Yep, fires can be so unpredictable on a ship, especially one carrying so much 'volatile' gear. Was stationed in WestPac in 1967 when news came of the catastrophic fire hitting the nearby USS Forrestal, resulting in 134 dead. And that was caused by a freak 'chain reaction', starting with an electrical problem that caused a rocket to accidentally fire, and successively igniting jet fuel that quickly spread to a bunch of other ammo and 'flammables'. Any confined space, packed with all sorts of extremely volatile 'stuff'... not good!
Hi Just new to this content so a bit behind lol With relations to this video, what happened and my limited experiences at sea (small commercial fishing) With the sort of radar we used on fishing boats in a 30knt sea they were useless under about 5 miles with what we called sea clutter. I would imaging the tracking radar on these ships would be way much very better thou. So I guess it is possible a object close to the water and also in rain could blend into the sea clutter especially when you consider the speed, how often the radar was seeing it between the sea clutter if it wasn't tuned out and possibly not seeing ever sweep of the radar. Also a engine room fire can quickly get hot enough to disable power and melt brass water and hull fittings allowing water to ingress, then of cause there are the stored explosives even thou the pictures you were showing it didn't look like there was much damage from explosives going off. Ps some of your ex forces buddies may be able to shed more light on the radar and weather stuff. thanks for the videos, the good the bad and the ugly lol
Some of its defenses were disabled, and the ship was in bad condition, it’s sinking was expected, maybe Russia didn’t think they would need defense since they were fighting Ukraine
Ahh yes that one. The VPN that was hacked and open for 3 months. When they found out they tried to keep it secret but eventually had to own up. I am amased they stayed in business.
As a former navy radar operator I can say that in rough seas white caps will cause interference with radar returns called sea return. Radar operator could have turned down the radar gain to get rid of the sea return, but that also lowers your target signal.
Sd20 first, thank you for your service sir!!!! You were an OS I assume and all too familiar with the scope-dope after the 6 on 6 off watches, or no sleep and no sleep. As a former navy weapons systems supervisor- operator attacking during heavy sea state or ruff weather with a sea skimming missle is superior tactics. I applaud Ukrainian forces in sinking. Same kind of tactics used by Argentina in the Falkland Islands vs England
Also the Moskva had a single main air defense radar was a 3P41 Volna phased array to guide S300 missiles. Problem is, it only has a 180 degree field of vision. By using a spotting drone Ukrainian forces would be able to fire into the blind spot, and the ship couldn't turn in time. The missiles fired fly low and are not detected at range by search radar due to the curvature of the earth. The storm could also be a factor as you pointed out. Also there are moral and training issues in the Russian military.
@@briangallaugher3068 As a retired OS, I never had a problem with port and starboard watches. Yes sometimes you were tired, but not enough to not do your job. And I don't think the sea state was that bad that turning down the gain slightly would be that much of a deal.
It's hilarious that the Russian explanation of why their ship was sunk is essentially: "It sank due to our own incompetence, rather than Ukrainian attacks." You can't make this stuff up.
Yeah, it's a lose, lose argument. It would sound just as bad if you claimed that you lost multiple BTGs due to friendly fire rather than from enemy fire.
Tbh, do you think it'd be more embarrassing for the US if an aircraft carrier got sunk by stupid people on board or a North Korean ICBM? I can see the logic. But why didn't they just credit it to NATO or US intelligence competence, instead of anything Ukraine did, idk. Seems like something more plausible and defensible. But Russia isn't known for making good decisions lol
I was thinking the same, Imagine being a Russian sailor in a non combat region now being worried that they will die due to the poorly designed and maintained ship they are on. Most likely the dumbest explanation they could have ever come up with.
Something that might be worth considering is the fact that the Slavas were built in Ukraine, at 61 Communards Shipyard in Mykolaiv. If the ships have any weak points then there is a high probability that there are people living in Ukraine who know them quite well.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: Dimitry was cooking potatoes and by accident put the ship's kitchen on fire. The crew then followed the Russian's procedures to extinguish fire: sinking the ship. By the way, Russia didn't lose a single tank in this war: setting their own tanks on fire is a Russian technique to keep mosquitoes away. Everything is going as planned!
Dimitry was smoking with his friend in the magazine room, and both were drinking vodka, and when they heard the c.o coming they tossed the cigarettes into a pile of boxes , and realizing their mistake, they tried to extinguish it with the bottle they had and the rest is history
@Violet Canzonetti ahh yes! With millions of tons of water now stacked on top of the ship, there is no known weapon in any military service able to breach the mighty Russian vessel's hull! *#SavelivesSmokePutin*
As somebody that has worked with radars, I am not really surprised by the outcome. Heavy rain attenuates radar signals extremely well, especially on high frequencies, like those used for the OSA fire control radar ( somewhere between 10 and 15 GHz). In this case a Radar that is able to track a small target like a missile at a range of 10 km can be reduced to ~2km range. Large search radars, which operate on lower frequencies, generally don't suffer from the same problem nearly as much. So it is entirely possible that they were aware of the two missiles for the last 10 to 15 miles, but were not able to engage them until in range of the CIWS. Would be interesting to know if this has been modeled in DCS, considering that they have an extremel well modeled radar engine.
The Russians may have been overconfident that the Ukrainian's could touch them out to sea. Nothing kills faster in combat than underestimating your opponent.
@@Dano12345100 that's what I'm thinking. Low-flying missiles in rain and an inattentive crew probably made for a bad combo. There are rumors that Ukraine distracted them with a drone, too, but I have zero confirmation of that.
Dedicated Police radar with a decent rain and your car measured speed can be carried to the court. The judge will check the weather conditions in the report, confirm it at the weather station and your speeding ticket flies out of the window.
Sea state would change how the radar sees the "sea clutter" I was an OS on USN Cruisers in the 70s and 80s. The radar can't see the missile because all it can see is sea clutter. And that's how the Ukrainians snuck them in. Edit: Also these are not Doppler radar. We had Phased Array radar with systems like the A/N SPS-48c. And is surface mode those could cut through that clutter to a certain extent. However, it was a problem for all navies at the time. OS2 USN 76-83.
My more recent info says it's still a major issue in choppy seas especially for these boats as the state of Russian silicon is rough. Obviously this may use something else that was available a while back but either way its 10 years out or full of noise and heat related issues that might have been resolved.
It was stormy that night. I was wondering of the impact of both rain and seas on longer range radar systems. I wondered if UA waited for the conditions for best success (ie stormy weather) as that would be their best strategy.
Regardless of the Moskva's defensive capabilities, you're looking at it from a country that knows how to operate a navy. Re the question about the cause of the explosion, if it had been an accidental ammunition explosion, that would not explain the Russians suddenly moving the rest of their targets - excuse me, ships - much farther out to sea.
Moskva would not have been the only ship in the vicinity with defence and intercept capabilities either There would have been 100 defence systems in the area
If the Moskva represented a significant portion of the fleet's anti-air defense then its loss would, of itself, dictate moving the rest of the ships further out.
Not really, main role of the cruiser was defense against... missiles. With that defense gone you would move all other ships out of range of possible attacks. Still - the range of these anti ship missiles is 250km so curvature of earth is helping you out there.
The Neptune missile is a much-improved version of the missile you used in the demonstration. The most important is that it is literally sea skimming. That is, it travels only 8 to 30 feet above the water surface - not the 50 ft you used. That is a proven fact as these missiles were in testing for several years and western sources have seen it in action. As for the sea conditions at the time of the strike there is some debate - around 24 hours later a video showed the sea was relatively calm, of course weather can change quickly. Also the the Ukrainians say they distracted Muskva radar by using drones. What 'distraction' means was never explained. More ominously for the Russians is that the Ukrainians say, with some confidence, that this will not be the last ship in the Black sea fleet sunk. Overall that doesn't portend well for ALL large ships from any Navy. Basically Neptune might be considered a 'stealth' subsonic cruise missile - up until the last seconds.
There was a report that a Bayraktar was up, and there are traces showing that a US built Raptor surveillance drone may have been way overhead as well. That's all I've seen so far in addition to the 2 Neptunes that hit, no word anywhere of how many may have been launched.
@@muhlenberg2608 If they had a drone they werent too sure about in terms of intention then you would think the crew would have been more alert to some sort of looming danger. What happened to their ESM?
The analysis I've seen (on twitter) is that a drone was used the distract from the missiles (and possibly to locate the Moskva). Apparently the phased array radar (on the hanger roof) which is good at low altitudes only has a 180° field of view - this was 'looking' at the drone while the missiles attacked from the other side. The 3d search radar (on the mast) has full 360° FOV but is no good against sea-skimmers (plus the storm and sea-clutter made things worse). Clever tactics by the Ukrainian forces!
Reports I've read in the Turkish press and defense journals say a Bayraktar drone distracted the ship, like running interference I suppose. Clever tactics, like you say. Nice analysis, Cap. Thoughtful and professional.
I've heard elsewhere that Moskva does not have full 360 degree defensive capability. If THAT is true then presumably the blind side is covered by another ship. But in a storm they perhaps lost formation leaving Moskva exposed? I'd be curious to know.
Some of the best ways to arm an ally in war is with strategic knowledge. I imagine some of the brightest military strategists are feeding Ukraine with a ton of tactical knowledge.
I was an OS in the USN.. Weather like that would reduce the effective range of the radar and with the range reduced so is the reaction time of the crews. Stick someone on the radar who has been staring at the scope for an hour and I would bet they never even saw the missles coming. To react to that kind of threat in those conditions you have to have your best people in place at the right time or forget it. Given the lack of professionalism we have seen by the Russians so far? it isn't hard to see this out come and its sinking later because of damage? inexperienced crews all around.
@@yt45204 i doubt it tbh, im more tempted to lean on untrained crew or faulty maintenance as i doubt the russians or even the soviet union made they're command and control cruiser uncapabable of defending itself
Those systems are automated to detect and identify all incoming threats and to notify all designated personnel and defensive avoidance systems. The identified threat can be pre-validated by an operator(s), or the defensive system can be fully automated fire-at-will.
@@additudeobx No vessel is a Robot-Humans have to verify and then Humans have to take action. Given the reported conditions, the age of the systems of the Moskva etc. I have little doubt they never say the missile coming or if they did it was way past the time to take effective action.
@@yt45204 As missiles become more and more effective, the systems to detect and neutrailize them have to progress as well. Doppler radar is certainly better than older sweeping radars to find a target. If the weather conditions were reported correctly the range of older radars is greatly reduced. Sea swells actually return radar and thus older scopes look like a visual mess. I've been in the North Atlantic in the fall and skirted around a hurricane or two. Not fun and the effectiveness of man and machine is...well lets just say "not optimal".
Some people are saying they used a few drones to distract the crew. Rough weather, low training, and a credible distraction together could definitely be what went down.
@@palacio802 Of course Americans can, we've had rain dance technology for a couple hundred years now, send over specialist rain-dancers to start a storm and voila, the radar on that ship was down to 20% its normal effectiveness.
They attacked Moscow radars with drones rockets and in the storm weather Moscow was not able to fight with the stealthy drone... with destroyed radars it was game over for the flag ship...
@@tremedar there are some ways radars can be blinded. Jamming and deception are the most basic ones. But of course, state of the art rain-dancers are game changers, as well. Vaya gilipollas.
Back in the mists of time, I remember the interview of a Western naval officer invited aboard a Russian ship docked during a goodwill tour. The naval officer nearly had a heart attack when he saw that damage control gear, timbers etc, had literally been painted in place during maintenance. The quality of the crew goes a long way to ensuring a ship can return to port after severe damage.
Or even to prevent damage. It would help if the radar had detected the missiles and the radar operator actually saw it and deployed their anti-missile missile and the CIWS actually activated. That works much better than damage control.
@@daniel_dumile Meaning the gear was painted over while still in place, thereby adhering it to the surface the gear was mounted on. Don't know about the timbers.
The ship was so well defended that it sank itself before the Ukrainian missiles hit it, thus reduce the chance of it being sank by enemy missiles down to zero.
@@Дима-я5ы2э R-360 Neptune is a Ukrainian anti-ship cruise missile developed by the Luch Design Bureau. Neptune's design is based on the Soviet Kh-35 anti-ship missile, with substantially improved range and electronics. So basically it's just a old Soviet anti-ship missile that has been upgraded with better Electronics and fuel source
Sounds a bit like the Germans back in May 1941. " The Bismarck was scuttled by the ship's crew - two hours of shelling and torpedoes from the Royal Navy had nothing to do with the sinking."
The missile coming at low altitude with huge waves quite close to it's flightpath makes me think about radar tracking and local reflection. When I ran radioorienteering, i had a very strong reflection off a river bank. big waves might act as local dishes thus disabling the tracking system. The ship knew they were coming but couldn't get the right height and distance, so couldn't launch.
That was my thought as well - particularly given the radar dishes are well above the flight level of the missiles, and would thus be looking down towards the sea surface. I also think rain would degrade radar performance, which would have exacerbated the effect.
I have a question about this. At high/unstable sea states, wouldn't the sea skimming anti-ship missile's own radar seeker also have trouble acquiring and tracking the ship with all the high waves on its flight path? Thoughts?
If you know your radar sucks in bad weather sail out of range of coastal batteries before the said bad weather comes. Weather forecasts are good enough for at least 24h in this day and age. I'm beginning to think that IQ
@@blahdy21 I don't think so. Generally, you just need to send your ASM to the approximate target location, and you can get that from satellites. Then the missile pops up and uses active terminal guidance.
@@milosstojiljkovic5377 Yeah, and if you know you're standing on the highly irradiated site of the worst nuclear accident in human history maybe don't start digging trenches and rolling around in the dirty like a dog, and yet...
Soviets/Russians tend to be surprisingly individualistic in their preference to blame others or underlings or the dead to spare the nation's pride. As if losing a flagship due to own incompetence is less embarrassing than the enemy sinking it in action.
As others have mentioned, one of the dangers of sea-skimmer missiles like the Exocet, Kayak, and Neptune, is that in swelling seas, the fire control radar can't differentiate between the missiles and the sea swell. Once the missiles get close enough, the fire control system can no longer engage. I'm surprised that a missile got through that hail of 30mm but it's feasible! Especially given the reload time of those gatling guns.
@@ronaldthomas9396 probably not BUT the fire control radar for the S-300 only sees 180° so if the drone was being flown at the edge of the S-300 range on the other side of the ship from where the attack was coming, they could've literally had all eyes (radars) turned that way.
The problem is the fire control algorithms of the AK-630. It aims and shoots. The re-aiming aspect, or predicting the flight path and firing is underdeveloped.
Neptune were built specially for this case... 😁 Major difference between kh35 and neptue is flight profile. It fly high before it can be intercepted by s300. Then he goes lower under osa radar view (actually, same on wid, where waves hiding kh35). And final approach - 10ft, to hide from ak630 radar. But not at all... Speaking about drones - bulshit, as on later photos we can see radars on "cruise" positions. Looks like they werent aware of attack at all. They were just not ready to fighting. Even if drones were there, its just to lock target position and (maybe) to check radars. Tb2's can "see" up to 40-50mi from 25000ft. So can scan in passive visual mode staying invisible for s300 radars.
As far as I can tell: Moskva had the following triple layer air defense: 1) S300F (Naval) with 64 90km Grumbles 2) 9K33 OSA-M with 20 missiles per launcher (but are they M1, M2 or M3? Only M2 and M3 can hit sea skimmers, minimum engagement altitudes for the 3 missile types are 50, 25 and 10m) 3) 6 * AK-630 CIWS, 2 port, 2 starboard and 2 bow mounted which can see a good 270° so max 4 can engage. These all require a bewildering number of radar sets to work. Like, a dozen easy. A and they have to be trained. Like, say, if they were all looking to port while you were distracted by a TB2 drones, starboard is unwatched. AK-630 does not look like it has much depression. _At all_ OSA-M is obsolete, it still uses a 2 rail trainable launcher, reload time is unknown although they do retract. S300F is good but you won't have much time. Refire time is 3-5 seconds. However, target acquisition times for all 3 weapons is very slow, I've read 12 seconds. At Mach 0.8 it takes ~109 seconds to go from radar horizon to impact. This can get a lot of S300 rounds off but I don't know how many missiles it can juggle. OSA-M probably just can't engage at all if Neptune comes in at, I dunno, 2 meters? And AK-630, I don't know it's minimum engagement altitude. If it can't depress it's useless. So yeah, this is like the Falklands, 70s tech built to get choppers and high altitude bombers and that sorry of thing. Not good!
@@KJAkk Yeah, we figured it out elsewhere. With a bit of trig we figure it can only hit sea level targets at 50m out. Once you hit that 50m, it can't hit a sea skimmer. Looks like OSA-M can't hit anything below 10m So it's only S300F that gives you any chance. Apparently Neptune is at 2m during it's terminal phase so yeah, Moskva was in real trouble once in range. 70s tech Vs 21st century missiles = Having a Bad Time
I remember that more than once in the early days of the Phalanx system where the thing ran out of ammo!!! It was too busy shooting at fragments of various drones that it already hit! It has been fixed!! However, if the Ukrainians fired off several Neptunes (current production and reasonably modern) Missiles then I can see the Russian CIWS running out of ammo!!! Especially when you include things like drones being used as decoys, the big waves (sea return will basically make your radar screen "white out") and the rain (once again lots of water giving you false returns) and the relatively small target of a Harpoon sized missiles coming at you head on..... Yeah, the Ukrainians did sink her!!!!!!!!!!
@@MostlyPennyCat This is the most bizarre logic. Do you think that 50m is the engagement range of an AK-630? If the missile's got within that range, it's going to hit regardless. The OSA-MA2 is the production model of naval OSA-Ms since the mid-80s, and has engagement capability down to 5m. The warhead has a lethal radius of 5m. The Neptune wouldn't be saved by flying at 2m. The Neptune isn't a 21st century missile, it's a 20th century missile slightly modernized with 21st century equipment. The Slava's tech is ranging between 80s and 90s. You're wrong from every angle, the sea state was the issue, not the tech levels.
The U.S. nearly lost a warship in the Gulf to an air launched anti-ship missile due to hesitation by the human crews on target ID. The thing about these DSC sims is that those ships get shot at all the time so that the programming is live-fire tested. Also, the AI performs target ID and threat assessment instantly and perfectly every time like a very experienced crew who is ready and expecting to get shot at. Modern navies and their crews almost never get shot at, so their procedures, training, and human response under direct fire adrenalin are never fully tested. These incidents are so rare that they occur against un-blooded troops. In the U.S. Navy incident, the missile was stopped in the nick of time by the point defenses of another ship. An error was made though, twice. The target fired off chaff to fool the incoming missile, but it also fooled the neighboring ship's seawiz into shooting into the target ship.
senator john mccain nearly sank his own aircraft carrier during the vietnam war by allowing his missiles to launch on deck and blow up tow other aircraft. when your father is an admiral, you can get away with this. his senate career was similar.
I was in the Persian Gulf war I in 91 the ship I was in was with USCC Saratoga, America and Kennedy in the area it was along with many others as mineisweepers from Germany , destroyers and frigates form other countries.. What you say has an absolute truth base to it and so it is. Teamwork and coordination in the fleet were the most important along with the crew position to perform.. A tired crew has disadvantages, a worn-out crew as well even more. AFAIK that Russian ship was already 4.5 months in Syria before it came up to the Black sea and adding to that, who knows if the crew had time to get in a port all this time and what was their daily program.
That was the footage of the old battleship going to "brace brace brace" right? And it was a British frigate I believe that shot it down. But yeah, sprayed the Battleship with some PD due to the friendly chaff confusing it.
Sims also tend to massively underestimate failure rates and assume perfect equipment. As we have seen during this invasion: what russia says their stuff does on paper does not match the reality AT ALL. ERA blocks made of cardboard, helis getting merced by systems that shouldnt really be much of a threat, old equipment with no NVG or flir capability. Many people seem to forget that russian press releases are not trustworthy, russian test reports.. .are not trustworthy. One off demos with small numbers of people/equipment... are not trustworthy. Ihave never understood the commieboos and russiaboos, blindly saying soviet and then russian gear was the equal of the west. AT BEST, we cant say how effective their gear is because we have NO reliable data on the equipment.
The Slavas were originally built to operate in the NORTH ATLANTIC, where the weather is often uniformly horrible. It's pretty hard to believe the systems would refuse to operate. Seems SO much more likely - given the training levels of the crew involved - that the operable problem is human-related.
I did firefighting as part of my training for the carriers when i was on harriers. They changed the fire procedures massively because of what happened in the Falklands. They found that fire flash was a big problem so they now have a thing called a ships protector where a hose with a disc spread spray either connected to hatch or door combing or when the door or hatch is opened the hose is quickly jammed in the orifice to cover the hole with a spray of water that covers the orifice. It stops the fire flashing through the door/hatch & as such protects the ship & crew from the flash. It’s probably been updated even more since i did it.
Waterwall, on! Firefighter, prove foam! Jolly japes with the Royal Navy! How we didn't get killed in training I don't know! Civilian firefighters would never attempt a re-entry from above.
Did it several times in early 90's with the royal navy ,old smoking proper fireboxes and solid brass turn nozzles, - no1 firefighter, no 2 - waterwall, no3 - command, no 4 hose tender - 4 man fire team. entry from side into several fires , then above into normal fire - instructor would throw diesel onto fire as no1 went through the waterwall sealing open hatch- nice little fireball, fun.....then side entry into oil fire having changed to foan f5bx nozzle for no1. i know the nozzles have hanged to a different type these days so have the suit no more thick wool but i bet they still have a waterwall nozzle.
On US ships everyone is trained in firefighting not so in a russian. Only a few men trained for that. And this ship did not have waterproof shutters and can be closed to minimize flooding of compartments
the main thing here is dcs is based on the capability of hardware, not the maintenance required to keep it working based on the economic state of the ownership country. also, there were reports that drones were used to distract the ships radar. but, was the radar even maintained? are the missile systems maintained? are the missile tubes even filled?
These questions are supported by the rest of the war. What happens to a military in a kleptocracy? It gets hollowed out while those and the top are fed whatever bullshit they demand to hear.
I think maintenance is a KEY point in this incident, Tim Allison. So is crew training. Also, the officers have to be ready to risk a "blue on blue" incident by actually firing the ship's weapons. That sounds silly, but to a navy just coming out of peacetime, it is a real factor. The US had a lot of trouble with it in the night surface battles around Guadacanal in WWII.
looks likely that they got hit by the missiles but it's still completely plausible that it sunk due to inability to deal with accidents. Russia really is that bad.
