Ryan: This is top flight work on the Konstantinovka missile strike video and the DIP that followed. You may wish to reference this NASA web page concerning ground effects of sonic booms, the likely source of the noises a few frames before the explosion. Of note: local atmospheric conditions including wind speed can affect the arrival and effect of a sonic boom.
Worth noting when I was in Ukraine, the Russians had started to use modified S-300 missiles for ground to ground targets and they REGULARLY missed their designated targets or would just hit random civilian homes around us. S-300, X-22's, and Kalibr missiles are the most common being used right now by Russia to attack civilians.
Off topic here. Missile fragment, I have a fin from a HARM missile. I’m a militaria hoarder but gotta clear it out. Anyone think a museum would want it? I’m thinking only another hoarder? Ryan want to auction it for Ukraine benefit?
As I think about it I would most prefer to auction it with Ryan or somewhere and money to Ukraine. Anyone have any thoughts? Should I offer it to a group in Ukraine maybe? I’d pay the postage. It should not trip ITAR because it has no spline machined and no inspection marks. It’s cast stainless steel. It is in Canada so easy to mail to usa. I know it’s an odd one, but I’d love it to help Ukraine.
"According to Mykola Riabchuk, Ukrainian journalist and political analyst, the Russian propaganda evolved into a full-fledged information war during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Riabchuk writes: "Three major narratives emerged that can be summed up as 'Ukraine's borders are artificial', 'Ukraine's society is deeply divided', and 'Ukrainian institutions are irreparably dysfunctional'," thus needing "external, apparently Russian, guardianship." " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Russia#:~:text=The%20propaganda%20of%20the%20Russian,Russian%20'political%20warfare'%22.
If the missile was flying faster than the speed of sound, wouldn't that by definition mean that the missile would strike before the sound arrived? Unless it was slowing down to below the speed of sound, allowing the shockwave to overtake it. This is what happens when SpaceX boosters come in for landing.
I kept waiting for the post credits scene with the blank footage like a dummy. There may be some missing frames or videos at the end sarnt. Thanks for the heads up on this and love the work as always!
Thanks for the video, Ryan! As one of the commenters said - you are referring to a frame after the explosion which seems to be buckling of the cars tops from pressure wave. While some artifacts are present on two frames before the explosion on gray car and then on black car (the one in front of cargo vehicle). At least, in the video from Zelenskyy telegram. Could be anything, even birds flying.
Unfortunately you have looked on the frame @00:03.917, this is AFTER the explosion, but reflection is on the timestamp 00:03.720 of the video (5 frames earlier) published on Zelensky channel.
Reflection theory is still BS tho, I filmed a video (https://twitter.com/drug123/status/1699527335685259668?s=20) showing why and it is clear that up-down movement would reflect like this despite direction of the missile, being that flying from the camera or towards it.
I just downloaded two Telegram apps to check this (you can't use the Desktop version without creating an account on the phone version first - what BS!) and... it's both! There are two "missile blobs", one 3 frames before the explosion and the other 2 frames after. https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1700224082766422070
[Edited] While it is possible for there to be a reflection on the blue car regardless of whether the missile came from the southeast or northwest, Yaroslav makes a reasonable argument that the missile comes from the southeast based on a second reflection that appears on the black car one frame after it appears on the blue car (two frames before the explosion). Personally I'm not sure - the missile will have been moving at an angle with respect to the ground, and the two spots on the two roofs might be facing the sky at different angles. I think it will be necessary to model this carefully with trigonometry and uncertainty intervals....
One more thing - I originally heard that the missile came from the northwest directly from @CITeam_ru (https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1699877768069337382). IIUC they operate in good faith, but they don't provide detailed analysis leading to their "northwest" conclusion. So my guess would be that they did a superficial analysis and jumped to a seemingly-reasonable conclusion.
