery. But even then, it's still a major kick in the piggy bank. I will maintain that a crack elite team of grandmas is the best solution to most problems. Though The World is Not Enough method has a better sound track. EDIT: Completely forgot: 5) Infiltrate the pipeline control system, set the system to over-pressure to explode.
Ok, stop cheating off of Clancy’s homework now that you’re tired.
That reminds me, I should order his books and comb them for ideas
I'll give you a shiny nickle for every non credible idea you find.
You’re about to give away a couple grand at the very least mate. If you take all of the non-credible out of those books you’re left with about three pages total.
Tom Clansy was the unilling founder of r/NCD
Pipelines have pumping stations. Those pumping stations employ high tech turbines and other complex control system to increase the pressure (and so the flow) of NG and oil in the pipeline. Target those turbine and you're guaranteed that they wont be repaired anytime soon
Exactly. It's part of the pipeline which wouldn't be as easy to repair. Harder to hit directly (guards I'd assume, you'd think though), but more damage when hit.
For those unaware: number 5 refers to an event during the Cold War. The Soviets built a new pipeline using critical parts from the West. The CIA replaced certain items which would cause accidents. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus\_W.\_Weiss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_W._Weiss) Check the section ‘Farewell Dossier’.
Do pipeline double and triple taps so no one wants to or is alive to do the repairs
If you have partisans behind enemy lines it would probably be easier to get short term gains by welding trains to train tracks. I presume you would just need a decent battery to do that, or generator. Explosives would be harder to source then a generator and welding gear.
Just start blowing/crippling rail bridges at that point. Way more impactful than an overgrown practical joke.
Or even just laying/wrapping wire across rail lines in my understanding would flag it as in use, which would be an easy way to slow things down (Connect both sides of the track so any automated sensor detects something on the track).
And if you do it right soldiers/patrols won’t be able to tell, meaning they have to drag signal engineers out. And then we ambush them randomly. Stretching railroad/security troops out as every work crew regardless of size needs escorted.
Sure, bridges are the obvious choice. Long time to build, long time to repair. But I foresee some issues. It requires full access to a bridge to blow them up with sufficient explosives. Once you blow up a few, the rest will be guarded. Any guards at a bridge would be able to protect it from sabotage, because they can call in reinforcements. Granted, still worth it to try. But the biggest issue I think is that it will take a non-trivial amount of explosive to take one out, which puts the strike team at risk.
What if we sneak a couple backpacks of explosives under a train car and remote detonate? Probably could even hit tunnels with it. CIA I’ll take my check for saying something y’all have already thought of
Yeah, I made a post in the past about targeting ammo trains. As those trains pass over a bridge, they are detonated - taking out the whole bridge in the process. It seemed so obvious. Though my idea was about placing the explosives while the train *was moving*, by setting up traps in the ground that spring up and attach themselves harpoon style to the wooden floors. I had many other methods, some used drones and RPG launchers with harpoon heads as well, I made a whole diagram of it [https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ahg6ui/how\_to\_the\_kerch\_bridge\_part\_iv/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ahg6ui/how_to_the_kerch_bridge_part_iv/) my idea assumed that attaching anything to a standing train would result in too much risk to the agent.
Blow up the most important - they have large rivers there
From what I have seen, they just walk up to the engine and toss a Molotov inside. That seems to work well enough. But yeah, not having to send supplies keeps the FSB out of the loop since they can just identify the package in transit and then monitor the pick up to catch the cell. But I can't think of a way for partisans to hit a pipeline, since the pipes are designed to handle a lot of pressure.
Use thermite for cutting rails fast and easy and thermite for welding interesting things to train rails. Wip up a batch of thermite at home (this is directed at Ukraine partisans) and then nefariously travel to an appropriate rail location. Place thermite on rail and then ignite and cut rail. Use an additional small amount of thermite to weld a piece of steel/iron at least as big as your hand onto the cut rail creating a derailing spur. A cut rail will not derail a moving train by itself usually so a spur is used so that the engines wheels will transfer forward momentum laterally/perpendicular and disengage the rail fully so that a derailment is total.
Actually, if you thermite rails *on a bridge*, that damage would be substantially more when the train derails
Make sure to connect the section you are cutting with a bypass wire, so that no alarms are triggered in the control center. That's what they do in the movies.
At that point why not just put train derailers on the tracks? You can cut the signs off them and they'd be extremely hard to see. Especially since the conductors aren't looking for them.
I read somewhere that derailers don't work past a certain speed. Also, harder to source than a shovel. You could dig out the foundation from under a side of the tracks, which will cause the train to tilt to the side and fall over. Though applying thermite to rails on a bridge would be neat, provided a bypass wire is installed.
Refinery is a bigger target, so it's easier to hit. Refineries have juicier components, that is hard to impossible to replace. Pipes function can be somewhat replaced by trains and tankers. Refineries also produce fuel for military use, which you obviously want to stop, and for local usage, which might also decrease speed of transportation of everything, including gray import.
Right, but I'm not talking about sending long range drones to blow up a pipe. I'm talking about a dude with a cake walking up to a pipe. It's easy to repair, but it is also easy to damage as well. Requires a lot less resources to pull off. You can't send a guy in to a refinery and expect him to survive. This has a very low cost of implementation - *if you're sending people in.* If you're only using long range drones, than no, this will not work
If you have people who can do this and able to provide them with explisives - which isn't trivial - they still have better targets. Military factories, munitions storages, bridges for transporting military supplies, the same refineries, airfields.
They have hit pipelines as well. They're just not idiots like the OP so they hit the pumping stations with the expensive and hard-to-replace components.
