Moskva cruiser sank while being towed in a storm – Russian Defense Ministry
tass.com
tass.com
This will be (should be) a wake up call for the rest of the fleet and keep them much further from the shore, which in turn has impact on the amount of air control the Russians can exert on the southern parts of Ukraine as apparently they have been leaning on navy vessels to provide SAM cover.
1) Do ships truly have good defences against Harpoons etc. these days? If 1 or 2 were sent a ship is there a decent chance they'd be neutralized?
2) There's indications Ukraine was flying a drone to distract them possible have their radars not on the right thing, firing missiles from behind. Does this remotely make sense i.e. radar coverage? Or possibly even just overwhelming/confusing the ships operators a bit?
1) Let's look at the ship I am most familiar with, the NL Navy Zeven Provicien class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn-class...). It generally would have 2 types of anti air defense missiles, the SM-2 and the ESSM (both US-built, see wikipedia for their publicly available specs). Apart from that, there are electronic and flare/chaff passive countermeasures and finally a Goalkeeper CIWS for last-mile defense. I have little doubt that we would have been able to take on an attack of 2 Harpoon missiles. OTOH, the Neptune missiles are a lot more modern than the Harpoon and modern missiles have been known to do tricky things like having a pseudo-random noise generator generate corkscrew like maneuvers to evade the defensive fires. I'll also note that the Moskva was built in the early 80s (though refitted after the fall of the Soviet Union) and it was apparently quite stormy (so additional radar noise from wave reflections may have been a thing). All in all, IMHO it seems quite likely that they were indeed hit. Warships don't just suddenly catch fire, and especially in warzones when the opponent has sophisticated anti ship missiles it seems more likely that the fire was caused by a missile impact.
2) For older warships it could be possible. Usually they would have a rotating air warning radar and a dedicated targeting radar for missile guidance. An example would be the STIR (https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/stir-tracking-and-illuminatio...) on NATO vessels, basically a powerful narrowbeam radar on a servo pedestal. There would rarely be more than two or three on a vessel, so it might be possible to distract all of them with several drones. Modern naval radars use active phased array technology where the amount of tracked targets is no longer the bottleneck (in practice, you'd need dozens of missiles), but as mentioned before the Moskva is from the early 80s so they would probably not have this yet. So it could happen, especially in a stormy sea where the waves provide a lot of additional radar noise, but it is really only speculating without a lot more information than we have right now.
As far as I know, nobody has tried to retrieve conventional munitions from a shipwreck, and reasonably enough - they're not dangerous enough to be worth the trouble. Nations will go after lost nuclear warheads, though; indeed, Bayesian search theory saw significant development and interest to serve that purpose [1], and the CIA's been known to go to Bond-movie levels of trouble to the same end [2].
Granted, these were both First Cold War projects, but it seems like there's some degree of possibility that this use of "First Cold War" may eventually prove not to have been a somewhat silly joke, so...
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RTt59BtFLqQbsSiqd/a-history-...
That makes it worthwhile to try and prevent the enemy from seeing that tech.
(For what it's worth, I don't love linking to Less Wrong for this or any reason, but I couldn't as quickly find another reference for the point about Bayesian search theory. If not for the fact that I've seen it mentioned elsewhere in, let's say, less breathlessly wide-eyed technopositivistic contexts, I wouldn't have included it at all.)
I admit that I'm triggered by Less Wrong, though.
With regard to the value of recovering Moskva, I suppose I don't know. It's not all that young a design, and evidently struggles against even subsonic antiship missiles. Not that that means it's worth nothing, of course, but I could see the possibility that to attempt a recovery would be throwing good money after bad. That said, you quite evidently have experience in this realm that I lack, and your analysis is thus certainly better informed than mine.
And since it sunk in the Black Sea, depending on the exact location, it could have sunk in a relatively shallow area, where it is easy to do the salvage even if there is no really good reason.
The Israeli Navy, for example, spent several decades searching for its lost submarine INS Dakar. It was located in 1999 and then the conning tower was salvaged from a depth of 3,000m and placed in the Naval Museum.
So yes there is potential to detonate, but in general that does not matter a lot unless you are the unluckiest person in the world and happen to be right above it at the time. The explosive wave front expands in a sphere and so decreases in amplitude with the square of the distance to the origin. It loses lethal potential very quickly.
SS Richard Montgomery comes to mind. Tsunami threat directly off the southern coast of England.
Warships, just like everything else, do suddenly catch fire from time to time. Carelessness, negligence, sabotage, or bad luck could cause a fire that would sink a ship. Especially during a war, when munitions are being handled under pressure.
Not the most likely cause, but shit does happen.
BTW, By sabotage I don't mean some mustache twirling spy, but something more mundane, a disgruntled sailor, or a homesick one that wants to return to base as soon as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)#2012_fire
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sailor-ryan-mays-court-martial-...
Given the potential causes basically being [accident, self-inflicted sabotage, hit by missile], "hit by missile" seems by far the most likely given all the other information about this.
Galley fires could happen anytime. During times of war, guns are being loaded, missile systems are turned on and tested to ensure they are ready. Somebody could easily screw up and cause a major fire. If missiles were fired by the Moskva, then a dud could have caused a fire, and so on.
I'm not claiming this is likely in this case, but it does happen.
Warships certainly do suddenly catch fire. They just don't usually catch fire in such a way that it's a casualty. DCS is usually competent enough to get things under control in reasonable amounts of time.
Normally the sudden catching fire is due to electrical problems, particularly when repairs are done by non-electrical teams who fail to follow the correct procedures or doubly so if they are battleshorting for one reason or another.
Now what happened here though definitely wasn't "suddenly catching fire" unless the crew were negligent and incompetent... which well actually looking at the performance of the Russian army that could actually be a possibility.
Note that DCS is (at least partially) Russian, so maybe don't install it on a trusted machine.
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeiOHgzic6Y, lol.
