Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Glory to Ukraine!

It was exactly the ship in that famous phrase of being sent very offensively and very far by the defenders of Zmeiny island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_warship,_go_fuck_yours...) which has become a Ukrainian battle cry since then, and looks like the ship has ultimately reached the prescribed destination.

Interesting that the ship was hit by the Ukraine developed missiles which Ukraine put in service just about a year ago. Looking at this war (and compare it to the fighting in 2014-2015) it is very noticeable how much a progress Ukraine has made in the last 8 years and in particular absorbing all the new developments in the technology while Russia in many areas hasn't progressed since 1945. I see that is a perfect illustration of constant learning and adaptation vs. stagnation.

Anyway, for anybody who likes Odessa and hates its shelling by those Russian Navy ships - the video of the burning "Moskva" with the wonderfully matching occasion soundtrack "Moscow" by GenghisKhan https://twitter.com/i/status/1514481957962657794

> Looking at this war (and compare it to the fighting in 2014-2015) it is very noticeable how much a progress Ukraine has made in the last 8 years and in particular absorbing all the new developments in the technology while Russia in many areas hasn't progressed since 1945.

Even worse than that for Russia. The "Moskova" was created in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.

The warship itself was a creation of the USSR, but has more to do with Ukraine's manufacturing prowess than present-day Russia.

Russia wants to pretend that the USSR's history is Russia and Russia's alone. That's why Russia wants to erase Ukrainian history. But this war is proving that Ukrainian contributions to the old USSR's power was mighty and cannot be ignored.

------

The mighty warship was created by Ukraine, and brought down by Ukrainian missiles. The story here is really about how Russia has forgotten their Slavic brother's contributions to the USSR.

EDIT: It is quite possible that Ukrainians knew some kind of weakness to the ship that they exploited during the attack.

> EDIT: It is quite possible that Ukrainians knew some kind of weakness to the ship that they exploited during the attack.

Such as that it’s loaded with explosives that won’t respond well to being hit with anti ship missiles?

More along the lines of the radar for most of it's systems point forward, leaving the rear much less protected by anti-missile tech.

Its a cruiser. Which means the ship was loaded with anti-missile missiles, anti-missile RADAR, and anti-missile CIWS.

The fact remains that the Ukrainians killed an anti-missile cruiser, with... a missile. That's impressive. Something horribly wrong has happened to the Russian anti-missile defense systems.

That suggests that the Ukrainians know about a weakness to the Russian missile defense systems... a blindspot where the RADAR wouldn't pickup enemy missiles perhaps? In any case, maybe its not so surprising, Ukrainians built the ship after all.

Apparently the ship’s armaments were vastly out of date. Its combat systems were from 90s and it had no modern anti-missile defences.

Its offensive weaponry was more impressive, but even then it barely carried the radars to support them.

I saw elsewhere that an upgrade was proposed but the budget for it was denied...

I guess it is just a matter of reading the proposal, figure out what needed upgrading, and considering that to be the weakness you can exploit.

An analogy would be finding out the castle you want to conquer was supposed to have a rear gate repaired but the repairs were postponed... it would be quite obvious to attack that rear gate.

What I was hearing earlier is the old anti-missile RADAR that was in use on that ship was not capable of dealing with targets approaching from multiple sides at once, and so the Ukrainians flew a UAV on one side to effectively "distract" it, while the Neptunes struck it on the other side.

> That suggests that the Ukrainians know about a weakness to the Russian missile defense systems... a blindspot where the RADAR wouldn't pickup enemy missiles perhaps? In any case, maybe its not so surprising, Ukrainians built the ship after all.

One of the weaknesses of missile defense systems, is they can only engage a small number of targets at a time.

If you knew the Moskva could engage (say) 12 incoming missiles at a time, you fire 24 all at the same time.

There was some articles on it a few years back, which of course I can't find now. It was regarding virtual wargames, where one commander handily won by, basically, firing everything all at once at the start of the game.

> If you knew the Moskva could engage (say) 12 incoming missiles at a time, you fire 24 all at the same time.

That's the sort of thing that's a classified secret.

None of us know how many missiles the Moskva could handle. But the Ukrainians knew, and fired (at least) +1 missile over its capacity.

Ukrainians are savvy, but they don't have enough missiles to really be throwing "eeeh, maybe 20 at the same time is enough??". Whatever battle plan they did here and implemented was surely based on their intelligence... stuff even USA wouldn't be privy to.

>EDIT: It is quite possible that Ukrainians knew some kind of weakness to the ship that they exploited during the attack.

not really. If they could they would hit the cruiser's anti-ship missiles - that would sent the ship immediately down instead of the whole fire/towing story. You just can't always hit that precisely from like 30 miles distance coming at transonic speed, and who knows what defense measures were activated by the ship.

