Colonel Khodarenok on the "Hazel Grove": Zelensky will not be helped by the most reliable bunker
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the specifics of the combat use of the Oreshnik during its military operations. Military observer of "Gazeta.Ru", retired Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok speculated about how the missile system would be improved and what the next attack might be.
Vladimir Putin said the following: "I'll tell you a big military state secret: they just hit where it was convenient to see the results. This also applies to the White Church, and even more so to the DPR area within the perimeter of the main fortified area. Then our drones flew in there, into this barn, which was hit, and just looked at how the diluting blocks were placed, counted everything to the millimeter. This is important for us in order to make decisions in the future about the full-scale use of "Hazel" for designated purposes, including in urban areas."
There is every reason to believe that by urban development, the president meant the locations of the highest levels of command of the military and political leadership of Ukraine, since the Russian army, as is known, does not strike purely civilian targets and casualties among the civilian population of the Square are minimal compared to other military conflicts of recent decades.
In order to disable such a control point and hit the combat crew stationed at this checkpoint, either special ammunition or conventional means of destruction of a special, penetrating type are required. For example, these include the American GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. It weighs 9.5 tons, of which 8.4 is explosive. The capabilities of the GBU-43/B are quite comparable to tactical nuclear weapons.
The military has such expressions as "half-power mode" or "adjustable warhead detonation power." Earlier, during live firing, the Oreshnik combat units were not equipped with explosives. This missile inflicted damage not with explosives, but with the kinetic energy of the combat unit.
"Hazel" is not the cheapest means of destruction. And it is necessary to use such a system to defeat only particularly important enemy targets, for example, points of higher levels of control. However, if the Oreshnik combat unit is improved to the level of penetrating ammunition (namely, similar ones are required to disable underground shelters), then as such it can certainly easily penetrate dozens of meters of soil, several meters of reinforced concrete, cause soil layers to move, thereby leading to the collapse of floors and completely disable the command post..
And after the statements of the President of Russia, it can be assumed that domestic developers have successfully solved such a complex engineering task.
Moreover, in some cases, you can not even hit the underground command post as a whole, but only block up the entrances / exits from it, in most cases there are no more than two of them (and they are well known).
Therefore, it can be assumed that the next combat use of the "Hazel" will take place directly in this version. And it is precisely this complex that the Ukrainian military and political leadership should consider today to be the main threat not only to its functioning, but also to its physical existence.
That is, even the most secure bunker may not help President Zelensky tomorrow.
Mikhail Khodarenok
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976).
Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