Also, they have more people, so it's a bigger deal if they get sunk.
From their design, the ship class in question seem to be some kind of largish general-purpose missile cruisers with substantial armament and decent anti-air/anti-missile defenses, but not intended to survive sustained fighting (their weapon placement suggests that—all those missile tubes on the deck can't possibly be safe, but it might let them cram more weapons on there cheaply)
[VERY LATE EDIT] The TL;DR here is that "cruiser" and "destroyer" and all that are nearly meaningless without context of who's doing the labeling, and when.
[ANOTHER LATE EDIT] I overstated the degree to which the Kirov class' designation is misleading: its displacement is roughly in the range of WWII-era battlecruisers (~1/2 the displacement of an Iowa class battleship—armor is really, really heavy). It lacks battleship-class guns, but so does everything else these days and it'd be kinda silly if it had them.
Also I`ve read the reason Iowa Battleship in USA is not fully decomissined is just in case they need it to take out the two Russian battlecruisers... not likely to be nededed but "just in case"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov-class_battlecruiser
Lots of big missiles; the only real naval gun is a twin 130mm. (That's about the size of an Arleigh Burke destroyer's gun. The Iowa's 15" guns are 406mm.) If you're in gun range of a Kirov, something has gone badly wrong for the Kirov.
(I think you may have confused this with the 1980s refit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa-class_battleship#1980s_re....)
The Iowa and Wisconsin (originally New Jersey and Wisconsin, but then Congress specifically intervened to override the Navy and specify Iowa to replace New Jersey) were returned to the reserve status and kept in mothballs because Congress ordered the Navy to keep to Iowa-class BBs in reserve in case needed to support Marine amphibious operations (this ended in 2006), not to fight the Kirovs.
My understanding is that the Moskva specifically had few and outdated anti-missile self-defense systems, but capable anti-air systems (and was, in fact, the main anti-air platform as well as the flagship for the Black Sea fleet.)
I could not figure it out easily - looks like Moskva was NOT a Kirov class, but a class down?
But, other countries operate ships they designate destroyers at roughly the same displacement, these days. Role of the ship, and just preference of the country deciding what they'll call them, is a bigger factor than size.
These ships are big-ish soviet-era vessels designed primarily (as I understand it) for anti-ship cruise missile focus, but they fill all roles.
The development of HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in big gun capital ship design and modern battleships were sometimes referred to as Dreadnought class battleships, though for a long time that’s been the only kind. Particularly large or capable cruisers are sometimes called battle cruisers.
This ship doesn’t have big guns because it’s a missile ship so it can’t be a battleship, but it is a capital ship, which makes it a cruiser.
As all programmers know, naming things is hard.
Battleships were the last descendants of the ship of line, which basically meant a ship big enough and heavily armed enough to not be a weak link in the line of battle.
That’s basically what I said.
* Corvette/Frigates -- Smaller ships with smaller munitions. They're just missile platforms. Anything smaller than a Corvette basically is ignored for most discussions. Frigates are slightly larger than Corvette.
* Destroyers -- Bigger than Frigates. Not only do Destroyers have significant missile capacities (like Corvette / Frigates), Destroyers are big enough for major sensor suites. SONAR, RADAR, etc. etc. Maybe enough for a CWIS (aim-bot with a gatling gun, designed to automatically shoot down enemy missiles as they approach).
* Cruisers -- Bigger than Destroyers. More missiles, more sensors. While a Destroyer might have 1x CWIS and 1x RADAR, you might be seeing 2x or 3x CWIS or RADARS on the larger Cruiser class.
> In these days and age where all war ships seem to be essentially floating missile launch platforms, what is the difference?
Defense. You need a lot of power to run those RADAR systems, which are constantly scanning the skies for enemy missiles. Corvette/Frigates are too small to have a CWIS / anti-missile defense system, so they need to hang around larger ships (like Destroyers or Cruisers) for defense.
Multiple Destroyers could be stationed next to each other to increase their defenses. But if two Destroyers were just going to sail together (for better RADAR coverage and/or defenses), its a better idea to just make a slightly bigger ship, but with twice the RADAR / twice the defense of a singular Destroyer.
Corvette.
Why? Wouldn't two destroyers be more flexible and also harder to hit than one big ship?
Destroyers are around 8000 tons. Cruisers are around 10,000 tons.
You need 16,000 tons of metal to make 2x Destroyers. You only need 10,000 tons of metal to make 1x Cruiser.
Your crew sizes are also merged together with the larger-ships, meaning you need fewer sailors to perform the same amount of firepower. Two Destroyers would have a lot of redundant jobs compared to one Cruiser.
Don't know if this is just a meme or actually called that by real Navy members, but I heard them referred to as "missile sponges", i.e. to "soak up" missiles fired at the convoy/battle group.
Even LCSs, effectively overpowered corvettes, have CIWS. They don't have the radar which can deal with threats further out than the 10 miles or so that their SeaRAM can deal with.
Frigates have more room to fit larger radars, power plants to feed them, and missiles to fire with them. Smaller frigates usually have 8-16 VLS tubes with ESSM or SM-2 to deal with threats 30+ miles out. Bigger ones, like the planned Constellation class, will have 32.
Destroyers are where you get enough room to start having strike and long range defense capabilities. The radar is now powerful enough to track ballistic missiles coming in from space, and they have missiles that can intercept them like SM-3. They also have extra VLS to store strike capabilities, like Tomahawk missiles. US Arleigh Burke class Destroyers have 96 VLS cells.
Cruisers have an interesting role. In the US navy, we don't really need them. We have a slightly larger destroyer hull with extra room for a fleet command center that we call cruisers to make congress happy. In navies that don't have carriers, though, their role is to be the main strike platform for the fleet. They'll have mounts for the largest mobile missiles in their arsenal, like the Russian P-700 Granit, which NATO called "Shipwreck".