@@anthonyb5279 That doesn't make much sense, Ukraine claimed to have shot it before Russia acknowledged there was a problem, then Russia threatened massive retaliation, and this morning Russia launched a costly strike to hit seemingly every Ukranian city in retaliation. They wouldn't do that for an "Accident", the fact that Russia even screamed at Ukraine about their attack (before going back to the accident narrative) pretty much proves it
As was pointed out by those below who would definitely know, sea-state can limit target detection for a sea-skimmer. It was reported to be "A dark and stormy night" on the black sea. Credit the Ukrainians for using that fact to their advantage! Couple that with the issue of the ships watch-section probably having utter assurance that they were safe, ergo inattention on-watch, Ukraine having no ships with which to oppose them, and with a probable lack of training, and Mr. Neptune becomes "Dr. Benjamin Dover, MD, Proc." One also wonders how effective their damage control efforts were, and doubts it was effective. As soon as the news reports said that the crew had been removed, I knew the game was over, you do NOT abandon ship unless you have no hope of saving it. You can keep a ship afloat after major damage. As a snipe, DC was part of living and breathing aboard ship, (USN Ret.) but obviously not so much for them.
Yes your description of the weather is quite a bit off and either way I doubt both missiles would have made it through. The whole story doesnt seem very likely to me especially because Neptune missiles or not cheap and shooting them at a slava class is not a safe bet
There is at least one thing people haven't noted much here- the actual post-attack photos show the missile/s impacted in exactly the same place that DCS said they did. Forward of the funnels, aft of the P-500s etc.
It was not sunk by missiles! It courageously destroyed two missiles by sailing into them, and it's a complete coincidence the ship accidentally caught fire at the same moment, causing it to sink ;)
The ship saw the missiles and ran into them with typical Russian bravery, proving that the sea belongs not to any stupid Ukranian missile, and now the ship is searching the sea floor for any more treacherous Ukranian technology
Just like it’s land based cousins (T-72s) stopping the javelins and nlaws by blowing up, it gallantly stopped the Neptune missile in its tracks, causing the Neptune to blow up and stop flying.
Large swells and rain/ cloud cover absolutely effects radar accuracy, and with those missiles flying low like that just skimming the surface, I'm not surprised that the Russians lost their floating missile launch pad. Those Ukrainian boys knew what they were doing.
As a former RF engineer, I can think of a few things that might be going on here. First, there is a thing called "rain fade" that affects microwaves (and presumably radar). So the effective detection distance might be greatly shortened. Remember that in the radar equation the returned signal power falls off as the 4th power of the distance. Adding a loss element such as rain fade in both the forward and returned direction could greatly affect signal levels. Remember that the detection distance is not when the target comes over the horizon, it is when the target emerges from the dectector noise. Second, salt water is highly reflective in RF so there might be some effects from multipath that could confuse the software and therefore might make the aiming accuracy a little less accurate. Third, if there is a high sea state the salt spray from white caps may make the layer of air near the sea surface rather more opaque thus also shortening available response times. This might mean that the defensive missile may not have sufficient time to correct its course for an intercept. Anyway, just some thoughts. Someone with more experience with radar guidance might be able to provide better insight.
But with modern real time digital signal processing (ie RADAR return oversampling) random returns from sea spray, rain, waves etc. can be filtered out and constants picked out of the noise - exactly why the "stealth" fighter programme is as good as dead. painting a picture with RADAR returns used to be limited by clutter and noise - we can now increase gain on RADAR returns by a ridiculous amount (which would have once produced nothing but unintelligible white noise) and crunch the returns in real time through DSP chips to find tiny constant returns. This sort of processing would have taken a football field of computers a week to process in the 1970s - now a $10 chip can do it in real time.
Do you think that "Moskva" was sunk... No, Russian scientists made her invisible, remember the "Philadelphia experiment" in 1943 with the destroyer "Eldridge". The Moskva cruiser is 3 miles from Washington on full alert, it is invisible, there is no need to supply weapons to Ukraine, when the point of no return is passed, America will be under attack, the Russians never fight civilians. The military infrastructure will be destroyed.
@@LondonSteveLee I've often wondered (but assumed I was being naive) that if a stealth plane has the radar return of a small bird, doesn't this mean it is being detected okay and the radar computers just need to look for birds doing Mach 1. I figured the radar couldn't track the "bird" long enough to measure its speed.
@@donkeysunited In the old days a bird-sized RADAR return would be lost in clutter and rejected, these days each return is digitally hot-spotted and if anything appears to be valid movement it is detected as a track, if a bird sized return is doing 400+ knots then the system knows it's not a bird and therefore it will not be filtered out as clutter. Think of an old analogue TV with the aerial disconnected - that's what RADAR returns look like electronically amplified many-fold - but imagine a constant pixel in all that noise that's always-on - and that hot pixel appears to be moving (ie has a flight path) otr is a constant in front of you - that's a valid return - this oversampling and hot-spotting of return data is how modern systems spot tiny, tiny RADAR returns. The RADAR itself doesn't have to be that amazingly powerful it's how the data is processed that counts. Blue Vixen on Sea Harrier FA2 was one of the first fighter-sized RADAR installations with such a real time digital signal processing system. Again ground clutter was rejected by ignoring returns that don't have increased-decreased gain, modern systems can actually process those returns in real time and map the ground and or structures. This also means modern RADARs cannot be notched as that old fashioned way of rejecting ground clutter is no longer employed (in western RADARs) in other words appearing static on a RADAR by flying equidistant to the source no longer works against modern systems.
That was crazy, it's like short range defense missiles were losing their locks over and over due to the waves rendering launch impossible. We are learning a lot in this terrible war, and NATO too
Could it be that Ukrainian forces knew of the relative ineffectiveness of the ship's defences during storm conditions and patiently waited for the elements to oblige before launching their attack?
Realize this, the Moskva is packed stem to stern with high powered, high explosive weaponry, this ship is a Roman candle just waiting for a light. I also wouldn't doubt that the ship was cruising around with out all it's water tight compartments and vent NOT closed, typical Russian ineptness. The Ukrainians totally distracted the ships bridge and defensive radars by flying a few drones high up in the air around the Moskva, they also has the local weather conditions going for them, all the stars lined up perfectly. Apparently the Moskva didn't even get to fire off it's in close anti missile defense guns, they didn't know what hit them until it was way too late.
If you look back a few years at evaluations of the Slava class cruisers, the difficulty of performing damage control due to the extensive use of flammable materials throughout the ship is frequently mentioned, along with the huge volume of ordnance carried by the ship. So those cruisers were always suspected of having a glass jaw, and if Russian sailors are as incompetent as Russian soldiers that makes things even worse. I suspect also that the Ukrainians used the Russian's own doctrine against them. The Slava class was intended to overwhelm US carrier strike group defenses with quantity. It's got 16 anti-ship missiles ready to fire. A Ukrainian Neptune battery is reportedly even larger; it's got 6 launcher erectors with 4 missiles each, for a total of 24 missiles. I'm sure they didn't just fire a single missile and hope their drone feint would have distracted the ship.
they waited for the stars to align to try this, the Ukranians are being so incredibly effective with their limited resources. Every helicopter, plane, and advanced rocket that Ukraine has is spent carefully. There will be courses taught in academies about Ukranian military strategy for decades
There are certain significant factors that this simulation ignores. Firstly, the Ukrainians used a Bayraktar drone to 'distract' the ship's crew. Secondly, the Moskva was sailing close to the Snake Island. If the size of the waves is enough to prevent deployment of the OSA guns, then the island can also mask the approach of the Ukrainian missiles. Thirdly, the Moskva was built in Nikolaev, Ukraine. It is a Soviet-era ship. Therefore the Ukrainians must be very, very familiar with that ship.
Bairaktar is not any serious problem for the ship. It is easy to destroy. And the ship defence is ready to handle a simultaneous attack of several missiles. Obviously a Bairaktar is much less dangerous object compared to an anti-ship missile: it is slow, it is well visible and it has nothing special in it. The only explanation were an explosion on board or a wrong level of alertness in which the systems were put in. If Ukrainians did the strike, then it is strange that the video is missing, because usually they film every meaningful action an use it in propaganda videos.
@@dandelobo9284 I am following Ukrainian telegram groups and after the Moskva was lost, the number of daily air raids targeting Ukraine has gone up dramatically.
> Thirdly, the Moskva was built in Nikolaev, Ukraine. It is a Soviet-era ship. Therefore the Ukrainians must be very, very familiar with that ship. In fact Ukrainians were upgrading and repairing Moskva in Nikolaev a few years back, Russians refused to pay, so Ukrainians removed some systems they installed and returned the ship :) @Dan Delobo Moskva had just one good long-range radar and it can only scan 180 degree at once. If Bayraktar drone was on the one side and Naptun missiles went very low over the sea from the other side - it's possible they were detected too late to react.
@@os360 They already announced the increase of attack before this happened. And even if you wouldn't take this fact into account, whatever caused the lose of such a ship the number of attacks would be go up in every case. Therefore to see it as a "revenge" would be absolutely wrong. The fact of lose of the ship as such is absolutely enough for to be a reason to intensify the fire.
@@ajuc005 It doesn't mean that they know how to disable the defence. If it were the missiles, than the only good explanation were the wrong level of alertness set. There are different levels and they affect how fast systems of the ship and the crew are able to react to a danger. Rain and storm -- it is surely was taken into account by the developing the defence. It is strange to hear something like this in this video. We would hear it otherwise immediately from many experts and officials in US and elsewhere: "storm was a reason why Moskva couldn't intercept the missiles". But we didn't.
The question is was this an issue with Russia or all warships and missiles? China’s and Russia’s ability to fire missiles are much more significant than Ukraine’s. This incident along with the results of the Falkland Islands seems to confirm Navy planners are over estimating ship’s ability to defend themselves. It seems just like Battleship armor was over rated.
Oh battleship armor was fine for pre aircraft threat the aircraft threat is what was underestimated by the Battleship side of Navies. And if they realized the aircraft threat more deck armor would have helped keep the Battleships out there. Plus moving battleships way harder to hit and kill than WWI Battleships at Pearl Harbor. Japanese being chicken till way to late with their surface ships also hurt Battleship reputation. Taking their large battleship force and blowing the hell out of Midway and taking the island with their transports should have been done US only had one Carrier left to use and it in actual battle only sunk one heavy cruser. Japanese Battleships if sent in force to Guadalcanal would have won that battle and again after engagement with Japanese carriers US carriers unavailable. Still Battle ships just help the carriers and were very helpful in all the invasions still not worth building after that although cruse missile battleships never fought and some future versions might be very hard to deal with with Super guns and missiles they even up the range advantage of carriers.
@@milferdjones2573 You forget one of the major threats to Battleships was torpedos. More deck armor would have just made Battleships even more top heavy and more prone to roll over then they already were. The US still had the Enterprise and the Hornet after Midway and the Saratoga arrived in Pearl Harbor on June 6th. After the loss of the Yorktown at Midway the Navy immediately recalled the Wasp and sent her to the Pacific as well. She arrived in San Diego on June 19th and participated in the Battle for Guadalcanal in August. So she also would have been available if Midway had continued into the end of June or July. Midway was also in range of B-17s from Hawaii. If the Japanese fleet had stayed around Midway without air cover they would have been picked off one by one.
Slava cruisers carry the missiles in thin metal cans strapped on the side. Hit one of those and you’ll have the warhead and solid propellant to deal with. Along with those either side. Older battleships protected their ammunition (especially gun propellant) in thick steel cases deep in the ship. Diving shells would never get deep enough horizontal shells (and sea skimming missiles) have layers of thick armour to contend with. Slava class does not have those armoured citadels.
@@matthewhuszarik4173 Minor corrections: Lexington was lost at Coral Sea, Yorktown was lost at Midway(or more appropriately, after the battle)as it was being prepped for towing back to Pearl Harbor.
Very difficult to hit a missile flying at wave height in rough weather. Radar suffers from returns from the sea. Hitting a missile in flight is very difficult. Israel achieved it over land.
Russian statement on the (surviving) crew of the Moskva: "'Officers, midshipmen and contract personnel will continue service in the Navy. Conscript sailors on the Moskva will be relieved of their duties in the near future." So there were apparently conscripts on-board, in a complex war zone. I can imagine who on duty at 1am and who was in their bunks.
Good points. It does seem that crew training and officer conduct was likely at fault with either missile counters or damage control, seems that overall moskva should have been able to survive that attack
First the Moskva was lured by a drone at the opposite side of the ship. Second the missiles used the drone system to launch at the good direction (without using the batteries radars so their launch was un detected). Third the Neptune missiles used a blind launch and low flight to prevent detection until their about 1 minute from impact were their used their own radar, it's too late for defences to be used at this time. the time for pointing radars and armament, acquiring the target and firing is too short. One last thing, somme of the missiles on the Moskva can't engage a target with low altitude (50 meters from old missiles, 10 from new, the Moskva didn't have the new ones).
I don't believe a ship like that could be distracted just by something on the other side too, these are combined 3d radars etc. But yes a drone was used with some kind of electronic warfare to jam the radars so the missiles could slip in. But since the missiles skim slow why would a launch be detected, and not from a drone? it would only be detected once over the horizon, but if the sea is rough that can create clutter. I heard a usa plane "poseidon" was uszed tho to give the exact location of the ship, so perhaps indeed the missile didn't really need his own radar to track the ship, I'm not sure. But ukraine certainly played it smart, cuz this was their best protected air defense ship they had.
The swells pose a computational problem both for DCS and the actual fire control systems on the ship. As the size of the swells increase the required processing power increases exponentially as the range for each variable increases. At some point you overwhelm the fire control system with more data than it can calculate.
I don't think the radar for anything except the premium aircraft are fully modeled with ray tracing. They use a simple algorithm using percentages of distance, cross sections, altitude, weather, etc and a dice roll to determine if something is detected. Actual playable aircraft like the F5, Viggen, F18, etc use a raytracing like method that actually calculates every significant surface that is visible from the aircraft. You can tell because your frame rate drops like crazy when you have the ground scanning radar on but you can drop a bunch of AI controlled radars without the same loss of performance.
sorta, it's about the noise threshold, you need your target to have a large enough radar return to exceed the clutter/noise threshold. At the start, it's an analog/microwave signal that is returned to the radar. The return signal is amplified but the baseline has to be established for what is a true return vrs unwanted noise/clutter. The system has processors for different weather effects/interference.
We are assuming, of course, that proper maintenance and training was done of the various systems. Or that the defensive missiles were not past their shelf life.
Aside from the possible (or even actual) weather issues, I also wondered a lot about the effect of complacency combined with poor morale and training. If the crew believed that they were not in danger ("We're too far offshore, and besides the Ukrainians have nothing that can hit us!"), the realization that there was incoming fire may have delayed activating the response. I will admit to being shocked that what should have been survivable hits ended up sinking the ship, which does point to bad damage control training. But we'll never get the answer from the Russians.
The Moskova would have needed to be beyond Sevastopol to be out of range of the Neptune missile. I am sure the Russian Navy was aware of the risk. I think the Ukrainians just played their hand very well , I bet they did not expect it to be sunk.
@@walterblanc9708 Russian military planning having just reset could also play into the outcome. Since Russian forces redeployment to the east it leaves the corridor from the west side open. The Ukrainian army probably has 10x the number of trident missiles since the day of sinking. I would expect Mariupol to be In Ukrainian hands in a month.
With 16 gigantic easy to hit missile tubes stuck outside on the deck of the Moskva, I am surprised that ANY explosion near it would not detonate those missile tubes and doom the ship. The giant missiles look really cool out there, but this seems like a very bad Soviet style design.
I don't think 2 missiles exploding would sink it. I would bet that the one or both of them hit the ships missiles causing them to explode like dominos.
Like the majority of ships hit by a modern ASM some if not all the defensive systems were never turned on. The ship captains believed there was no danger to their ships.
When you are involved in a wartime situation, the best defense is to take nothing for granted and be prepared for any and all things. It is apparent that the ship has no, or very little, damage control or fire-fighting capability. I will also speculate that the electronic systems are not well maintained. Also, 80% of that ship is above water (top heavy) combined with a 21 ft. draft, it would not be a very stable platform and would probably capsize and sink in heavy weather.
Part of that issue is that you can't have the crew on the razor's edge the whole time and by this time it would be well over a month. Perhaps a well trained crew but as we've gathered so far, the training in the Russian Military isn't that good overall.
All warships appear to be top heavy but that does not make them unstable since the centre of buoyancy moves when they heel. This creates a righting moment.
@@grimreapers that is if what the Russian states was true. As is the case in this Ukraine war, it seems Russia is massively overstating their technology and weaponry. Capitalizing on their success of few products like AK rifle to create a myth of invincible weapon producer.
Is it possible, and I know this is really going out on a limb, that a country (let's keep it general here not to hurt anybody's feelings) might overstate their technological capabilities to appear more dangerous than they really are? i was watching a documentary the other day discussing some confiscated "advanced" technology from Russia, and it was really just off the shelf, Chinese made gear of dubious quality. There's a very good chance that Russia's strength is largely just smoke and mirrors...
@@ClockworkAnomaly While I generally agree with the sentiment of Russian/Soviet terrible hardware quality, I don't think using a Canon camera in a recon drone is part of them. For its purpose, that particular camera is perfectly adequate and are both cheap and abundant (in the market pre-war) enough to be economical. Russia doesn't really need to produce their own custom military spec camera that will drive up the cost even more, in fact I don't think Russia is industrially capable of producing their own high fidelity camera + lenses either. And as a comparison many other superpowers did similar thing before as well.
The Moskva's primary defensive radar was stowed when you look at the pictures of the Moskva when it was being towed. To an untrained eye this means the ship was not expecting an attack!
Radar clutter, as other people already mentioned here. I was an RF engineer for a long time and I learned that clutter is a real issue trying to track low flying objects.
Modern Doppler radar can deal with radar clutter. The Moskva just wasn't modern, it was 20 years out of date. You can tell by its mechanically rotating radar.
@@williamzk9083 indeed. All modern vessels have a phased array radar, but can that deal with all clutter? Will that detect a low flying missile over a choppy sea?
@@hansrosenberg3115 With Coherent Pulse Doppler radar you can detect movement. The radar maintains an extremely accurate local oscillator reference, the radar pulse is sent out in phase with this. When the echo returns its phase is measured and stored. When the next pulse comes back its phase is also stored. If the target has moved the phase will change. The Germans even had in WW2 a system called Wurzlaus on their Wurzburg radars to overcome windows clutter. They didn't have digital memory but used acoustic delay lines. It's of course more complicated in that there are multiple pulse sequences on different frequencies that are dithered to avoid jamming. The Moskva just looks a little old and not so good at filtering out clutter. The mechanical scanning radars means maybe 5-10 seconds is lost between rotations cutting into warning times. The Russians could probably do better but they didn't and got sunk.
@@williamzk9083 clear answer. Sounds very logical technically. Which makes you wonder:why the hell did the put their flagship in such a dumb position knowing the Ukraine has weapons like that. Really dumb tactics.......
@@hansrosenberg3115 I think arrogance, they underestimated the Ukrainian will & resolve. I actually agree with the sea clutter theory. The Russian radar just wasn't good enough or modern enough. Cruise missiles have a very small radar signature. I would imagine an effort is put into making them stealthy.
Thankyou Reapers. Great little docco. Informative (Truly enlightening really) and entertaining. For those of us with a very basic understanding of naval hardware, you have brought reality to us in language we can readily digest. 10 out of 10.
Imagine a super-advanced Digital Combat Simulator running on a supercomputer in Arlington, VA, using all the data gleaned from years of observing the Slava class cruisers during naval exercises around the world. Imagine being able to precisely model the physics of how microwaves reflect off waves and rain, taking into account temperature and even the salinity of the water. Imagine being able to plug in the precise parameters of the R-360 "Neptun" missile, including its radar cross section. Too bad Ukraine didn't have access to such technical resources. Or maybe, just maybe, they did...
If anything they would have used Harpoon V or its competitor whose name escapes me at the moment. which is a dedicated Naval Warfare simulator that goes has a lineage that goes all the way back to the late 80s. Clancy used it to wargame Red Storm Rising and naval academies and think tanks use it to simulate scenarios all the time. Harpoon V was release I want to say in 2020 so its dataset should be fairly relevant.
From what I understand, the attack was undertaken at night and in bad weather which may have reduced the Moskva's defensive abilities. Also, Ukraine are claiming 2 missile hits but how many did they actually fire? Maybe they fired 20 missiles and only 2 got through? We likely won't have those details until later. In any event, nothing is invincible and as much as the Russians would like us to think so, it has become apparent over the last 50 days that their military is nowhere near as good as we thought it was and Ukraines military is far better than anyone gave it credit for. Keep up the good work, Cap! Fun fact: the Moskva (formerly Slava) was built in Mylolaiv, one of the cities which has suffered greatly during the recent war. There's a whiff of poetic justice about this.
So a single launcher can do 4 missiles per truck. I kind of find it hard to believe they would hold back and not blow the whole truck i.e. 4 missiles if they really thought they had a chance to sink the thing. If for no other reason to try and overwhelm the defense systems!
Apparently, they sent Bayraktar TB-2 drone to distract the engagement radar because said radar only could engage one target, at only one direction. So when Moskva trained their radar towards the drone, and add to the choppy seas rendering all sensors ineffective, those missiles could only be detected by Mark One Eyeballs. And it'll be too late.
Ehhh Ukraine is buying most of their stuff from already developed countries, America being a big part. 2.1 billion in aid. It’s not as if Ukraine built all of their stuff prior to this. Which none of it is.
From what I've been reading, the Neptune missile cruises at about 10-15m and goes to about 4m above sea level on terminal flight. Both missile systems struggle to acquire anything below 15-20m so it's possible the missile radar just didn't pick up the incoming. As you say in the video, if the guns hit at all is somewhat random. Add bad seastate probably making radar contact with the missiles intermittent, apparent drone use to distract the AA systems and low visibility and the invincible becomes very vincible.
