Conscripts are notoriously poorly trained, and consequently of course their morale is low. As I asked how high your morale be when you fighting as an infantryman find out your rations passed their use-by date seven years ago? Poorly trained, poorly victualed, poorly equipped, I doubt it would be too high. Apparently the Russian army focuses on brutal hazing more than training; hardly a morale booster, that. Of course this is in no way the fault of the soldiers or sailors. It’s entirely the fault of their leadership all the way up the chain-of-command to Putin.

But it appears that Putin is as willing to use his own troops as fodder for his meat grinder as he is to use unarmed Ukrainian civilians.

I’m more convinced than ever that the Moskva had to have been operating it’s air defense systems. After all, the Ukrainians claim they used a drone as a decoy. No doubt the systems were operating in a degraded mode due to poor material condition and maintenance. Now that the Slava is gone the Black Sea Fleet’s most capable ships are three Admiral Grigorovich-class Guided Missile Frigates. These 3,800 ton frigates are of course much less capable than the 12,500 ton Slava. They’re supposedly capable of self-defense against air threats but it appears the Admiral Essen was struck by a Ukrainian Neptune on 7 April, a few days before the Slava was sunk.

“I’m sorry, I don’t care what nation’s flag they fly under; once defeated they are simply Sailors in need of rescue. If you don’t get that, we should all pray for you.”

https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/

Monday, April 18, 2022
Moskva’s Last PHOTOEX

The Russians claim the Moskva was operating 60 nautical miles off the Ukrainian coast. But according the U.S. track she was actually only 25nm off the coast. In a shooting war. If you ever need your air defense systems up and running, that’s the time. Even if the Ukrainians hadn’t been operating an improved version of the older Kh-35 either stand-off distance was within the effective range of 80nm of the older missile. If it had been a Kh-35 then making a 60nm shot with an 80nm weapon would have involved a degree of luck. But open source reporting going back to 2019 shows that the 170nm range of the Neptune was public knowledge.

I can’t rule out towering stupidity, of course. I just can’t see how such a stupid captain would make it through his first command tour let alone have a career that lasted long enough to be given command of the fleet flagship. Where his performance would be directly observed by the fleet commander (the Ukrainian navy equivalent of a USN 3 star or Vice Admiral). In fact, I still haven’t seen enough information to know whether or not the Black Sea fleet commander was embarked in his flagship on the day the Moskva was struck. In any barely competent navy if a fleet commander knew the skipper of his flagship was operating 25 – 60nm off the coast of the nation his country was at war with while the air defense systems were deliberately shut off, the admiral would have relieved the skipper on the spot and taken direct command.

But then the Moskva was hit at 1900 (7p.m.) local time so maybe the captain (along with the admiral if embarked) would have been cracking open their third bottle of vodka since they were at least 3 hours into Happy Hour.

So if a missile (or even a shell) hits one of them, there is a good chance of an explosion that can cause serious damage – these things are designed to sink a carrier right?

The picture of it burning suggested the fire was on the port side where these missiles were located.

Occam would say the Moskva’s captain simply didn’t deploy it.
Why not?
Because he didn’t think it was necessary.

(This is precisely what happened in 2006 to the Israeli Navy corvette that was badly damaged by a Chinese missile fired by Hezbullah. It was a major screw up, since there were warnings—by Israel’s military itself—that Hezbullah had such missiles in its possession.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Hanit

…Of course it’s also entirely possible that the Captain of the Moskva knew that the defense system just didn’t work effectively….

The was the first time maneuvering, actively defending capital ships had been sunk by aircraft alone. And the Prince of Wales had the most sophisticated air defense system of its day. This loss not only shocked the British, who thought this feat was impossible, it also stunned the Japanese who were pretty much of the same opinion despite the success of the Pearl Harbor attack 3 days earlier. After all, those were old battleships at anchor. Hara Tameichi writes about his stunned reaction in his WWII memoir, “Japanese Destroyer Captain.”

To my mind aircraft launched torpedoes are about as close we can get in a WWII scenario to the modern problem; aircraft launched cruise missiles. There is no way we’re going to let an aircraft carried (including the LHD/LHA large deck amphibs) get close enough to be picked off by land based cruise missiles.

Turning to the Moskva, the idea that someone set off a fire that resulted in a magazine explosion is plausible. Zelensky joked that maybe a Russian sailor was sneaking a smoke somewhere he shouldn’t have been. They do that. Hell, I know of at least one Russian air force transport plane that crashed when the embarked soldiers discovered the hydraulic fluid was alcohol based (no doubt to prevent it from freezing in Russian winters). They drained the system, causing the plane to crash. But then, shipboard fires have been a known hazard for centuries. Why didn’t the Moskva have a fire suppression system adequate to the task? They didn’t have one installed, which is impossible to believe, or was it improperly maintained and operated?

But the fact is Ukrainian voice transmissions show the Ukrainians were aware immediately the Moskva was in trouble. Which strongly indicates they had fired the missiles that sank the Moskva. They wouldn’t have known immediately if the Moskva had a fire aboard.

Which leads to the next question; why didn’t the Moskva’s air defense system engage the Neptunes? Theoretically they have a three layered air defense system and sensor suite designed to deal with cruise missiles (the Slavas have been refitted many times in their long careers). Either it wasn’t functioning or it wasn’t in the state of readiness required to detect the missiles.

All these possibilities, whether Russian or Ukrainian, point to two glaring shortcomings. Poor maintenance practices and horribly insufficient crew training. Which we also see hobbling the Russian ground offensive. And frankly both poor maintenance practices and insufficient crew training stem largely from the same source. Corruption on a massive scale. The Ukrainians have captured Russian army stores including MREs. There are youtube videos showing the expiration dates on the meals was in 2015. Are we really to believe that the Russians haven’t allocated funds to update their food stores since 2015.

And what would your morale be like as a Russian conscript being sent to war with MREs that expired nearly seven years ago?

https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/

Friday, April 15, 2022
Fullbore Friday

“From a practical perspective, the loss of the Moskva is significant, not only because it served as the Russian flagship, coordinating the Black Sea fleet, but also because the ship’s significant anti-air and anti-missile capabilities provided an air defense umbrella for the smaller ships around it. Consequently, the Russian amphibious threat to Odessa has virtually been eliminated, allowing Ukraine to redeploy forces assigned to the defense of that key port city to the battle to retake Kherson, about 90 miles to the east along the Black Sea coast.”