A small German-made component inside Russian refineries has become Ukraine's most tantalizing target—the Achilles heel of Putin's $189 billion war machine.
Cracking units are at the heart of the refining process, quite complex, very high pressure, and very expensive and time consuming to replace.
The Russians would be truly stupid if the critical parts of their refineries didn’t start looking like their cope cage tanks with multiple layers of nets, chains, etc. to prevent subsonic drones from getting too close.
These drones are, for now, relatively low & slow assets attacking the refineries. That may change in the future with higher speed delivery systems like StS Neptune variants and Grom Missiles that Ukraine is reportedly developing.
Actually breaking a cracker is likely hard unless you score a good or close hit. By virtue of what they do and how they do it, the walls are thick to contain the pressures inside.
But unlike all the German replacement machine tool parts being “exported” to Kyrgyzstan, Dubai, and elsewhere (ie smuggled to Russia via a proxy), cracking units are so bespoke that replacements cannot be smuggled as easily.
Furthermore, I doubt Russia has a lot of domestic expertise and manufacturing left that can be devoted to the replacement of Balance-of-Plant components around a cracking unit.
So even if the cracker itself is not breached, repairing the myriad of control systems, pipes, valves, etc. takes time, expertise, purchased parts, etc. that might be very difficult to get at this point.
Cracking units are at the heart of the refining process, quite complex, very high pressure, and very expensive and time consuming to replace.
The Russians would be truly stupid if the critical parts of their refineries didn’t start looking like their cope cage tanks with multiple layers of nets, chains, etc. to prevent subsonic drones from getting too close.
These drones are, for now, relatively low & slow assets attacking the refineries. That may change in the future with higher speed delivery systems like StS Neptune variants and Grom Missiles that Ukraine is reportedly developing.
Actually breaking a cracker is likely hard unless you score a good or close hit. By virtue of what they do and how they do it, the walls are thick to contain the pressures inside.
But unlike all the German replacement machine tool parts being “exported” to Kyrgyzstan, Dubai, and elsewhere (ie smuggled to Russia via a proxy), cracking units are so bespoke that replacements cannot be smuggled as easily.
Furthermore, I doubt Russia has a lot of domestic expertise and manufacturing left that can be devoted to the replacement of Balance-of-Plant components around a cracking unit.
So even if the cracker itself is not breached, repairing the myriad of control systems, pipes, valves, etc. takes time, expertise, purchased parts, etc. that might be very difficult to get at this point.