Moskva was never meant for independent operation. It was always a "first strike" ship of a MUCH larger navy, meant to engage enemy carrier groups with a barrage of huge missiles including 2 tactical nuclear missiles, while covering its own support group with its strong anti-aircraft defense. Anti-aircraft meaning anti-helicopter and anti-airplane. The smaller screening ships around Slava would be handling enemy missiles. It has several radars, but the outdated fire control system meant that only one target per radar could be engaged at a time. In Soviet times in Soviet doctrine, the risk was thought to be affordable compared to the danger Moskva posed to CAGs. You're right about the drones, they were indeed meant to distract the AA so that Osa SAMs wouldn't have a chance to react to incoming ASMs. And perhaps to paint the target, too.
Do you think that "Moskva" was sunk... No, Russian scientists made her invisible, remember the "Philadelphia experiment" in 1943 with the destroyer "Eldridge". The Moskva cruiser is 3 miles from Washington on full alert, it is invisible, there is no need to supply weapons to Ukraine, when the point of no return is passed, America will be under attack, the Russians never fight civilians. The military infrastructure will be destroyed.
Very unlikely that would be a problem even if hit, the rotary AAM launchers on the other hand would probably cause the sort of damage which could cripple and sink such a ship... wonder where the Galley is on that boat, that would be another likely source of shipboard fire. The Ukranian claims are both varying too much as well as lacking evidence to be considered as genuine.. so an ammunition misfire or magazine fire seems more likely, especially those big AAMs amidships, a catastrophic fire in those space would cause all kinds of problems and could split the ship in 2...
@@larryzigler6812 Go ahead and correct him with facts then... instead of just saying WRONG, like you did something to disprove his observation/experience. That's a simpleton move and ignorant at most.
Just noticed, despite having most AA missiles at the stern of the ship, there's no close quarters guns there, its a big blind spot, but not surprising for a ship clearly designed to smash straight into an enemy fleet. Well the results were very interesting, but I do believe that crew training was an issue.
You're probably speaking of crew training to defend from an incoming, but there's another aspect of training: damage control. Other ships have been hit by cruise missiles, some went down (notably some smaller UK ships in the Falklands war), others didn't (the USS Stark, a much smaller ship hit by two cruise missiles). It might be that with better damage control training, the crew of the Moskva could have saved her. Otoh, it's possible that the incoming hits were lucky, and caused one of Moskva's own missiles to explode. If that happened, it would probably have been on the other side of the ship, since the launchers on the port side seem intact. The fact that it's listing to port makes that unlikely, but it is possible that the incoming passed cruise missile passed entirely through the starboard side of the Moskva and exploded just inside the port side, causing more damage at the waterline there, while still igniting one of the starboard side missiles.
Some Navies place gun type CIWS amidships, because thats where the majority of Exocet / Harpoon type weapons of that generation aim for and you generally wont have to deal with a crossing target. USN Navy differs in this regard and places them fore and aft.
I remember when I lived in Hull ,there was a memorial to 2 fisherman killed by the tsars imperial navy on the way to fight the Japanese navy in 1905 .The Russian's navy is still incompetent.
That a fun thing to look up as the Russian Admiral threw binocular after binocular into the Ocean when frustrated. The level of incompetence was insane. The mistaking of British Fishing Fleet for Japanese torpedo boats almost caused a war except the Russians missing them when firing on them. British Intercepted after that incident with home fleet and Admiral in charge considering what he was up against told the Russians I'm only going to use five of my Battleships considering the Russians performance later that would have sunk the whole Russian Fleet but it got worked out and British Admiral called off before it went down. Consider the Russians could not hit a fishing boat and the British accuracy in WWI the British would have crushed the Russians probably without being hit.
There's two good Russian sailors. One was a revolutionary who didn't let a little thing like his ship sinking stop him. The other was actually Lithuanian and entirely fictional. Both spoke with a Scottish accent.
That is only a claim. Maybe they just swarmed it with enough missiles. The search radar should still be searching regardless of what weapon radars are doing.
They didn't. Bayraktar has only 150km control range and 7-8km missile range. It would have been shot down by 130mm dual purpose guns before getting in range
I suspect the drone was not only used to 'distract' the Moskva but to locate and track the vessel. The Neptune missiles has a command link to update the targets position and so this would have allowed an optimal attack approach. The missiles active search radar would only have been turned on at the last moment. Ukrainina officers served on the Moskva and knew its systems. I suspect some effort at noise jamming to degrade the Moskva's radar and reduce range. They should have had 30-40 seconds warning with the missile picked up at 10km or more. I blame the AK-630 so called CIWS and its radar for this failure. The Phalanx has its search and target tracking radar mounted above and beneath the gun. The tracking radar will track the target and the rounds from the same antenna. The deviation of round and target on same antenna thus eliminates any alignment issue.
The seas were rough , ever see an surface search radar in heavy seas? It’s umm degraded. Rain also adds to this, the main reason was sea state and degraded surface radar that the missiles were more than likely never even seen, it was a brilliant move by Ukraine with the low flying missiles, It’s not wind that degraded radar , it’s the sea state, and if surface search radar can not detect anything, it sure is not sending telemetry to fire control, or the missile , it does not see it. Only a very focused and experienced radar operator would have even detected this, with a outstanding peak tuned radar, and all this is proving operations department is on top of everything all the time 100% of the time, that is just not possible, and these systems are not just set and forget , a missile launch and is not something taken lightly,, as one would do using with a simulator. My take, and I know a little about all this in real life. 1 Weapons systems have limitations, 2 weapons systems are ran by humans, and errors happen, a lot more than you think. 3 running simulators do not reflect real life. They are a simulator and add even more limitations in a search for truth. I was surprised the sim reflected degraded fire control solutions at all. But it did, as a guy who spent years in the red glowing room as soon as Ukraine claimed what they did, it made perfect sense to me, and was a brilliant move in perfect conditions for getting a hit or two. The Russian story sounds absurd. And if you spent time on warships , in conflict, you know all about how bad the Russian claims are. Very very unlikely. That is my simi educational wild a#% guess. Well you asked!
Well-said and I agree, this is 100% plausible and probably exactly what happened. They wouldn’t have used those missiles in clear air, but the conditions were perfect. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they launched MANY at the same time to multiply their odds of success.
They probably used bad wheather yes ,but Moskva had only one radar system on board , Ukrainians used Bayraktar drone to mislead the radar sytem - and then released 2 Neptun missiles , not one, to make things even more complicated
It seemed that Ukrainians claimed the kill well before the Russians admitted their “fire”. So either the Ukrainians are telling the truth or they’re lying but somehow have incredible intelligence on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
A few extra thoughts : 1. I remember many years back (I THINK USS Stark hit by 2 missiles) part of the failure was the CIWS system didn't take down two incoming missiles. They were the same distance and the system couldn't decide which one to hit first, so it did nothing. 2) According to another post the UKR also had a Bayraktar in the area. On top of the weather issues mentioned, I suspect when the Neptunes were close, the Bayraktar launched 4 missiles which "distracted" the CWIS. 3) AK-630 shoots 5,000 rounds per minute, but only holds 2000 of ammo (based on wikipedia) so that 24 seconds of firing. So the drone missiles go in first and drain the cwis of ammo AND have the guns facing a few degrees the wrong way. Then the Neptunes come in behind, and the CWIS isn't able to shoot then down as they are out of ammo and/or engaging the drone's missiles. So combining 1+2+3 make an interesting strategy. Not a weapon expert but seems (at least in part) a plausible strategy.
In the USS Stark incident the CIWS didn't fire because it was not set on auto-engage. It was tracking the target and had a firing solution but did not receive authorization to fire from the human crew member not because it was confused which missile to target lol
Are you seriously considering that drone was able to encounter ship without being destroyed on a fly path? And where are the footages of it? Why this is the first time Ukrainians don't have footages. Not even from land. I know for sure, that Neptune doesn't exist. I know it from intel, and because there are are a lot of evidences that there were no such missiles strikes recorded from space at time of incident. You can't hide a missile launch from a military satellite. Had this happen, it would be exposed and destroyed soon after. But that didn't happened. So to me it's clear, they are playing information warfare once again. The best proof is intel and lack of footages. Complete lack. For the first time. The factory where Neptune's were supposed to be produced back in 2021 is destroyed now. Turned into dust just to be sure. But there is still no intel or confirmation that it exist. No one ever saw one outside of vague pictures in internet. Not even Ukrainian military.
@@MrZlocktar I think you missed my point a bit. Assuming this video is accurate, then the "Moscov anti-air missiles will not fire", and only the AK-630 will. The UKR drone (and it's missiles) are meant to go first and waste the CWIS ammo. (yes the drone and drone's missiles will be destroyed)... and THAT is the point. As right behind them are the Neptune missiles, the crew will not have enough time to reload the ak-630 so it will not fire. As for footage : Why does UKR OWE you (or anyone) footage? Let's assume they really DID hit the Moscov... do you think they are that dumb to release footage to show how they did it? So that RUS will know how to better protect themselves? THEY are the only ones who need to be convinced it worked. What you or I think is NOT relevant. Footage 2: IF it was an explosion from a fire& explosin from inside then were is THAT footage? A pic / vid will clearly show the hull was ruptured from the inside. Also where are the 500 crew saved? Arn't lives more important than a ship? Shouldn't Russia be happy that 500 of their sailors were saved? Neptune : You make no sense. You claim the factory is destroyed now BUT also claim it didn't exist in the first place. How can it be destroyed if it didn't exist? Honestly PRE-RUS was I don't think anyone really cared... so if nobody cares AND they are careful it's not like many would know. Also UKR could be lying and used some other weapon instead (i.e. Harpoon?) Although the US "just" announced sending Harpoons, it's totally plausible these were already sent a few weeks ago. Again the US / UKR don't OWE us anything so they absolutely have the right to send some weapons first and tell us later. Do Neptunes exist? I think so but it doesn't really matter... what is more important is the UKR capability to hit ships.
@@chaitanyasingh3258 Your reply is pretty good. CIWS will never do nothing in the case of multiple missiles that meet threat criteria. If CIWS is not set to "Auto", it will obviously need another button pushed to fire. In that case, "Command" failed, not CIWS itself. I'm not even sure the Starks' CIWS was loaded, or even in a mode to track a target, let alone engage it. As a former U.S. Navy CIWS supervisor, we were always told the Stark did not have their CIWS "on", whatever that means. Maybe not even loaded with live rounds (we normally have dummy rounds loaded), or not set to "Auto", as Singh suggests.
Never use "Invincible" or "Unsinkable" for any ship. Here is another thing your simulator may not have taken into account, the fact that the Admirals and Generals of the Russian Federation have been stealing from their forces. It's the same reason The Russians who supposedly have 10,000 tanks only fielded 2,800 at the start of their invasion of the Ukraine. How many of those fancy systems are actually maintained properly and working well on a 40 year old ship? It also seems Russian upgrades are not as good as they bragged about. Russia has 5 times the population of Texas and their economy is smaller. Putin, his oligarchs and military leaders have weakened their nation to the point that they are a pathetic shell. Fewer Ukrainians with native and western equipment and western training are beating up on Putin's invasion force. The US does one thing very well - Make functioning weapons. Sometimes, as with the Bradley, it takes a little extra work but they tend to get things sorted out eventually. A 96% hit chance for the Javelins demonstrates this. Plus there is always the media in the US looking at military equipment and making it impossible for military procurement to hide blunders. Just one reporter finding something fishy or not working right and a congressional committee starts taking a look at a General's colon to look for malfeasance. When some dolt in the US Airforce wanted to dump the A-10 the media reported it and the feedback made them realized it was a very bad idea. Now the A-10s have a whole new upgrade package and even a drone version made by Raytheon. That machine may not be invincible but it is an extremely tough machine that can really ruin a Russian Tank battalion's day, if their boss is not careful. That is what the Russians should fear -- the fact that Western weapons are very effective and better maintained by well trained operators and not a bunch of conscripts.
I can't argue with your first point that Russia's military capabilities are grossly over-exaggerated and obsolete. However, I disagree that corruption is primary reason for Russia's obsolete military. As for your second point about America's weaponry quality, I agree for the most part but would argue that the US only FIELDS functioning military weapons and it isn't due to media coverage or public opinion (otherwise 2/3s of our weapons programs wouldn't make it past R&D). Reason for both is the economic situation of both countries. The US economy can afford a massively expensive military budget that not only successfully maintains "legacy" equipment but also (more importantly) can invest incredible amounts of money into developing new weapons programs in every military branch. The media covers it and the public knows. The public and media have a much greater appetite for scrutinizing spending on other non-defense related issues that cost a fraction of a percent of our military spending. Our military budget is insanely high and naturally there are problems with some weapons programs (for example, the F-35 would have been cancelled a decade+ ago if the media/public opinion was so closely tied to procurement processes success/failure) but I think we all know deep down we don't want Russia or China calling the shots on the world stage so I'd say we tolerate massive military spending while occasionally complaining about it but that's about it in terms of earnest media/public/political efforts to curtail spending. The actual impactful role we play in influencing military programs' success is by maintaining a strong economy. Russia's corrupt oligarchs are scum and rob their country but they're robbing an already middling/dying economy that would hardly be any different if the oligarchs didn't exist. Russians also want a strong military (apparently for a different purpose but nevertheless) and would pay for it but they simply can't. The Russian economy is simply too weak. They can barely maintain the Soviet-era legacy equipment; they cannot fund the R&D for a superpower-level military.going forward. They're living on fumes but it's because of fundamental flaws in their economy, not primarily because of oligarchs robbing them (sure the oligarchs don't help but again, it's insignificant relative to the amount of military spending needed to be a military superpower). I can't believe I wrote that much. I could have just said it's the economy for both countries, not oligarchs and free-media/free-public. Oh well. Hopefully it makes some sense because I'm too tired to proof read it. This is why I shouldn't drink coffee after 8pm.
With the swell been so high wouldn't the missile's coming in be comparable to notching with background interferance making the missle systems redundant? This video was far more interesting than I thought it was going to be! Really gave us food for thought...
I think the kirov and the nakhimov ( beeing modernised) are better defended they have 8 30mm gatlinglike guns (slava had 6) and 6 kortik (gun combined missle ) systems and espacially the nakhimov had way better Electronic and waningsystems, btw ukraine says 2 missles hit,but how many did they fire? Its possible the cruiser took a few down
@@bammeke76 But the Kirov class Battlecruiser and Slava class cruiser Share not only similar weapons/communications/EW/radar systems but also similar mission profiles, primarily anti-air and anti-surface vessel warfare, Although the Kirov type vessel would likely have improved defensive capabilities, in similar circumstances I would argue a similar outcome could be probable based on the current performance of the Russian Navy during this war
@@ebenitez2011 the kirov has indeed pretty much the same systems ( but more and the kortik system is better then the 30 mm guns) the nakhimov is a different story ,all the systems are replaced with modern day systems ,its nearing completion and basicaly the only thing it has in commen with the peter the great is it's hull
@@christianvanderstap6257 indeed I've seen an episode from " combat aproved" about the topic ( you van see them on UA-cam) and the loss of the slava cruiser is a blow but the main russian seapower are its subs and they focus on smaller ships ( up to frigates) with hypersonic and cruisemissles. In my opinion they keep the kirov's slava's and ships like the udaloys to have a blue water navy and force other navys to invest in big ships to ( same and only reason they want to keep the kusnetsov )
Thank you for your content about this current conflict. You are very professional and sensitive to the situation. I am very interested in what all you guys have to say about all of this and I am fascinated by the simulations that you make. keep up the good work.
The extent of my knowledge regarding ships is the difference between a ketch and a schooner. This was amazing. A learning experience unlike anything in my repertoire.
It appears a lot of navies got their heads stuck in the sand (or water) when it comes to the threat from the anti-ship missiles. If I am not mistaken that was demonstrated in The Falkland War and by BOTH sides ...
The Royal Navy ships involved in the Falkland lacked any CIWS other than Sea-Dart missiles (Which had serious problems with low altitude targets). After the Falklands the RN made a very big effort to sellotape CIWS systems to their ships. Anti-Ship missiles were still pretty much untested in combat during the Falklands and a lot of lessons were learned (By navies across the entire world.) from them. Russia seems to have missed this. (Heck, this is evidenced by the Argentine forces messing up their Exocet missile fuses so the missiles just weren't detonating at all. The BBC reported on this and the Argentinian's fixed it. Combined with just poor misuse of them due to the Argentinian pilots being afraid of going to a high altitude. Lot of ordnance was released far too low without enough time for the fuse to be armed.) The Argentine Navy didn't really take part in the Falklands (Other than the Belgrano being sunk by ye olde torpedoes and some random helicopters gunning and launching a torpedo.) and the RN didn't really utilise anti-ship missiles against anything, nor have they ever really made a decent one.
@@MrNigzy23 You forgot to mention Seacat and Seawolf which were also point defence missile systems deployed on ships during Op. Corporate. The former might have been shit but it was still there. Seawolf was effective but not there in sufficient numbers being fitted to only two type 22's. .I also suspect you're mixing up your ammo types there. It was iron bombs not being fused correctly for the low level drop so they weren't arming correctly before impact as the low level they were being dropped from did not give them time to fuse correctly. All of the exocet missiles that struck ships detonated including the one that struck HMS Sheffield. Although three ships were actually struck by exocet missiles, only two of them were lost as a result and one of those was an unarmed merchant vessel. As far as Argentine naval vessels go, during the conflict argentina lost 20 vessels in total. 8 sunk, 4 damaged and another 8 captured. To my mind you're correct about shipborne anti ship missiles for the RN down south.. For shipborne SSM's Britain used exocet for while then changed to Harpoon. Air launched anti surface missiles were carried by helicopters during corporate one of which was used to disable the submarine Santa Fe. Also, Sea Skua was used down south and had a good hit rate. It was fired at least 8 times. In 1985 the Sea Eagle was introduced but has now been replaced with Sea Venom. Both pretty decent lightweight anti ship missiles.
Interesting comment from Professor at the Dartmouth Naval Academy on BBC this morning. The P500/P1000 missiles that surround the superstructure carry a warhead of about 1 tonne each, using a "non-inert" explosive, & the russians did say that a "magazine" explosion was involved, might explain why the Moskva was able to burn out. Perhaps the sea swell produced too much radar clutter for the Osa missiles to be guided, so the Fire Control systems wouldn't launch.
Personally, I think that these simulations make anti-air systems see a lot more effective than they are. Often times the skill and doctrine of the operator can make all the difference - just compare and contrast Iraq and Serbia in the 90s. One had an incredible anti-air system that was flattened in days, the other managed to utilise tactics that allowed them to survive and even shoot down a stealth jet. Maybe Moskva was just incompetent and the Ukrainians timed their attack well.
You can add a similar note to every aspect of modern warfare. We get all caught up in the deadly, well armored, high-tech, fancy equipment but some forget that in almost all cases, it still relies partly or wholly on humans for at least part of the function. So training should join logistics (and IMHO ergonomics, as any tanker knows that fighting inside a cramped soviet/russian tank is exhausting and miserable compared to a lot of NATO/US vehicles) on the list of "don't forget these things"
@@th6029 100%, however I think when it comes to the likes of fighter jets their weaknesses are far better modelled. Whereas when we look at these air defense systems, their ability to track and defeat aircraft is almost like they offer close to complete area denial for non-stealth aircraft. However, as we can see in Ukraine, both sides are able to operate in the sky - obviously not freely - but going by the function of the Moskva in game their airforces should be non-existent. Indeed, the Moskva should never have been hit by the Neptun missiles.
@@guntguardian3771 Air defenses in DCS are actually pretty ineffective compared to real life against aircraft players for just this reason, their AI is pretty poor with little capability to coordinate and employ tactics.
Great Job on the simulation. I would have to factor in the Russian Complacency variable, facing the Ukrainian forces in the real world. "Safe at Sea" and not expecting any kind of threat may be a real issue in overlooking the Ukrainian resolve.
@Pavlo Kramarenko yes yes, however, the Ukrainian army is gradually ending) a limited grouping of troops successfully operates against the entire army of another country) pretty good, right?)
One factor not mentioned is the Moskva's possible lack of battle readiness and possible defensive systems' lack of maintenance and readiness. If the Moskva, her crew and commander were in a state not unlike a lot of the other Russian forces we have seen in this conflict with their poor performance then it wouldn't be a stretch to think that two anti-ship missiles could get through the defenses. Also why did Russia move the rest of their fleet near Odessa further out to sea if it was only an onboard accident?
I think it was a combination of events. An attack started the fire and poor damage control training let the fire become uncontrollable or they straight up bailed from the ship not long after it was hit and let the fire do its thing. Since WWII the American navy put a huge emphasis on damage control due to operating so far from ports in the Pacific which carries on today. The Japanese didn't because they believed they could never be attacked in any meaningful way. With how much propaganda Russia tells their own soldiers, I would be surprised if there is a similar lack of training because of the belief that their ship is impervious to attack.
I'm not an expert on navel warfare, but I'm inclined to think lack of training & proper mainitance was a large factor. And I'm basing my conclusions on how the troops in the ground war are being run. Other than that, this was some very good food for thought. Well done GR!
Its a 40 year old ship. Might have been modernised but anti ship munitions a huge issue and this incident only reinforces the vulnerability. It’s a big vessel 11500 tonnes so it’s no slouch theoretically.
