File:OFAB-250 bomb in Urm al-Kubra warehouse.jpg


 * Source
 * Rebel ☪ ‏@zulamba on Twitter
 * ''Looks like bombs that struck @UN aid convoy are Russian OFAB-250-270 type
 * HD version: http://images1.persgroep.net/rcs/bEKqCFDqBB2ra9zO6IPvj_QEgTY/diocontent/70861070/_fill/1350/900/?appId=21791a8992982cd8da851550a453bd7f&quality=0.9

Location
Inside the warehouse on the north edge of the SARC compound in Urm al-Kubra, west of Aleppo. There is a hole in the reinforced concrete roof right above the crater. The orange truck is also seen in photographs taken from the outside.


 * Alternate view: via HRW, Reuters Gallery (HD file)
 * Inside view of warehouse showing hole in roof via Getty images (notice burn marks on walls and ceiling.)
 * Source: Geolocation of the alleged OFAB-250-270 tail section and nighttime strike aftermath videos - "large_butt" on Reddit, September 22, 2016
 * Simulation
 * Meaning this? Viewpoint illustration, not simulation?

Was it a dud?
Did the bomb explode? What caused the crater? Would an explosion of the 250 kg bomb cause greater damage to the cardboard boxes. (Or are these boxes made out of the same magic material al-Qaeda uses for their passports? :-)

What will be found in the crater? An unexploded bomb? The tail section and other remains of an exploded bomb?

P.S. - Here is some material on German WWII high-explosive bombs. A 250 kb bomb would produce a crater 7.3-11m in diameter and 3-3.7m in depth. The Soviet OFAB bombs have a similar design and size range. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 13:14, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Entered a similar comment on main page, 92 kg of high explosive next to largely intact carbon boxes with tiny perforations here and there. Makes no sense apart from placing it there later. They were used a number of times elsewhere, and fin pictures compared and discussed on the web, prior to this. So it was known in advance how it can be gamed. --Resup (talk) 13:37, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

A Russian correspondent shows a crater from OFAB 250 in Palmyra, standing in it (1:09). Towards the end, shows damages to armored vehicles in Debaltsevo caused by artillery, with munition weights of about 1/10 of the aviation bomb. (Fine points in his presentation may need some adjustment/clarification, but gives an overall idea of scales of things) --Resup (talk) 16:36, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * But could an unexploded 250 kg bomb with its kinetic energy produce the hole on the roof, the crater on the floor and the small shrapnel holes on the cardboard boxes? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 16:57, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's essentially impossible. That will typically make a hole not much bigger than bomb itself, and it will stay in the hole with steep walls. Certainly this is what will happen in not very hard ground; will be something like this. Nothing will be hitting material some distance away from impact to turn it into fine dust. It will not throw dust smoothly all around with shallow crater walls, but dig in with a steep wall; what we see is blown, not excavated.  If the floor is so hard and strong that it can't dig in much at all, and so won't stay put there, it  will be a not deep and not wide mark (so again not like what we see here),  and it will bounce somewhere in one, possible  several pieces, but not as a small size shrapnel everywhere. This really looks like something considerably smaller, mortar shell sized, did explode there, and this fin is thrown into the crater, and all made into this photo op scene.


