Ukraine says it's destroyed about 1/3 of Russia's warships,
and it's doing this without a full-fledged Navy.
How are cheap unmanned sea drones taking down to $100
million warships?
And how has this asymmetrical advantage helped them in the
Black Sea?
I'm Sam Feldman, I'm AUS Navy veteran and a defense
editor with business insight.
Let's look at the balance of power between Russia's Navy
and Ukrainian forces.
The Black sees a critical fight between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia is using its naval power to threaten to blockade
the exports that are central to
Ukraine's economy. It's also using its warships to strike targets
throughout Ukraine.
Ukraine is working to neutralize that overwhelming advantage.
On the ground, Russia has regained the momentum,
given Ukraine's shortages of artillery and air defense missiles.
But in the waters of the Black Sea,
the opposite is true. There,
Ukraine has gained the momentum.
Russia borders the Black Sea.
Its Black Sea ports account for 30%
of its seaborne trade, including oil.
Ukraine is one of the world's largest grain exporters.
Its trade accounts for $28 billion
annually, and before the war,
98% of that trade moved via its black seaports.
3 NATO countries border the Black Sea and were Russian
attacks to affect those countries shipping or territorial waters,
it would likely trigger an International Crisis.
The Black Sea Fleet is composed of about
40 ships and seven submarines.
Let's talk about a couple classes that are used against
Ukraine.
The Admiral Grigorovich frigates are newer ship class.
There's Kilo class submarines, and those can fire calibers.
There's new missile corvettes. These corvetes are about 200 feet
long,
half the length of a frigate.
And then there's landing ships that are useful for moving
troops and material.
The Rapucha class, for example,
can move up to 10 T,
72 tanks and 340 troops.
The Black Sea Fleet also has air defenses,
aircraft, and naval infantry.
Russia uses seals and dolphins for harbor defense.
These animals are useful at spotting an intruder,
like an enemy diver. They're also useful for assisting
Russian divers on a mission,
but they're not effective against an incoming drone boat like
Ukraine is using.
Russia keeps its dolphin training program under wraps,
and we know about its presence because of satellite images
showing pens of dolphins near Russian naval bases in the
Black Sea.
The US Navy also has a marine mammal program of
seals and dolphins that it uses for harbor defense,
but it really provides outside access to the animals and
their facilities.
Ukraine has principally used two weapons to fight back.
The first are missiles. It used its Neptune missiles to
strike and sink the Black Sea Fleet's flagship,
the cruiser Moskva. That effectively forced Russian ships to abandon
the northern Black Sea.
It has continued to use long range missiles to strike
ships in Crimea.
It's also developed what are essentially the first modern exploding
naval drones.
They are low profile, fast boats loaded with explosives.
They can reach further than Ukraine's missiles.
They explode in a vessel's water line and trigger flooding.
They're remote controlled by pilots staring at the drone's video
feed.
There's only about two feet visible above.
That's low enough it's hard to spot on a warship's
radar.
They can maneuver into targets at speeds of up to
55 mph, and they pack an enormous punch.
The newest 1 carries 1900 lbs of explosive,
or almost double the likely amount of explosive used in
the USS Cole bombing in 2000 that killed 17 and
almost sank the destroyer.
A ship's crew has to be on lookout for this
threat to be able to stop it in time.
OK, so here's somebody who has started a cell phone
video crew member.
And look, they've got a Searchlight in the water scanning
for where they think the drones are.
Now you're seeing the crew firing machine guns,
but they're trying to fire,
put as much fire in the water as possible.
This is a night attack.
These are black vessels low in the water.
There's no light on these vessels.
And so that searchlight's going to be important to try
to spot it.
Here. We're seeing just a lot of wild mounted and
handheld machine gunfire.
And there we're seeing what appears to be one of
the first whole impacts of a blast.
We're definitely seeing some kind of onboard fire.
That's a really bad sign.
One of the dangers here is that now the ship
has
some kind of blast, is likely taking on water,
and meanwhile that they recognize there's more bomb boats that
are coming in.
This is a terrifying situation for them,
and there we've got another blast.
To have any hope of saving the ship,
they're going to need crew.
They're going to those spaces and closing off any hatches
to try to seal the spaces from others.