A rough analysis of how this may have been achieved. Combination of deception, good use of weather conditions, relatively precise targeting and exploitation of weaknesses of enemy. One of the key risks in this operation was collateral damage, Ukraine cannot afford the political fallout of an accidental strike on a merchant ship or tanker etc. this was probably one of the key go/nogo factors. So they would need a clear range from point of firing to target. How do you ensure clear range when you can’t fly aircraft in the area due to Moskvas AA capability, they probably used a number of drones to cover the area in question. Clear range achieved. Deception by a drone flying closer to the moskva so that the main air radar with supposedly only 180 degree coverage is kept busy covering this target in case it is a missile carrier. Deception achieved. Weather conditions, radar is badly effected by bad weather, trying to detect missiles in a radar screen that is hampered by sea clutter and rain storms is needle in a haystack stuff. One of the factors to be considered would have to the moskvas speed. If she is at top speed it is doubtful the missiles would be successful as she would probably move to far out of the target box before the missiles switch to active radar homing. Also her Electronic warfare systems are waiting to pick up any radar transmissions as she would have to be at high readiness considering she was operating near a hostile coastline. So did Ukraine change the active radar settings on these missiles, if it is possible and the Moskva is transiting at relatively slow speed then I suggest the two missiles are fired from truck mounted launchers. They initially fly at 15m asl until they reach terminal flight point let’s say 8nm from Moskva. Weather conditions are affecting the secondary air radars so they do not detect the two missiles inbound, it also lessens the likelihood of visual detection of the missiles. Active radar on, missile drops to 5m asl and covers the 8nm to target in 2 mins or so. Electronic warfare equipment would detect the active radar but is 2 mins enough time also unless fire control radars can achieve a lock those systems are useless. Last resort is visual engagement if missiles by optical weapon systems in poor weather at night. All in all a well planned and executed operation to remove a major tactical and strategic target that provided force protection Anti Air Defence for this entire sea area. It probably ensures Russia cannot conduct a sea based invasion of Odessa unless this ship is replaced with similar and also may now allow Ukraine to utilize Neptune’s from their own aircraft now. This is just an analysis of how it may have been conducted. Russian complacency after 2 months at sea on enhanced readiness cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor. The footage I saw of what I said was possibly Moskva post strike was actually footage of post missile test on a Charles F Adams DDG edited to prevent confusion.
That sounds like a reasonable Possibility. I do not know enough to trust my own Opinion in that regard. But from what i read in the comments - especially in your Post: Yeah that sound like it could be done that way. Good Thinking. Thx.
do you have a link to that footage? I have been looking for any photos or videos of the attack. I am assuming that somewhere there is a TB2 video Ukraine has of the attack since they had one involved.
Sorry just looked at the footage in detail, it was footage of a Charles F Adams DDG that was used in testing of anti ship missiles. So ignore that part about the footage, it was not Moskva. I will edit my initial post.
I have to wonder if the missile battery got intel from some NATO awacs that had the position of the Moskva. I suppose no one is going to admit that they shared that.
I think people underestimate the plan the Ukrainians had and the amazing teamwork that lead to sinking this ship. From what I've heard they used about 10 missiles launched from different positions + drones to confuse the radar systems
@@ghp0518 First time I heard this. There in lies the problem. Overwhelming the ships ability via massive missiles volley will compromise it's defensive countermeasures. This can be said if any naval ship. Better be on point and trained to perfection in order to keep your shop afloat if you want a tiny chance at living. Everyone has to know their jobs perfectly and fast. That's why drills are so important. From simple instructions and timing on how to put on a gas mask (remember when you first put it on and it took two minutes? Then as you got better maybe 10 seconds from the time you pulled it out to tightening the straps right?) to getting your stations?
I think the ship either got "caught with it's pants down", the missile used some sort of new/advanced technology, the storm interfered with the ship's sensors in some way or any combo of these things
You'd think the Russians would be aware of this, LOL... Rumor has it that they didn't even have the radar switched to "active" mode so it could constantly search for missiles! I wouldn't be surprised if this is true.
@@tedarcher9120 I would actually doubt they'd waste that many missiles. They almost certainly only fired 2-4. You wouldn't waste 8-16 missiles. I may be wrong though.
3 lessons from Sheffield: if your long range comms interfere with your search radar, don't use comms when in missile range. Extensive use of aluminium and (particularly) magnesium in ship construction is a nightmare in fire. Airborne Early Warning is essential in naval ops. There's also several systems that had very poor maintenance in the Yeltsin years (Mig-29 case in point). This has led to a lack of inspection and routine maintenance in many Russian systems.
One more thing: don’t send a naval task force into the littoral unless you’ve got organic top-cover (in the form of a fleet air arm). I used to think the Black Sea was a Russian lake; nowadays I think it’ll prove to be their graveyard.
oddly, magnesium burns. even under water. 😂😂 having served 20 years with the US Navy, it's not a surprise to me that this is an issue. The decision makers are so far removed from the end user, that they tend to look like morons from an operational perspective.
The use of aluminium...lesson from Sheffield? Sure this wasn't HMS Amazon. She was a type 21. Only material remedial actions noted in BOI where reduce smoke from fittings and furniture, and splinter damage from the use of Formica on Glamorgan after she was also hit by an exocet. Most of the smoke came from missile propellant and wiring cable. Sheffield had a mild steel frame. For a full week after being struck she retained normal trim and draft suggesting no issues with hull or frame.
Sorry I disagree alot of that is historical but after the subsequent reports that have eventually been released there's much more relevant lessons to be learned. The presence of artificial fibre uniforms and plastic foam bedding producing large amounts of smoke was relevant. The T42 destroyers were all steel construction and so aluminium and magnesium was not relevant. The limitation of lack of AEW continues to be a problem with the same radar system in use since the 1980s. Lessons that can be learnt relate much more to military discpline competence and training. HMS Glasgow detected the exocet, immediately transmitted a "handbrake" warning of missile attack, fired chaff and turned bow onto the attack vector. Some reports detail that the P2 neptunes radar was detected by ESM and reported to Sheffield but as the capability had been kept so secret the ops team were unaware of the significance. Sheffield recieved the "Handbrake" warning, and according to some reports did detect the incoming missile on its Type 965 radar however the airwarfare officer was absent from the operation room and his junior was to quote the findings of the board of inquiry "relieving himself" no action was therefore taken and the missile was sighted by the bridge crew just before impact with the ship not at action stations. One reason for the complacency was that the air warfare officer had failled to read the intellignece briefing (200pages) thoroughly enough to realise that the Super Entendards had an air to air refueling capability and therefore believed that a missile attack was impossible, he continued to insist this even after the impact. There was then poor coordination of the fire fighting effort, damage to the ring mains and it was discovered that some access hatches could not be used whilst wearing breathing apparatus. Despite the board of inquiry findings no court martial was conducted to avoid damaging morale (early on) or tarnishing the victory (later) the reports were finally declassified in the 2010s (2017 I think). The 2015 MOD review concluded that the exocet's warhead did detonate despite earlier opinions that it had not. Personal opinion - It's the differnce between a ship being run as if it was at war (HMS Glasgow) or at peace (HMS Sheffield) at the time there was a reasonable expectation that it may not have developed into an all out war. There was a similar disparity in performance with other T42s (note HMS Exeter's kill record, having just been exercising with the RAF off Belize). A lack of CIWS and point defence missile systems was also clearly critical (although in 1982 that was only just developed in the US Navy too). All in all it comes down to the crew.
Russian ship Captain: "Missile incoming! Activate automated countermeasures!" Ship: "Your device is downloading required updates. Please do not turn off or reboot your device during these updates"
There are some interesting factors here regarding the Moskva. She is the lead ship for the class (Slava). She is old having been launched in 1979 commissioned in 1982. Her surface to air weapons are also very dated as are the supporting electronics. She had the AGM630 CIWS. When the ship was designed they used what the had available at the time vice inventing a new primary weapon for. The SS-N-12 is also carried on the Kiev CVHG, Mod Echo II SSGN and some Juliet SSG's. So practically every system on this class had already been installed on another. She is a COGOG propulsion system COGOG stands for COmbination Gas Or Gas - meaning that she had a set of Gas turbines for cruising at slow speeds and could switch to a larger set to operate at faster speeds. She could not use both systems at the same time. That would be called COGAG with the A meaning And. So she has a lot of jet fuel on board for propulsion. So if we consider the that since the war started the Russian Navy really has not played a significant role, but patrolling a coast line gets very boring very quickly. Her crew in CIC was likely not keenly focused on their jobs when the attach occurred. There are some discrepancies in how the weather was actually. In pictures after the explosion the seas appear calm which goes against the Russian version. Further one has to wonder if they actually updated the threat detection systems for Russian Anti-Ship missiles of not. In 2021 the Mineral-U search/attack radar was introduced which would also be part of the Neptune system. Finally Ukrainian Military decision to wait until a valuable target was available the shoot the Neptune's at it.
Happened across this video and was initially put off by the games aspect. However, I learned more about its defensive capabilities than all the news outlets joined together! Modelling is only as good as the programmer. I had another thought. Perhaps Ukrainians and others "helping" from elsewhere were running models?
0:50 Technically it's four. Ukrania were more than 90% complete, but stuck at Mykolaiv because Russia decided to be cheap and demanded Ukraine to give it for free. Who's want to bet that the Ukrainians knew the ship inside out and decided to send Bayraktar to distract the engagement radar because the radar turns out could be only trained in one direction, and choppy seas made the ship essentially blind as a bat because they still stuck in 70s tech because the money for modernization got redirected for someone else's Black Sea dacha? So yes, the ship were sunk from incompetence. And corruption from the beginning to the end. That two Neptune AShM were final two nails in the coffin for Moskva, sharing the same death date with Titanic.
I was really thinking the cold rainy weather affected it. Sea clutter, lessened ability to detect heat, and Ive heard they were sidetracked by UAVs. That was my very first thought
Couldn't the drones attack the radar as well. I saw a thing that said the drones probably "jammed the radar". I don't know exactly what that means but I too it as they disabled it in some fashion.
eminence it could be for opsec reason. Could be for emotional reasons, allegedly all hands lost or up to 50 survivors, and could just be looking at footage of hundreds of sailors burning to death. Could be there were no TB2s at all and nothing to look at basically. There is however a SAR image of what appears to be the Moskva burning with some support vessels nearby. But NATO, Ukraine and Russia have all acknowledged that the ship has been sunk. That is basically 3 “witnesses” agreeing the ship is no more even though the explanations are different.
@@warbuzzard7167 brahmos brahmos is 15yrs old i think and there have been many advanced development and upgrades in the mean time + brahmos 2(hypersonic) is around the corner already
i felt the same way about the "invincible" soviet army and the s-300, s-400, pantsir, tunguska air defence and so on .. it was all a big act all along, a maskirovka that fell apart during the first real war
Well the Ukraininans seem to be using their Russian made SAM Systems sufficiently well to keep the russian airforce largely out of ukranian airspace and requiring heavy use of jamming pods so I wouldn't count on the SAMS being ineffective.
If the radars aren't on, if nobody's watching, if the guns aren't manned, any system is useless. Like the four Tunguskas without crew, taken out with some Molotows by civilians/home defence forces. Or the Pantsirs travelling and taken out by Baryaktars. Lousy training and operating is key.
The idea that two subsonic, soviet era anti ship missiles could strike a modernized Russian missile cruiser armed with no less than 64 S-300 anti aircraft missiles, a ton of Strella close range antiaircraft missiles, at least two point defense turrets, and an advanced radar array while being escorted by a fleet of armed missile frigates strains credulity. It would be as ridiculous as a German teenager flying a stolen Cessna over hundreds of miles of hostile Russian airspace and landing it right on top of the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, next to Red Square near the Kremlin in Moscow. Preposterous. Completely and utterly preposterous.
Or it could be that most Russian tech is propaganda stat sheets and the actual production models are shit. You know, like everything else getting destroyed in Ukraine.
@@sir0herrbatka On 3 December 2009, Moskva was laid up for a month at floating dock PD-30 in Sevastopol for a scheduled interim overhaul which comprised replacement of cooling and other machinery, reclamation work at bottom and outboard fittings, propulsion shafts and screws, clearing and painting of bottom and above-water parts of the ship's hull.
IF the defensive equipment was ever installed, some vital parts might have been lost to the black market, and the money pocketed by somebody in the supply chain.
There was a commanding officer in vfa 125 which is a naval fleet air replacement squadron, at least it used to be, that was court-martialed for hiding away a couple million dollars worth of parts so that maintenance would be easier. The corruption in the Russian military just blows my mind. It's seriously hard for me to even imagine something close to that happening in the US military. I mean I'm sure it does with hey if you endorse my weapon system I'll scratch your back type of deals, and there has been instances in recent memory in San Diego of military corruption but nothing on this scale
I have often thought that the heavily armed Russian ship are actually very vulnerable, with all the essentially unprotected ordnance about on the ship's upper levels it only needs one missile to penetrate the ships' defences to potentially cause massive amounts of damage by exploding the ships own missiles warheads and propellant fuel. .
When the Marshal Ustinov (Slava class) made a port call in Norfolk in 1989 some US Navy personnel suposedly got a thorough tour (unlike the 10 minute above deck tour I got). Reports say they questioned whether the ship was designed with survivability in mind at all. Also the US Navy took them on a tour of the Damager Control training center and the Russians were in awe of the systems and precedures.
@@michaelsauer9129 Interesting. Thanks. The Soviets were never an oceanic navy. From what I've read, their vessels were designed to carry lots of ordinance, sortie from port, engage, then return to port. I'm sure crew survivability was low on their list of their priorities, as your insights about Russian amazement at USN damage control systems and training attests to.
@@michaelsauer9129 I doubt there was ever much consideration to making them survivable if they were detected and attacked before they got their missiles off. Their survivability came from the long range of the missiles themselves which allowed them to launch their attack earlier but also necessitated that the missiles be built big and full of fuel. Makes you wonder why they even bothered to carry them aboard the Moskva since Ukraine's navy wasn't much of a threat.
They said Moskva only had 180 degree range on their radars. Also was mentioned that the ship was distracted by Drone before impact. Waves absorb radar waves and could lead to very confusing radar detection results.
I've read somewhere that a Bayraktar drone was also present around Moskva and that it distracted the crew (on purpose, of course). Seeing how little time it takes from when the missile becomes visible above the horizon to when it strikes, it looks like a smart tactics to maximize the probability of achieving a hit.
Ukraine-Russia Series:
Fulcrum/Flanker vs Foxbat/Super Flanker: ua-cam.com/video/BhXfxc94JAU/v-deo.html
NASAMS vs Russian Cruise Missiles: ua-cam.com/video/pJI_b95jzpk/v-deo.html
Russian KH-47M2 vs Polish Air Force: ua-cam.com/video/cnrVxqL5q9w/v-deo.html
Su-27 & Drone vs Snake Island: ua-cam.com/video/T_oRoU2Ayfo/v-deo.html
Su-25s vs Russian Convoy At Kyiv: ua-cam.com/video/ryV65bUJzrw/v-deo.html
NATO Eurofighters vs Crimean AWACS: ua-cam.com/video/EiJ2dFRh95g/v-deo.html
Patriot, Gepard & Gripen vs KH-65: ua-cam.com/video/ZhxdrNjig1g/v-deo.html
A-10s vs Russian Convoy At Kyiv: ua-cam.com/video/B0tZoo0uLh4/v-deo.html
USN Tomahawk Strike Kerch Bridge: ua-cam.com/video/0vpi8xBygV8/v-deo.html
USAF Stealth Strike Kerch Bridge: ua-cam.com/video/IJbf9Bcxnw0/v-deo.html
Ukrainian Jets Strike Kerch Bridge: ua-cam.com/video/I8FumuZReB4/v-deo.html
F-22 Raptors vs Russian Fighters: ua-cam.com/video/ComRcmrwJWk/v-deo.html
Raptor/Eagle vs Super Flanker: ua-cam.com/video/keqYmuSEo-8/v-deo.html
USAF Bombers vs Mariupol Defenses: ua-cam.com/video/aCsboOG0QU4/v-deo.html
Ukraine Bombs Snake Island: ua-cam.com/video/BX696MKdkb8/v-deo.html
Stealth Fighters vs Russian Bombers: ua-cam.com/video/rym90jnQDsA/v-deo.html
Sinking Of Moskva #3: ua-cam.com/video/NIjoyIieOzY/v-deo.html
Sinking Of Moskva #2: ua-cam.com/video/snjfbj_EwW4/v-deo.html
Sinking Of Moskva #1: ua-cam.com/video/Bxwh6MGLJNc/v-deo.html
Russia Nukes Britain: ua-cam.com/video/rzk45RFQwA8/v-deo.html
Ukraine Uses Danish F-16s: ua-cam.com/video/17Pikrp0QaY/v-deo.html
Ukraine Uses Polish Mig-29s: ua-cam.com/video/zCi4tAIzuOU/v-deo.html
Russian-Britain Missile Attack: ua-cam.com/video/zwIGfabvzHA/v-deo.html
Ghost Of Kyiv: ua-cam.com/video/Yrct8V4n1-U/v-deo.html
Belgorod Raid: ua-cam.com/video/mQykTxt6ftw/v-deo.html
Eurofighter/Fulcrum vs Super Flanker: ua-cam.com/video/MPyIipEhgR0/v-deo.html
US Strike vs Odessa ua-cam.com/video/KeiOHgzic6Y/v-deo.html
Russian Helo Rocket Lob: ua-cam.com/video/118GgGnP_sM/v-deo.html
Russian Su-25 vs US Patriot SAM: ua-cam.com/video/asp69ZD_tO0/v-deo.html
Understanding Russian SAMs: ua-cam.com/video/R4xTxLNZXcw/v-deo.html
Ukrainian Jets Road Operations: ua-cam.com/video/hBpzQhinPbw/v-deo.html
Russian 40 Mile Convoy: ua-cam.com/video/Vr_-2FLblBk/v-deo.html
Flanker vs Super Flanker: ua-cam.com/video/VOAuOFLJGk4/v-deo.html
Yep, fires can be so unpredictable on a ship, especially one carrying so much 'volatile' gear. Was stationed in WestPac in 1967 when news came of the catastrophic fire hitting the nearby USS Forrestal, resulting in 134 dead. And that was caused by a freak 'chain reaction', starting with an electrical problem that caused a rocket to accidentally fire, and successively igniting jet fuel that quickly spread to a bunch of other ammo and 'flammables'. Any confined space, packed with all sorts of extremely volatile 'stuff'... not good!
Hi Just new to this content so a bit behind lol
With relations to this video, what happened and my limited experiences at sea (small commercial fishing)
With the sort of radar we used on fishing boats in a 30knt sea they were useless under about 5 miles with what we called sea clutter. I would imaging the tracking radar on these ships would be way much very better thou. So I guess it is possible a object close to the water and also in rain could blend into the sea clutter especially when you consider the speed, how often the radar was seeing it between the sea clutter if it wasn't tuned out and possibly not seeing ever sweep of the radar.
Also a engine room fire can quickly get hot enough to disable power and melt brass water and hull fittings allowing water to ingress, then of cause there are the stored explosives even thou the pictures you were showing it didn't look like there was much damage from explosives going off.
Ps some of your ex forces buddies may be able to shed more light on the radar and weather stuff.
thanks for the videos, the good the bad and the ugly lol
Richland bombers score
Some of its defenses were disabled, and the ship was in bad condition, it’s sinking was expected, maybe Russia didn’t think they would need defense since they were fighting Ukraine
Clearly the Ukrainian missiles used NordVPN to bypass the Russian defenses.
The Russians thought the missile was being uploaded from Russia.
Ahh yes that one. The VPN that was hacked and open for 3 months. When they found out they tried to keep it secret but eventually had to own up. I am amased they stayed in business.
I'm invincible to Russian and Ukrainian missiles because I use NordVPN plus
H4x0r! 😂
Lol well played
As a former navy radar operator I can say that in rough seas white caps will cause interference with radar returns called sea return. Radar operator could have turned down the radar gain to get rid of the sea return, but that also lowers your target signal.
Sd20 first, thank you for your service sir!!!! You were an OS I assume and all too familiar with the scope-dope after the 6 on 6 off watches, or no sleep and no sleep. As a former navy weapons systems supervisor- operator attacking during heavy sea state or ruff weather with a sea skimming missle is superior tactics. I applaud Ukrainian forces in sinking. Same kind of tactics used by Argentina in the Falkland Islands vs England
Also the Moskva had a single main air defense radar was a 3P41 Volna phased array to guide S300 missiles. Problem is, it only has a 180 degree field of vision. By using a spotting drone Ukrainian forces would be able to fire into the blind spot, and the ship couldn't turn in time. The missiles fired fly low and are not detected at range by search radar due to the curvature of the earth. The storm could also be a factor as you pointed out.
Also there are moral and training issues in the Russian military.
@@briangallaugher3068 As a retired OS, I never had a problem with port and starboard watches. Yes sometimes you were tired, but not enough to not do your job. And I don't think the sea state was that bad that turning down the gain slightly would be that much of a deal.
@@ictpilot thanks for your service sir!!! As a tin can sailor fewer crew a lot more things to handle you know it is.
@@briangallaugher3068 I was on USS Truxton CGN- 35, then swapped to the USS Hewitt DD-966 for my active duty ships.
It's hilarious that the Russian explanation of why their ship was sunk is essentially: "It sank due to our own incompetence, rather than Ukrainian attacks." You can't make this stuff up.
It is hilarious isn't it. The entire campaign is a shamble.
Yeah, it's a lose, lose argument. It would sound just as bad if you claimed that you lost multiple BTGs due to friendly fire rather than from enemy fire.
@@PieterBreda its a shamble that cost thousands their life... Thats what scary...
Tbh, do you think it'd be more embarrassing for the US if an aircraft carrier got sunk by stupid people on board or a North Korean ICBM? I can see the logic. But why didn't they just credit it to NATO or US intelligence competence, instead of anything Ukraine did, idk. Seems like something more plausible and defensible. But Russia isn't known for making good decisions lol
I was thinking the same, Imagine being a Russian sailor in a non combat region now being worried that they will die due to the poorly designed and maintained ship they are on. Most likely the dumbest explanation they could have ever come up with.
As shown, the ship is exceptionally defended. If hit, it can go underwater to fight off fire and hide from more enemy fire.
Something that might be worth considering is the fact that the Slavas were built in Ukraine, at 61 Communards Shipyard in Mykolaiv. If the ships have any weak points then there is a high probability that there are people living in Ukraine who know them quite well.
Or it could just another Kursk type situation where Russian ships are death traps just waiting to explode on their own.
@@Edax_Royeaux or it could be that the other comment came from a logically deductive mind.
Maybe they added a weakness like the deathstar 😏
good point. The people who designed them might still be around
I think she was part of teh Ukranina Navy until 2014, but the crews then didi choose to join Rusia...
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: Dimitry was cooking potatoes and by accident put the ship's kitchen on fire. The crew then followed the Russian's procedures to extinguish fire: sinking the ship. By the way, Russia didn't lose a single tank in this war: setting their own tanks on fire is a Russian technique to keep mosquitoes away. Everything is going as planned!
I’d believe your story if you said Dimitri was drinking potatoes.
Dimitry was smoking with his friend in the magazine room, and both were drinking vodka, and when they heard the c.o coming they tossed the cigarettes into a pile of boxes , and realizing their mistake, they tried to extinguish it with the bottle they had and the rest is history
That's funny 🤣😂
You mean they tried to put the fire out with vodka ?
