Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Best Served Cold
This is, or was (heh heh), the Moskva. Last time I saw her she was still calling herself Slava.
The best version of the story I’ve heard is that the Ukes distracted this sophisticated warship, bristling with radars, with a drone decoy while they put a couple of homegrown cruise missiles into her. I hope it’s true. Good shooting, guys.
Ships die from fire. Moskva probably took a hit in one of her many magazines; the Reds are calling this an “ammunition explosion.” Ok, so now she’s a wreck inside – you have to put out the fires and control the flooding. Damage control has always been the USN’s other secret weapon, right beside underway replenishment. The Red Navy was never known for the quality of its sailors – so they probably never had good DC.
We weren’t afraid of Slava; her radars were primitive then too. Those city-bus-sized missiles are fast, but fat targets for an SM-2. But we were grateful after the fall of the USSR that we wouldn’t have to run that live test.
Russia’s navy sucks, that’s obvious. How bad does the CIC have to be to let two vampires in? Moskva had plenty of short-range missiles and close-in defensive guns, not to mention all the radar Russia can muster. But the most telling thing is they evacuated the crew.
You can read up on the Slava cruisers at Wikipedia, where the photo above links. Just like the Sukhoi, the Russians do build them pretty.
Published in General
Asymmetric warfare is beating the crap out of “superpower” militaries the last couple of years.
I’m sure the Taiwanese are studying the lessons from Afghanistan and Taiwan with a level of attention the US military reserves for gender and race studies.
Why are all the big guns pointed down?
Now reported sunk while under tow.
Oh, this is too good – Slava was built in Mykolaiv.
“Superpower” militaries are built to fight each other. When they don’t get a set-piece battle, they struggle. We kicked the crap out of the Iraqi army twice. The militias, etc., were what we had trouble with.
I think they’re pointed forward and up.
oops. youre probably correct.
And they look like missile launchers. The gun is by itself up on the pointy end.
The eight huge tubes inclined at about 20º (and the eight on the other side) are surface-to-surface anti-ship missiles. She also had lots of surface-to-air missiles in launchers under the deck. The Slavas were built for the same fleet air protection mission as the Aegis cruisers, but carried twice as many anti-ship missiles. Her anti-air missiles were medium range remotely guided with semi-active terminal, like ours. But I don’t think she could carry on many simultaneous engagements. And she had torpedoes, although I don’t know how good her sonar was. But not a lot of guns, just the little dual popgun.
I get the feeling that most of their stuff failed to work half the time.
They are missile launchers. They hold missile with lots of fuel and explosives. Guess what happens when they get hit by a Neptune missile? The fuel and warhead cooks off. This leads to uncontrollable fires unless you have first-rate damage control teams. Doesn’t look like Moskova did.
Mykolaiv has been a major warship shipyard since Tsarist times. They built dreadnought battleships there a little over a century ago.
It is my fervent hope that there are still a few men in the Pentagon not too busy experimenting with their mascara to be able to pay attention and learn from this war. What an opportunity to watch Russian forces at work….
It doesn’t look like it’s pointing downward either, but rather up and forward (toward the — and I don’t mean to be pedantic, but — I think it’s called the nose).
You’re doing that on purpose.
So, this is the second ship sunk by the Ukrainians?
Even better that it was the one that took Snake Island after the Ukrainian soldiers told them to &$%# ‘…….
It’s being said that this was the fleet flagship, and apparently has been confirmed that it was the command and control center for the operation. Therefore, I would expect there to be a very high – ranking naval officer aboard, no? Besides a ship, have the Ukrainians scored another admiral / general?
Probably not, if the crew was successfully evacuated, according to some reports. Although there may have been casualties before that.
You seriously think Russian officers go down with their ships?
Might have been killed in the attack/explosions. but perhaps unlikely.
He may develop health issues when he gets back to port. This one is going to be tough to explain.
It’s a bit like when the Royal Navy lost HMS Sheffield in the Falkland Islands war. And HMS Coventry. And HMS Ardent. And the Sir Galahad.
What? The US lost less men in Afghanistan the last 7 years than Russia probably lost on the Moskva in the last 36 hours. The US didn’t have military problems in Afghanistan it was purely the civilian side-no political will and no vision of what our long term goals where.
Russian OTOH is having severe military problems- they can’t sustain logistics 94 miles away while the US army had excellent logistical support halfway around the world.
When I was in the Navy, we were told Russia likes to build its surface warships with a lot of weapons, then cram even more topside. That many exposed weapons are vulnerable to attack and could easily explode, setting of a chain reaction as they are packed close together . . .
I have been trying to remember the city of my late Ukranian friend, Peter, who came here as a religious refugee. He told me long ago that his city was closed to tourists because of the naval facilities. Your comment rang a bell. I am pretty sure now that this is it.
When we think about the effects that socialism has on how things work here, we should not be too surprised that the Russian armed forces are not as invincible as their appearance might lead us to believe. Of course we should never count on that being the case, but it is a cause for hope. I suspect that the same goes for the Communist Chinese.
The Soviets didn’t anticipate their ships lasting long in an exchange with the US navy- they wanted to be able to fire off all their cruise missiles in the 1st volley, hence they were all up on the deck (note no reloads carried for their major weapon system). Their ships were cramped and difficult to repair at sea, making damage control an after thought. They aimed for what the US called a “Joe Louis with a glass jaw”- good 1st punch but it better land or else.
And soon for our forces as well
Sadly, this may be true as more time is spent on trendy leftist policies and less on killing people and breaking things . . .
There are scattered news reports that the Moskova may have had nuclear warheads on board.
Lots of mean tweets- they might provoke Vlad: