Wargame Simulating the Sinking of the Moskva
weaponsrelease.com
weaponsrelease.com
With the base assumptions, the Moskva detects both missiles and destroys them long before they're anywhere close to a threat. Of course, this isn't what happened in reality....
From there, the blogpost doubles the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, making the ship's crew less-and-less competent until the missiles hit. The OODA-loop originally assumes a response time of 15-seconds. But what if it was 30-seconds? 60-seconds? 120-seconds? How long do we give the "crew" to not see the missiles?
A second experiment is then run: what if the RADAR is off? It looks like the CWIS detects the missiles, but its too late: the CWIS can only disable one missile before the second one strikes the ship.
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Of course, just playing around with assumptions probably won't get us to the truth of the matter. But maybe it gives us at least an idea of what the crew was thinking and/or not thinking.
Personally speaking, I would have increased the number of Neptune missiles until two missiles struck the ship in the simulation. There's just a lot of unknown variables here...
But that's also ridiculous: a cruiser, with full anti-air capabilities, would be disabled from an aerial bomb?
Missile-defense is harder than anti-air (especially vs slow, non-stealthy aerial drones). It makes far more sense that Moskva failed against the sea-skimming missiles, rather than the obvious drone in the vicinity.
Then again: the Moskva *should* have been able to disable the missiles.
I would say these are all games and have little value but what do I know.
The US and UK militaries use the licensed version of Command: Modern Operations to do wargaming / modeling & simulation. For ~$20,000/copy it mostly lets the end user edit/update the database (probably to incorporate classified capabilities/performance envelopes). The game has a ton of references for its radar/EMS and physics models. It's probably the best and most accessible military simulation on the open market.
I have some ideas about writing adversarial AIs for it to sell to the military but I'm too swamped with other stuff.
The person said that the AA radar was in the inactive position and the AA launchers were down in the wells. Obviously it is possible that they were retracted after the attack so it's not a hundred percent proof.
That is confusingly incompetent for a vessel at war, off the enemy’s coast, an enemy which manufactures anti-ship missiles and has been potting your side’s planes for weeks. I’m more liable to believe the radars were broken. It fits the pattern of logistical and maintenance issues across the Russian military.
Not everything is necessarily down to intelligence. If Ukraine saw a chance to fire upon the ship, maybe they were like "Lets test out their missile-defense systems and see if they're as good as they claim..."
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If you have an intelligence-advantage against the opponent, you can fish for lucky chances more often, knowing that the opponent doesn't really have a good counter-response.
1. UK promises to ship anti-ship Harpoon missiles to Ukraine.
2. Ukraine was holding these Neptune missiles as the "ace in the hole" if the Odessa amphibious landing was ever to occur. After all, destroying enemy ships would kill most amphibious landing plans.
3. Since "Harpoons" are promised, Ukraine was suddenly in a position where it could use some weapons "recklessly", fishing to get lucky. As long as the UK's Harpoons arrive in time to defend Odessa in time, then the use of the Neptune missiles would be worth the tradeoff (even if there was a high chance of failure).
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On the other hand, Ukraine built the Moskva (in the Mykolayiv Shipyard). The 1990s refit of the Moskva was also handed by the Mykoalyiv shipyard (IE: Ukrainians not only built the original ship, but also handled one of the upgrades). It is quite possible that Ukraine had deep knowledge about the capabilities of the Moskva, and this was "less luck" than any of us can see.
Us in the USA may have overestimated the capabilities of the Moskva, while the Ukrainians knew more details about how / when to attack it for maximum chance of effectiveness. What they needed was a plan to defend Odessa however once those missiles were used up. UK providing a "backfill" of Harpoon missiles was therefore all Ukraine needed to go with the "lets try to get lucky" plan.
That’s a common pattern for Russian armed forces.
Perhaps the Russians got convinced by the internal logic if their own propaganda where they are engaged in a "special operation". By that logic it is ok to be relaxed about readines as well as have conscripts on board.
Still, it seems unlikely that the missile would have been that much lower, and that the Moskva "should've" detected it at 10nm out. Which does make you wonder, if the drones had been carrying out electronic warfare, faking radar locks, then that makes things complicated for the Moskva.
Every case can be endlessly Monday morning quarterbacked, but it appears to me that if your navies defensive systems are not fully automated, continuously available or compromised by tracking limitations, including those induced by tunnel vision-ed crews, weather or any other conceivable condition, then you risk having your capital ships blown apart by a relatively inexpensive bit of ordinance that can be launched from hundreds of kilometers away using a variety of platforms.
The missiles involved weren't even all that extraordinary. They're based on an old Soviet design (Kh-35). Not especially stealthy. Not hypersonic. Yet here we are.