@@drno3391 no, Dmitry had sold all of the fire extinguishers to buy vodka. His backup plan was to roll down the porthole and let seawater in.
“It is the only cruiser in the Black Sea. Well it used to be.”
I mean, technically the ship is still in the Black Sea ;)
Technically its now even more in the black sea
@@TRPilot06YT Actually now the Black Sea is inside it
WHOOOOOOOOO LIVES UNDER BLACK SEA? SLAVA CLASS CRUSIER MOSKVA and SPONGEBOB SQAURE PANTS
@@danylonimko8419
Okay that’s a good one lol
You should have stopped it before the and though.
Unfunny Ukrainian troll
On the bright side, the Moskva now has the perfect defense against anti ship missiles.
Surrounded by water, big water on all sides and top.
I wonder how her torpedo defense is now
I said torpedo, not anti air
@Violet Canzonetti ahh yes! With millions of tons of water now stacked on top of the ship, there is no known weapon in any military service able to breach the mighty Russian vessel's hull!
*#SavelivesSmokePutin*
Watch out for torpedoes there, Ivan.
As somebody that has worked with radars, I am not really surprised by the outcome. Heavy rain attenuates radar signals extremely well, especially on high frequencies, like those used for the OSA fire control radar ( somewhere between 10 and 15 GHz). In this case a Radar that is able to track a small target like a missile at a range of 10 km can be reduced to ~2km range.
Large search radars, which operate on lower frequencies, generally don't suffer from the same problem nearly as much. So it is entirely possible that they were aware of the two missiles for the last 10 to 15 miles, but were not able to engage them until in range of the CIWS. Would be interesting to know if this has been modeled in DCS, considering that they have an extremel well modeled radar engine.
That would suck. "Come one defense missiles fire your praying the whole time they come in and they don't fire"
@@milferdjones2573 It's like seeing death itself approach, but there's nothing you can do about it until it's almost right on top of you.
The Russians may have been overconfident that the Ukrainian's could touch them out to sea. Nothing kills faster in combat than underestimating your opponent.
@@Dano12345100 that's what I'm thinking. Low-flying missiles in rain and an inattentive crew probably made for a bad combo. There are rumors that Ukraine distracted them with a drone, too, but I have zero confirmation of that.
Dedicated Police radar with a decent rain and your car measured speed can be carried to the court. The judge will check the weather conditions in the report, confirm it at the weather station and your speeding ticket flies out of the window.
Sea state would change how the radar sees the "sea clutter" I was an OS on USN Cruisers in the 70s and 80s. The radar can't see the missile because all it can see is sea clutter. And that's how the Ukrainians snuck them in. Edit: Also these are not Doppler radar. We had Phased Array radar with systems like the A/N SPS-48c. And is surface mode those could cut through that clutter to a certain extent. However, it was a problem for all navies at the time. OS2 USN 76-83.
Thought that. Nice that DCS modeled it
My more recent info says it's still a major issue in choppy seas especially for these boats as the state of Russian silicon is rough. Obviously this may use something else that was available a while back but either way its 10 years out or full of noise and heat related issues that might have been resolved.
🫡
I came here to suggest radar clutter from the waves was probably the problem
It was stormy that night. I was wondering of the impact of both rain and seas on longer range radar systems. I wondered if UA waited for the conditions for best success (ie stormy weather) as that would be their best strategy.
Regardless of the Moskva's defensive capabilities, you're looking at it from a country that knows how to operate a navy. Re the question about the cause of the explosion, if it had been an accidental ammunition explosion, that would not explain the Russians suddenly moving the rest of their targets - excuse me, ships - much farther out to sea.
Moskva would not have been the only ship in the vicinity with defence and intercept capabilities either
There would have been 100 defence systems in the area
If the Moskva represented a significant portion of the fleet's anti-air defense then its loss would, of itself, dictate moving the rest of the ships further out.
@@James-hb8qu Very good point.
Not really, main role of the cruiser was defense against... missiles. With that defense gone you would move all other ships out of range of possible attacks. Still - the range of these anti ship missiles is 250km so curvature of earth is helping you out there.
If it was an accidental fire that doomed the ship, why the event was followed by anger againt Kyiv and such a need for retaliation?
The Neptune missile is a much-improved version of the missile you used in the demonstration. The most important is that it is literally sea skimming. That is, it travels only 8 to 30 feet above the water surface - not the 50 ft you used. That is a proven fact as these missiles were in testing for several years and western sources have seen it in action. As for the sea conditions at the time of the strike there is some debate - around 24 hours later a video showed the sea was relatively calm, of course weather can change quickly. Also the the Ukrainians say they distracted Muskva radar by using drones. What 'distraction' means was never explained. More ominously for the Russians is that the Ukrainians say, with some confidence, that this will not be the last ship in the Black sea fleet sunk. Overall that doesn't portend well for ALL large ships from any Navy. Basically Neptune might be considered a 'stealth' subsonic cruise missile - up until the last seconds.
If there was a 30kt+ wind blowing up a storm, then I doubt that any missile set to fly at 8ft is going to get very far. Even 50ft might be pushing it.
There was a report that a Bayraktar was up, and there are traces showing that a US built Raptor surveillance drone may have been way overhead as well. That's all I've seen so far in addition to the 2 Neptunes that hit, no word anywhere of how many may have been launched.
@@piscinaiv7937 o
Flying a missile 8' above a rough sea is asking for the missile to take a dive straight into it.
@@muhlenberg2608 If they had a drone they werent too sure about in terms of intention then you would think the crew would have been more alert to some sort of looming danger. What happened to their ESM?
The analysis I've seen (on twitter) is that a drone was used the distract from the missiles (and possibly to locate the Moskva). Apparently the phased array radar (on the hanger roof) which is good at low altitudes only has a 180° field of view - this was 'looking' at the drone while the missiles attacked from the other side. The 3d search radar (on the mast) has full 360° FOV but is no good against sea-skimmers (plus the storm and sea-clutter made things worse). Clever tactics by the Ukrainian forces!
Reports I've read in the Turkish press and defense journals say a Bayraktar drone distracted the ship, like running interference I suppose. Clever tactics, like you say. Nice analysis, Cap. Thoughtful and professional.
Considering the Ukrainians built it they probably know every detail of it, strengths and weaknesses.
I've heard elsewhere that Moskva does not have full 360 degree defensive capability. If THAT is true then presumably the blind side is covered by another ship. But in a storm they perhaps lost formation leaving Moskva exposed? I'd be curious to know.
Some of the best ways to arm an ally in war is with strategic knowledge. I imagine some of the brightest military strategists are feeding Ukraine with a ton of tactical knowledge.
They may have switched off the missile defense system, to prevent wasting very expensive missiles on a cheap drone.
I was an OS in the USN.. Weather like that would reduce the effective range of the radar and with the range reduced so is the reaction time of the crews. Stick someone on the radar who has been staring at the scope for an hour and I would bet they never even saw the missles coming. To react to that kind of threat in those conditions you have to have your best people in place at the right time or forget it. Given the lack of professionalism we have seen by the Russians so far? it isn't hard to see this out come and its sinking later because of damage? inexperienced crews all around.
@@yt45204 i doubt it tbh, im more tempted to lean on untrained crew or faulty maintenance as i doubt the russians or even the soviet union made they're command and control cruiser uncapabable of defending itself
Most of the russians made it out alive, it was no missle.
Those systems are automated to detect and identify all incoming threats and to notify all designated personnel and defensive avoidance systems. The identified threat can be pre-validated by an operator(s), or the defensive system can be fully automated fire-at-will.
@@additudeobx No vessel is a Robot-Humans have to verify and then Humans have to take action. Given the reported conditions, the age of the systems of the Moskva etc. I have little doubt they never say the missile coming or if they did it was way past the time to take effective action.
@@yt45204 As missiles become more and more effective, the systems to detect and neutrailize them have to progress as well. Doppler radar is certainly better than older sweeping radars to find a target. If the weather conditions were reported correctly the range of older radars is greatly reduced. Sea swells actually return radar and thus older scopes look like a visual mess. I've been in the North Atlantic in the fall and skirted around a hurricane or two. Not fun and the effectiveness of man and machine is...well lets just say "not optimal".
Some people are saying they used a few drones to distract the crew. Rough weather, low training, and a credible distraction together could definitely be what went down.
I’m pretty sure drones were used ahead of the missiles
in some russian telegram accounts they are saying that americans could help with electronic warfare to blind moskva's radars.
@@palacio802 Of course Americans can, we've had rain dance technology for a couple hundred years now, send over specialist rain-dancers to start a storm and voila, the radar on that ship was down to 20% its normal effectiveness.
They attacked Moscow radars with drones rockets and in the storm weather Moscow was not able to fight with the stealthy drone... with destroyed radars it was game over for the flag ship...
@@tremedar there are some ways radars can be blinded. Jamming and deception are the most basic ones. But of course, state of the art rain-dancers are game changers, as well. Vaya gilipollas.
Back in the mists of time, I remember the interview of a Western naval officer invited aboard a Russian ship docked during a goodwill tour. The naval officer nearly had a heart attack when he saw that damage control gear, timbers etc, had literally been painted in place during maintenance. The quality of the crew goes a long way to ensuring a ship can return to port after severe damage.
What do you mean painted on? Like they are faked? Also Timbers? Thanks
Or even to prevent damage. It would help if the radar had detected the missiles and the radar operator actually saw it and deployed their anti-missile missile and the CIWS actually activated. That works much better than damage control.
@@daniel_dumile Meaning the gear was painted over while still in place, thereby adhering it to the surface the gear was mounted on. Don't know about the timbers.
@@daniel_dumile the equipments have not been used for a long time. Painted over. Which basically means that they don’t practice.
@@felixsu375 Yes, eg USS Stark incident
The ship was so well defended that it sank itself before the Ukrainian missiles hit it, thus reduce the chance of it being sank by enemy missiles down to zero.
Hahaha
it was nato antiship missile. ukranian neptun is old soviet missile x-35
@@Дима-я5ы2э R-360 Neptune is a Ukrainian anti-ship cruise missile developed by the Luch Design Bureau. Neptune's design is based on the Soviet Kh-35 anti-ship missile, with substantially improved range and electronics. So basically it's just a old Soviet anti-ship missile that has been upgraded with better Electronics and fuel source
I heard that it transformed itself into a submarine.
Sounds a bit like the Germans back in May 1941.
" The Bismarck was scuttled by the ship's crew - two hours of shelling and torpedoes from the Royal Navy had nothing to do with the sinking."
The missile coming at low altitude with huge waves quite close to it's flightpath makes me think about radar tracking and local reflection. When I ran radioorienteering, i had a very strong reflection off a river bank. big waves might act as local dishes thus disabling the tracking system. The ship knew they were coming but couldn't get the right height and distance, so couldn't launch.
That was my thought as well - particularly given the radar dishes are well above the flight level of the missiles, and would thus be looking down towards the sea surface. I also think rain would degrade radar performance, which would have exacerbated the effect.
I have a question about this. At high/unstable sea states, wouldn't the sea skimming anti-ship missile's own radar seeker also have trouble acquiring and tracking the ship with all the high waves on its flight path? Thoughts?
If you know your radar sucks in bad weather sail out of range of coastal batteries before the said bad weather comes. Weather forecasts are good enough for at least 24h in this day and age. I'm beginning to think that IQ
@@blahdy21 I don't think so. Generally, you just need to send your ASM to the approximate target location, and you can get that from satellites. Then the missile pops up and uses active terminal guidance.
@@milosstojiljkovic5377 Yeah, and if you know you're standing on the highly irradiated site of the worst nuclear accident in human history maybe don't start digging trenches and rolling around in the dirty like a dog, and yet...
Reality: “Your flagship sunk. Enemy action or incompetence “
Russia: “We choose incompetence”
i've been making that same joke myself.
Only in Russia 🇷🇺 🤦
Soviets/Russians tend to be surprisingly individualistic in their preference to blame others or underlings or the dead to spare the nation's pride. As if losing a flagship due to own incompetence is less embarrassing than the enemy sinking it in action.
US: *sweats in USS Bonhomme Richard*
As others have mentioned, one of the dangers of sea-skimmer missiles like the Exocet, Kayak, and Neptune, is that in swelling seas, the fire control radar can't differentiate between the missiles and the sea swell. Once the missiles get close enough, the fire control system can no longer engage. I'm surprised that a missile got through that hail of 30mm but it's feasible! Especially given the reload time of those gatling guns.
Moskva had a sea-going tug on hand "just in case". Were the crew manning her weapons? Did they even see the missiles coming?
A drone first took out the radar!
@@ronaldthomas9396 probably not BUT the fire control radar for the S-300 only sees 180° so if the drone was being flown at the edge of the S-300 range on the other side of the ship from where the attack was coming, they could've literally had all eyes (radars) turned that way.
The problem is the fire control algorithms of the AK-630. It aims and shoots. The re-aiming aspect, or predicting the flight path and firing is underdeveloped.
Neptune were built specially for this case... 😁
Major difference between kh35 and neptue is flight profile. It fly high before it can be intercepted by s300. Then he goes lower under osa radar view (actually, same on wid, where waves hiding kh35). And final approach - 10ft, to hide from ak630 radar.
But not at all...
Speaking about drones - bulshit, as on later photos we can see radars on "cruise" positions. Looks like they werent aware of attack at all. They were just not ready to fighting. Even if drones were there, its just to lock target position and (maybe) to check radars. Tb2's can "see" up to 40-50mi from 25000ft. So can scan in passive visual mode staying invisible for s300 radars.
As far as I can tell:
Moskva had the following triple layer air defense:
1) S300F (Naval) with 64 90km Grumbles
2) 9K33 OSA-M with 20 missiles per launcher (but are they M1, M2 or M3? Only M2 and M3 can hit sea skimmers, minimum engagement altitudes for the 3 missile types are 50, 25 and 10m)
3) 6 * AK-630 CIWS, 2 port, 2 starboard and 2 bow mounted which can see a good 270° so max 4 can engage.
These all require a bewildering number of radar sets to work. Like, a dozen easy. A and they have to be trained. Like, say, if they were all looking to port while you were distracted by a TB2 drones, starboard is unwatched.
AK-630 does not look like it has much depression. _At all_
OSA-M is obsolete, it still uses a 2 rail trainable launcher, reload time is unknown although they do retract.
S300F is good but you won't have much time.
Refire time is 3-5 seconds.
However, target acquisition times for all 3 weapons is very slow, I've read 12 seconds. At Mach 0.8 it takes ~109 seconds to go from radar horizon to impact.
This can get a lot of S300 rounds off but I don't know how many missiles it can juggle.
OSA-M probably just can't engage at all if Neptune comes in at, I dunno, 2 meters?
And AK-630, I don't know it's minimum engagement altitude. If it can't depress it's useless.
So yeah, this is like the Falklands, 70s tech built to get choppers and high altitude bombers and that sorry of thing.
Not good!
AK-630 elevation is from -12 / +88 degrees.
@@KJAkk
Yeah, we figured it out elsewhere.
With a bit of trig we figure it can only hit sea level targets at 50m out.
Once you hit that 50m, it can't hit a sea skimmer.
Looks like OSA-M can't hit anything below 10m
So it's only S300F that gives you any chance.
Apparently Neptune is at 2m during it's terminal phase so yeah, Moskva was in real trouble once in range.
70s tech Vs 21st century missiles = Having a Bad Time
I remember that more than once in the early days of the Phalanx system where the thing ran out of ammo!!! It was too busy shooting at fragments of various drones that it already hit! It has been fixed!!
However, if the Ukrainians fired off several Neptunes (current production and reasonably modern) Missiles then I can see the Russian CIWS running out of ammo!!! Especially when you include things like drones being used as decoys, the big waves (sea return will basically make your radar screen "white out") and the rain (once again lots of water giving you false returns) and the relatively small target of a Harpoon sized missiles coming at you head on.....
Yeah, the Ukrainians did sink her!!!!!!!!!!
@@MostlyPennyCat This is the most bizarre logic. Do you think that 50m is the engagement range of an AK-630? If the missile's got within that range, it's going to hit regardless.
The OSA-MA2 is the production model of naval OSA-Ms since the mid-80s, and has engagement capability down to 5m. The warhead has a lethal radius of 5m. The Neptune wouldn't be saved by flying at 2m.
The Neptune isn't a 21st century missile, it's a 20th century missile slightly modernized with 21st century equipment. The Slava's tech is ranging between 80s and 90s. You're wrong from every angle, the sea state was the issue, not the tech levels.
@@thegenericguy8309 Ah yes, The Generic Russian Wumao, my favorite...😑
Awesome stuff guys!
Coming from an 11 year active duty Sailor.
thx
The U.S. nearly lost a warship in the Gulf to an air launched anti-ship missile due to hesitation by the human crews on target ID. The thing about these DSC sims is that those ships get shot at all the time so that the programming is live-fire tested. Also, the AI performs target ID and threat assessment instantly and perfectly every time like a very experienced crew who is ready and expecting to get shot at. Modern navies and their crews almost never get shot at, so their procedures, training, and human response under direct fire adrenalin are never fully tested. These incidents are so rare that they occur against un-blooded troops.
In the U.S. Navy incident, the missile was stopped in the nick of time by the point defenses of another ship. An error was made though, twice. The target fired off chaff to fool the incoming missile, but it also fooled the neighboring ship's seawiz into shooting into the target ship.
senator john mccain nearly sank his own aircraft carrier during the vietnam war by allowing his missiles to launch on deck and blow up tow other aircraft. when your father is an admiral, you can get away with this. his senate career was similar.
I was in the Persian Gulf war I in 91 the ship I was in was with USCC Saratoga, America and Kennedy in the area it was along with many others as mineisweepers from Germany , destroyers and frigates form other countries.. What you say has an absolute truth base to it and so it is. Teamwork and coordination in the fleet were the most important along with the crew position to perform.. A tired crew has disadvantages, a worn-out crew as well even more.
AFAIK that Russian ship was already 4.5 months in Syria before it came up to the Black sea and adding to that, who knows if the crew had time to get in a port all this time and what was their daily program.
That was the footage of the old battleship going to "brace brace brace" right? And it was a British frigate I believe that shot it down. But yeah, sprayed the Battleship with some PD due to the friendly chaff confusing it.
Sims also tend to massively underestimate failure rates and assume perfect equipment. As we have seen during this invasion: what russia says their stuff does on paper does not match the reality AT ALL. ERA blocks made of cardboard, helis getting merced by systems that shouldnt really be much of a threat, old equipment with no NVG or flir capability. Many people seem to forget that russian press releases are not trustworthy, russian test reports.. .are not trustworthy. One off demos with small numbers of people/equipment... are not trustworthy. Ihave never understood the commieboos and russiaboos, blindly saying soviet and then russian gear was the equal of the west. AT BEST, we cant say how effective their gear is because we have NO reliable data on the equipment.
agreed. the crew lost this ship. it was able to defend itself here
The Slavas were originally built to operate in the NORTH ATLANTIC, where the weather is often uniformly horrible. It's pretty hard to believe the systems would refuse to operate. Seems SO much more likely - given the training levels of the crew involved - that the operable problem is human-related.
I did firefighting as part of my training for the carriers when i was on harriers. They changed the fire procedures massively because of what happened in the Falklands. They found that fire flash was a big problem so they now have a thing called a ships protector where a hose with a disc spread spray either connected to hatch or door combing or when the door or hatch is opened the hose is quickly jammed in the orifice to cover the hole with a spray of water that covers the orifice. It stops the fire flashing through the door/hatch & as such protects the ship & crew from the flash. It’s probably been updated even more since i did it.
The cruiser Moscow did not pass the completion of fire extinguishing, there was not enough money.
What ship were you on?
Waterwall, on!
Firefighter, prove foam!
Jolly japes with the Royal Navy! How we didn't get killed in training I don't know! Civilian firefighters would never attempt a re-entry from above.
Did it several times in early 90's with the royal navy ,old smoking proper fireboxes and solid brass turn nozzles, - no1 firefighter, no 2 - waterwall, no3 - command, no 4 hose tender - 4 man fire team. entry from side into several fires , then above into normal fire - instructor would throw diesel onto fire as no1 went through the waterwall sealing open hatch- nice little fireball, fun.....then side entry into oil fire having changed to foan f5bx nozzle for no1. i know the nozzles have hanged to a different type these days so have the suit no more thick wool but i bet they still have a waterwall nozzle.
On US ships everyone is trained in firefighting not so in a russian. Only a few men trained for that. And this ship did not have waterproof shutters and can be closed to minimize flooding of compartments
the main thing here is dcs is based on the capability of hardware, not the maintenance required to keep it working based on the economic state of the ownership country. also, there were reports that drones were used to distract the ships radar. but, was the radar even maintained? are the missile systems maintained? are the missile tubes even filled?
These questions are supported by the rest of the war. What happens to a military in a kleptocracy? It gets hollowed out while those and the top are fed whatever bullshit they demand to hear.
I think maintenance is a KEY point in this incident, Tim Allison. So is crew training. Also, the officers have to be ready to risk a "blue on blue" incident by actually firing the ship's weapons. That sounds silly, but to a navy just coming out of peacetime, it is a real factor. The US had a lot of trouble with it in the night surface battles around Guadacanal in WWII.
It also utilizes Russia's claimed capabilities which are suspect to say the least.
looks likely that they got hit by the missiles but it's still completely plausible that it sunk due to inability to deal with accidents. Russia really is that bad.
@@anthonyb5279 That doesn't make much sense, Ukraine claimed to have shot it before Russia acknowledged there was a problem, then Russia threatened massive retaliation, and this morning Russia launched a costly strike to hit seemingly every Ukranian city in retaliation. They wouldn't do that for an "Accident", the fact that Russia even screamed at Ukraine about their attack (before going back to the accident narrative) pretty much proves it
As was pointed out by those below who would definitely know, sea-state can limit target detection for a sea-skimmer. It was reported to be "A dark and stormy night" on the black sea. Credit the Ukrainians for using that fact to their advantage! Couple that with the issue of the ships watch-section probably having utter assurance that they were safe, ergo inattention on-watch, Ukraine having no ships with which to oppose them, and with a probable lack of training, and Mr. Neptune becomes "Dr. Benjamin Dover, MD, Proc." One also wonders how effective their damage control efforts were, and doubts it was effective. As soon as the news reports said that the crew had been removed, I knew the game was over, you do NOT abandon ship unless you have no hope of saving it. You can keep a ship afloat after major damage. As a snipe, DC was part of living and breathing aboard ship, (USN Ret.) but obviously not so much for them.
