So which reflects worse on Russia's military? If it was sunk by an accidental fire on board, or if it was sunk by a Ukrainian missile attack? Either way it seems like a huge loss for them.
Bonus points: 1) parallels with Tsushima, and 2) the fact that this was the "russian warship" from the meme, and that it went precisely where it was told.
In fact Russia as a country now has no shipyards capable of building anything larger than frigates, so this missile cruiser is actually something beyond the technology of Russia to produce right now. All of the Soviet Union's (and Russia's) aircraft carriers were in fact built in Mykolaiv as well for example. Their main class of Aircraft Carrier in the cold war was the "Kiev" (Kyiv) class.
Which is why Russia felt cheated for having an independent Ukraine that's not a Russian puppet state as it meant the loss of highly important defense supply chains.
It wasn't a loss until Russia occupied Crimea and the Donbas, before that there was extensive collaboration, even after the fall of Yanukovich. Instead of having the vital supply chains in a non-puppet but relatively friendly neighbor, they cut their own noses off to spite Ukraine and lost access to stuff like marine engines they simply can't replace.
Accidental fire on board is a freak accident that’s not replicatable. Missile attack means that someone has either competely lied about their capabilities or has corrupted and sold the self defense systems. Or both.
The latter means Russian ships in general are now a way easier targets and hence smaller threats. Hence Russia has every incentive to hide this.
Source please?
However, I feel that CIWS is mostly defensive security theatre. How often are do they actually work in the real world? The number of attacks on vessels carrying CIWS are so small. As a result, CIWS hardly get any real world practice. Events would be studied by military and manuf., then software updates made. As a counterpoint: Think how many cruise missiles have been fired in the last 50 years -- lots(!). There are plenty of case studies for military and manuf. to improve software. (I assume this is also how anti-missile systems are improved, like the US Patriot system.)
FYI about this ship (Moskva):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Moskva
Says CIWS system is: AK-360
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-630
See section "Service history" for some *highly* speculative writing!Why not? We are allowed to ask for the sources to claims that are not obvious or easily verifiable, like the ones regarding weapons systems of a secretive country.
And all of them naturally boast that they can defend against well, everything. Only when something is actually tested in the field we can see how well it works.
Hence Russians have an incentive to deny that it was due to weakness of their CIWS. Or, perhaps more probably, an incentive to say to Putin that they didn't corrupt all the maintenance money and it was just an accident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mason_(DDG-87)#Attacks_off...
Mokva air defence radar only looks one way.
They made it look away from the coast using a drone, and then launched missiles when it turned away from the coast — this is how I imagine it happened.
But I have a hard time picturing the Moskva having trouble destroying a drone with the performance of a WWI-era plane.
It also had two radars, MR-710 and MR-800, but I'm unable to find if they have differences in terms of target tracking and acquisition.
Given the Russian army's current level of performance and the Russian navy's...entire history, I don't have any trouble believing the Moskva was beguiled by a drone.
They have a small RCS, but they're slow as a dog, and signals at sea are significantly easier to interpret given that there's infinitely less spurious reflection and radio sources. Maybe the bad weather played a bigger role in that than I've seen accounted for. But even with detection at close range, any modern heat-seeking SAM should have absolutely no problem taking it down before it drops anything funny on target.
Additionally even if drones were detected the Moskva may not have been equipped with heat seeking munitions. Even if they had them, a drone at stand-off distance can easily be out of range of their targeting. The drones also only need to occupy the ship's attention long enough to distract it from the incoming anti-ship missiles. Even if the drones are shot down it's a small price to pay to disable or sink the Russia's biggest naval asset in the Black Sea.
Finding things even in calm seas is hard. Aiming at those things is harder. Hitting those things with a fast moving thing is harder still. Poor equipment increases those difficulties as does poor crew capability. All of those combined makes for single use submarines.
That seems like a pretty big flaw, given how easy it could be to, y'know, attack from more than one direction at a time.
It's easy to see why they spin it this way if you watch at least one program of Vremya or similar Russian "news" or read Putin's article on Ukraine from last year. They don't consider Ukraine a 'real' country, and Ukrainians as normal people. The supremacism, bigotry and entitlement to Ukraine is mind blowing, and unfortunately quite a number of Russians agree.
So it will always be the West's fault, or an accident but they will never admit to a defeat by Ukrainians as it will challenge their supremacist views. I expect next they will claim that it wasn't a Neptun missile, but maybe a British Harpoon, or why not even a CIA sabotage operation. And they cannot help themselves not to provoke and draw in Western countries that wouldn't care less about Eastern Europe.
This type of thinking is already playing out on Russian TV where the failure of Russia to capture Kiev in three days is explained by Western arms and training even they were already known before the declaration of the "Special Military Operation".
It gives me hope that supremacists, bigots and bullies lose because they underestimate their opponents.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/151476606277187585...
And at the same time overestimate their own capabilities. Both history and life experience teach us that more often than not failure is an outcome of inadequate self-observation. Imagined prowess based on mistaken assumptions is so often the source of defeat even more than losing to a genuinely superior adversary. It's the difference between arrogant blindness and courage under fire, the first is a dishonest prelude to failure, the second affirms reality and probability of success.
I would think that it would be more important to Ukraine from a morale standpoint if the missile attack was the cause. To take out the flagship of the Russian fleet with a weapon of Ukrainian design that hadn't previously been proven in battle... that's big. I would expect morale to be a key concern for them given the punishment they're enduring to get these victories.
Maybe because ... it actually is.