First sinking of a military ship since the Belgrano in the falklands war

[Aragorn243]

Really hard to tell what is going on in this war. I don't trust either side very much. The Russians the least. I expect that the ship was indeed hit by two Ukranian missiles as they claim. The Russians then screwed up the damage control and lost the ship due to that. Either way, it's a valid Ukrainian claim on sinking the ship. This ship was central to protecting the other Russian ships in the area so its loss is a severe one.

[GeeRam]

Really hard to tell what is going on in this war. I don't trust either side very much. The Russians the least. I expect that the ship was indeed hit by two Ukranian missiles as they claim. The Russians then screwed up the damage control and lost the ship due to that. Either way, it's a valid Ukrainian claim on sinking the ship. This ship was central to protecting the other Russian ships in the area so its loss is a severe one.

Yep, plus the fact that the following day the Russians attacked the factories near Kviv, where it claimed the missiles that supposedly didn't hit the ship were made

Again it looks a superb engagement by the Ukrainians, using that drone to distract the Russians and launch 6 Neptune's to attack from the opposite direction, with likely at least 2 of the 6 finding the target.
Its a shame that the Ukraine AF have likely not got the air assets left to take advantage of the very big hole that is now in the Russian fleet air defense with the loss of the Moskva.

---------- Post added at 07:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:20 PM ----------

The ship had 16 cruise missile launching tubes. Did any of those cruise missiles have nuclear warheads?
Was the ship nuclear or conventionally powered?

The missile tubes on the Moskva were not for cruise missiles, they were for Vulkan anti-ship missiles. The Moskva wasn't really designed for ship to shore attack, but ship to ship.
It was conventionally powered, and ironically it was built in a Ukraine shipyard 40 years ago.

[30Three]

An important point reported by France 24, who were discussing this issue. If the ship sunk due to a fire on board that was not caused by a missile strike; why did the Russians move all the other ships away from the coast!

[Flying10uk]

I expect that the ship was indeed hit by two Ukranian missiles as they claim. The Russians then screwed up the damage control and lost the ship due to that.

Probably the most likely scenario. I did wonder if there had been a fire onboard before the ship got hit by missiles. If there had been a fire onboard the ship could have been more vulnerable.

[mrclark303]

It's interesting, I believe the Neptune missile is a relatively old anti ship missile, with a simple radar seeker, akin to the early block Harpoon missile.

It's fired in the direction of its target and at a pre designated range, the radar turns on and simply locks onto the biggest target it can see...

The Russians probably thought it was stationed sufficiently far from the coast that the Ukrainians couldn't accurately enough target the ship, RAF and USAF RC135's and other NATO assets, might have been a tad 'indiscreet' and given the Ukrainians a very accurate patch of Black Sea that they might want to send a few missiles into..

Here's the thing re the Russian Navy, it's been widely known since the 1960's that their Warships are absolute death traps, unlike say the Royal and US Navies, we're everyone is trained in fire fighting, Russian ships have very few trained personnel, even less equipment and it's poorly maintained.

Add to that, refits over 40 years have seen holes cut into watertight bulkheads and cabling passed through (I kid you not), I have it on good authority that's standard practice in Russian Navy...

All in all floating coffins for their crews...

Like the rest of the Russian Armed forces, impressive on paper, but in reality, little better than useless....

[GeeRam]

It's interesting, I believe the Neptune missile is a relatively old anti ship missile, with a simple radar seeker, akin to the early block Harpoon missile.

It's only been in service for barely 12 months!

Whilst it's based on an older Soviet design (Kh-35) the Ukranians have redesigned it with a substantially increased range and modern and vastly improved electronics, and were very clever in keeping quiet about the results of its testing in the years after Russia's annexation of Crimea, which clearly hastened its development.

[mrclark303]

Thanks for the clarification. While they can increase range by swapping out/ modifying the engine and adding additional fuel, I would think the electronic modifications are probably limited.

Perhaps limited to increasing the radars range, slightly, maybe changing the missiles attack profile.

Incorporating significant 'new' features like ignoring decoys or selecting specific targets would be considerably more difficult and add a whole level of very expensive and highly specialised engineering..

I don't think they could do this in the 2014 to now timescale, without very significant Foreign assistance.

Like everyone, I look at the approaching May 9th with a degree of discomfort. Putin will want to make a major announcement of 'victory' by then and will consider it a line in the sand.

He will hopefully settle for a land corridor to the Crimea and start winding down the the war, a deeply unpalatable outcome, but possibly the best we can hope for...

Or, he will go 'all in' I don't even want to think what that might look like!

[GeeRam]

Thanks for the clarification. While they can increase range by swapping out/ modifying the engine and adding additional fuel, I would think the electronic modifications are probably limited.

Perhaps limited to increasing the radars range, slightly, maybe changing the missiles attack profile.

Incorporating significant 'new' features like ignoring decoys or selecting specific targets would be considerably more difficult and add a whole level of very expensive and highly specialised engineering..

I don't think they could do this in the 2014 to now timescale, without very significant Foreign assistance.

Its one of the things Ukraine has plenty of knowledge and expertise in. An lot of the former Soviet arms factories and design bureau's were in the Ukraine, and since Russia's annexing of Crimea, Ukraine have cut off all support and supply to Russia for stuff that Russia was still relying on Ukraine for. And not just electronics, as Russia had no indigenous marine gas turbine design and manufacture, for all its Naval fleets, it all this came for the Ukraine, and so post Crimea annexation, has had to start that from scratch!
In fact the electronic's industry in Ukraine is such that many European car makers had turned to Ukraine in recent years for supply of electronic components and wiring looms, including Ford, Porsche & BMW, such that these firms have had to invoke production line shutdowns due to stoppage of parts coming out of Ukraine since the start of the war.

[Gil Boyd]

OK............if one believes they did indeed launch a missile or two at the ship, we are led to believe that they had the best of the best on that ship as their main C&C centre in the Black Sea,.
All our NATO ships have the Phalanx CIWS "sea-wiz" fitted which is a close-in weapon system for defence against incoming threats such as small boats, surface torpedoes, anti-ship missiles.
Did something fail or did they not have it fitted??

One wonders whether Leading Seaman Gugarin in the galley had to run up top and chuck a bag full of silver foil as their Chaf repellant as missile warnings went off

[GeeRam]

OK............if one believes they did indeed launch a missile or two at the ship, we are led to believe that they had the best of the best on that ship as their main C&C centre in the Black Sea,.
All our NATO ships have the Phalanx CIWS "sea-wiz" fitted which is a close-in weapon system for defence against incoming threats such as small boats, surface torpedoes, anti-ship missiles.
Did something fail or did they not have it fitted??

Mosckva supposedly had 6 x AK-630 CIWS fitted, so one does wonder how well trained (or not) the Russian Navy really is, or how good its CIWS system really is, or the combination of both?
I think it's becoming clear, that the Russian 'best of the best' isn't really that much cop. How many of the 500 crew are short term conscripts and how many are regular trained Navy? The Russian Navy is supposed to have suffered the most in the post-USSR brake-up, and perhaps the fate of the Moskva shows this up. Isn't there a rumour going around that the Black Sea Fleet Admiral has since been arrested by the FSB?