From looking at the weather, it was overcast, maybe some drizzle, low winds. Not really stormy
Unfortunately that evacuation was a lie, only 50 men escaped due to Turkish intervention
-----> It vodka and movie night
I'm wondering if they even had any escort/screening ships flanking it. Or if it was alone.
Yes your description of the weather is quite a bit off and either way I doubt both missiles would have made it through. The whole story doesnt seem very likely to me especially because Neptune missiles or not cheap and shooting them at a slava class is not a safe bet
There is at least one thing people haven't noted much here- the actual post-attack photos show the missile/s impacted in exactly the same place that DCS said they did. Forward of the funnels, aft of the P-500s etc.
Must say : Extremely accurate simulation
It was not sunk by missiles! It courageously destroyed two missiles by sailing into them, and it's a complete coincidence the ship accidentally caught fire at the same moment, causing it to sink ;)
Are you for real?
@@carlabroderick5508 Clearly being satirical. Learn to read.
For it's bravery, it was promoted from Warship Moskva to Submarine Moskva.
The ship saw the missiles and ran into them with typical Russian bravery, proving that the sea belongs not to any stupid Ukranian missile, and now the ship is searching the sea floor for any more treacherous Ukranian technology
Just like it’s land based cousins (T-72s) stopping the javelins and nlaws by blowing up, it gallantly stopped the Neptune missile in its tracks, causing the Neptune to blow up and stop flying.
The Moskva is now undertaking special submerged operations.
Unfunny joke made by Reddit neckbeards
@@TheBranchez Wait, I heard it's already sunk by storm during towing, right ?
@@hieulengoc21531 yes, even the Russians admitted that it has sunk.
@@Rover200Power ohh my bad I missed it. I just heard them say it was damaged and abandoned.
lol
Large swells and rain/ cloud cover absolutely effects radar accuracy, and with those missiles flying low like that just skimming the surface, I'm not surprised that the Russians lost their floating missile launch pad. Those Ukrainian boys knew what they were doing.
It was very well planned
Apparently it happened at night, 18 knot winds and rain...
As a former RF engineer, I can think of a few things that might be going on here. First, there is a thing called "rain fade" that affects microwaves (and presumably radar). So the effective detection distance might be greatly shortened. Remember that in the radar equation the returned signal power falls off as the 4th power of the distance. Adding a loss element such as rain fade in both the forward and returned direction could greatly affect signal levels. Remember that the detection distance is not when the target comes over the horizon, it is when the target emerges from the dectector noise. Second, salt water is highly reflective in RF so there might be some effects from multipath that could confuse the software and therefore might make the aiming accuracy a little less accurate. Third, if there is a high sea state the salt spray from white caps may make the layer of air near the sea surface rather more opaque thus also shortening available response times. This might mean that the defensive missile may not have sufficient time to correct its course for an intercept.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Someone with more experience with radar guidance might be able to provide better insight.
But with modern real time digital signal processing (ie RADAR return oversampling) random returns from sea spray, rain, waves etc. can be filtered out and constants picked out of the noise - exactly why the "stealth" fighter programme is as good as dead. painting a picture with RADAR returns used to be limited by clutter and noise - we can now increase gain on RADAR returns by a ridiculous amount (which would have once produced nothing but unintelligible white noise) and crunch the returns in real time through DSP chips to find tiny constant returns. This sort of processing would have taken a football field of computers a week to process in the 1970s - now a $10 chip can do it in real time.
Do you think that "Moskva" was sunk... No, Russian scientists made her invisible, remember the "Philadelphia experiment" in 1943 with the destroyer "Eldridge". The Moskva cruiser is 3 miles from Washington on full alert, it is invisible, there is no need to supply weapons to Ukraine, when the point of no return is passed, America will be under attack, the Russians never fight civilians. The military infrastructure will be destroyed.
@@LondonSteveLee I've often wondered (but assumed I was being naive) that if a stealth plane has the radar return of a small bird, doesn't this mean it is being detected okay and the radar computers just need to look for birds doing Mach 1. I figured the radar couldn't track the "bird" long enough to measure its speed.
@@donkeysunited In the old days a bird-sized RADAR return would be lost in clutter and rejected, these days each return is digitally hot-spotted and if anything appears to be valid movement it is detected as a track, if a bird sized return is doing 400+ knots then the system knows it's not a bird and therefore it will not be filtered out as clutter. Think of an old analogue TV with the aerial disconnected - that's what RADAR returns look like electronically amplified many-fold - but imagine a constant pixel in all that noise that's always-on - and that hot pixel appears to be moving (ie has a flight path) otr is a constant in front of you - that's a valid return - this oversampling and hot-spotting of return data is how modern systems spot tiny, tiny RADAR returns. The RADAR itself doesn't have to be that amazingly powerful it's how the data is processed that counts.
Blue Vixen on Sea Harrier FA2 was one of the first fighter-sized RADAR installations with such a real time digital signal processing system. Again ground clutter was rejected by ignoring returns that don't have increased-decreased gain, modern systems can actually process those returns in real time and map the ground and or structures. This also means modern RADARs cannot be notched as that old fashioned way of rejecting ground clutter is no longer employed (in western RADARs) in other words appearing static on a RADAR by flying equidistant to the source no longer works against modern systems.
That was crazy, it's like short range defense missiles were losing their locks over and over due to the waves rendering launch impossible. We are learning a lot in this terrible war, and NATO too
That’s the key, lessons are being learnt at the Russians expense
I mean, naval experts probably knew this for 40 years... but I am not a naval expert.
Could it be that Ukrainian forces knew of the relative ineffectiveness of the ship's defences during storm conditions and patiently waited for the elements to oblige before launching their attack?
@@martinhicks6020 Of course they knew. They were supremely trained by US trainers who were in Ukraine ever since the russians invaded Crimea.
@@haloguy628 moreover, that ship was built in Ukraine (when it was a part of the USSR).
Realize this, the Moskva is packed stem to stern with high powered, high explosive weaponry, this ship is a Roman candle just waiting for a light. I also wouldn't doubt that the ship was cruising around with out all it's water tight compartments and vent NOT closed, typical Russian ineptness. The Ukrainians totally distracted the ships bridge and defensive radars by flying a few drones high up in the air around the Moskva, they also has the local weather conditions going for them, all the stars lined up perfectly. Apparently the Moskva didn't even get to fire off it's in close anti missile defense guns, they didn't know what hit them until it was way too late.
If you look back a few years at evaluations of the Slava class cruisers, the difficulty of performing damage control due to the extensive use of flammable materials throughout the ship is frequently mentioned, along with the huge volume of ordnance carried by the ship. So those cruisers were always suspected of having a glass jaw, and if Russian sailors are as incompetent as Russian soldiers that makes things even worse.
I suspect also that the Ukrainians used the Russian's own doctrine against them. The Slava class was intended to overwhelm US carrier strike group defenses with quantity. It's got 16 anti-ship missiles ready to fire. A Ukrainian Neptune battery is reportedly even larger; it's got 6 launcher erectors with 4 missiles each, for a total of 24 missiles. I'm sure they didn't just fire a single missile and hope their drone feint would have distracted the ship.
they waited for the stars to align to try this, the Ukranians are being so incredibly effective with their limited resources. Every helicopter, plane, and advanced rocket that Ukraine has is spent carefully. There will be courses taught in academies about Ukranian military strategy for decades
If Russia doesn't withdraw their warships from the black sea, more of them are going to sink! Mark my words!
Would drones operate in the appalling weather that was, apparently, happening?
@@brianfreeman8290 Could be flying above the could ceiling.
There are certain significant factors that this simulation ignores. Firstly, the Ukrainians used a Bayraktar drone to 'distract' the ship's crew. Secondly, the Moskva was sailing close to the Snake Island. If the size of the waves is enough to prevent deployment of the OSA guns, then the island can also mask the approach of the Ukrainian missiles. Thirdly, the Moskva was built in Nikolaev, Ukraine. It is a Soviet-era ship. Therefore the Ukrainians must be very, very familiar with that ship.
Bairaktar is not any serious problem for the ship. It is easy to destroy. And the ship defence is ready to handle a simultaneous attack of several missiles. Obviously a Bairaktar is much less dangerous object compared to an anti-ship missile: it is slow, it is well visible and it has nothing special in it. The only explanation were an explosion on board or a wrong level of alertness in which the systems were put in. If Ukrainians did the strike, then it is strange that the video is missing, because usually they film every meaningful action an use it in propaganda videos.
@@dandelobo9284 I am following Ukrainian telegram groups and after the Moskva was lost, the number of daily air raids targeting Ukraine has gone up dramatically.
> Thirdly, the Moskva was built in Nikolaev, Ukraine. It is a Soviet-era ship. Therefore the Ukrainians must be very, very familiar with that ship.
In fact Ukrainians were upgrading and repairing Moskva in Nikolaev a few years back, Russians refused to pay, so Ukrainians removed some systems they installed and returned the ship :)
@Dan Delobo Moskva had just one good long-range radar and it can only scan 180 degree at once. If Bayraktar drone was on the one side and Naptun missiles went very low over the sea from the other side - it's possible they were detected too late to react.
@@os360 They already announced the increase of attack before this happened. And even if you wouldn't take this fact into account, whatever caused the lose of such a ship the number of attacks would be go up in every case. Therefore to see it as a "revenge" would be absolutely wrong. The fact of lose of the ship as such is absolutely enough for to be a reason to intensify the fire.
@@ajuc005 It doesn't mean that they know how to disable the defence. If it were the missiles, than the only good explanation were the wrong level of alertness set. There are different levels and they affect how fast systems of the ship and the crew are able to react to a danger. Rain and storm -- it is surely was taken into account by the developing the defence. It is strange to hear something like this in this video. We would hear it otherwise immediately from many experts and officials in US and elsewhere: "storm was a reason why Moskva couldn't intercept the missiles". But we didn't.
In this century, everyone is a military expert at real time these days. Thanks for this video and thanks to DCS for such a fantastic simulation
The question is was this an issue with Russia or all warships and missiles? China’s and Russia’s ability to fire missiles are much more significant than Ukraine’s. This incident along with the results of the Falkland Islands seems to confirm Navy planners are over estimating ship’s ability to defend themselves. It seems just like Battleship armor was over rated.
I don't think the Moskva was very heavily armored. Big and very powerful armaments, but not armored like the Iowas for example. Just big.
Oh battleship armor was fine for pre aircraft threat the aircraft threat is what was underestimated by the Battleship side of Navies. And if they realized the aircraft threat more deck armor would have helped keep the Battleships out there. Plus moving battleships way harder to hit and kill than WWI Battleships at Pearl Harbor.
Japanese being chicken till way to late with their surface ships also hurt Battleship reputation. Taking their large battleship force and blowing the hell out of Midway and taking the island with their transports should have been done US only had one Carrier left to use and it in actual battle only sunk one heavy cruser.
Japanese Battleships if sent in force to Guadalcanal would have won that battle and again after engagement with Japanese carriers US carriers unavailable.
Still Battle ships just help the carriers and were very helpful in all the invasions still not worth building after that although cruse missile battleships never fought and some future versions might be very hard to deal with with Super guns and missiles they even up the range advantage of carriers.
@@milferdjones2573 You forget one of the major threats to Battleships was torpedos. More deck armor would have just made Battleships even more top heavy and more prone to roll over then they already were.
The US still had the Enterprise and the Hornet after Midway and the Saratoga arrived in Pearl Harbor on June 6th. After the loss of the Yorktown at Midway the Navy immediately recalled the Wasp and sent her to the Pacific as well. She arrived in San Diego on June 19th and participated in the Battle for Guadalcanal in August. So she also would have been available if Midway had continued into the end of June or July. Midway was also in range of B-17s from Hawaii. If the Japanese fleet had stayed around Midway without air cover they would have been picked off one by one.
Slava cruisers carry the missiles in thin metal cans strapped on the side. Hit one of those and you’ll have the warhead and solid propellant to deal with. Along with those either side.
Older battleships protected their ammunition (especially gun propellant) in thick steel cases deep in the ship. Diving shells would never get deep enough horizontal shells (and sea skimming missiles) have layers of thick armour to contend with.
Slava class does not have those armoured citadels.
@@matthewhuszarik4173 Minor corrections: Lexington was lost at Coral Sea, Yorktown was lost at Midway(or more appropriately, after the battle)as it was being prepped for towing back to Pearl Harbor.
Considering her anti-ship missiles were on the deck and easy to be hit, it's easy to see how something a small missile hit could take her out.
There was no where else to put them 😅
really stupid design
@@anthonyb5279 *BUT IT LOOKS COOL THO*
-R*ssian logic
Missile wich was used aint small by any means.
@@ghansu 12 meters long
Very difficult to hit a missile flying at wave height in rough weather. Radar suffers from returns from the sea. Hitting a missile in flight is very difficult. Israel achieved it over land.
Thats very true
Russian statement on the (surviving) crew of the Moskva: "'Officers, midshipmen and contract personnel will continue service in the Navy. Conscript sailors on the Moskva will be relieved of their duties in the near future." So there were apparently conscripts on-board, in a complex war zone. I can imagine who on duty at 1am and who was in their bunks.
Thank you for fixing my mistake, I thought that rough weather would make things harder for the missile.
Won't happen again.
very dufficult to fly a missile at wave height in rough weather without running it into the ocean.
Good points. It does seem that crew training and officer conduct was likely at fault with either missile counters or damage control, seems that overall moskva should have been able to survive that attack
First the Moskva was lured by a drone at the opposite side of the ship.
Second the missiles used the drone system to launch at the good direction (without using the batteries radars so their launch was un detected).
Third the Neptune missiles used a blind launch and low flight to prevent detection until their about 1 minute from impact were their used their own radar, it's too late for defences to be used at this time. the time for pointing radars and armament, acquiring the target and firing is too short.
One last thing, somme of the missiles on the Moskva can't engage a target with low altitude (50 meters from old missiles, 10 from new, the Moskva didn't have the new ones).
Good old drones again in this war coming threw .drones are future warfare i think ??
You need to work on your English language skills. You are so terrible at writing in English I can't puzzle out what you're trying to say.
I don't believe a ship like that could be distracted just by something on the other side too, these are combined 3d radars etc. But yes a drone was used with some kind of electronic warfare to jam the radars so the missiles could slip in. But since the missiles skim slow why would a launch be detected, and not from a drone? it would only be detected once over the horizon, but if the sea is rough that can create clutter. I heard a usa plane "poseidon" was uszed tho to give the exact location of the ship, so perhaps indeed the missile didn't really need his own radar to track the ship, I'm not sure. But ukraine certainly played it smart, cuz this was their best protected air defense ship they had.
The swells pose a computational problem both for DCS and the actual fire control systems on the ship. As the size of the swells increase the required processing power increases exponentially as the range for each variable increases. At some point you overwhelm the fire control system with more data than it can calculate.
I don't think the radar for anything except the premium aircraft are fully modeled with ray tracing. They use a simple algorithm using percentages of distance, cross sections, altitude, weather, etc and a dice roll to determine if something is detected. Actual playable aircraft like the F5, Viggen, F18, etc use a raytracing like method that actually calculates every significant surface that is visible from the aircraft. You can tell because your frame rate drops like crazy when you have the ground scanning radar on but you can drop a bunch of AI controlled radars without the same loss of performance.
Particularly so if you are relying on the very best leading edge technology of the 90's.
sorta, it's about the noise threshold, you need your target to have a large enough radar return to exceed the clutter/noise threshold. At the start, it's an analog/microwave signal that is returned to the radar. The return signal is amplified but the baseline has to be established for what is a true return vrs unwanted noise/clutter. The system has processors for different weather effects/interference.
We are assuming, of course, that proper maintenance and training was done of the various systems. Or that the defensive missiles were not past their shelf life.
Aside from the possible (or even actual) weather issues, I also wondered a lot about the effect of complacency combined with poor morale and training. If the crew believed that they were not in danger ("We're too far offshore, and besides the Ukrainians have nothing that can hit us!"), the realization that there was incoming fire may have delayed activating the response. I will admit to being shocked that what should have been survivable hits ended up sinking the ship, which does point to bad damage control training. But we'll never get the answer from the Russians.
The Moskova would have needed to be beyond Sevastopol to be out of range of the Neptune missile. I am sure the Russian Navy was aware of the risk. I think the Ukrainians just played their hand very well , I bet they did not expect it to be sunk.
@@walterblanc9708 Russian military planning having just reset could also play into the outcome. Since Russian forces redeployment to the east it leaves the corridor from the west side open. The Ukrainian army probably has 10x the number of trident missiles since the day of sinking. I would expect Mariupol to be In Ukrainian hands in a month.
With 16 gigantic easy to hit missile tubes stuck outside on the deck of the Moskva, I am surprised that ANY explosion near it would not detonate those missile tubes and doom the ship. The giant missiles look really cool out there, but this seems like a very bad Soviet style design.
I don't think 2 missiles exploding would sink it. I would bet that the one or both of them hit the ships missiles causing them to explode like dominos.
The ship was built in the 50s so would of been a very comprised design vs todays wepones
Like the majority of ships hit by a modern ASM some if not all the defensive systems were never turned on. The ship captains believed there was no danger to their ships.
Or didnt work as well as they had hoped.
Don't think so, as this ship was tasked with defending the whole region, their fleet from aerial attacks.
@@bekeneel they never thought there was an anti ship missile threat. The Moskva probably spent most of her time searching for overland targets.
When you are involved in a wartime situation, the best defense is to take nothing for granted and be prepared for any and all things. It is apparent that the ship has no, or very little, damage control or fire-fighting capability. I will also speculate that the electronic systems are not well maintained. Also, 80% of that ship is above water (top heavy) combined with a 21 ft. draft, it would not be a very stable platform and would probably capsize and sink in heavy weather.
Part of that issue is that you can't have the crew on the razor's edge the whole time and by this time it would be well over a month. Perhaps a well trained crew but as we've gathered so far, the training in the Russian Military isn't that good overall.
Thanks Dave, we appreciate your expert opinion 👍
All warships appear to be top heavy but that does not make them unstable since the centre of buoyancy moves when they heel. This creates a righting moment.
Thanks for your knowledge. Dirt navy here.
Heavy weather in the oceans!
Wave period in Baltic and Black Seas is significant shorter
I heard the main radar had a 180 deg arc and they flew a drone into the arc of the radar and shot from opposite direction
Correct BUT it has multiple Fire Control radars which can point at different angles. We studied this ship last year.
@@grimreapers would that be then a crew ability/readiness issue? Inability for the humans to deal with multiple threats?
@@grimreapers the higher frequency fire control radars have trouble with rain.
@@harryparatestes This would be my bet.
@@grimreapers that is if what the Russian states was true. As is the case in this Ukraine war, it seems Russia is massively overstating their technology and weaponry. Capitalizing on their success of few products like AK rifle to create a myth of invincible weapon producer.
Is it possible, and I know this is really going out on a limb, that a country (let's keep it general here not to hurt anybody's feelings) might overstate their technological capabilities to appear more dangerous than they really are? i was watching a documentary the other day discussing some confiscated "advanced" technology from Russia, and it was really just off the shelf, Chinese made gear of dubious quality.
There's a very good chance that Russia's strength is largely just smoke and mirrors...
Very possible.
The Orlan uses a bolted-in Canon DSLR camera from the store..
Well. Judging from how they are doing in Ukraine, this seems to be the case.
@@ClockworkAnomaly a cheap one
@@ClockworkAnomaly While I generally agree with the sentiment of Russian/Soviet terrible hardware quality, I don't think using a Canon camera in a recon drone is part of them.
For its purpose, that particular camera is perfectly adequate and are both cheap and abundant (in the market pre-war) enough to be economical.
Russia doesn't really need to produce their own custom military spec camera that will drive up the cost even more, in fact I don't think Russia is industrially capable of producing their own high fidelity camera + lenses either.
And as a comparison many other superpowers did similar thing before as well.
The Moskva's primary defensive radar was stowed when you look at the pictures of the Moskva when it was being towed. To an untrained eye this means the ship was not expecting an attack!
What do you mean stowed. The OSAs were stowed they were still covered up but you cant stow the searchradars.
It was in a stow position to limit a PR disaster of shooting down a civilian plane, but I guess Russia won't be taking this risk again
Radar clutter, as other people already mentioned here. I was an RF engineer for a long time and I learned that clutter is a real issue trying to track low flying objects.
Modern Doppler radar can deal with radar clutter. The Moskva just wasn't modern, it was 20 years out of date. You can tell by its mechanically rotating radar.
@@williamzk9083 indeed. All modern vessels have a phased array radar, but can that deal with all clutter? Will that detect a low flying missile over a choppy sea?
@@hansrosenberg3115 With Coherent Pulse Doppler radar you can detect movement. The radar maintains an extremely accurate local oscillator reference, the radar pulse is sent out in phase with this. When the echo returns its phase is measured and stored. When the next pulse comes back its phase is also stored. If the target has moved the phase will change. The Germans even had in WW2 a system called Wurzlaus on their Wurzburg radars to overcome windows clutter. They didn't have digital memory but used acoustic delay lines. It's of course more complicated in that there are multiple pulse sequences on different frequencies that are dithered to avoid jamming. The Moskva just looks a little old and not so good at filtering out clutter. The mechanical scanning radars means maybe 5-10 seconds is lost between rotations cutting into warning times. The Russians could probably do better but they didn't and got sunk.
@@williamzk9083 clear answer. Sounds very logical technically. Which makes you wonder:why the hell did the put their flagship in such a dumb position knowing the Ukraine has weapons like that. Really dumb tactics.......
@@hansrosenberg3115 I think arrogance, they underestimated the Ukrainian will & resolve. I actually agree with the sea clutter theory. The Russian radar just wasn't good enough or modern enough. Cruise missiles have a very small radar signature. I would imagine an effort is put into making them stealthy.
Thankyou Reapers.
Great little docco.
Informative (Truly enlightening really) and entertaining.
For those of us with a very basic understanding of naval hardware, you have brought reality to us in language we can readily digest. 10 out of 10.