Carriers are the most important part of the US Navy. Their power projection and sea control capabilities are unmatched. Each one carries their own airborne radar squadron, as well as 44+ strike fighters to not only defend it but to strike back at their foes. The carrier allows the fleet to know everything that happens within 500 miles, and destroy anything that it doesn't want there.
So, why don't we want to just have lots of cruisers? A mix of survivability and flexibility. While offensive capability scales linearly with tonnage, survivability falls to the cube-square law and only increases as the cube root of tonnage. Carriers are a special exception to this, because their aircraft are such a force multiplier. However, they're extremely expensive so very few countries can afford more than one or two. The US, however, is required by congress to have at least 10. For flexibility, it's often nice to have more platforms with less capabilites in more places than one platform with more capabilities in one place.
Modern US Carriers are pretty absurd though. Do they really need 2 runways and 4 catapults?
I get it, in combat, you really want to launch your aircraft really fast. But it does show how building one-ship with 2x runways is considered better (by the US Navy anyway) than building 2x ships with 1x runways each.
There's a lot of decisions that went into the design of these ships. I'm not sure if they all made sense... it all comes down to what modern naval combat is (and frankly, no one really knows what modern naval combat is... there hasn't been a clash of major powers since WW2. Falklands War IMO doesn't count since Argentina isn't really the same kind of power as United Kingdom)
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I think everyone knows that our Carriers are vulnerable to enemies. But they're so useful for power projection that we keep building them...
A typical carrier (Chinese Shandong) is 70,000 tons. The Gerald Ford Supercarrier is 100,000 tons.
So you can see that 3x regular carriers cost as much tons as 2x Supercarriers (210,000 tons vs 200,000 tons). But 2x supercarriers have 4-runways total and 8 catapults, while 3x carriers would only have 3-runways.
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The real problem with "Supercarriers" is that you've got all your eggs in one basket. Killing one supercarrier is kinda-sorta like killing two carriers, in terms of capabilities.
More efficient for the US Navy to use, but also more efficient for the enemy to kill.
"Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships."[1]
So it looks like they're larger than destroyers but have a similar function.
A discussion of current U.S. and Russian cruiser capabilities can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruiser#Current_cruisers
Moskva is a Slava-class cruiser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava-class_cruiser
The Ticonderoga class cruisers are basically the same size as the Arleigh Burke destroyers (smaller than the Flight III, larger than earlier ones) and much smaller than the Zumwalt-class destroyers.
There's a degree of what amounts to fashion in the naming, and “cruiser“ is out of fashion for newer ships.
The US Navy is gradually decommissioning their cruisers and can't afford to build new ones.
The newer American destroyers are bigger than the last cruisers we built, so phasing out of cruisers isn't about not having big, non-carrier surface combatants.
Sure, but they are the newest destroyers we have, and illustrate (along with the Flight III Ashleigh Burke) a pattern. DDG(X) won't be twice the Ticonderoga-class displacement like the Zumwalt-class, but they'll also be bigger than the Ticonderoga by a sizable margin.
The Ticonderoga class cruisers are 9,600 tons, the Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyers are 9,700 tons, the Zumwalt class destroyers are almost 16k tons.
We have newer cruisers, we just call them destroyers.
Generally, cruisers are designed with capabilities that allow them to operate anywhere on the ocean on their own, or as the lead vessels in small groups of ships (along with frigates and destroyers). Destroyers are usually smaller and have a more limited set of capabilities, and are intended to operate as ocean-going support ships in a combat group. Frigates are usually even smaller, with similar set of capabilities to a destroyer, but more limited equipment and intended to operate relatively close to their home ports.
Every navy has different sizes for each, with the USA having some of the largest ships of each designation. You should also keep in mind that each type of ship has gotten progressively larger over time; as of WWII, destroyers were roughly 2000 tons, and cruisers were about 8000 tons.
Originally the distinctions were (mostly) of purpose, but after WWI a series of treaties (mostly the Washington Naval Treaty and the First and Second London Naval Treaties) set out size, equipment, and numerical limits for various categories, so a whole lot of the interwar design and classification was based on gaming treaty limits, and the resulting naming patterns had a lasting influence that gradually faded.
The key distinction is what name when applied to the hoped for platform will win funding from the national tax authority - what ever that is.
In the UK talk of cruisers is a no-no, the last "through deck cruisers" were actually aircraft carriers, and no one is falling for that again. Thus the Type 45's are definitely destroyers despite displacing 9400 tonnes. In other lands the Ticonderoga's are cruisers, even though they displace 9600 tonnes, the Arleigh Burke are destroyers at 9300 tonnes, but the Zumwalt's come in at 14000 tonnes as destroyers as well! Note, there will only ever be three Zumwalt's.
Ships are expensive and missiles are almost free by comparison, so this seems like a fundamental problem for naval warfare.
What I'm really wondering is why the Russians even staged this ship into the Black Sea. What possible capabilities could it have been providing that the Russians could not also get from land units?
If you put a carrier group in a pond and lob missiles at them, I'm not confident in the outcome either.
A Stirling engine is particularly well suited for a submarine because the engine is nearly silent and can use the surrounding sea water as a heat sink to increase efficiency
In 2005, HSwMS Gotland managed to snap several pictures of USS Ronald Reagan during a wargaming exercise in the Pacific Ocean, effectively "sinking" the aircraft carrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine
My own opinion is that aircraft carriers are very effective in projecting power around the world during peacetime or low intensity conflicts, but military planners recognize (I hope) that they will be quickly sunk in an all out war and have contingency plans.
But if informed that an attack is imminent there may be at least one ace up their sleeve.
A Shkval can go as fast as a missile, but it can't turn very well so you might be able to dodge it this way.
Sure it's not a good outlook in any case, but it's better than sitting there waiting to be hit.
... Traveling a few dozen knots faster is an "ace up the sleeve"?