What is the actual feasibility of protecting surface ships? An important question because everyone has sea skimming anti-ship missiles.
I mean, that's what I've generally heard about "hypersonic" missiles.
Sure, they're harder to shoot down. But regular-ol' cruise missiles are already hard to shoot down. Its probably more worthwhile to just fire 20x simultaneous cruise missiles rather than to develop 1x hypersonic missile.
But if two Neptune cruise missiles are all that was needed to destroy one of Russia's cruisers (with some of Russia's latest anti-missile CRAMs / anti-missile RADARs), why should the USA develop hypersonic missiles?
That's the thing. Ukraine just showed that regular ol' cruise missiles are still sufficient to destroy Russian warships. There's no point making an "unbeatable hypersonic missile" if the Russian equipment/training can't even beat a regular-ol cruise missile.
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In contrast, Russia / China *MUST* create hypersonic missiles, because USA's CRAMs and USA's defense systems have proven to defeat subsonic and even supersonic missiles.
USA should have hypersonic missiles ready just in case Russia/China suddenly shows off world-class missile defense systems. But... under the current estimations, regular old cruise missiles / Tomahawks / Harpoons remain an efficient weapon, and aren't obsolete yet.
I'm sure that Russia / China will eventually develop adequate missile-defense systems. But this Moskva sinking event (especially a Flagship / cruiser) proves that the Russians don't have an adequate defense yet vs a cruise missile, let alone a cruise missile salvo.
Hypersonic is the brute force and "obvious" approach to defeating enemy defense systems. But its important to not let the hype get carried away.
The Moskva was designed to launch exactly that system. The P-500 Bazalt/P-1000 Vulkan missiles that are launched from the huge battery of launchers that dominate the deck of the Moskva class coordinate among themselves in flight to minimize the attack profile and prioritize targets. The thing you're thinking of is already old hat.
Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform.
The "Gray Wolf" cruise missile system that USAF is investing into (or maybe more accurately: experimenting with) is one such "cruise missile swarm" that's quite modern, for example, and is competing against Hypersonic missiles for development. The Gray Wolves seem like they're small enough to be deployed on common fighter-aircraft, like F16 or F35.
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Lets say you only need 8 Gray Wolves to reliably hit and kill an enemy cruiser. That's only 2x F35 fighters that need to be deployed to launch those 8x Gray Wolves.
It might be easier logistically speaking, to launch 2x or 3x F35B or F35C fighters off a US Navy Carrier / US Marine Assault Ship to launch 8x missiles, rather than figuring out how to launch a larger bomber who can carry the larger Hypersonic missile.
No one really knows how the next war is going to face. Even though we're getting more information in this Ukrainian/Russian conflict, we're not really seeing major naval battles (Ukraine after all, doesn't have a Navy). Therefore, we don't really have much insight at all to how carriers / destroyers / frigate missile platforms vs airplane systems work.
> Hypersonic weapons seek to deliver equivalent power in a far smaller, lower cost and more agile platform.
But the Hypersonic missiles themselves need to be much larger and full of propellant to break not only the sound-barrier, but the hypersonic barrier. That's a lot of drag to breakthrough.
Can those systems be shrunk to a small enough size to fit onto an F35 or F16? If you can only "shrink" those missiles to B52 size, that limits their deployment. Its not like you can launch a B52 from a carrier. And even if you could, B52 doesn't have any stealth capabilities like the F35, so you wouldn't want to use it in anything resembling a contested airspace.
Subsonic weapons are naturally going to be smaller than hypersonic weapons. Subsonic weapons always have exponentially less drag, since they're flying at far slower speeds. Less drag means more range with less propellant, and smaller weapons yet yielding more payload (bigger explosives, since you're spending less precious "weight" on propellant).
EDIT: Case in point, the USA's HAWC project has no explosives at all, and is purely a kinetic-energy projectile.
The attack on Moskva wasn't simply a pair of R-360 missiles. It was a coordinated attack using drone threats to distract the target combined with poor weather conditions and the naivety and perhaps (in)competence of the Russian Navy. A hypersonic weapon, at least while they remain unstoppable, could forego these sort of preconditions.
A cruise missile salvo requires a salvo launching platform. A large ship with many launchers and a large magazine, for example. A hypersonic weapon could forego that as well; a small, agile and far lower cost platform such as a single aircraft or frigate class ship could deliver the same result.
The high probability of destruction means a stealthy long range aircraft such as B2 armed with air launched hypersonic missiles could deny entire oceans to enemy ships. That is far too compelling and ensures the pursuit of this capability.