Edit 2: Okay, one MORE thing - yes, sound can echo/bounce off things to give people a misleading impression of where it came from. But how would that physically happen in this case? My initial thought is that the original sound source should be heard first and be loudest. This first thought may be incorrect - if the missile is flying low, maybe some sort of sonic reflection from the atmosphere could be heard first. But it looks to me like the man in the white shirt is tracking an object with his eyes.
Followup: An analysis from CIT[1] with help from a Telegram account[2] finds that the missiles came from the northwest. CIT says:
> the reflections on the car roofs would be identical whether the missile flew from the northwest, on a trajectory almost parallel to the ground, or from the southeast, at an angle of about 45 degrees. However, the reflection of the missile in both these cases would only match if the length of the missile coming from the southeast would have been many times larger than what is realistically possible. Preliminary estimates based on the cars and grid modeled in the visualization suggest that the length of a hypothetical missile coming from the southeast would need to be 40 to 50 meters, similar to a Boeing 737-900, with the diameter of such an object comparable to the fuselage of an airliner. For reference, missiles fired by S-300 SAM systems are just over 7 meters long. In any event, the reflections on the car roofs are no longer central to our understanding of the Kostiantynivka missile strike, as we have now gained access to more compelling evidence indicating that the missile flew in from the northwest. [...]
They find that available data is consistent with an airburst munition: either Russian Vympel R-27 or R-37 missiles (which can change direction in flight) or Ukrainian HARM missiles (which are reportedly being fired "blind" from MiGs because Ukrainians lack the hardware needed for the aircraft to communicate with the missile, IIUC). They say Ukraine could "easily" gather evidence to show it was R-27 or R-37 if that is the case. Their spreadsheet[3] says it could be from an S-300 or S-400, but in the text they speak as if it were ruled out:
> in all known and declared cases of their use against ground targets, fairly large craters have been visible in photos and videos. If we assume an attack from occupied territories, then the missile would have had to make at least a 90-degree turn, a maneuver that is very energy-intensive and reduces the flight range. As far as we know, the maneuvering capability of S-300 missiles only works when targeting airborne objects capable of evading, while ground targets do not move.
Similarly other missiles like GMLRS and Kh-31P (AS-17) are considered a match, but treated in the text as highly implausible. CIT essentially takes it as given that Ukraine would not deliberately target its own market, but they also assume Russia would attack with unguided shells, so all of their most likely scenarios involve a missile hitting the market by accident, whether it was fired by Russia or Ukraine. They don't expect Russia to do deliberate misdirection by firing a costly missile that changes direction in midair, just to hit a market. I agree that Russian information operations are usually cheap and simple affairs, but they may consider it valuable if they can persuade western sources to say Ukraine attacked itself, or if western sources are divided about which side did it.
You are speaking about the shockwave effects after the explosion. You are missing what people are actually talking about. There are 2 frames here that are not showing on your video. https://imgur.com/a/tkzjwRD
I can personally attest to sound and echoes being rather wonky. I work on an aircraft ramp that is surrounded on three sides by hangers. Depending on where I'm standing on the ramp, the incoming jets sound like they're coming from any direction, despite the fact they exclusively come from the right (looking at the runway).
Thank you for the coverage. This is the reason I subscribe. The glare is probably a pressure wave as you say. Might it be debris from the explosion, thrown up instantly? Smoke is seen billowing reflected in the roof so it's pretty clear where the shadow would have come from this split second before.
Another great video Ryan. Absolutely soul shaking to see the explosion. War is a biotch. I hope we find out with definitive corroboration what the artifact on the roof of the car is. I'll keep checking back on this thread.
To the other folks screening the versions and peripheral info leads, I find it fascinating and heart lifting that y'all are cooperating and keeping open minds. The way things are sounded out and critiqued is admirable.
This thread gave me a new insight as to how those of us on this side of the war can contribute to finding and presenting the truth for the record. This war is my first time being exposed to real time behind the scenes intel.
I'm not sure how warped previous conflicts have been but seeing it here is a real eye opener. I believe having groups like this is a noble cause. Maybe something comes of the work, maybe not. The fact that people are out there conducting the litmus tests on it all is very reassuring.