Its a stupid strategy, but it seems to check out. The faster a submarine tries to go, the easier it would be to detect.
Very possibly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo
Maximum speed: 55 knots
Effective firing range: 21-27 nautical miles
If your carrier can do anything near 55 knots away from the torpedo, it's safe.
> A displacement hull won't plane no matter how much power you put into the shafts.
I wouldn't be so sure, the main difference between the two is that a planing hull has an angle of attack in regards to the water, so it can generate lift. You can achieve the same by increasing stern trim on a displacement hull.
As for it being flat on the bottom, there are also less stable flat planning hulls that work so that doesn't disqualify it either.
I don't doubt that such ecological worries will go out the window if there's actual threats involved.
BTW, it should also be noted that the missile that took it down was - again, supposedly - Ukraine's very recently (2020) developed P-360 Neptune; and they have very few of them in service. They haven't been used until this point, so the assumption now is that it was a long-running operation in which Ukrainians bided their time and patiently arranged for all the pieces to be just right before making the move - and it paid off big time.
That is, are the warships of today much better than the warships of 1950, if better at all? What about the skill and preparation of the crews?
On the other hand when I watched videos of the Javelin missile I see a lot of sensors and software that probably could have only been created recently.
I don't think such a thing could have existed in 1950 or 1970. Probably by 1990 it was possible, but I bet it's a lot better by 2010 too. Electronics got cheaper and smaller and more mobile. Imaging is way better.
So while I don't know any of the specifics, this seems like a general trend. It's going to be harder for the offensive side to take and hold territory, and maybe the aircraft carrier is obsolete in a big conflict.
We saw some asymmetry in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but it doesn't seem like the same type, since AFAIK the opponents didn't have many smart weapons.
The carrier is not obsolete. They are surrounded by a battle group of the best of these modern ships, in open ocean with mobility unrestrained by the rules of engagement of a pre-planned exercise. On their decks, they carry 50+ aircraft that can investigate anywhere within 500nmi, ensuring that nothing moves on the surface that they don't know about. When a plane lands, it can be turned around for another sortie in an hour with a fresh pilot and more missiles. Each of these missiles have a range of their own of 100nmi+, and can be carried more than 500nmi by the aircraft carrying them. An aircraft carrier at full power can even outrun some smaller surface ships.
Real wars are confusing and there is a lot of uncertainty about everything. Maybe China could sink every US Navy capital ship if they fire everything they have at once, but they are not sure about that. There have not been any major naval battles since WW2, and nobody really knows what would happen in one. If they fire everything and it doesn't work, their forces will be spent and vulnerable until they can resupply, and they may not want to risk that.
On the other hand, big high-value targets do sound like a bad idea, given how warfare has evolved in the past 30-40 years.
Look at a map of western Russia's sea access. Choke points everywhere, most of them controlled by others.
3 mile, 12 mile. 200 is roughly the range that's reasonably patrolable via aircraft.
What you own is defined by what you can defend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters
And yes, Russia's sea access is surprisingly limited for a country which nominally has the 4th longest coastline of any --- largely along the Arctic ocean.
I've heard that actually hitting a carrier group at open sea is pretty tough with a cruise/ballistic missile, where are they? Where are they moving? Layered defenses etc. But what good is a bunch of ships steaming around hiding?
Exactly. A carrier group that's not within 500nm of enemy territory might as well not exist.
It's worth looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Gloucester_(D96)#First_Gul... as another example. My understanding is that the Falklands experience resulted in lots of changes and a much higher state of readiness for these situations within the Royal Navy. Budget and tech were much harder to acquire than tactics were to develop. In the case of China, there may be some upgraded weapons which can't be countered with training and tactics.
I'm guessing here but I think it might have been more a show of force by putting that cruiser there as well as an attempt at dissuading other countries from entering the area.
To be clear I am arm-chairing here and would love to know more on the operational capabilities of radar on ships.
I presume most more modern ships don't have radars that can only cover 180 degrees so they would be as vulnerable to this attack.
It looks similar to what they did with their tanks: fight with insufficient infantry support (https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/03/15/in-ukraine-...)
Fun fact: in early modern English, "towing" was the correct passive participial form, and "being towed" was ungrammatical.
read (a little) more: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2903
>So how did Ukraine do it? Early reports suggest a brilliantly effective combination of tactics, strategy and the exploitation of its own capabilities, combined with awareness of Russian weaknesses
>According to early reports, the attack took place during a storm. This would have made flying difficult but also helps to conceal shore-based activity from observation. The Russians wouldn't have seen the preparations
>Reportedly, the Ukrainians used a Bayraktar TB-2 drone to distract the Moskva. The Ukrainian Navy introduced TB-2s into service in August 2021.
>How did the Russians not see the incoming Neptunes? The Moskva has/had a single main air defence radar - a 3P41 Volna phased array to guide S300 missiles. Problem is, it only has a 180 degree field of vision
>360 degree coverage is provided by MR-800 Voshkod/Top Pair 3-D long range air search radars for shorter-range SA-8 missiles. But it's likely that in the storm, they couldn't distinguish the sea-skimming Neptunes from the wavetops.
So likely a Bayraktar distracting on one side while the missiles were camouflaged by the storm waves. Quite cunning really. More info: https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1514498197489659909
1. Did it go to a bottom with some nuclear warheads onboard? What is going to happen to these? (Slava class is nuclear strike capable[0])
2. It was the flagship of the BS fleet. This I have been told implies admiral and their staff on board. Any news of the fate of the fleet staff?
3. Is there any news beyond 'all were evacuated' of the fate of the crew? Some news said Turkish navy managed to rescue ~50 sailors. What about the rest ~450[1]?
[0] https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/03/ukraines-next-nightmare-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava-class_cruiser
For one, we've had nukes lost before by accident (called a "broken arrow" incident in US military) and its estimated around 50 have been lost at sea and never recovered[0].