Imagine a super-advanced Digital Combat Simulator running on a supercomputer in Arlington, VA, using all the data gleaned from years of observing the Slava class cruisers during naval exercises around the world. Imagine being able to precisely model the physics of how microwaves reflect off waves and rain, taking into account temperature and even the salinity of the water. Imagine being able to plug in the precise parameters of the R-360 "Neptun" missile, including its radar cross section. Too bad Ukraine didn't have access to such technical resources. Or maybe, just maybe, they did...
If anything they would have used Harpoon V or its competitor whose name escapes me at the moment. which is a dedicated Naval Warfare simulator that goes has a lineage that goes all the way back to the late 80s. Clancy used it to wargame Red Storm Rising and naval academies and think tanks use it to simulate scenarios all the time. Harpoon V was release I want to say in 2020 so its dataset should be fairly relevant.
very new here, but why are people so confident DCS has it correct?
i got a good imagination
Yeah, I wonder if it wasn't former Navy personnel (acting say as CIA) firing those missals.
@@ratsuel8152 It's the closest we could get with accurate radar simulation since this (Flight) sim has all that modeled.
From what I understand, the attack was undertaken at night and in bad weather which may have reduced the Moskva's defensive abilities. Also, Ukraine are claiming 2 missile hits but how many did they actually fire? Maybe they fired 20 missiles and only 2 got through? We likely won't have those details until later. In any event, nothing is invincible and as much as the Russians would like us to think so, it has become apparent over the last 50 days that their military is nowhere near as good as we thought it was and Ukraines military is far better than anyone gave it credit for. Keep up the good work, Cap! Fun fact: the Moskva (formerly Slava) was built in Mylolaiv, one of the cities which has suffered greatly during the recent war.
There's a whiff of poetic justice about this.
We dont have 20 neptun launchers. Hell, we dont even have 20 Neptun missiles :)
So a single launcher can do 4 missiles per truck. I kind of find it hard to believe they would hold back and not blow the whole truck i.e. 4 missiles if they really thought they had a chance to sink the thing. If for no other reason to try and overwhelm the defense systems!
@@Uf1r There is some talk that a Bayraktar TB2 was used as a decoy. Not sure if it's true or not.
Apparently, they sent Bayraktar TB-2 drone to distract the engagement radar because said radar only could engage one target, at only one direction.
So when Moskva trained their radar towards the drone, and add to the choppy seas rendering all sensors ineffective, those missiles could only be detected by Mark One Eyeballs.
And it'll be too late.
Ehhh Ukraine is buying most of their stuff from already developed countries, America being a big part. 2.1 billion in aid. It’s not as if Ukraine built all of their stuff prior to this. Which none of it is.
From what I've been reading, the Neptune missile cruises at about 10-15m and goes to about 4m above sea level on terminal flight.
Both missile systems struggle to acquire anything below 15-20m so it's possible the missile radar just didn't pick up the incoming. As you say in the video, if the guns hit at all is somewhat random.
Add bad seastate probably making radar contact with the missiles intermittent, apparent drone use to distract the AA systems and low visibility and the invincible becomes very vincible.
Moskva was never meant for independent operation. It was always a "first strike" ship of a MUCH larger navy, meant to engage enemy carrier groups with a barrage of huge missiles including 2 tactical nuclear missiles, while covering its own support group with its strong anti-aircraft defense. Anti-aircraft meaning anti-helicopter and anti-airplane. The smaller screening ships around Slava would be handling enemy missiles. It has several radars, but the outdated fire control system meant that only one target per radar could be engaged at a time. In Soviet times in Soviet doctrine, the risk was thought to be affordable compared to the danger Moskva posed to CAGs. You're right about the drones, they were indeed meant to distract the AA so that Osa SAMs wouldn't have a chance to react to incoming ASMs. And perhaps to paint the target, too.
Only over calm seas.
Do you think that "Moskva" was sunk... No, Russian scientists made her invisible, remember the "Philadelphia experiment" in 1943 with the destroyer "Eldridge". The Moskva cruiser is 3 miles from Washington on full alert, it is invisible, there is no need to supply weapons to Ukraine, when the point of no return is passed, America will be under attack, the Russians never fight civilians. The military infrastructure will be destroyed.
Thanks to the generously of the Ukraine military, the Moskva has being promoted to a submarine
Special Underwater Operation
That’s unfunny and a joke Reddit trolls made to make themselves feel better about Ukraine get shit on lmao
@@IlIlIlIlIlIlIIlIlIlIlIlIlIIIII cornball
More like underwater fish refuge.
@@IlIlIlIlIlIlIIlIlIlIlIlIlIIIII UDT at its finest
No. 1 rule. Never ever call a ship unsinkable. It will sink.
There's something to be said about not having massive missiles stowed on the weather decks.
Very unlikely that would be a problem even if hit, the rotary AAM launchers on the other hand would probably cause the sort of damage which could cripple and sink such a ship... wonder where the Galley is on that boat, that would be another likely source of shipboard fire.
The Ukranian claims are both varying too much as well as lacking evidence to be considered as genuine.. so an ammunition misfire or magazine fire seems more likely, especially those big AAMs amidships, a catastrophic fire in those space would cause all kinds of problems and could split the ship in 2...
@@martinpalmer6203 WRONG !!!!
@@larryzigler6812 Go ahead and correct him with facts then... instead of just saying WRONG, like you did something to disprove his observation/experience. That's a simpleton move and ignorant at most.
@@cornbreadstew7957 The facts are being broadcast throughout the free world. Pay attention, goober.
@@martinpalmer6203 if it is true then russian navy really lacks professionalism, especially this is the biggest girl of the black sea
Just noticed, despite having most AA missiles at the stern of the ship, there's no close quarters guns there, its a big blind spot, but not surprising for a ship clearly designed to smash straight into an enemy fleet.
Well the results were very interesting, but I do believe that crew training was an issue.
You're probably speaking of crew training to defend from an incoming, but there's another aspect of training: damage control. Other ships have been hit by cruise missiles, some went down (notably some smaller UK ships in the Falklands war), others didn't (the USS Stark, a much smaller ship hit by two cruise missiles). It might be that with better damage control training, the crew of the Moskva could have saved her. Otoh, it's possible that the incoming hits were lucky, and caused one of Moskva's own missiles to explode. If that happened, it would probably have been on the other side of the ship, since the launchers on the port side seem intact. The fact that it's listing to port makes that unlikely, but it is possible that the incoming passed cruise missile passed entirely through the starboard side of the Moskva and exploded just inside the port side, causing more damage at the waterline there, while still igniting one of the starboard side missiles.
@@michaelbmaxwell1640 I was referring to training in general, but damage control would be an issue,
@@jack99889988 mi opinion irrelevant, but Russian navy definitely didn't expect that.
Some Navies place gun type CIWS amidships, because thats where the majority of Exocet / Harpoon type weapons of that generation aim for and you generally wont have to deal with a crossing target. USN Navy differs in this regard and places them fore and aft.
@@zipz8423 but it still leaves the stern unguarded a severe flaw
I remember when I lived in Hull ,there was a memorial to 2 fisherman killed by the tsars imperial navy on the way to fight the Japanese navy in 1905 .The Russian's navy is still incompetent.
That a fun thing to look up as the Russian Admiral threw binocular after binocular into the Ocean when frustrated. The level of incompetence was insane. The mistaking of British Fishing Fleet for Japanese torpedo boats almost caused a war except the Russians missing them when firing on them.
British Intercepted after that incident with home fleet and Admiral in charge considering what he was up against told the Russians I'm only going to use five of my Battleships considering the Russians performance later that would have sunk the whole Russian Fleet but it got worked out and British Admiral called off before it went down. Consider the Russians could not hit a fishing boat and the British accuracy in WWI the British would have crushed the Russians probably without being hit.
There's two good Russian sailors. One was a revolutionary who didn't let a little thing like his ship sinking stop him. The other was actually Lithuanian and entirely fictional. Both spoke with a Scottish accent.
For me was a real satisfaction watching an offensive naval force being humillated.
👍👏👍
What would you say about the British loosing 7 warship in the Falklands war, but this war was considered a victory for the British navy.
You forget that the UA's used a drone to distract or disable the RU's radar. That was critical to the mission.
That is only a claim. Maybe they just swarmed it with enough missiles. The search radar should still be searching regardless of what weapon radars are doing.
They didn't. Bayraktar has only 150km control range and 7-8km missile range. It would have been shot down by 130mm dual purpose guns before getting in range
I suspect the drone was not only used to 'distract' the Moskva but to locate and track the vessel. The Neptune missiles has a command link to update the targets position and so this would have allowed an optimal attack approach. The missiles active search radar would only have been turned on at the last moment. Ukrainina officers served on the Moskva and knew its systems. I suspect some effort at noise jamming to degrade the Moskva's radar and reduce range. They should have had 30-40 seconds warning with the missile picked up at 10km or more. I blame the AK-630 so called CIWS and its radar for this failure. The Phalanx has its search and target tracking radar mounted above and beneath the gun. The tracking radar will track the target and the rounds from the same antenna. The deviation of round and target on same antenna thus eliminates any alignment issue.
The seas were rough , ever see an surface search radar in heavy seas? It’s umm degraded. Rain also adds to this, the main reason was sea state and degraded surface radar that the missiles were more than likely never even seen, it was a brilliant move by Ukraine with the low flying missiles, It’s not wind that degraded radar , it’s the sea state, and if surface search radar can not detect anything, it sure is not sending telemetry to fire control, or the missile , it does not see it. Only a very focused and experienced radar operator would have even detected this, with a outstanding peak tuned radar, and all this is proving operations department is on top of everything all the time 100% of the time, that is just not possible, and these systems are not just set and forget , a missile launch and is not something taken lightly,, as one would do using with a simulator. My take, and I know a little about all this in real life. 1 Weapons systems have limitations, 2 weapons systems are ran by humans, and errors happen, a lot more than you think. 3 running simulators do not reflect real life. They are a simulator and add even more limitations in a search for truth. I was surprised the sim reflected degraded fire control solutions at all. But it did, as a guy who spent years in the red glowing room as soon as Ukraine claimed what they did, it made perfect sense to me, and was a brilliant move in perfect conditions for getting a hit or two. The Russian story sounds absurd. And if you spent time on warships , in conflict, you know all about how bad the Russian claims are. Very very unlikely. That is my simi educational wild a#% guess. Well you asked!
Well-said and I agree, this is 100% plausible and probably exactly what happened. They wouldn’t have used those missiles in clear air, but the conditions were perfect. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they launched MANY at the same time to multiply their odds of success.
That coupled with a corrupt poorly trained crew a recipe for disaster
They probably used bad wheather yes ,but Moskva had only one radar system on board , Ukrainians used Bayraktar drone to mislead the radar sytem - and then released 2 Neptun missiles , not one, to make things even more complicated
It seemed that Ukrainians claimed the kill well before the Russians admitted their “fire”. So either the Ukrainians are telling the truth or they’re lying but somehow have incredible intelligence on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
OK that's too much to read
A few extra thoughts :
1. I remember many years back (I THINK USS Stark hit by 2 missiles) part of the failure was the CIWS system didn't take down two incoming missiles. They were the same distance and the system couldn't decide which one to hit first, so it did nothing.
2) According to another post the UKR also had a Bayraktar in the area.
On top of the weather issues mentioned, I suspect when the Neptunes were close, the Bayraktar launched 4 missiles which "distracted" the CWIS.
3) AK-630 shoots 5,000 rounds per minute, but only holds 2000 of ammo (based on wikipedia) so that 24 seconds of firing. So the drone missiles go in first and drain the cwis of ammo AND have the guns facing a few degrees the wrong way.
Then the Neptunes come in behind, and the CWIS isn't able to shoot then down as they are out of ammo and/or engaging the drone's missiles.
So combining 1+2+3 make an interesting strategy. Not a weapon expert but seems (at least in part) a plausible strategy.
In the USS Stark incident the CIWS didn't fire because it was not set on auto-engage. It was tracking the target and had a firing solution but did not receive authorization to fire from the human crew member not because it was confused which missile to target lol
Are you seriously considering that drone was able to encounter ship without being destroyed on a fly path? And where are the footages of it? Why this is the first time Ukrainians don't have footages. Not even from land.
I know for sure, that Neptune doesn't exist. I know it from intel, and because there are are a lot of evidences that there were no such missiles strikes recorded from space at time of incident. You can't hide a missile launch from a military satellite. Had this happen, it would be exposed and destroyed soon after. But that didn't happened. So to me it's clear, they are playing information warfare once again. The best proof is intel and lack of footages. Complete lack. For the first time.
The factory where Neptune's were supposed to be produced back in 2021 is destroyed now. Turned into dust just to be sure. But there is still no intel or confirmation that it exist. No one ever saw one outside of vague pictures in internet. Not even Ukrainian military.
@@chaitanyasingh3258
Thanks. :)
@@MrZlocktar
I think you missed my point a bit.
Assuming this video is accurate, then the "Moscov anti-air missiles will not fire", and only the AK-630 will.
The UKR drone (and it's missiles) are meant to go first and waste the CWIS ammo. (yes the drone and drone's missiles will be destroyed)... and THAT is the point. As right behind them are the Neptune missiles, the crew will not have enough time to reload the ak-630 so it will not fire.
As for footage :
Why does UKR OWE you (or anyone) footage? Let's assume they really DID hit the Moscov... do you think they are that dumb to release footage to show how they did it? So that RUS will know how to better protect themselves?
THEY are the only ones who need to be convinced it worked. What you or I think is NOT relevant.
Footage 2:
IF it was an explosion from a fire& explosin from inside then were is THAT footage? A pic / vid will clearly show the hull was ruptured from the inside. Also where are the 500 crew saved? Arn't lives more important than a ship? Shouldn't Russia be happy that 500 of their sailors were saved?
Neptune :
You make no sense. You claim the factory is destroyed now BUT also claim it didn't exist in the first place. How can it be destroyed if it didn't exist?
Honestly PRE-RUS was I don't think anyone really cared... so if nobody cares AND they are careful it's not like many would know.
Also UKR could be lying and used some other weapon instead (i.e. Harpoon?)
Although the US "just" announced sending Harpoons, it's totally plausible these were already sent a few weeks ago. Again the US / UKR don't OWE us anything so they absolutely have the right to send some weapons first and tell us later.
Do Neptunes exist? I think so but it doesn't really matter... what is more important is the UKR capability to hit ships.
@@chaitanyasingh3258 Your reply is pretty good. CIWS will never do nothing in the case of multiple missiles that meet threat criteria. If CIWS is not set to "Auto", it will obviously need another button pushed to fire. In that case, "Command" failed, not CIWS itself. I'm not even sure the Starks' CIWS was loaded, or even in a mode to track a target, let alone engage it. As a former U.S. Navy CIWS supervisor, we were always told the Stark did not have their CIWS "on", whatever that means. Maybe not even loaded with live rounds (we normally have dummy rounds loaded), or not set to "Auto", as Singh suggests.
Never use "Invincible" or "Unsinkable" for any ship. Here is another thing your simulator may not have taken into account, the fact that the Admirals and Generals of the Russian Federation have been stealing from their forces. It's the same reason The Russians who supposedly have 10,000 tanks only fielded 2,800 at the start of their invasion of the Ukraine. How many of those fancy systems are actually maintained properly and working well on a 40 year old ship? It also seems Russian upgrades are not as good as they bragged about.
Russia has 5 times the population of Texas and their economy is smaller. Putin, his oligarchs and military leaders have weakened their nation to the point that they are a pathetic shell. Fewer Ukrainians with native and western equipment and western training are beating up on Putin's invasion force.
The US does one thing very well - Make functioning weapons. Sometimes, as with the Bradley, it takes a little extra work but they tend to get things sorted out eventually. A 96% hit chance for the Javelins demonstrates this. Plus there is always the media in the US looking at military equipment and making it impossible for military procurement to hide blunders. Just one reporter finding something fishy or not working right and a congressional committee starts taking a look at a General's colon to look for malfeasance.
When some dolt in the US Airforce wanted to dump the A-10 the media reported it and the feedback made them realized it was a very bad idea. Now the A-10s have a whole new upgrade package and even a drone version made by Raytheon. That machine may not be invincible but it is an extremely tough machine that can really ruin a Russian Tank battalion's day, if their boss is not careful. That is what the Russians should fear -- the fact that Western weapons are very effective and better maintained by well trained operators and not a bunch of conscripts.
Indeed....
I bet it is also a total lack of discipline by the Russian sailors resulting in poor combat performance and readiness.
Fun A10 fact: 85% of all armored kills were done using missles
I can't argue with your first point that Russia's military capabilities are grossly over-exaggerated and obsolete. However, I disagree that corruption is primary reason for Russia's obsolete military.
As for your second point about America's weaponry quality, I agree for the most part but would argue that the US only FIELDS functioning military weapons and it isn't due to media coverage or public opinion (otherwise 2/3s of our weapons programs wouldn't make it past R&D).
Reason for both is the economic situation of both countries.
The US economy can afford a massively expensive military budget that not only successfully maintains "legacy" equipment but also (more importantly) can invest incredible amounts of money into developing new weapons programs in every military branch. The media covers it and the public knows. The public and media have a much greater appetite for scrutinizing spending on other non-defense related issues that cost a fraction of a percent of our military spending. Our military budget is insanely high and naturally there are problems with some weapons programs (for example, the F-35 would have been cancelled a decade+ ago if the media/public opinion was so closely tied to procurement processes success/failure) but I think we all know deep down we don't want Russia or China calling the shots on the world stage so I'd say we tolerate massive military spending while occasionally complaining about it but that's about it in terms of earnest media/public/political efforts to curtail spending. The actual impactful role we play in influencing military programs' success is by maintaining a strong economy.
Russia's corrupt oligarchs are scum and rob their country but they're robbing an already middling/dying economy that would hardly be any different if the oligarchs didn't exist. Russians also want a strong military (apparently for a different purpose but nevertheless) and would pay for it but they simply can't. The Russian economy is simply too weak. They can barely maintain the Soviet-era legacy equipment; they cannot fund the R&D for a superpower-level military.going forward. They're living on fumes but it's because of fundamental flaws in their economy, not primarily because of oligarchs robbing them (sure the oligarchs don't help but again, it's insignificant relative to the amount of military spending needed to be a military superpower).
I can't believe I wrote that much. I could have just said it's the economy for both countries, not oligarchs and free-media/free-public. Oh well. Hopefully it makes some sense because I'm too tired to proof read it. This is why I shouldn't drink coffee after 8pm.
@@thatdude1435 yeah the A-10 is possibly one of the most overhyped military aircraft of all time
With the swell been so high wouldn't the missile's coming in be comparable to notching with background interferance making the missle systems redundant? This video was far more interesting than I thought it was going to be! Really gave us food for thought...
This may mean that Their battle cruiser, the Kirov may be just as vulnerable like their Slava class cruisers…
I think the kirov and the nakhimov ( beeing modernised) are better defended they have 8 30mm gatlinglike guns (slava had 6) and 6 kortik (gun combined missle ) systems and espacially the nakhimov had way better Electronic and waningsystems, btw ukraine says 2 missles hit,but how many did they fire? Its possible the cruiser took a few down
@@bammeke76 But the Kirov class Battlecruiser and Slava class cruiser Share not only similar weapons/communications/EW/radar systems but also similar mission profiles, primarily anti-air and anti-surface vessel warfare, Although the Kirov type vessel would likely have improved defensive capabilities, in similar circumstances I would argue a similar outcome could be probable based on the current performance of the Russian Navy during this war
@@ebenitez2011 the kirov has indeed pretty much the same systems ( but more and the kortik system is better then the 30 mm guns) the nakhimov is a different story ,all the systems are replaced with modern day systems ,its nearing completion and basicaly the only thing it has in commen with the peter the great is it's hull
@@bammeke76 as soon as nakhimov is back the kirov will also get it's overdue overhaul
@@christianvanderstap6257 indeed I've seen an episode from " combat aproved" about the topic ( you van see them on UA-cam) and the loss of the slava cruiser is a blow but the main russian seapower are its subs and they focus on smaller ships ( up to frigates) with hypersonic and cruisemissles. In my opinion they keep the kirov's slava's and ships like the udaloys to have a blue water navy and force other navys to invest in big ships to ( same and only reason they want to keep the kusnetsov )
Thank you for your content about this current conflict. You are very professional and sensitive to the situation. I am very interested in what all you guys have to say about all of this and I am fascinated by the simulations that you make.
keep up the good work.
The extent of my knowledge regarding ships is the difference between a ketch and a schooner. This was amazing. A learning experience unlike anything in my repertoire.
It appears a lot of navies got their heads stuck in the sand (or water) when it comes to the threat from the anti-ship missiles.
If I am not mistaken that was demonstrated in The Falkland War and by BOTH sides ...
Well this ship had three systems to deal with them.
The Royal Navy ships involved in the Falkland lacked any CIWS other than Sea-Dart missiles (Which had serious problems with low altitude targets). After the Falklands the RN made a very big effort to sellotape CIWS systems to their ships.
Anti-Ship missiles were still pretty much untested in combat during the Falklands and a lot of lessons were learned (By navies across the entire world.) from them. Russia seems to have missed this. (Heck, this is evidenced by the Argentine forces messing up their Exocet missile fuses so the missiles just weren't detonating at all. The BBC reported on this and the Argentinian's fixed it. Combined with just poor misuse of them due to the Argentinian pilots being afraid of going to a high altitude. Lot of ordnance was released far too low without enough time for the fuse to be armed.)
The Argentine Navy didn't really take part in the Falklands (Other than the Belgrano being sunk by ye olde torpedoes and some random helicopters gunning and launching a torpedo.) and the RN didn't really utilise anti-ship missiles against anything, nor have they ever really made a decent one.