Thank you all for your pursuit of truth and use of integrity. Keep up the great work.
Yeah I’m vaxx injured bad so unhoarding or this stuff will all be in the dump if I die. I can’t judge the value of my HARM missile fin but I think low as few people are as silly about this stuff as I am. Too bad it wasn’t a fin pulled out of a busted Russian S-400! The reason it’s solid stainless is for resistance to friction heating and aero forces at high speed and G. The HARM is an old but awesome machine! It might have too low a value to, for example, send to Ukraine Air Force for them to put a unit badge on it and charity auction but what do you think?
Looking at the isolated ECU(extreme close up) of the car roof for the first time, my suspicions were immediately aroused not by the timing, but by the optics. If you look at the dark horizon reflected "beneath" the "missile", it appears to bow in that one frame. Absent a physical bending of the roof metal, the dark horizon should not change and certainly not for just one frame (1/60th of second). It looks like a bad job of imposition. The other possibility is that it IS a sonic boom from the explosion. The timing seems right: shock wave travels about 1000 ft per second, 3 frames explosion to artifact= 1/10th of a second= distance of about 100 ft. (The car window is rattled in the same frame and the shock wave could distort the roof metal.
Hmm, I guess you mean the horizon "above" the dark blob ("missile"). Below the dark blob also I see a cloud change shape one frame after the dark blob is seen, consistent with physical deformation of the car's roof.
Ryan, this sort of analysis is why I subscribe to your substack. Well done!
Ryan: This is top flight work on the Konstantinovka missile strike video and the DIP that followed. You may wish to reference this NASA web page concerning ground effects of sonic booms, the likely source of the noises a few frames before the explosion. Of note: local atmospheric conditions including wind speed can affect the arrival and effect of a sonic boom.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-016-DFRC.html
I'll take a look.
Worth noting when I was in Ukraine, the Russians had started to use modified S-300 missiles for ground to ground targets and they REGULARLY missed their designated targets or would just hit random civilian homes around us. S-300, X-22's, and Kalibr missiles are the most common being used right now by Russia to attack civilians.
Off topic here. Missile fragment, I have a fin from a HARM missile. I’m a militaria hoarder but gotta clear it out. Anyone think a museum would want it? I’m thinking only another hoarder? Ryan want to auction it for Ukraine benefit?
I don't think so, unless it was used in some kind of operation of historical significance.
As I think about it I would most prefer to auction it with Ryan or somewhere and money to Ukraine. Anyone have any thoughts? Should I offer it to a group in Ukraine maybe? I’d pay the postage. It should not trip ITAR because it has no spline machined and no inspection marks. It’s cast stainless steel. It is in Canada so easy to mail to usa. I know it’s an odd one, but I’d love it to help Ukraine.
a HARM missile fin for sale u say? I'm quite the military hoarder myself lol
"According to Mykola Riabchuk, Ukrainian journalist and political analyst, the Russian propaganda evolved into a full-fledged information war during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Riabchuk writes: "Three major narratives emerged that can be summed up as 'Ukraine's borders are artificial', 'Ukraine's society is deeply divided', and 'Ukrainian institutions are irreparably dysfunctional'," thus needing "external, apparently Russian, guardianship." " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Russia#:~:text=The%20propaganda%20of%20the%20Russian,Russian%20'political%20warfare'%22.
In other words, Ukraine firing on itself would be an example of "dysfunctional"
My assessment of the initial boom is the missile breaking the sound barrier as it was incoming...
To be fair I don't even know if those can do that or would make that sound if they did, this is just what I think it was...
If the missile was flying faster than the speed of sound, wouldn't that by definition mean that the missile would strike before the sound arrived? Unless it was slowing down to below the speed of sound, allowing the shockwave to overtake it. This is what happens when SpaceX boosters come in for landing.
Without more information we're all just speculating...😉
I kept waiting for the post credits scene with the blank footage like a dummy. There may be some missing frames or videos at the end sarnt. Thanks for the heads up on this and love the work as always!
Ron
In Australia the news flat out said this was a Russian attack and on a nonmilitary target ie war crime.
Thanks for the video, Ryan! As one of the commenters said - you are referring to a frame after the explosion which seems to be buckling of the cars tops from pressure wave. While some artifacts are present on two frames before the explosion on gray car and then on black car (the one in front of cargo vehicle). At least, in the video from Zelenskyy telegram. Could be anything, even birds flying.
Unfortunately you have looked on the frame @00:03.917, this is AFTER the explosion, but reflection is on the timestamp 00:03.720 of the video (5 frames earlier) published on Zelensky channel.
Reflection theory is still BS tho, I filmed a video (https://twitter.com/drug123/status/1699527335685259668?s=20) showing why and it is clear that up-down movement would reflect like this despite direction of the missile, being that flying from the camera or towards it.
I am beginning to wonder if there are two copies of this video out there
I am talking about the one Zelensky office had published here: https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/7681
I just downloaded two Telegram apps to check this (you can't use the Desktop version without creating an account on the phone version first - what BS!) and... it's both! There are two "missile blobs", one 3 frames before the explosion and the other 2 frames after. https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1700224082766422070
[Edited] While it is possible for there to be a reflection on the blue car regardless of whether the missile came from the southeast or northwest, Yaroslav makes a reasonable argument that the missile comes from the southeast based on a second reflection that appears on the black car one frame after it appears on the blue car (two frames before the explosion). Personally I'm not sure - the missile will have been moving at an angle with respect to the ground, and the two spots on the two roofs might be facing the sky at different angles. I think it will be necessary to model this carefully with trigonometry and uncertainty intervals....
One more thing - I originally heard that the missile came from the northwest directly from @CITeam_ru (https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1699877768069337382). IIUC they operate in good faith, but they don't provide detailed analysis leading to their "northwest" conclusion. So my guess would be that they did a superficial analysis and jumped to a seemingly-reasonable conclusion.
Edit 2: Okay, one MORE thing - yes, sound can echo/bounce off things to give people a misleading impression of where it came from. But how would that physically happen in this case? My initial thought is that the original sound source should be heard first and be loudest. This first thought may be incorrect - if the missile is flying low, maybe some sort of sonic reflection from the atmosphere could be heard first. But it looks to me like the man in the white shirt is tracking an object with his eyes.
Followup: An analysis from CIT[1] with help from a Telegram account[2] finds that the missiles came from the northwest. CIT says:
> the reflections on the car roofs would be identical whether the missile flew from the northwest, on a trajectory almost parallel to the ground, or from the southeast, at an angle of about 45 degrees. However, the reflection of the missile in both these cases would only match if the length of the missile coming from the southeast would have been many times larger than what is realistically possible. Preliminary estimates based on the cars and grid modeled in the visualization suggest that the length of a hypothetical missile coming from the southeast would need to be 40 to 50 meters, similar to a Boeing 737-900, with the diameter of such an object comparable to the fuselage of an airliner. For reference, missiles fired by S-300 SAM systems are just over 7 meters long. In any event, the reflections on the car roofs are no longer central to our understanding of the Kostiantynivka missile strike, as we have now gained access to more compelling evidence indicating that the missile flew in from the northwest. [...]
They find that available data is consistent with an airburst munition: either Russian Vympel R-27 or R-37 missiles (which can change direction in flight) or Ukrainian HARM missiles (which are reportedly being fired "blind" from MiGs because Ukrainians lack the hardware needed for the aircraft to communicate with the missile, IIUC). They say Ukraine could "easily" gather evidence to show it was R-27 or R-37 if that is the case. Their spreadsheet[3] says it could be from an S-300 or S-400, but in the text they speak as if it were ruled out:
> in all known and declared cases of their use against ground targets, fairly large craters have been visible in photos and videos. If we assume an attack from occupied territories, then the missile would have had to make at least a 90-degree turn, a maneuver that is very energy-intensive and reduces the flight range. As far as we know, the maneuvering capability of S-300 missiles only works when targeting airborne objects capable of evading, while ground targets do not move.