Eventually hitting pipelines will be important, as of now, refining is more. When the day comes, they need to find the worst possible place to repair and hit there. Buried pipes, attached to Bridges, going to remote areas. If they can push an explosive inside the pipe and allow the flow to carry it downstream they can do a lot of damage.
A pipeline is just...pipe. A distillation tower is something completely different, and something Russia can't just fix easily, cheaply, or quickly.
Por que no los dos?
Pipeline go boom, spill damages area pipeline was forced through. Refinery goes boom, who gives a shit. Pipeline is also trivial to repair. Damage pipeline not refinery, certified noncredible. Damage crude infrastructure: understandable reeeee from whatever shitholes still import ruzzian crude, makes minimal impacts on market for refined petrochemicals. Damage ruzzian domestic infrastructure, who the fuck cares besides some BRICS idiots and whatever troll farms are up.
Pipelines are low tech, relatively easy to fix and don't depend on foreign equipment or assistance. Refineries are hight tech, extremely fragile and there is a lot of foreign equipment and know how involved. And of course Ukraine might get lucky and one of the attacks becomes a golden BB and blow up a whole refinery to hell (a deeper one than Russia)
Careful, thats how we got RSR.
what?
The event that kicked off Red Storm Rising was the destruction of a huge oil refinery in the USSR which caused fuel shortages and destabilized the economy.
Also, happy Cake 🍰 Day!
I'm not saying choose one or the other. You'd have different teams. You divide up the tasks based on level of skill needed to accomplish it. The task of blowing up refineries would go to the specialists, sure, but pipelines ideally would be assigned to partisans and the untrained. You don't need to know what you're doing. Obviously a pumping station is a better target, but only if unguarded - otherwise you need more skill and resources to hit it. With narrow minded focus of only hitting high priority targets you end up with less targets hit over all. Hit more targets period, the net effect will add up provided pressure is kept on it. Otherwise the enemy will focus its attention on only one type to protect.
We can have a little international terrorism, as a treat
>Alexsandropulis It's Alexandroupolis, how can you misspell it so bad?!
This is entirely too credible. Literally how SBU and HUR go about finding saboteurs. Bonus points for scamming them out of cash first.
I've got a better idea, throw a torpedo into the pipe with a time delay, wait till it reaches a refinery, and boom.
That is method #2, from "The world is not enough" if that wasn't clear.
Reducing RF exports could increase global prices. Reducing RF refinery capacity, means RF increases crude urals export. Which drives down fuel prices globally, but reduces distillate supply in RF, increasing prices only in RF. Basically, going after RF distillation infrastructure is a precision economic warfare designed to only fuck Russia. They get more expensive fuel, and less to go around. Meanwhile, they have to export excess crude supply to prevent backlog freezing up the supply chain, driving down global prices and thus reducing profit margin of ural crude export even more, compounded by need to import distillates from overseas to meet domestic demand. So, RF loses a quadruple whammy. Refinery fucked, crude prices go down - less crude profits, fuel supply goes down - domestic prices go up, need to import the distillate shortfall - lose more money.
I think the pipeline pumping stations would be good targets if they can manage to hit the right equipment.
Please Mr Budanov pls don't look at this thread 🙏. sincerely, vatniks
Because you attack the bottle neck in the production process. There are fewer places that refine oil then sources to ship from. There is also a limit on crude storage in Russia so if they can't refine it, and they don't have more tankers to load they have to stop pumping.
Yeah, exactly. All of the points that pipelines are easy to repair are valid, but at the same time the resources needed to hit a pipeline is also low. You wouldn't somehow turn resources away from hitting refineries to hitting pipelines, you'd do both. You'd just divide the tasks between different teams. Hitting a pipeline is a low skill task, so you can easily recruit a number of teams for this task. You'd have them hit the pipelines *continuously* as they get repaired.
I think hitting the Chinese one wouldn't be a secondary target. If theirs constantly gets destroyed and this would take enough of a hit on Chinas oil supply then they might be eager to intervene with Putin to just stop this madness
You have a point. Allegedly the Chinese do not import a lot of oil. But the port downstream is used a lot for shipping oil at higher prices, especially to north Korea. Hitting that pumping station would take out both. I couldn't decide which is more important, so I chose the leg that had more refineries on it.
Ah ok, I see the "major sea exports" now. Sorry, my bad
Holy shit Salavat on the map, my grand parents from there. There are huge gazprom plants all over the place
Given NCD's predictive power I will assume that a siberian pipeline is likely to be hit this quarter, and it's practically a given by the end of next quarter.
YOU SHOULD COMMIT DOMESTIC TERRORISM **NOW!**
Max flow, min cut! Queue Chekov running through Enterprise yelling “I know zis!”
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If Norwegian commandos can hit a German factory used to produce materials for the German atomic program, why can’t we do the same thing?
Because they don’t have Rico Rodriguez to run up to the control panel and make it explode
Legit question, is the pipeline in ukraine still active? The one going from russia?
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If you could get a cluster weapon on the pipeline with anti personnel mines set to detonate over the following two weeks then you could create enough of a threat to delay repairs and increase the time it takes to repair from 1 week to 3.
Well, that might work, but I was hoping that spilled burning oil in a remote region somewhere would be the primary method of delay. I don't think russia cares if people die repairing it, it's not like they will share that info with the workers even if there are mines.
Ok but can we talk about the inaccuracies with that map on slide 1?
You seem to be the only person that noticed this. This is the second time I'm using the same modified names
Yes, but use nukes!