Euphemisms can be fun. Stephen Green had a good one when the Space X Starship exploded about four minutes after launch. Engineers refer to a blow-up like this as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” or RUD.
Engineers are not especially known for their sense of humor. And neither are military planners, for that matter. A Russian SU-34 bomber on its way to bomb targets in Ukraine came up a little short and dropped a bomb on the city of Belgorod near the border.
The Russian Defense Ministry called it an “emergency release of an air ordnance,” also “an abnormal descent of aviation munitions.”
Oops.
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Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and threw a car on a store roof.
It left a 66-foot-wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartment buildings, shattering their windows, damaging several cars and injuring two residents. A third person was later hospitalized with hypertension.
The Defense Ministry says three people were wounded in the accident, so I suppose the Russians can count their blessings.
The bomb was set to explode a few seconds after impact. It was apparently designed to target underground facilities. Watch below as the initial puff of dirt is followed in about 15 seconds by a blast that ruptured a gas line:
Clearer video of a Russian bomb that detonated in Belgorod last night. pic.twitter.com/vZnoFFvq7J
— Dmitri (@wartranslated) April 21, 2023
Here are Russian authorities trying to remove the car that ended up on a department store roof after the explosion:
Belgorod this morning, the russians are trying to remove the car that flied to the roof after the explosion. pic.twitter.com/Q4O6ams8lY
— Parrot ™ 🇺🇦 (@parrot_soldier) April 21, 2023
Ministry of Defense of Russia:
In the evening of April 20, during the flight of the VKS aircraft Su-34 over Belgorod city, there was an abnormal descent of aviation munitions. As a result, residential buildings were damaged…
On CNN, one analyst thought the release of the bomb “odd:”
Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and former Royal Australian Air Force officer, said a pilot may jettison bombs when their aircraft loses power, or in the case of an Su-34, losing power in one of its two engines.
But he termed Thursday’s Belgorod incident “odd” for several reasons.
Firstly, the munition exploded. In an emergency, ordnance would normally be released in a “safe” mode so it wouldn’t detonate, unless “the bomb’s explosive filing is very sensitive to shock.”
Secondly, a pilot would normally jettison a bomb in unpopulated areas.
“Where the bomb hit; the town center, not in the countryside, almost suggests accuracy,” Layton said.
If it was a case of a mentally unbalanced pilot, it was fortunate for the Russians to ground him before he did any real damage. But if it was a patriot/traitor (depending on your point of view) deliberately dropping bombs on Russian soil, Moscow has a big problem.
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