“Ukraine says it has sunk another warship, disabling a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet” (CNN):
Ukraine claims it has now disabled a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet after its military intelligence said it sank another Russian warship in a sea drone attack off the coast of Crimea on Wednesday.
Russia’s landing ship Caesar Kunikov was attacked with “MAGURA” V5 drones that punctured “critical holes” on its left side before sinking, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said on Telegram.
After the attack on the Ivanovets, CNN interviewed Ukraine’s secretive sea drone unit behind the strike at a location near the Ukrainian coastal city of Odesa. One of the drone pilots behind the attack told CNN that 10 “MAGURA” drones were used in the attack, six of which hit and ultimately sunk the Russian warship.
“MAGURA” drones are only a few meters long and powered by jet skis, a pilot from a special unit in Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency told CNN earlier this year.
But they have a large range of around 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles), so military units can launch drones from across large swathes of Ukraine’s coastline for missions against Crimean targets.
Of course, the U.S. Navy is a more capable force than the Russian Navy, but the future will bring more capable drones than what Ukraine has built and deployed. An adversary with 1/100th of our resources can still build a massive sea drone fleet. Is it safe to bet that drone technology will advance faster than ship technology? If so, why do we want to fund an enormous Navy that could be just as vulnerable to a sophisticated adversary as the Russian Navy has been to Ukraine’s drone tech?
How is the drone below readily distinguished from some of the fast skiffs that Houthis are using and that the U.S. Navy interacts with at close range?
Related:
- USS Cole bombing (“a small fiberglass boat carrying C4 explosives and two suicide bombers approached the port side of the destroyer and exploded … Speakers in the Yemeni parliament ‘calling for jihad against America’ were broadcast on local television each night.”)
I think Ukraine relies on Western recon systems to target these ships. The US Navy will have to do that for itself.
I’ll see your blog post and raisse you a blog post from 2015:
https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/65448643-are-u-s-navy-surface-ships-sitting-ducks-to-enemies-with-modern-weapons
Aircraft carriers seem very useful.
The writing was on the wall during the Falklands War, wasn’t it? An Argentinian (French sourced) Exocet missile sank HMS Sheffield.
Drones are pretty good on land, too. Specially optically-guided, AI self piloting type that are resistant to electronic warfare.
As long as uncle moon beam keeps providing munitions, you don’t need a navy.
Eliminate the U.S. Navy given Ukraine’s success with sea drones? No!
Is it safe to bet that drone technology will advance faster than ship technology? Yes!
If so, why do we want to fund an enormous Navy that could be just as vulnerable to a sophisticated adversary as the Russian Navy has been to Ukraine’s drone tech? Perhaps increase funding for anti drone technology.
How is the drone below readily distinguished from some of the fast skiffs that Houthis are using and that the U.S. Navy interacts with at close range? The biggest distinction is that the Houthis skiff requires a suicide bomber, which are sometimes hard to find.
Seems there is probably a little more to it than this. The US and British navies recently sent warships to lie off the coast of Lebanon to dissuade Hezbollah from opening a second front. The strategy seems to have been effective and the ships were not destroyed by drones. The Iranian supplied drones the Houthis used against western warships & Israeli naval interests in the Red Sea don’t seem to have accomplished much.
Was the Russian Black Sea fleet a bit of a surf holiday operation, like the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii ca. 1941? The plausible accounts of the sinking of the Moskva indicate a combination of poor preparedness and incompetence. Even now historical incidents like the sinking of HMS Sheffield in 1982 and the 1988 USS Vincennes airliner attack show how, as with airline pilots, poor understanding of the ship’s systems can lead to disaster. In today’s environment I expect that relevant training is even more critical.
CalTech grad physics professor/venture capitalist Stephen Hsu on his podcast has recently had experts on to discuss Taiwan, whence his wife hails. One show discussed a recent multi-day military war game dealing with what would happen when China attacks Taiwan. Two to five American aircraft carriers would be sunk, the wargamers concluded, with hypersonic missiles.
The US has bases in Japan, mostly adjacent to JSDF bases … and they concluded that both countries couldn’t avoid being drawn into it. They also think the US had plans to immediately bomb the more advanced semiconductor plants in Taiwan when hostilities start.
What is the advantage of using hypersonic missile against moving fleets vs regular low profile anti-ship cruise missile? Who cares how missile gets there? Regular high subsonic speed maneuverable with low flight signatures just do the job great. It is not a trivial problem to acquire target on a moving fleet ship from thousands or hundreds of miles in the first place, specially without air superiority.
Old US Patriot air defense system shot down Russian supersonic missile “dagger” ( to be fair it is just a tactical Iscander ballistic missile with a booster stage) Israel intercepted ballistic maneuverable hypersonic Iranian missile fired by Houthis.
I want neither minimize Chinese military ability nor US military brass incompetence and corruption but those hypersonic threats sound like old MS vaporware of old.
The Patriot didn’t strike down hypersonic Kinzhal. It’s just more fact-free Ukro propaganda. The Patriot complex was, in fact, damaged in that attack. There is a spectacular video of $150M worth of Patriot missiles going in random directions only to culminate in a large explosion at appoximately the place Patriot battery was.
Also, Kinzhal is nothing like Iskander, even its size is quite different. Please do some basic fact checking (your own, LOL) before promulgating propagandist nonsense.
@averros, as you correctly guessed I was not present at the event nor I read blueprints for Kinzhal.
Here are the links about Patriot intercepting Kinzhal and mention that Kinzhal is based on Iskander.
Please provide your sources.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a43806773/patriot-missile-kills-russia-hypersonic-kinzhal-missile/
https://theaviationist.com/2023/05/10/kinzhal-vs-patriot/
YouTube video summarizing the wargames:
I like the conclusion part: do not try threatening China or Chinese hegemony on the seas, be happy with protecting the beachheads. This strategy always worked great, last time for Nazis against allied invasion in WWII.
Let’s just say that selling Patriot missiles and batteries is big business for US MIC, so admitting that the system can no longer even protect itself would be costly and embarrassing. Hence no one in the West will argue against Uki claims of shooting down a Kinzhal. But a good start to the discussion is to look at the speed of Kinzhal vs Patriot that supposedly intercepted it and go from there. The real embarrassment is US not having hypersonics of its own, but that’s not talked about, either.
The US military seems a bit overkill overall, given how weak Russia has demonstrated to be in Ukraine. And I haven’t seen that much aggression out of China, the last 50 years.
That said, planes, tanks, and ships don’t seem so invulnerable any more. Seem mostly like sitting ducks.