 * Also, if you look at those boxes sitting neatly on top, and with shrapnel holes on them out of place,-what are the chances of that to occur like that? They are there to obscure what's under the fin, and that is dust, matching well the rest of the overall landscape, and some plastic bottles--UNDER the fin. Likelihood of such a scenery occurring naturally is near zero, just by itself.  --Resup (talk) 17:43, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't think anything exploded here, just hit the ground with force to make that crater, or it was already there. The shredding of the boxes to me suggests shrapnel, small, anti-personnel fletchettes. The pattern might have a sort of curve suggesting an angle of impact that's about like the tail assembly here suggests - between 45 degrees and along the wall. The light in the room doesn't make it seem there's a hole in the roof, but I guess there must be, and this was fired from the northwest, managed to knock a hole in the roof, and then only scatter projectiles upon hitting the ground. Is that its design, only go off after second impact (once inside a building)? --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the hole is to the south, toward the wall. I saw it on a video, but cannot find it now. (Here is my YouTube playlist.) -- Petri Krohn (talk) 23:37, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This tail fin thing is from a BIG AIR BOMB. (fragmentation type, large shrapnel). Like 10 artillery shells together. If this MF explode, not only the f--ing boxes gone, walls are gone, and f--ing truck is on its side (if still in one piece). It it does not explode, goes in vertically, would not make splashed round blown pool of dust 10 times its diameter. An example of unexploded bomb crater is eg here, or may look as this. Bomb is a tall cylinder of diameter about the same as fin. Shrapnel is created by breaking thick iron walls of that cylinder.  92 kg explosives and everything else -ie about 150 kg is the cast iron body. Looks like this. --Resup (talk) 01:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is clear that the OFAB-250 did not explode. But could an unexploded OFAB-250 do this damage? The ODAB-500 falls with a parachute and still manages to go through the roof and bury itself halfway in the ground. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The damage will go into breaking and displacing essentially up stuff directly under it. It won't look like an explosion. It will look a lot like if somebody pressed it in slowly, or nailed in, like with a hammer (and kinetic energy will go into work of doing that). It moves way too slowly for it to look a lot different than moving in real slow, no shock waves, just breaking and displacing. Whatever flies away, flies mostly up, and does not hit and break too much extra, so will look about the same as slow press. Looking more like extra stuff excavating and thrown on top than making a crater. This is what photos show too. Would be surprising to see anything different --Resup (talk) 02:54, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'm not sure I follow that, and I don't know. Here's Bellingcat, with the tail-crater-and hole in the roof. The hole looks realistically punched. No real angle, it would have dropped down almost straight. Possible shrapnel pattern, not very clear - could fit with this. Could it be from impact after all? The bottles seem to be metal canisters. Pressurized? Could they explode under enough pressure and cause this shrapnel? There's mud - was it muddy in here, or did the dirt "liquefy" in the impaact? So many questions ... headache. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:29, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, think about this as a large nail going in launched by a nail gun, if ever used those. It just goes into ground and does not make shallow craters, like nails don't; they leave entry holes just slightly bigger than nail itself --Resup (talk) 14:10, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't, know it could kick up some dirt and make a sort of crater, seems to me. But I get your point. If we see the whole thinge axcavated, that's one story, but until then it could be a tail just set there.
 * Kicking dirt you can make a crater, but it will be about the size of the foot, maybe times two, or three, but not times ten, like what we see in that crater ('foot' in that case is the size of the fin, same as bomb diameter). --Resup (talk) 15:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * And what's with that crush pattern on the tail assembly? It almost seems like a rotor that was spinning, and distorted itself. Not sure if this is normal, or a clue. It seems strange. (see twisted view from Bc)
 * Would not be unusual for it to spin about long axis for more vertical stability; fins can easily make that happen. Just this fin has not to do with this crater. --Resup (talk) 14:10, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That could explain it - in this or its earlier actual drop, whichever. Thx. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Will it break on impact?
Not supposed to, by design. Lots of unexploded bomb photos starting from WW2, and can't remember any of those fractured. Here is a one resembling our case, may be from Syria, another from Chechnya, another, FAB from Syria --Resup (talk) 15:17, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Preexisting Impact?
the mud - beneath a hole in the roof - makes me tempted to moot the point. Maybe something smashed that hole and crater prior to the last rains? And then ... the boxes were delivered, something splashed mud on the boxes while ripping them along the same lines and tossed them around? The shreds do suggest tiny fragments. But what else, RPG through the window, hand grenade the same way... I don't feel like I have this. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC) I looked at the Russian surveillance video. See here and here. The hole in the roof is not there. It must have thus come at the time of he attack.


 * That's Petri. Good call. There's one dead end caught early. And I suppose the crater and hole go together, so all of it must be new. The mud is from whatever. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:12, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

False-flag OFAB-250 attack?
Here's a question: How hard would it be to obtain a OFAB-250 and rig it up to be fired from a Hell Cannon? And not appear obviously rigged here? As with any mortar, you can get an essentially straight-down angle of fire if you fire almost straight up from very close by. I suppose not very hard. It seems about the right size and shape. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:29, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Or, on the other track, could a predator drone drop one of these? (seems unlikely) --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Or, on a track I'll suggest, by a Russian-made SU-22 flown by NATO false-flaggers (a-la December Deir Ezzour attack), maybe giving off a signal that it's a predator drone? --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Otherwise, planting remains an option, as does a Russian jet dropping this thing as alleged. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * It indeed looks like a mortar/hell cannon. Bomb dropped from a height will go essentially vertically down, and continue down straight through the ceiling; no reason to get deflected like this by horizontal ceiling . If it gets spun, will spin and go down still, likely ending on a side and making an irregular side- shaped imprint. It really looks like smaller charge launched from a mortar, than crater decorated with tail fin as this is how they imagine that will look like, after having been firing their mortars,-mortar shells remain in craters with fins out- or as instructed to do, whatever.


