Reproduced here for easier amusement:
1/ Russia’s space agency Roskosmos is reportedly evaluating options for using space rockets to drop aerial bombs on Ukraine from orbit. The proposal is likely to face serious technical difficulties, not least the risk of bombs burning up from the heat of atmospheric reentry.
2/ The Russian BRIEF Telegram channel reports that former Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin has been discussing the proposal with Dmitry Baranov, director general of the Progress Rocket Space Centre, before taking it to Vladimir Putin last week.
Rogozin reportedly envisages using Russia’s Vostochny and Plesetsk cosmodromes to launch bomb-carrying rockets into space to drop “heavy FABs” (presumably the FAB-500 500-kilogram (1,100 lb) general purpose air-dropped bomb) on “NATO equipment” in Ukraine.
3/ Baranov, understandably, has questions. According to BRIEF, he objected that the bombs would overheat on the way down. “It’s travelling at over 6 kilometres per second. That’s practically space speed. It’s like the Soyuz TMA [spacecraft] coming back. It’s the same shit.”
4/ According to Baranov, rockets launched from Vostochny can carry 7.5 tons, while launches from Plesetsk can carry 10 tons, minus a ton in each case for “insurance”. He is said to envisage a 6-9 month timeframe for adapting the rockets into bombers, though he seems to be uncertain about how this can be done. Rogozin reportedly envisages adapting “the toys of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering” to shield the FABs from reentry heat.
5/ BRIEF reports that Rogozin planned to send a paper to Anton Vaino, Putin’s chief of staff, who is said to be interested and intending to “report to the chief on this matter”. It’s not known what Putin himself thinks of the idea
Sounds cost effective
Aren’t FABs primitive iron bombs (unguided)? The accuracy of this will be ±200 km, extrapolating from the fact that WWII bombers operating from 7 or 8 km altitude could only reliably hit city-sized targets (and my own experiments with unguided bombing in DCS). The russians will be lucky to hit the right country.
And extrapolating from my experience in a mortar crew, the russkies will have an “oops” moment or two when they overshoot the target by about 6000 km🙃
This is incredibly small brained, but, hey, whatever gets these guys to throw away more of their resources!
Uh, I mean, you guys should definitely do this. It’s a flawless idea.
ah yes, this comes from rogozhin, that genius who threw a bday party within ukrainian artillery range
now it makes sense
How much weed are these guys smoking? I’m surprised they haven’t “reinvented” the trebuchet at this point.
At the very least it decreases the possibility they’ll accidentally hit the wrong country and start world war III.
The inaccuracy on this is so high that they might accidentally hit Antarctica.
