Posted on 05/04/2014 1:21:07 PM PDT by tcrlaf
Engineering troops of Russian Armed Forces have launched construction of an additional ferry line between port Kavkaz in southern Russias Krasnodar territorial city of Temryuk and port Krym in the Russian Crimean port city of Kerch, the press service and information department of the Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday.
Specialists are measuring the width, depth and speed of current in the Kerch Strait and expected areas of building a ferry line, are surveying the coastal line and are developing driveways and interchange ramps, the press service noted.
Military divers are involved in ground engineering reconnaissance near the coastal line.
In the near future engineers will start unloading materials for a pontoon bridge which were brought on the Black Sea coast from Vladimir, Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd regions.
A new ferry line is expected to increase sharply transport and freight traffic to the Russian Republic of Crimea in vacational season. The ferry line will operate four ferryboats, each of them can traffic six KAMAZ heavy-duty trucks or more than 20 vehicles with a total of 180 tonnes of cargoes.
Along with a higher throughput capacity the ferry line will become a good practical training to transfer units and special engineering machinery at larger distances, the Defence Ministrys press service and information department said.
It would solve a lot of Crimea's current supply problems, allowing lighter vehicles to cross.
I have another dumb, as usual, question.
Won’t it need a drawbridge to allow shipping to pass through?
And since The Kerch Straight is less than ten miles wide and rather shallow: why not build a permanent bridge?
Okay...that’s two dumb questions...
In lieu of building a permanent bridge across the Kerch Straits to connect Crimea to Russia proper.
That would help Russian tourists to drive there.
One of the differences between NATO/American forces and the Russian forces that the media never mentioned, during the Cold War, was how NATO was built on defense, and the Russian military was built on attack.
The Russians were built on a foundation of bridge building units and Airborne Divisions, and Armor.
It takes time to build a permanent bridge. That has already been fast-tracked by the Russian government but the summer tourist season will start soon.
I wonder what the design would look like. A basic pontoon bridge would block ship traffic through the strait. This must have an elevated or swinging component.
If (when?) Russia annexes a chunk of eastern Ukraine, they’ll have a ready-made land bridge to Crimea.
“Wont it need a drawbridge to allow shipping to pass through?”
Pretty easy to rig a pass-through, I would think. Just move a few segments out of the way as you need to. Floating bridges aren’t anything new.
The approaches would be the tough part, I think.
It’s worth noting that they are moving Pontoon components from all over Russia for this.
And that is all you need to know about the end game.
” a good practical training to transfer units and special engineering machinery at larger distances”
Par,
Just heard from a close friend that his wife’s grandson, who is in sniper training, just got the word that he’s being sent to the Ukraine within the next two months.
There were joint exercises with the Ukraine planned for July well before this started. They were planned to be pretty small, hundreds of people, not thousands. I suspect that’s what this is about, not something new.
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