 * It is considerably more difficult to do anything else. Launching 250 kg and different diameter thing, with unfamiliar fuse, from their mortar is not guaranteed to work at all and is dangerous. Ukrainians do put mortar shells on RPG shots (not normally used in such combination) successfully but it takes time to do anything like this right and it is too big to really experiment with it.  If I would own a Predator/Reaper, I would not allow this thing to come anywhere close, not to say fiddle with changing hangers and all that; also it is an unguided bomb, if they drop it, it will land somewhere in the field, not right next to UN boxes. It first flies mostly horizontally with plane speed, than air friction kills horizontal part but not going down pulled by gravity. As it does not just drops down (initially) when it is dropped from the plane, you don't know for sure where it lands,  (or it needs unreasonable time spent on preparation). Maybe after having your idea they will start doing it, but unlikely yet.  Flying  a SU 24 by coalition is all but out because Russian radars will track it and make the plot entirely obvious.  As well as making what we see from a Russian SU 24, as far as I am concerned and outlined above. In addition, this is a carpet-bombing 'dumb' sort of bomb, really to use lots of them against a big field, and is not suited for what we see here; no evidence for any of those (here and) elsewhere either.
 * Agreed launching makes little sense. It has no propulsion of its own, normally (right?) and is huge and heavy. Maybe an unknown new super-hell cannon could handle the massive lift needed. Not quite NASA-grade, but... The distortion too suggests, it if it fell here as alleged, it was from way higher up than anything known could heave such a thing.
 * Separately, the home and crater looks more like a mortar hit - a separate event from any dud bomb drop. And the boxes were shredded and muddied, from probably something else ... all supposedly post-delivery, but before next day ... how many things can it be? Confused, and wondering even about that time limit. --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:06, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * This by the way shows how shrapnel looks like, and obviously not a match at all with marks on boxes --Resup (talk) 13:33, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Box shrapnel would not be OFAB big chunks. They co show one, so they're saying it exploded? Or just broke up a bit? Clearly THESE did not tear through these boxes, and why in the hell could they miss such a large target immediately at impact? Looks obviously like something smaller, that did explode, I guess AFTER piercing the cieling with some force, and sent out little shards meant to tear up people inside buildings. Alternately, some kind of grenade was lopped into the existing crater during the loading, and the Russian bomb was planted ... before or after, I guess. In fact, maybe it was dropped here during a recent raid they're still pissed off about... Hm. --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:06, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * As reported by Voltaire Network in December 2015 (article titled Where will the Ukrainian bombs explode?), according to documents leaked by Cyber Berkut Qatar apparently bought 2,000 of these bombs at triple the market price from Ukraine. Couldn't make it up? I'm so sick of this stuff, but optimistic that it is to most of the audience as transparent as it is obscene by now. --CE (talk) 19:07, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Huh, that's well worth considering at this point. Well-done piece. We have the super distortion to work with - it looks sort of dropped from a great height. That could hypothetically be faked, or this is a dud dropped (here or previously) and these Qatar bombs are irrelevant. Maybe they thought about that revelation and insisted they use a real copy from the field.--Caustic Logic (talk) 08:52, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

But What About Witnesses?
What if that Russian bomb was already there, and something else tore up the aid boxes and air workers? It wouldn't sound good if a survivor mentioned stacking boxes next to the Russian bomb crater ... or things like watching colleagues bleed to death as someone shot guns and mortars all around, with no helicopter or jet sounds, for hours ... How on earth could they plot all this in front of the victims? Someone would talk. Right?