The thing is, water is a really good radiation shield, and nuclear weapons must execute an extremely precise series of actions to detonate.
It may actually be safest to just leave them put.
[0]:http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/weapons/q0268.shtml
This raises the question of what comes next if this kind of thing keeps happening. What does Russia do? Russia appears to have staked the farm on this operation. Can it afford anything less than total victory?
The Russian military has made a sizable investment in tactical nuclear weapons with allegedly 2,000 of them on hand [1]. These small weapons can be detonated in ways that produce minimal fallout but lots of destruction [2]:
> A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon which is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territory. Generally smaller in explosive power, they are defined in contrast to strategic nuclear weapons, which are designed mostly to be targeted at the enemy interior away from the war front against military bases, cities, towns, arms industries, and other hardened or larger-area targets to damage the enemy's ability to wage war.
With every conventional defeat faced by the Russian military and with the massive loss of credibility this causes, at what point does Russia decide that it's time to take the gloves off?
It would be a calculated risk that the response from the West would be much like it has been so far. We're not talking "The Day After," but more like a really big bomb and 2,000 more where that came from. The response to the invasion has been fragmented at best, and it's not unreasonable to think that would continue, especially given a county that has demonstrated a willingness to use nuclear weapons in battle.
I'm not saying this is likely, but more speculating as to what series of events would cause the scenario to play out.
Russia would need to make tests and reach readiness to use them, ideally with air superiority.
A tactical nuke won't do that, though.
Where was this stated as the goal of the invasion?
(The US has threatened more sanctions if Russia uses WMDs. That threat was in response to signs Russia was getting ready to use chemical weapons.)
Here's one such article from a few weeks ago. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/23/if-russia-use...
Of course, we won't know for sure unless it happens (and let's hope it doesn't).
Reference: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukraine-russi...
It eliminates the logic of not going to war.
Not that "logic" has any connection to "appetite" or that excuses require it.
If Russia did launch a limited tactical strike on Ukraine, let's say super low-yield, honestly not much more than the MOABs we fired off in Iraq, is the USA really going to risk Berlin, or US cities getting vaporized to defend a non-NATO country?
Once a nuclear bomb is used, a lot of gloves will come off, not just the Russian ones, and so far Ukraine appears to have a lot of extremely competent military partners and Russia has a reluctant Belarus.
The Baltics and Poland have already been pushing for NATO intervention because they want Russia checked because they don't want to be next; Article 5 is nice, but they’d rather stop Russia before it's on their land.
Nuking Ukraine, even a tiny little nuke, ratchets that up enormously and forces the US and Western European NATO powers to decide how to secure the eastern flank of the alliance.
If Russia is using nukes, it becomes particularly absurd to continue to follow rules purported to appease them so they don't use nukes.
At best it's a transparently nonsensical excuse that conceals some other motivation.
When important people say they are against doing X, Y, or Z because of the risk of nuclear war, we can at least pretend they are serious as long as no nukes have been used yet.
But is there any other motivation they could have? There's one that seems very obvious to me, especially when I saw the reaction to Lindsey Graham's comments about regime change.
If they wanted to use tactical nukes they would have likely used it to take Kyiv. That they did not suggests they aren’t going to use them. Their goal now seems to be annexing/liberating parts of eastern Ukraine and bullying zelenski into neutrality.
This is about a new world order.
This transition has severe short-term disruption for Russia, but a wartime (sorry, "military exercise" time) sacrifice is much easier for its citizens to accept.
Not clear if this was the plan all along.
I mean obviously India and China had to switch to other currencies to trade with Russia, cause Russia can not send or receive dollars and euros, but did it actually have any effect on India <-> China trade?
Western economic sanctions literally prevent Russian financial accounts containing US dollars from being accessed, right?
Framing this as a problem for the dollars is odd; it's hard to put my finger on why.
That doesn't tell the whole story of course, but it does appear we are witnessing a larger decoupling from the US Petrodollar standard that has been dominant for decades. That wouldn't be possible if the dollar weren't already weak, I don't think.
That doesn't tell us what precisely you are mistaken about, and clearly many people have been agreeing with you for years and years, but something is off here.
Dollars: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CHF&view=10Y
Rubles: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=CHF&view=10Y
I haven't been tracking developments very closely, but a minimal set of objectives would be claiming land up to the Donetsk/Luhansk oblast boundaries under DPR/LPR flags, which can be framed as a victory. Nukes are unlikely compared to simply changing what "victory" means.
I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
I believe any use of nuclear weapons would end Russia as a state, tactical or otherwise. They know this, why is why they resort to their conventional (although brutal) warfare methods.
They have been threatening nuclear weapons since the start of the war for various reasons, and thats because nuclear weapons _only_ work as a threat.
“The flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva cruiser, was indeed attacked by the Neptune anti-ship missiles from the coastline between Odessa and Mykolaiv,” it said, adding that a drone distracted the ship before the missiles hit. [emphasis mine]
Ref: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/14/ukraine-russ...
I mean private persons can use drone swarms to put pictures on the night sky.
And while they are rout pre-programmed, it's not hard to use a template to very fast pre-program a drone swarm to fly some pseudo randomized pattern around a ship of which the position is known.
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%BF%D1%82%D1%83...
The only other loss of a warship of comparable size in combat since WW2 was the ARA General Belgrano, a slightly smaller cruiser sunk by a British sub in 1982. Losing a surface ship to enemy action is just not common these days. For a little more context, the only currently commissioned US naval vessel to have sunk an enemy ship is the USS Constitution, which sank the HMS Java (and more famously the HMS Guerriere) in 1812.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/04/russias-most-po...
“It is the most significant naval vessel to be sunk since the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed by a British submarine, HMS Conqueror in 1982. It is the first time Moscow has lost a cruiser since German planes sunk the Chervona Ukraina (Red Ukraine) in 1941 at Sevastopol – the same Crimean naval base which the Moskva was being towed towards when it sank.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/14/russia-moskva-...