Fitting considering that this ship was the largest to be sunk in modern warfare since the admiral Belgrano
@@MrNigzy23 You forgot to mention Seacat and Seawolf which were also point defence missile systems deployed on ships during Op. Corporate. The former might have been shit but it was still there. Seawolf was effective but not there in sufficient numbers being fitted to only two type 22's. .I also suspect you're mixing up your ammo types there. It was iron bombs not being fused correctly for the low level drop so they weren't arming correctly before impact as the low level they were being dropped from did not give them time to fuse correctly. All of the exocet missiles that struck ships detonated including the one that struck HMS Sheffield. Although three ships were actually struck by exocet missiles, only two of them were lost as a result and one of those was an unarmed merchant vessel. As far as Argentine naval vessels go, during the conflict argentina lost 20 vessels in total. 8 sunk, 4 damaged and another 8 captured. To my mind you're correct about shipborne anti ship missiles for the RN down south.. For shipborne SSM's Britain used exocet for while then changed to Harpoon. Air launched anti surface missiles were carried by helicopters during corporate one of which was used to disable the submarine Santa Fe. Also, Sea Skua was used down south and had a good hit rate. It was fired at least 8 times. In 1985 the Sea Eagle was introduced but has now been replaced with Sea Venom. Both pretty decent lightweight anti ship missiles.
Yes! I literally went to your channel to ask whether you will produce something about Moskva defeat and here it is!
We aim to please.
Interesting comment from Professor at the Dartmouth Naval Academy on BBC this morning. The P500/P1000 missiles that surround the superstructure carry a warhead of about 1 tonne each, using a "non-inert" explosive, & the russians did say that a "magazine" explosion was involved, might explain why the Moskva was able to burn out. Perhaps the sea swell produced too much radar clutter for the Osa missiles to be guided, so the Fire Control systems wouldn't launch.
Personally, I think that these simulations make anti-air systems see a lot more effective than they are. Often times the skill and doctrine of the operator can make all the difference - just compare and contrast Iraq and Serbia in the 90s. One had an incredible anti-air system that was flattened in days, the other managed to utilise tactics that allowed them to survive and even shoot down a stealth jet.
Maybe Moskva was just incompetent and the Ukrainians timed their attack well.
You can add a similar note to every aspect of modern warfare. We get all caught up in the deadly, well armored, high-tech, fancy equipment but some forget that in almost all cases, it still relies partly or wholly on humans for at least part of the function.
So training should join logistics (and IMHO ergonomics, as any tanker knows that fighting inside a cramped soviet/russian tank is exhausting and miserable compared to a lot of NATO/US vehicles) on the list of "don't forget these things"
@@th6029 100%, however I think when it comes to the likes of fighter jets their weaknesses are far better modelled. Whereas when we look at these air defense systems, their ability to track and defeat aircraft is almost like they offer close to complete area denial for non-stealth aircraft. However, as we can see in Ukraine, both sides are able to operate in the sky - obviously not freely - but going by the function of the Moskva in game their airforces should be non-existent. Indeed, the Moskva should never have been hit by the Neptun missiles.
@@guntguardian3771 Air defenses in DCS are actually pretty ineffective compared to real life against aircraft players for just this reason, their AI is pretty poor with little capability to coordinate and employ tactics.
Great Job on the simulation. I would have to factor in the Russian Complacency variable, facing the Ukrainian forces in the real world. "Safe at Sea" and not expecting any kind of threat may be a real issue in overlooking the Ukrainian resolve.
Yeah, I think its highly likely they did not expect the threat and their defenses were not active
@Pavlo Kramarenko yes yes, however, the Ukrainian army is gradually ending)
a limited grouping of troops successfully operates against the entire army of another country)
pretty good, right?)
@@cheekybreeky1507 successfully gets on the nose and retreats)
One factor not mentioned is the Moskva's possible lack of battle readiness and possible defensive systems' lack of maintenance and readiness. If the Moskva, her crew and commander were in a state not unlike a lot of the other Russian forces we have seen in this conflict with their poor performance then it wouldn't be a stretch to think that two anti-ship missiles could get through the defenses.
Also why did Russia move the rest of their fleet near Odessa further out to sea if it was only an onboard accident?
My note the Russians soldiers really don’t want to be fighting Ukraine. Russia lost the morale battle long ago.
@@codename1176 judging by the number of surrendering Ukrainian soldiers, no one wants to fight at all
The ships are participating in a special racing operation away from the shores
Fair point but the drastic reduction in SAM umbrella wouldn't encourage me to hang around, either. Fantastic news however it happened imho.
I think it was a combination of events. An attack started the fire and poor damage control training let the fire become uncontrollable or they straight up bailed from the ship not long after it was hit and let the fire do its thing. Since WWII the American navy put a huge emphasis on damage control due to operating so far from ports in the Pacific which carries on today. The Japanese didn't because they believed they could never be attacked in any meaningful way. With how much propaganda Russia tells their own soldiers, I would be surprised if there is a similar lack of training because of the belief that their ship is impervious to attack.
I'm not an expert on navel warfare, but I'm inclined to think lack of training & proper mainitance was a large factor.
And I'm basing my conclusions on how the troops in the ground war are being run.
Other than that, this was some very good food for thought.
Well done GR!
Its a 40 year old ship.
Might have been modernised but anti ship munitions a huge issue and this incident only reinforces the vulnerability.
It’s a big vessel 11500 tonnes so it’s no slouch theoretically.
I think what happened is it was hit by 1 missile and they surrendered, then it was tugged to the nearest Ukrainian port to be scrapped.
For those who don't know scrapping a captured ship is a traditional way of insulting the enemy.
Nice analysis and modeling. Keep up the good work!
A rough analysis of how this may have been achieved. Combination of deception, good use of weather conditions, relatively precise targeting and exploitation of weaknesses of enemy. One of the key risks in this operation was collateral damage, Ukraine cannot afford the political fallout of an accidental strike on a merchant ship or tanker etc. this was probably one of the key go/nogo factors. So they would need a clear range from point of firing to target. How do you ensure clear range when you can’t fly aircraft in the area due to Moskvas AA capability, they probably used a number of drones to cover the area in question. Clear range achieved. Deception by a drone flying closer to the moskva so that the main air radar with supposedly only 180 degree coverage is kept busy covering this target in case it is a missile carrier. Deception achieved. Weather conditions, radar is badly effected by bad weather, trying to detect missiles in a radar screen that is hampered by sea clutter and rain storms is needle in a haystack stuff. One of the factors to be considered would have to the moskvas speed. If she is at top speed it is doubtful the missiles would be successful as she would probably move to far out of the target box before the missiles switch to active radar homing. Also her Electronic warfare systems are waiting to pick up any radar transmissions as she would have to be at high readiness considering she was operating near a hostile coastline. So did Ukraine change the active radar settings on these missiles, if it is possible and the Moskva is transiting at relatively slow speed then I suggest the two missiles are fired from truck mounted launchers. They initially fly at 15m asl until they reach terminal flight point let’s say 8nm from Moskva. Weather conditions are affecting the secondary air radars so they do not detect the two missiles inbound, it also lessens the likelihood of visual detection of the missiles. Active radar on, missile drops to 5m asl and covers the 8nm to target in 2 mins or so. Electronic warfare equipment would detect the active radar but is 2 mins enough time also unless fire control radars can achieve a lock those systems are useless. Last resort is visual engagement if missiles by optical weapon systems in poor weather at night. All in all a well planned and executed operation to remove a major tactical and strategic target that provided force protection Anti Air Defence for this entire sea area. It probably ensures Russia cannot conduct a sea based invasion of Odessa unless this ship is replaced with similar and also may now allow Ukraine to utilize Neptune’s from their own aircraft now. This is just an analysis of how it may have been conducted. Russian complacency after 2 months at sea on enhanced readiness cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor. The footage I saw of what I said was possibly Moskva post strike was actually footage of post missile test on a Charles F Adams DDG edited to prevent confusion.
That sounds like a reasonable Possibility. I do not know enough to trust my own Opinion in that regard. But from what i read in the comments - especially in your Post: Yeah that sound like it could be done that way. Good Thinking. Thx.
do you have a link to that footage? I have been looking for any photos or videos of the attack. I am assuming that somewhere there is a TB2 video Ukraine has of the attack since they had one involved.
Sorry just looked at the footage in detail, it was footage of a Charles F Adams DDG that was used in testing of anti ship missiles. So ignore that part about the footage, it was not Moskva. I will edit my initial post.
@@kingofthesofas was old footage of a missile test on a Charles F Adams DDG even us old navy salts can be spoofed 😂
I have to wonder if the missile battery got intel from some NATO awacs that had the position of the Moskva. I suppose no one is going to admit that they shared that.
You left out an important part of the engagement: Ukraine had a drone playing cat-and-mouse with the ship as Ukraine was firing the missiles.
I think people underestimate the plan the Ukrainians had and the amazing teamwork that lead to sinking this ship. From what I've heard they used about 10 missiles launched from different positions + drones to confuse the radar systems
@@ghp0518
First time I heard this. There in lies the problem. Overwhelming the ships ability via massive missiles volley will compromise it's defensive countermeasures.
This can be said if any naval ship. Better be on point and trained to perfection in order to keep your shop afloat if you want a tiny chance at living. Everyone has to know their jobs perfectly and fast. That's why drills are so important.
From simple instructions and timing on how to put on a gas mask (remember when you first put it on and it took two minutes? Then as you got better maybe 10 seconds from the time you pulled it out to tightening the straps right?) to getting your stations?
I think the ship either got "caught with it's pants down", the missile used some sort of new/advanced technology, the storm interfered with the ship's sensors in some way or any combo of these things
Due to logistics issues, the crew were not issued pants.
Its called war everything go's wrong all the time we are just human. Until the alien invasion comes anyway.
Why would Putin issue pants? He has big enough balls where he never needs them!
Crew was drunk on vodka and busy fapping to nudie magazines
Could also be caused by incompetence of the crew.
Lesson learned: never underestimate an opponent who has built your ship, knowing its design flaws and limitations.
You'd think the Russians would be aware of this, LOL...
Rumor has it that they didn't even have the radar switched to "active" mode so it could constantly search for missiles! I wouldn't be surprised if this is true.
When your battleship is sunk on the first attack of its life by only two fired missiles with a 100% hit rate then you really have a problem as a navy.
Have any footage?
I doubt they only fired two missiles. They could have fired 8-16 in one salvo and only 1-2 went through
Or your five-year old is just very lucky.
@@tedarcher9120 I would actually doubt they'd waste that many missiles. They almost certainly only fired 2-4. You wouldn't waste 8-16 missiles. I may be wrong though.
@@jonny-b4954 it's not wasting missiles - it's using them. It's much better to spend and extra 1-2 mil dollars to destroy a billion dollar cruiser
3 lessons from Sheffield: if your long range comms interfere with your search radar, don't use comms when in missile range. Extensive use of aluminium and (particularly) magnesium in ship construction is a nightmare in fire. Airborne Early Warning is essential in naval ops. There's also several systems that had very poor maintenance in the Yeltsin years (Mig-29 case in point). This has led to a lack of inspection and routine maintenance in many Russian systems.
One more thing: don’t send a naval task force into the littoral unless you’ve got organic top-cover (in the form of a fleet air arm).
I used to think the Black Sea was a Russian lake; nowadays I think it’ll prove to be their graveyard.
oddly, magnesium burns. even under water. 😂😂 having served 20 years with the US Navy, it's not a surprise to me that this is an issue. The decision makers are so far removed from the end user, that they tend to look like morons from an operational perspective.
Also...don't make working dress out of synthetic fabrics like nylon or polyester
The use of aluminium...lesson from Sheffield? Sure this wasn't HMS Amazon. She was a type 21. Only material remedial actions noted in BOI where reduce smoke from fittings and furniture, and splinter damage from the use of Formica on Glamorgan after she was also hit by an exocet. Most of the smoke came from missile propellant and wiring cable. Sheffield had a mild steel frame. For a full week after being struck she retained normal trim and draft suggesting no issues with hull or frame.
Sorry I disagree alot of that is historical but after the subsequent reports that have eventually been released there's much more relevant lessons to be learned. The presence of artificial fibre uniforms and plastic foam bedding producing large amounts of smoke was relevant. The T42 destroyers were all steel construction and so aluminium and magnesium was not relevant. The limitation of lack of AEW continues to be a problem with the same radar system in use since the 1980s. Lessons that can be learnt relate much more to military discpline competence and training. HMS Glasgow detected the exocet, immediately transmitted a "handbrake" warning of missile attack, fired chaff and turned bow onto the attack vector. Some reports detail that the P2 neptunes radar was detected by ESM and reported to Sheffield but as the capability had been kept so secret the ops team were unaware of the significance. Sheffield recieved the "Handbrake" warning, and according to some reports did detect the incoming missile on its Type 965 radar however the airwarfare officer was absent from the operation room and his junior was to quote the findings of the board of inquiry "relieving himself" no action was therefore taken and the missile was sighted by the bridge crew just before impact with the ship not at action stations. One reason for the complacency was that the air warfare officer had failled to read the intellignece briefing (200pages) thoroughly enough to realise that the Super Entendards had an air to air refueling capability and therefore believed that a missile attack was impossible, he continued to insist this even after the impact. There was then poor coordination of the fire fighting effort, damage to the ring mains and it was discovered that some access hatches could not be used whilst wearing breathing apparatus. Despite the board of inquiry findings no court martial was conducted to avoid damaging morale (early on) or tarnishing the victory (later) the reports were finally declassified in the 2010s (2017 I think). The 2015 MOD review concluded that the exocet's warhead did detonate despite earlier opinions that it had not. Personal opinion - It's the differnce between a ship being run as if it was at war (HMS Glasgow) or at peace (HMS Sheffield) at the time there was a reasonable expectation that it may not have developed into an all out war. There was a similar disparity in performance with other T42s (note HMS Exeter's kill record, having just been exercising with the RAF off Belize). A lack of CIWS and point defence missile systems was also clearly critical (although in 1982 that was only just developed in the US Navy too). All in all it comes down to the crew.
Russian ship Captain: "Missile incoming! Activate automated countermeasures!"
Ship: "Your device is downloading required updates. Please do not turn off or reboot your device during these updates"
There are some interesting factors here regarding the Moskva. She is the lead ship for the class (Slava). She is old having been launched in 1979 commissioned in 1982. Her surface to air weapons are also very dated as are the supporting electronics. She had the AGM630 CIWS. When the ship was designed they used what the had available at the time vice inventing a new primary weapon for. The SS-N-12 is also carried on the Kiev CVHG, Mod Echo II SSGN and some Juliet SSG's. So practically every system on this class had already been installed on another. She is a COGOG propulsion system COGOG stands for COmbination Gas Or Gas - meaning that she had a set of Gas turbines for cruising at slow speeds and could switch to a larger set to operate at faster speeds. She could not use both systems at the same time. That would be called COGAG with the A meaning And. So she has a lot of jet fuel on board for propulsion. So if we consider the that since the war started the Russian Navy really has not played a significant role, but patrolling a coast line gets very boring very quickly. Her crew in CIC was likely not keenly focused on their jobs when the attach occurred. There are some discrepancies in how the weather was actually. In pictures after the explosion the seas appear calm which goes against the Russian version. Further one has to wonder if they actually updated the threat detection systems for Russian Anti-Ship missiles of not. In 2021 the Mineral-U search/attack radar was introduced which would also be part of the Neptune system. Finally Ukrainian Military decision to wait until a valuable target was available the shoot the Neptune's at it.
Happened across this video and was initially put off by the games aspect. However, I learned more about its defensive capabilities than all the news outlets joined together! Modelling is only as good as the programmer. I had another thought. Perhaps Ukrainians and others "helping" from elsewhere were running models?
0:50 Technically it's four. Ukrania were more than 90% complete, but stuck at Mykolaiv because Russia decided to be cheap and demanded Ukraine to give it for free.
Who's want to bet that the Ukrainians knew the ship inside out and decided to send Bayraktar to distract the engagement radar because the radar turns out could be only trained in one direction, and choppy seas made the ship essentially blind as a bat because they still stuck in 70s tech because the money for modernization got redirected for someone else's Black Sea dacha?
So yes, the ship were sunk from incompetence. And corruption from the beginning to the end. That two Neptune AShM were final two nails in the coffin for Moskva, sharing the same death date with Titanic.
There has been so much discussion of the sinking and you're the first person I've heard mention it.
Thanks.
I was really thinking the cold rainy weather affected it. Sea clutter, lessened ability to detect heat, and Ive heard they were sidetracked by UAVs. That was my very first thought
The weakness of the simulation is that it doesn't cover lack of maint or crew training issues.
And that’s what killed her none of the weapons were functioning when she got hit
I heard there were UA TB2 drones in the air aswell. Possibly overwhelming the radar or simply distracted the crew long enough to land the missiles.
Couldn't the drones attack the radar as well. I saw a thing that said the drones probably "jammed the radar". I don't know exactly what that means but I too it as they disabled it in some fashion.
why we dont have footage then
eminence it could be for opsec reason. Could be for emotional reasons, allegedly all hands lost or up to 50 survivors, and could just be looking at footage of hundreds of sailors burning to death. Could be there were no TB2s at all and nothing to look at basically. There is however a SAR image of what appears to be the Moskva burning with some support vessels nearby. But NATO, Ukraine and Russia have all acknowledged that the ship has been sunk. That is basically 3 “witnesses” agreeing the ship is no more even though the explanations are different.
I leave geopolitics out of it and admire war machines for their engineering and capabilities. The Slava class are still starkly beautiful.
I can only imagine what happens when a brahmos does this , with that speed, warhead and such low sea skimming capabilities
No one can intercept it. It is the fastest supersonic cruise missile.
If two Neptunes can defeat a Slava class ship, then one Brahmos would utterly demolish any Russian ship.
You can't get any more sunk than the Neptune missiles did to the Muskva.
Oh, the Brahmos is like 45 years old. It can be hit by a variety of weapons.
@@warbuzzard7167 brahmos brahmos is 15yrs old i think and there have been many advanced development and upgrades in the mean time + brahmos 2(hypersonic) is around the corner already
Thanks for the date of the information
i felt the same way about the "invincible" soviet army and the s-300, s-400, pantsir, tunguska air defence and so on .. it was all a big act all along, a maskirovka that fell apart during the first real war
Что развалилось то клоун?
2 US stealth bombers in Yugoslavia got hit by a Soviet, Vietnam era missile from 1960 that were not maintained for decades.
Well the Ukraininans seem to be using their Russian made SAM Systems sufficiently well to keep the russian airforce largely out of ukranian airspace and requiring heavy use of jamming pods so I wouldn't count on the SAMS being ineffective.
If the radars aren't on, if nobody's watching, if the guns aren't manned, any system is useless. Like the four Tunguskas without crew, taken out with some Molotows by civilians/home defence forces. Or the Pantsirs travelling and taken out by Baryaktars. Lousy training and operating is key.
@@1GTX1 Downing of the f-117 is explained by the opeartions room
bomb bay open :)
Plus this plane was not even 25% as stealth as the b-2 :)
The idea that two subsonic, soviet era anti ship missiles could strike a modernized Russian missile cruiser armed with no less than 64 S-300 anti aircraft missiles, a ton of Strella close range antiaircraft missiles, at least two point defense turrets, and an advanced radar array while being escorted by a fleet of armed missile frigates strains credulity. It would be as ridiculous as a German teenager flying a stolen Cessna over hundreds of miles of hostile Russian airspace and landing it right on top of the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, next to Red Square near the Kremlin in Moscow. Preposterous. Completely and utterly preposterous.
Well that might happen today but there is no way that could have happened back in the 80s at the height of soviet power.
Not modernized. This cruiser never went into a refit.
Or it could be that most Russian tech is propaganda stat sheets and the actual production models are shit. You know, like everything else getting destroyed in Ukraine.
I remember that , haaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaa
@@sir0herrbatka On 3 December 2009, Moskva was laid up for a month at floating dock PD-30 in Sevastopol for a scheduled interim overhaul which comprised replacement of cooling and other machinery, reclamation work at bottom and outboard fittings, propulsion shafts and screws, clearing and painting of bottom and above-water parts of the ship's hull.
IF the defensive equipment was ever installed, some vital parts might have been lost to the black market, and the money pocketed by somebody in the supply chain.
There was a commanding officer in vfa 125 which is a naval fleet air replacement squadron, at least it used to be, that was court-martialed for hiding away a couple million dollars worth of parts so that maintenance would be easier. The corruption in the Russian military just blows my mind. It's seriously hard for me to even imagine something close to that happening in the US military. I mean I'm sure it does with hey if you endorse my weapon system I'll scratch your back type of deals, and there has been instances in recent memory in San Diego of military corruption but nothing on this scale
Hhh are u serious hhhh
@@Pieregov2.0 IF NATO decided to start a land war against Russia, it would be a parade, heading east.
If the crew were even trained on how to use it.
@@AllanFolm hahahah u watch too much bullshit on internet lol he said a parade hhh
Finally. Our DCS knowledge has a real world usecase.
By the way, Neptune has a significantly longer firing range compared to the Kh-35... And can attack ground targets.This is not just a copy.
I agree it's not a copy, it's based on.
rocket x 35 also earned Ukrainians
Best they can do considering that the real Neptune missile isn't in game
I have often thought that the heavily armed Russian ship are actually very vulnerable, with all the essentially unprotected ordnance about on the ship's upper levels it only needs one missile to penetrate the ships' defences to potentially cause massive amounts of damage by exploding the ships own missiles warheads and propellant fuel. .
When the Marshal Ustinov (Slava class) made a port call in Norfolk in 1989 some US Navy personnel suposedly got a thorough tour (unlike the 10 minute above deck tour I got). Reports say they questioned whether the ship was designed with survivability in mind at all. Also the US Navy took them on a tour of the Damager Control training center and the Russians were in awe of the systems and precedures.
@@michaelsauer9129 Interesting. Thanks. The Soviets were never an oceanic navy. From what I've read, their vessels were designed to carry lots of ordinance, sortie from port, engage, then return to port. I'm sure crew survivability was low on their list of their priorities, as your insights about Russian amazement at USN damage control systems and training attests to.
@@michaelsauer9129 I doubt there was ever much consideration to making them survivable if they were detected and attacked before they got their missiles off. Their survivability came from the long range of the missiles themselves which allowed them to launch their attack earlier but also necessitated that the missiles be built big and full of fuel. Makes you wonder why they even bothered to carry them aboard the Moskva since Ukraine's navy wasn't much of a threat.
They said Moskva only had 180 degree range on their radars. Also was mentioned that the ship was distracted by Drone before impact. Waves absorb radar waves and could lead to very confusing radar detection results.
I've read somewhere that a Bayraktar drone was also present around Moskva and that it distracted the crew (on purpose, of course). Seeing how little time it takes from when the missile becomes visible above the horizon to when it strikes, it looks like a smart tactics to maximize the probability of achieving a hit.