On October 25, 2023, the spokeswoman of the Joint Press Center of the Operational Command South Nataliya Gumenyuk reported on the air of the telethon that the russian invaders began to drop "unknown explosive devices" from their planes along the route of civilian shipping, which takes place within the framework of the "grain corridor". This was a detail of the overall picture, because during the past day, the occupiers dropped in the South 35 aerial weapons from their planes, which included cruise missiles, guided aerial bombs, and the same "unknown explosive devices".
Special attention should be paid to reports of unknown explosives being dropped from airplanes in the area of the passage of grain ships and to analyze what kind of devices these could be.
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It is unlikely that we were talking about training aerial bombs or something like explosive packages. Obviously, the russians could use there things that could be classified as explosive devices capable of damaging civilian grain ships (even the smallest of which can be larger than frigates and other large ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the russian federation.
Therefore, most likely, in this story, the russians could drop sea bottom mines of the MDM type of 533 mm caliber from their planes, are almost universal in terms of using carriers for their deployment.
The main problem is that it is really an explosive device that has to be simply laid on the bottom and detonated as ships or ships pass, making sea bottom mines a difficult target to combat even for modern minesweepers.
If we talk more specifically about the types of russian naval bottom mines, then here we have three samples. Basic - MDM-2 mod.1 naval bottom mine with a body length of 2.25 meters, weight - 1300 kg, warhead capacity - 1030 kilograms in TNT equivalent, placement depth - up to 120 meters, carrier speed during placement - up to 1000 km/h . The MDM-5 mod.1 naval bottom mine, which can also be dropped from aircraft, has similar parameters and characteristics.
It is also worth highlighting the MDM-3 mod.1 naval bottom mine, which, in fact, is a reduced version of the MDM-2 mod.1. The MDM-3 mod.1 naval mine has a body length of only 1.5 meters with a diameter of 450 mm, weight - 590 kg, power of the warhead - 300 kilograms in TNT equivalent, placement depth - up to 30 meters.
If you take into account the appearance of all the mentioned mines, it becomes more clear why the official message spoke about "unidentified explosive devices". Because from the outside it could look like ordinary unguided aerial bombs.
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