Well, as far as we've seen, there might be zero legitimate survivors. You'd have to silence them all, and it seems like perhaps something silenced them all. --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:12, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

It is a OFAB-250 tail section!
Bellingcat has obtained photos directly from White Helmets that show that the object is not a dud OFAB-250, as previously assumed, but a crushed OFAB-250 tail section from a bomb that exploded somewhere else. How did it get here? Did it fall from the sky? Did it also cause the burn marks on the ceiling and pillar when it landed? Conclusion: The tail section was planted. Therefore the attack was a false-flag attack, maybe a hoax. As the SARC team is still missing, they were most likely all massacred. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 16:04, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Confirmed : Russian Bomb Remains Recovered from Syrian Red Crescent Aid Convoy Attack - Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat, September 22, 2016 (German, Русский)


 * Well... looking at this, it looks like detached tail section. But the way it sits there suggests it's attached to more, like the rest of the whole dud bomb, still buried. This would just be bent at angle that looks like some strange edge of a strangely-detached tail section. If it were just this flattened disc laid here, it wouldn't likely stand on its edge like that. If the whole thing is there, of course, the whole thing cold be planted with just a little digging into the existing crater. OK, a pretty fair amount of digging, but not for the whole original length. --Caustic Logic (talk) 08:44, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * To take the photo shown on bellingcat, the site has been disturbed. Bellingcat states that the White Helmets "recovered and photographed" the objects. Boxes that were resting on or around the tail section in the original photo have been removed to show it more clearly. I think it's reasonable to assume that no one, not even a White Helmet, would disturb an unexploded 250 kg bomb just to take a better photo.  If it's not an unexploded bomb, and if this is not the site of the explosion, Petri's conclusion applies.  Pmr9 (talk) 10:41, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a good point, and would apply to air workers asked to stack boxes right next to it. And the hole wasn't there before (see above). Thinking "dud" is not what they'd tell you - that's unexploded. So, a silly lead. My visual point may stand, that there's more of the body than we see. But maybe just a bit more. The rest of it probably blew up, but apparently not here. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:24, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * So following the logic - a dud is suggested because there are freaking boxes there inches away, just torn up. That's consistent maybe with a heavy thud and some jumbling, and the tears ... whatever. And the crater, but too small... whatever. But if it's a dud, or unexploded, why do they just dig around it like they know it's harmless? And why is it (maybe) just a tail part or so, with at least one loose fragment, if it didn't blow up? What is consistent: a smaller munition that makes a small crater (but a good sized hole in concrete?) and sprays small shrapnel with light force. And then this inconsistent and harmless fragment of a heavier munition was planted. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:24, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Ceiling Hole

 * Here's a picture of the hole in the roof which shows the reinforcement wiring partly intact (found together with this composite). That's a neat little hole certainly not caused by such a beast of a soviet bomb, exploded or not. And isn't the tail seen on the photos, compared to the surrounding medicaments, much too small (while the structure looks indeed similar)? --CE (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Round hole size seems about the same as in warehouse photo, 2-and-a-bit window-squares-horizontally size,  roughly size of the middle one  among the three box measurements (meaning height-width-length). Fin is roughly of that size too; tricky perspective can make better comparison difficult. But only half of that hole space was made available, so may be not enough to sneak in. Some other weird things spotted: two more 'longitudinal' reinforcing bars are snapped too (grooves in cement). And neatly turned around the beam and also towards us in front (presumably to win an award for a pretty picture). Such bar maybe like 10 mm of steel, or more, in proper constructions, and bending it that pretty would be difficult; unsure what's the story here; maybe thinner mesh but even that not suitable for photo-journos or 'rescuers' to arrange. One more odd thing, square pieces of something like cement, supposedly falling out of round hole on top; --maybe they can use such wonderful experience in some other investigations.


 * Easiest way to make that hole with those hangers, small (eg plastic) explosive charge on the roof. Such charges are pretty routinely used in urban warfare, to make wall passes not through existing building entrance, knock of doors on other occasions, etc. Did not quite work well leaving bars/mesh. (All this a separate side issue. overall clearly a fake, with this conclusion under any scenario, exactly how faked --not really important) --Resup (talk) 22:07, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Examples of media warfare use

 * John Kerry urges one final chance for Syria truce, FT, 21 Sept, 2016. After going over Russian MoD claims (drone, militant with mortar following convoy:
 * ''"But Conflict Intelligence Team, a group linked to Russian blogger Ruslan Leviev, which follows Russia’s military involvement in Syria and Ukraine, questioned the relevance of the defence ministry video...(etc) Separately, it said that a photo of the aftermath of the attack showed part of the tail of a type of bomb which is commonly used by the Russian air forces in Syria.
 * Apparently Russian non-system opposition have hard time imagining that their side can possibility do something right, and the opposite side something wrong; as it is the leading light of democracy, human rights, etc, it is assumed to always follow it itself and is taken as a reference standard for all others to follow and admire...--Resup (talk) 16:02, 22 September 2016 (UTC)