Because it was the primary air defense for that entire area. If it can be hit by anti-ship missiles, the rest of the fleet definitely can.
The Ministry of Defense didn't clarify whose ammunition it was that exploded.
More seriously that was the flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. That's gotta put the fear of god into the other ship captains.
What set its own ammunition on fire is the follow-up question. Seems like the Ukrainian missile, though after what we’ve seen, nothing would surprise me.
Looks like Russia would rather we accept that the crew was inept than it was sun by a Ukrainian made missile
It could also be sabotage by a Russian crewmember or foreign infiltrator.
On a Russian ship, though, it's as absurd an idea as space aliens?
I don't wish to debate hypotheticals, because I generally am not certain about uncertain things.
On a meta level, though, I am very curious where other people get their certainty from. I would like to hear more about how you identify paranoid fantasies.
I don't understand what you are saying at all.
Sabotage can't happen during a war?
Or sabotage can't happen on a ship that wasn't hit by a missile?
Or sabotage can't happen on a ship that was hit by a missile?
Or sabotage can't happen to Russians at all?
Or sabotage by Russians can't happen on one of their ships?
Flashover is always a major concern, everything emits flammable gasses nowadays when heated to sufficient temperature, and ship fires absolutely reach sufficient temperature readily.
I highly encourage everyone to watch this video, this is not just important on this but it's really important to understand the rapidity of fire progression in general. It's worth a watch from the start but I'm going to link to the point where it gets colorful. Imagine this is all taking place in a steel blast furnace with locked bulkheads - it's literally a matter of 30 seconds between "my trash can fire is out of control" and "everything in the room is literally on fire".
[0]:https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/202...
Anyway, until the trial occurs, I wouldn't be so hasty to judge whether the sailor was actually responsible for deliberately setting the fire, or just the scapegoat for a multifaceted failure.
[0]: https://news.usni.org/2021/10/19/long-chain-of-failures-left...
A "Wasp-class amphibious assault ship", not a CVN. But yes, capable of launching harriers/F-35s.
I may have missed some info, but I think the jury is still out on that. The Ukrainians announced the sinking a day before the Russians did. At least one of them must have been incorrect, I would guess for propaganda reasons.
My money would be on the Russians lying. An Ukrainian lie would be very embarrassing if Russia subsequently invited some journalists over to look at the ship.
It was exactly the ship in that famous phrase of being sent very offensively and very far by the defenders of Zmeiny island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_warship,_go_fuck_yours...) which has become a Ukrainian battle cry since then, and looks like the ship has ultimately reached the prescribed destination.
Interesting that the ship was hit by the Ukraine developed missiles which Ukraine put in service just about a year ago. Looking at this war (and compare it to the fighting in 2014-2015) it is very noticeable how much a progress Ukraine has made in the last 8 years and in particular absorbing all the new developments in the technology while Russia in many areas hasn't progressed since 1945. I see that is a perfect illustration of constant learning and adaptation vs. stagnation.
Anyway, for anybody who likes Odessa and hates its shelling by those Russian Navy ships - the video of the burning "Moskva" with the wonderfully matching occasion soundtrack "Moscow" by GenghisKhan https://twitter.com/i/status/1514481957962657794
Even worse than that for Russia. The "Moskova" was created in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
The warship itself was a creation of the USSR, but has more to do with Ukraine's manufacturing prowess than present-day Russia.
Russia wants to pretend that the USSR's history is Russia and Russia's alone. That's why Russia wants to erase Ukrainian history. But this war is proving that Ukrainian contributions to the old USSR's power was mighty and cannot be ignored.
------
The mighty warship was created by Ukraine, and brought down by Ukrainian missiles. The story here is really about how Russia has forgotten their Slavic brother's contributions to the USSR.
EDIT: It is quite possible that Ukrainians knew some kind of weakness to the ship that they exploited during the attack.
Such as that it’s loaded with explosives that won’t respond well to being hit with anti ship missiles?
The fact remains that the Ukrainians killed an anti-missile cruiser, with... a missile. That's impressive. Something horribly wrong has happened to the Russian anti-missile defense systems.
That suggests that the Ukrainians know about a weakness to the Russian missile defense systems... a blindspot where the RADAR wouldn't pickup enemy missiles perhaps? In any case, maybe its not so surprising, Ukrainians built the ship after all.
Its offensive weaponry was more impressive, but even then it barely carried the radars to support them.
I guess it is just a matter of reading the proposal, figure out what needed upgrading, and considering that to be the weakness you can exploit.
An analogy would be finding out the castle you want to conquer was supposed to have a rear gate repaired but the repairs were postponed... it would be quite obvious to attack that rear gate.
One of the weaknesses of missile defense systems, is they can only engage a small number of targets at a time.
If you knew the Moskva could engage (say) 12 incoming missiles at a time, you fire 24 all at the same time.
There was some articles on it a few years back, which of course I can't find now. It was regarding virtual wargames, where one commander handily won by, basically, firing everything all at once at the start of the game.
That's the sort of thing that's a classified secret.
None of us know how many missiles the Moskva could handle. But the Ukrainians knew, and fired (at least) +1 missile over its capacity.
Ukrainians are savvy, but they don't have enough missiles to really be throwing "eeeh, maybe 20 at the same time is enough??". Whatever battle plan they did here and implemented was surely based on their intelligence... stuff even USA wouldn't be privy to.
not really. If they could they would hit the cruiser's anti-ship missiles - that would sent the ship immediately down instead of the whole fire/towing story. You just can't always hit that precisely from like 30 miles distance coming at transonic speed, and who knows what defense measures were activated by the ship.