Similarly other missiles like GMLRS and Kh-31P (AS-17) are considered a match, but treated in the text as highly implausible. CIT essentially takes it as given that Ukraine would not deliberately target its own market, but they also assume Russia would attack with unguided shells, so all of their most likely scenarios involve a missile hitting the market by accident, whether it was fired by Russia or Ukraine. They don't expect Russia to do deliberate misdirection by firing a costly missile that changes direction in midair, just to hit a market. I agree that Russian information operations are usually cheap and simple affairs, but they may consider it valuable if they can persuade western sources to say Ukraine attacked itself, or if western sources are divided about which side did it.
[1] https://notes.citeam.org/dispatch-sept-8-11
[2] https://t.me/ToBeOr_Official/13066
[3] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS2VLnDG9Z-t92HRtXKAS4gXm1UBbzo22XwGlwibYUSjl1cvHRUkYPtP5N4_igNT2yGNQfgPzELlBU2/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true
You are speaking about the shockwave effects after the explosion. You are missing what people are actually talking about. There are 2 frames here that are not showing on your video. https://imgur.com/a/tkzjwRD
I can personally attest to sound and echoes being rather wonky. I work on an aircraft ramp that is surrounded on three sides by hangers. Depending on where I'm standing on the ramp, the incoming jets sound like they're coming from any direction, despite the fact they exclusively come from the right (looking at the runway).
Thank you for the coverage. This is the reason I subscribe. The glare is probably a pressure wave as you say. Might it be debris from the explosion, thrown up instantly? Smoke is seen billowing reflected in the roof so it's pretty clear where the shadow would have come from this split second before.
Another great video Ryan. Absolutely soul shaking to see the explosion. War is a biotch. I hope we find out with definitive corroboration what the artifact on the roof of the car is. I'll keep checking back on this thread.
To the other folks screening the versions and peripheral info leads, I find it fascinating and heart lifting that y'all are cooperating and keeping open minds. The way things are sounded out and critiqued is admirable.
This thread gave me a new insight as to how those of us on this side of the war can contribute to finding and presenting the truth for the record. This war is my first time being exposed to real time behind the scenes intel.
I'm not sure how warped previous conflicts have been but seeing it here is a real eye opener. I believe having groups like this is a noble cause. Maybe something comes of the work, maybe not. The fact that people are out there conducting the litmus tests on it all is very reassuring.
Thank you all for your pursuit of truth and use of integrity. Keep up the great work.
Yeah I’m vaxx injured bad so unhoarding or this stuff will all be in the dump if I die. I can’t judge the value of my HARM missile fin but I think low as few people are as silly about this stuff as I am. Too bad it wasn’t a fin pulled out of a busted Russian S-400! The reason it’s solid stainless is for resistance to friction heating and aero forces at high speed and G. The HARM is an old but awesome machine! It might have too low a value to, for example, send to Ukraine Air Force for them to put a unit badge on it and charity auction but what do you think?
Looking at the isolated ECU(extreme close up) of the car roof for the first time, my suspicions were immediately aroused not by the timing, but by the optics. If you look at the dark horizon reflected "beneath" the "missile", it appears to bow in that one frame. Absent a physical bending of the roof metal, the dark horizon should not change and certainly not for just one frame (1/60th of second). It looks like a bad job of imposition. The other possibility is that it IS a sonic boom from the explosion. The timing seems right: shock wave travels about 1000 ft per second, 3 frames explosion to artifact= 1/10th of a second= distance of about 100 ft. (The car window is rattled in the same frame and the shock wave could distort the roof metal.
Hmm, I guess you mean the horizon "above" the dark blob ("missile"). Below the dark blob also I see a cloud change shape one frame after the dark blob is seen, consistent with physical deformation of the car's roof.
I was merely referring to their physical position on the video screen not the apparent or virtual position of the so-called reflection.