Like it or not this arms race is already under way. The argument is already settled.
And modern AIs can coordinate those attacks for us automatically. Not even a "deep learning" AI either, we're talking about old-school flocking behaviors that's well studied and understood.
It will be cheaper to write an AI to coordinate those attacks, rather than building larger engines to break the hypersonic barrier. Defeating the enemy air-defenses with cheap computers automatically swarming the enemy at 500mph is a lot cheaper than trying to build a 3000mph rocket.
'Cheaper' has to factor in all costs, including salvo launching platforms and logistics. Not everyone has (as you speculated on in another reply) an abundance of aircraft carriers and their F-35 squadrons and those that do will still place a high value on having the choice. This is why those than can are all developing hypersonic weapons and no amount of arm chair theorizing will stop it.
In any case, my original question, prompted by our brand new Moskva data point, was can surface ships be protected? They've already proved vulnerable to existing anti-ship missiles and the future will inevitably include hypersonics and flocks of AI missiles and anything else we here can dream up to make already poor defense even less viable. The implication being that they can't, and that this is the important question. If one seeks a clever way to save money perhaps the costly floating targets that are large surface ships should be at issue.
The whole story is about men, pretending they have control over things that they have no control over. So they focus on all sorts of small ass bullshit.
How could they have controlled the outcome? Especially that of a dictator dead set to recreate Imperial Russia?
NATO couldn't get involved directly in any way. Indirect measures such as sanctions would never have been approved preemptively, they had to wait for the attack first, in order to have public opinion accept sanctions.
By providing Ukraine with a shitload of weaponry before Russia invaded. I think the West made the same assumption Putin did: that Russia will squash Ukraine in a few days, and all the western weapons would then be studied and duplicated.
Like if you approach from a purely machevelian perspective:
* Nato's major enemy no longer has as many friends as it used to
* NATO now can witness russia's capabilities
*NATO members are now reminded why NATO is useful. Countries who previously didn't want in, suddenly do.
I don't know what NATO did/didn't do, but the outcome so far seems like the ideal one NATO would want geopolitically, so it doesn't seem like they are inept to me.
They're still waving the 'we have nukes' card, so states are still scared though.
Where is the line in the sand for the baltic and scandinavian states wanting to join NATO?
"If you join NATO, we nuke you"
"If you stop trading with us, we nuke you"
"If you don't stop trading with the US, we nuke you"
"If you don't join the Russian Empire, we nuke you"
Sure, russia can bring all those, but I doubt anything but the first one is even considerable for a state. And even then the more you wave the card the more attractive the first option of joining NATO becomes, because once you're in, Russia can't nuke you.
I don't think this is specifically true, but being in conflict does prevents you from joining NATO.
you dont think what happened to mariupol is scary? also i dont think that this war shows how weak russian army is (this was known before the war), but i think it shows how good ukranians can fight. personally i don't think american troops would fare much better in ukraine
on the other hand what this war might show to europeans is that blindly following america comes at a pretty high cost
Have you heard of the US? It is that country that keeps starting fights to maintain the petrodollar so they can print money out of thin air. They have shown that you can commit numerous crimes and still be seen as the good guys. They can even do colonization in the 21st century without anyone blinking an eyelid. Russia certainly needs to work on their PR.
Destroying Russia dictatorship is good for everyone, even poor Russians that can't even show a blank piece of paper.
I can't see any moral good in arming extremist rebels and letting countries devolve into chaos. Maybe one day America will get a taste of its own medicine.
This quote straight from general Aleksandr Lebed illustrates how Russia handles things:
"I told the hooligans [separatists] in Tiraspol and the fascists in Chișinău – either you stop killing each other, or else I'll shoot the whole lot of you with my tanks"
So you pick examples from more than 70 years ago. That's how good American PR is.
> I'd pick US hegemony over Russia's anytime, thank you.
Would you prefer being deported to Siberia or blown apart by a drone?
> Russians only ”solve” problems with violence, huge massacres and war crimes.
Yet in the current war in Ukraine they are portrayed as being weak for not carpet bombing like the US would in one of their 'peace-keeping' missions.
> Human life has no price for Russian dictators.
If you believe the narrative that the recent US wars in the Middle East were about setting up democracies, then they have completely failed and led to the needless loss of millions of lives. I'm not convinced human life has a price for American presidents, but I guess they say that it does, so it must be true.
> The effects of a recent US war can be seen in Serbia
you mean the child cancer cases as a result of using depleted uranium during bombing campaign which was aimed at the country's economic infrastructure and TV stations ... and Chinese embasy ?
It was justified and any sane person would do it again. Serbia is a mini-Russia. That's why one supports the other.