If anything, the weakness exploited here is the Russian poor state of combat readiness. The ship was mostly hanging around there for more than a month. All that time they were supposed to man the radars and keep CIWS/etc. combat ready - no way for Russian Navy. Maintaining combat readiness is a big issue even for shorter time frames - for example in 2008 while guarding the assault ships convoy on the way to Georgia "Moskva" was hit by the very brave and brazen unexpected night attack by Georgian small ships. Fortunately for "Moskva" back then the Georgians didn't have any weapons except small caliber artillery (it is really hard to imagine the courage of those Georgians to perform such an attack - just 4 small ships against that overwhelmingly large Russian Navy force. One of those Georgian ships was sunk by Russian anti-ship missile).
>The mighty warship was created by Ukraine
The independent Ukraine with all its "manufacturing prowess" was unable to finish its sister ship Ukraina for 30 years. It got almost sold to Russia in 2010.
>brought down by Ukrainian missiles
With a tinsy bit of help from the NATO radars and surveillance drones.
Frankly, that kind of ship has no place in a Ukrainian fleet, so to spend billions on it would make no sense. Ukraine as a province of Russian Empire, for that Empire - yes. But not for Ukraine proper.
That ship is designed to take on American fleet in Black Sea and elsewhere.
Ukraine just needs to a small / fast Black Sea fleet and possibly a few micro subs etc..
And a lot of missiles....
There is truth in this matter: USSR was composed of many modern nations. This whole "Moskva ship sinks" thing is almost entirely Ukrainian, historically speaking. Ukrainian-built ship, brought down with Ukrainian missiles, with the Russians renaming the ship to Moskva to try to "steal" its way into history.
I find this entire situation deliciously ironic for the Russians. It really shows how much of a paper-tiger they are, and how much Russia is trying to steal the USSR's name and history for themselves.
In a straight fight, it sure looks that way.
But a weak, frightened and embarrassed authoritarian nuclear power is a very dangerous thing.
It is indeed the product of USSR, which had integrated supply chain and R&D. Very likely some components of it were manufactured in Russia. Ukraine alone would not be able to build and maintain such ship due to budget and resource constraints, but Russia has rebuilt its capabilities in XXI century — their military industrial complex can maintain, upgrade and build such ships. I doubt though they will commission a replacement any time soon, since they are actively building lots of smaller vessels.
Because missiles are not a renewable resource, and the more they have the more they can fire?
[0] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/04/14/ukraine-claims-t...
It may not even have been a Ukrainian-made missile. Maybe it was a Harpoon, but they're just saying Ukrainian because NATO doesn't want the public credit.
Russia had 100's of advisors in North Vietnam during the Cold War I don't see why the US shouldn't have support units all around E. Ukraine.
China also actively involved in the war. At the peak of their involvement, 170,000 Chinese troops were present in North Vietnam - [1]
[0] - https://www.rbth.com/history/332396-how-soviets-fought-again...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War
Is there confirmation that it is specifically this ship? This video appeared in some places which backtracked this claim.
Ohio and Los Angeles class submarines were mostly built in the 1980s as well and many / most (?) are still active.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution
Though more generally, US warships seem to have a roughly 40 year service life.
The second-longest active commission belongs to the USS Pueblo, still officially on patrol, and commissioned in 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pueblo_(AGER-2)
Otherwise, the oldest active ship in normal duty appears to be the amphibious command ship USS Blue Ridge (1970), the oldest carrier the USS Nimitz (1975), and the oldest submarine the USS Ohio (1981).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...
Военная операция на Украине. Онлайн
Which google translates to: "Military operation in Ukraine. Online"
However Военная also means war, so I wonder how different would the tile be to say War operation in Ukraine? Would it be война на Украине?
Does the Russian navy not possess these? Or do they, and it just didn’t work well?
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/sneaky-way-ukraine-dist...
The crew probably got off alive (mostly). A vessel built only for killing, was sunk.
I agree it's not good to revel in bodycounts, but equipment-count... really nothing wrong with being happy about this one.
The labor that went to make the ship was wasted, the pollution caused by manufacturing was a needless waste, the materials could have been used for another less wasteful purpose. And unless the ship is raised and recycled, it will just rust in oblivion on the bottom of the black sea.
How about we just don't.
> How about we just don't.
But how exactly do you propose we do that?
I am willing
We'd also simplify all our web services to not require passwords, we'll just trust all the nice people to be who they say they are.
The disagreement is with implying that both sides of war are equal.
While there are no saints, only one of them chose to start the waste (see also: Chechnya, Georgia)
Even the effort spent on this conversation is a waste perpetrated by Putin, in no way should this statement be taken as an insult against you. That is not my intent. The waste of war is a cascading fractal.
Inexpensive autonomous weapons of war are here. The cost to kill for less than a $1 a soul is within everyone's reach.
The war in the Ukraine will have larger implications than WWI or the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And Ukraine needed to be armed - otherwise scenes like in Bucha and Mariupol would be happening across entire Ukraine, followed by brutal occupation.
> How about we just don't.
That requires cooperation from all sides.
Lack of war requires consistency and coherency between all parties to the degree they see themselves as 'one' (politically, economically, etc.) and have the same goals and needs, and are in agreement on how to fulfill them - or an overarching authority to enforce behavior.
For example, Civil war generally happens when an existing entity starts splitting into different political factions because the existing group can no longer agree on goals, needs, and how to fulfill them. Think of this like an animal getting cancer, where the animal is a country. When the countries central authority (think immune system) no longer is strong enough to suppress/control dissent.
War between countries happens when one country sees more benefit capturing/conquering/etc. another country than not. Like an animal killing or eating another animal for food, or territory, or just because.
In any real environment that is constantly changing, it is very difficult to have any sizable group that is consistent, happy, and has the same identity enough that they'll all individually sacrifice when necessary to make the larger group still work. Trying to do it globally with the current human condition would not be pretty.
This is especially true when you consider that all individual members within a group are susceptible to individual pathologies themselves.
Depending on how you define these groups, either we're talking individual countries, collections of countries/allied coalitions, or individual sub-states.