If anything, the weakness exploited here is the Russian poor state of combat readiness. The ship was mostly hanging around there for more than a month. All that time they were supposed to man the radars and keep CIWS/etc. combat ready - no way for Russian Navy. Maintaining combat readiness is a big issue even for shorter time frames - for example in 2008 while guarding the assault ships convoy on the way to Georgia "Moskva" was hit by the very brave and brazen unexpected night attack by Georgian small ships. Fortunately for "Moskva" back then the Georgians didn't have any weapons except small caliber artillery (it is really hard to imagine the courage of those Georgians to perform such an attack - just 4 small ships against that overwhelmingly large Russian Navy force. One of those Georgian ships was sunk by Russian anti-ship missile).

>The warship itself was a creation of the USSR, but has more to do with Ukraine's manufacturing prowess than present-day Russia.

>The mighty warship was created by Ukraine

The independent Ukraine with all its "manufacturing prowess" was unable to finish its sister ship Ukraina for 30 years. It got almost sold to Russia in 2010.

>brought down by Ukrainian missiles

With a tinsy bit of help from the NATO radars and surveillance drones.

If you don't have money or strategic reason to finish a ship, or arm it you don't finish it.

Frankly, that kind of ship has no place in a Ukrainian fleet, so to spend billions on it would make no sense. Ukraine as a province of Russian Empire, for that Empire - yes. But not for Ukraine proper.

That ship is designed to take on American fleet in Black Sea and elsewhere.

Ukraine just needs to a small / fast Black Sea fleet and possibly a few micro subs etc..

> Ukraine just needs to a small / fast Black Sea fleet and possibly a few micro subs etc..

And a lot of missiles....

Please don’t call Ukraine Russia’s slavic brother. That’s how russians justify the war - “we are protecting our brothers from the nazis”. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Let’s not perpetuate russian propaganda.

I recognize its Russia's propaganda, but I enjoy corrupting their propaganda / words into other uses.

There is truth in this matter: USSR was composed of many modern nations. This whole "Moskva ship sinks" thing is almost entirely Ukrainian, historically speaking. Ukrainian-built ship, brought down with Ukrainian missiles, with the Russians renaming the ship to Moskva to try to "steal" its way into history.

I find this entire situation deliciously ironic for the Russians. It really shows how much of a paper-tiger they are, and how much Russia is trying to steal the USSR's name and history for themselves.

> It really shows how much of a paper-tiger they are

In a straight fight, it sure looks that way.

But a weak, frightened and embarrassed authoritarian nuclear power is a very dangerous thing.

> The warship itself was a creation of the USSR, but has more to do with Ukraine's manufacturing prowess than present-day Russia.

It is indeed the product of USSR, which had integrated supply chain and R&D. Very likely some components of it were manufactured in Russia. Ukraine alone would not be able to build and maintain such ship due to budget and resource constraints, but Russia has rebuilt its capabilities in XXI century — their military industrial complex can maintain, upgrade and build such ships. I doubt though they will commission a replacement any time soon, since they are actively building lots of smaller vessels.

We don't know today how much help they had. e.g. perhaps a live KH-12 feed is handy for guiding a simple missile to a moving ship.

This is it really. We have no idea how much American / outside involvement going on.

It may not even have been a Ukrainian-made missile. Maybe it was a Harpoon, but they're just saying Ukrainian because NATO doesn't want the public credit.

Russia had 100's of advisors in North Vietnam during the Cold War I don't see why the US shouldn't have support units all around E. Ukraine.

We pretty much know that NATO is helping them immensely with battlefield overwatch there are awacs and other air assets 24/7 in the air around the borders of Ukraine. Harpoon is not yet delivered and the operators are still in training as are the ones for the switchblade system so it was most definitely a Neptun.

"Harpoon is not yet delivered" we don't know that.

Not 100, more than 100,000 Soviet personnel were sent to Vietnam during the war, sometime participated in fighting themselves - [0]

China also actively involved in the war. At the peak of their involvement, 170,000 Chinese troops were present in North Vietnam - [1]

[0] - https://www.rbth.com/history/332396-how-soviets-fought-again...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War

Makes me wonder however, where Ukraine's (edit)Neptune missiles where all this time and why Ukraine is getting Harpoon missiles from UK if they have their own.

> and why Ukraine is getting Harpoon missiles from UK if they have their own.

Because missiles are not a renewable resource, and the more they have the more they can fire?

Harpoons also carry a warhead about 50% larger than the Neptune, increasing the range of targets they can effectively hit. The Neptune is only designed for targets of 5,000 tons, compared to the Moskva being over 10,000. Whether it was a lucky hit on a/the magazine compartment(s), poor damage control, or combinations there of, good job Ukraine and the Neptune.

Plausible deniability.

they have only one battery which seems to have just become really operational.

The Economist [0] (paywalled) says the factories making the Nautilus missiles have been heavily bombarded and that the Ukrainian military doesn’t seem to have many of these missiles. I guess they were just very carefully choosing their target and the time to strike?

[0] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/04/14/ukraine-claims-t...

It’s called Neptune. It only entered service last year, so they probably don’t have many, and it’s possible early Russian strikes may have suppressed the batteries that were operational at the start of the war.

Neptune. Waiting for a surprise attack on a big target? They entered in service a year ago.

> the video of the burning "Moskva"

Is there confirmation that it is specifically this ship? This video appeared in some places which backtracked this claim.

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