It should be done to Russia, but you know unfortunately there are nukes now.
https://m.dw.com/en/uranium-risks-haunt-kosovo-survivors/a-1...
The conclusion of this article is: not enough data.
> Depleted uranium (DU) is an emerging environmental pollutant that is introduced into the environment primarily by military activity. While depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, it still retains all the chemical toxicity associated with the original element. In large doses the kidney is the target organ for the acute chemical toxicity of this metal, producing potentially lethal tubular necrosis. In contrast, chronic low dose exposure to depleted uranium may not produce a clear and defined set of symptoms. Chronic low-dose, or subacute, exposure to depleted uranium alters the appearance of milestones in developing organisms. Adult animals that were exposed to depleted uranium during development display persistent alterations in behavior, even after cessation of depleted uranium exposure. Adult animals exposed to depleted uranium demonstrate altered behaviors and a variety of alterations to brain chemistry. Despite its reduced level of radioactivity evidence continues to accumulate that depleted uranium, if ingested, may pose a radiologic hazard. The current state of knowledge concerning DU is discussed.
Russian way of solving that is not what you wrote. It is more: blow you up with a drone and deport all your family to Siberia.
I've lived with Russia shadow all my life, my country was multiple times invaded by it, tore apart, occupied - and this was happening over centuries.
If you think that what US is doing is in any way comparable you must live in a safe bubble somewhere in US (or in Russia) and have the freedom to write anything. It is your freedom that people in Russia don't (and never did), or my parents didn't have.
Yeah, but only when they were defending their motherland from evil external invaders they could see and go face to face with, while now Russian territory is currently not under attack, so Russian troops have very low morale, knowing their being sent to fight Ukraine, a friendly country they have no beef with, and die there due to outdated equipment, poor leadership, bad quality MREs or none at all, and under the constat threat that somewhere out of sight lies either a Bayraktar drone or a guy with an NLAW ready to blow your shit up, all this so one maniac can have his old-age power trip.
Not exactly the combination of factors to motivate you to fight, when you could just as easily have been chilling at home in safety, like you did in the past 30 years, if it weren't for your great leader's blunder.
Those Russians viewing the war on state TV from the comfort of their homes can see it like that, but the starving conscripts driving through Ukraine in an iron coffin who have to actually walk the walk, will beg to differ, that the current situation is not worth dying for.
There probably is a fair bit of clandestine operations going on inside the Ukraine as well. I would expect no less. Business as usual in an active war zone and the stakes are pretty high. From a NATO point of view, the Russians self destructing their army in this misguided war is a huge unexpected opportunity. I don't think anybody really expected that they'd go there but now that they have, it would be a shame to not make the most of it.
The Russians seem to have gotten stuck committing major troops, ships, planes, tanks etc. and it seems that they are losing quite a bit of that and also that it isn't actually enough. Not a good picture; no matter how you spin it.
In any case, it's not like anybody has much choice. Ukrainians have to fight to defend their country, the West has to support them, and Russia can't just back down. I just wish Zelenski let those males who want to leave go. It's inhuman to keep them there.
However it's clear that NATO is also mindful of the fact that Ukraine is currently well led by a capable democratic leader, but that might not be the case in a year or 2, so don't give them too many toys.
Saying that, as an armchair general I would like to see Ukraine driving a wedge to the west of Mariupol down to the sea, and a wedge just south of Kherson to surround the forces there. Secondly they could cross over into Russia via Bolgorod and attack the eastern forces from behind, whilst taking out as much military (including propaganda channels) and rail infra on the way.
The land bridge to Crimea should be reduced to rubble and the port at Sevastopol disabled.
Don't know that they have the man power for that, but that should give the old dictator something to worry about.
No one will openly state it but I'm confident this is the perspective in the US's halls of power. It's possibly the only thing the CIA and State Department have done right in the past ~25 years, and I think it's more a stroke of luck that the Russian military is surprisingly-incompetent than anything deliberate on our part. If Russia had performed as expected, this war would have been over in 72hrs and we'd be making excuses just like we did when our Afghan house of cards folded.
>>>Ukraine is currently well led by a capable democratic leader
democratic? this guy?
https://euobserver.com/opinion/152478
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-zelensky%E2%80%99s-...
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-medvedchuk-tv-channels-zelen...
>>>Don't know that they have the man power for that
Manpower isn't the problem. They don't have the munitions or the logistics to pull off such grand operational maneuvers. And moving large conventional forces into Russia itself would be a hugely destabilizing escalation. It would give Putin an excuse to actually mobilize his reserves, and give stronger justification for employment of tactical nuclear weapons (which people are already concerned he might use).