Almost always, some combination of 1) the group expends massive energy removing/silencing dissent, or 2) the group expends massive energy changing, with who benefits constantly changing too. Occasionally, 3) political-social identity aligns well and everyone sees it as a property of their reality, so #1 or #2 aren't necessary (very much). All existing large countries spend a lot of time and treasure on #1 though.
Think of it like the bodies immune system, with #3 being 'a very clean environment'.
So either you end up with a large political entity which wields significant power within it's borders (or is blessed with a very consistent and happy socio-economic identity for a time) to crush dissent, or has a lot of socio-economic 'churn', which rises or falls together (ahem, USSR, CCP, USA, EU, etc.), or many small ones.
Either way, these entities MUST push/pull/defend their interests - which fundamentally always don't align perfectly with others due to their varying socio-economic states and resources - including wars from time to time. The alternative is starvation from a competitor. The only alternative would be to have a larger authoritarian capability which enforces the lack of war and stasis on these various fronts. Drawing an analogy of a world like that to a zoo isn't hard.
That larger authoritarian capability would fundamentally need to be more powerful than any single actor or coalition of actors, or eventually it would be removed or overthrown via war.
'World Peace' is not just a pipe dream, it's a fantasy that it is ever anything we'd want - it would require global stasis, enforced by some kind of extreme global authoritarianism that would keep the 'have nots' in the have-not pile, and the have's in the have pile forever. Or everyone to always be happy with each other, even if that means some of them starve to death due to lack of resources (extreme brainwashing?).
World War sucks too of course, since too rapid change, churn, and turmoil sucks for everyone with massive blood spilled and treasure lost probably far in excess of what normally would occur in a bit more peaceful set of changes. It would be the natural equivalent of a massive famine or the like.
I really do not follow your argument.
Turning it around world peace requires authoritarian enforcement of global inequality.
The argument as presented is a very depressing outlook on humanity. My personal experience is the exact opposite. Wars (and other social chaos) are organised by a small minority. The vast overwhelming majority of us want peace
Near as I can tell, every system creates a small minority that drives it, and near as I can tell it’s a fundamental requirement of all human organizational systems for them to be effective.
The scale we are at, everything happens through systems of some kind.
The small number of folks involved are either de jure (by rule) or de facto (in fact) the ones who make the actual decisions required for the organization to respond, move forward, act.
If this is true, then ‘the small number of people organizing the social chaos’ are fundamental to the entire system. Removing them may change things for a time, but not for very long, and may (often if you look at the historic of revolutions) replace them with even worse.
I don’t think it’s depressing, any more than recognizing that zebras get eaten by leopards.
Not recognizing or avoiding it just leads to further chaos and damage. It would not help anyone (including zebras or leopards) to put guards out on the Serengeti to ‘enforce the peace’ for instance. At least not for very long.
Especially since the most murderery ones tend to come from those.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-repo...
Why they would? Minor benefits and some important info would leak.
And they likely have many important tasks right now leaving PR for other people.
While it's significant, it's also propaganda. At the very least, WP has a policy to maintain a neutral point of view and to only put things on the site which can be reliably sourced.
We should be sensitive to the power of a site like this in relaying harmful propaganda.
If Ukraine or some US news agency announced it, I wouldn't believe it.
But now even Russia is admitting it - so it's as good as confirmed to me that Ukraine sank their ship.
Wikipedia co-founder: I no longer trust the website I created - YouTube
uh, yeah there's a reason he's no longer with the project. dude's got history.
So many different ways to avoid saying that a Ukrainian missile sank it.
So it’s plausible that it wasn’t the Ukrainians, but then again it would surely be more honourable to get blown up by a Ukrainian missile than by your own incompetence. So if Ukraine is falsely claiming credit they should be taking it as a propaganda godsend.
Maybe there’s something about Russian military culture that the rest of us don’t understand, where being killed by the enemy is a much bigger loss of face than killing yourself.
Everything fits, there's no reason to believe russian propaganda now. They are just trying to save their non-existent face.
"Russian warship Moskva, go fuck yourself"
Then Moskva opened fire. Everyone on the island was (edit) captured.
Guess where Moskva is now?
At the bottom of the ocean. The Ukrainians are so badass.
I understand they didn't die and were just taken prisoner. See: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088593653/snake-island-sailo...
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information presented as fact, either intentionally or unintentionally. Disinformation is a subset of misinformation, that which is deliberately deceptive.
So yes 'misinformation' no 'disinformation'
Isn't English just such a utilitarian language?
[0]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation [1]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinformation
EDIT: Just to circle back here and really make my point clear. It appears we agree that the claim is 'misinformation' because it is incorrect. But that is not what you stated in the GP comment (which is what caused me to point out the mis/dis distinction in the first place)
Misinformation is whereby the information being propagated is not done with the intent to deceive BUT it does run counter to what is widely known as true.
The soldiers being alive, whilst being announced as dead was not done with intent to deceive (presumably), and did not run counter to widely known information, therefore it was neither disinformation nor misinformation. It was simply incorrect due to the chaos of war. Not all incorrect statements are “misinformation”.
If you have a published work that makes it more clear maybe that would help, but it seems wrong that “widely known” is the litmus test, especially when, by definition, the status of those people was not widely known at the time.
It seems like your definition of “misinformation” is very susceptible to the “appeal to authority” fallacy and therefore makes it a not very useful word (i.e. does one Russian general saying something incorrect make the information not misinformation?)
EDIT: sorry to hammer the edit feature, but to that end, if more than 50% of humans believe that God punishes those who sin, does saying “God did x to punish y group” then not equate to misinformation?
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088593653/snake-island-sailo...
They were all taken as PoWs by the Russians.
The one built into Telegram is useful too, but terribly unreliable. And boy, what’s happening there… Russians are getting increasingly aware of the situation, and they are calling for blood. And I don’t mean (just) Ukrainian blood.