If the flooding is going to go through more of
the ship,
all the weight of that water is going to bring
the ship down and it's going to roll over or
it's going to sink
Here. We've got like a the the view from the
camera of a drone moving extremely quickly in on this
missile Corvette and then it's hitting the stern.
That's likely this blast we're now seeing.
So it's getting right up against the stern.
These are probably crew serve machine guns and once again
they've proven ineffective.
We're having another stern blast on this missile Corvette.
We're already seeing the damage from a prior strike,
so once the hole's integrity has been broken,
then a secondary blast at the same spot is going
to be devastating.
There's crews that are going to be responding to that
area to try to minimize the flooding,
and so another attack might kill those responders.
It may also just widen the gap that's already been
created.
This is going to lead to a total loss of
the vessel unless it's stopped.
Ukraine has continued to update its sea drones.
Its latest version can carry more explosives.
It has a longer range,
up to about 600 miles,
and it can ride in rougher seas.
High seas complicate the effort to spot bomb boats.
Normally, a radar technician dials back the sensitivity so as
not to get radar returns from waves.
But in a high sea state where the waves are
say 3 feet high,
they're going to have to look through the radar noise
created by those waves to spot A2 foot tall bomb
boat.
We can only guess what the battle for the Black
Sea has cost Russia financially,
but it's probably measured in billions of dollars.
For example, the repair needed for just one damaged Kilo
class submarine is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The cost of Ukraine is comparatively small.
Ukraine doesn't have a Navy.
Ukraine crowdfunds for its sea drones,
and each one is estimated to cost about
$200,000. That's much cheaper than a guided missile.
The Harpoon missiles that the US has provided to Ukraine,
for example, cost about $1.4 million apiece.
1 Patriot intercept missile costs about $4 million.
Russia's moved slowly to adopt defensive measures.
It's laid out physical barriers like floating booms and sunken
barges to try to narrow its harbor mouth,
all to try to prevent the drones from reaching more
ships.
Helicopters and patrol aircraft scan the seas around the port,
and ships man crew serve machine guns.
And there is evidence of electronic jamming to try to
confuse the drone's navigation or to disrupt its steering control.
But Ukraine will likely adapt.
It's a huge surprise that Ukraine is now forcing Russia
to relocate its vessels out of Crimea in order to
keep them from getting damaged by missiles and drones.
Russia's done considerable damage with its Black Sea Fleet.
Its ships have fired long range caliber missiles against targets
throughout Ukraine.
The caliber itself has about 1000 lbs of explosives,
but it can also carry nuclear payloads.
There's also evidence that Russia has fired its ship launch
Zircon hypersonic missile against Ukraine.
That missile moves its speeds higher than five times the
speed of sound,
making it more difficult to intercept than other missiles.
Don't count the Black Sea Fleet out.
There's still significant ships that are able to fire a
lot of missiles and cause a lot of damage inside
Ukraine,
but they're having to do it from farther away now,
and Ukraine has them running scared.
What we're seeing in Ukraine isn't a passing fad.
This is a new emerging threat that is likely to
only become more pervasive and deadly.
The reason is just the dangerously simple logic at play
here.
If it only takes a couple $1,000,000 to build swarms
of drone boats that can knock out a $2 billion
destroyer,
then many countries are going to build those fleets.
And it's not just countries like Ukraine without navies.
This is a threat that is only going to become
larger as more countries get this technology,
and it's going to be really considerable for operations near
shore.
It may force some of the most advanced navies,
including the United States, to either develop technologies that can
counter it or operate further from shore to give itself
more space.
From these attacks, Ukraine has received considerable support.
The UK and France have provided their long range Storm
Shadow missiles
and those obstruct ships.
Those struck the fleet headquarters and shipyards.
Western partners also routinely share intelligence with Ukraine and it's
almost certain that that is playing a role in the
targeting of Russian ships.
There's also one report by the Washington Post that Ukraine
sea drones were developed jointly with the CIA and other
Western intelligence agencies.
Which country has the balance of power?
It's really important to remember that the Black Sea Fleet
is powerful and it is powerful now and it has
even in its new home ports that it's being pushed
to, it has the long range strike weapons to continue
to barrage Ukraine.
It's hardly knocked out of the fight,
but it is sidelined. It's a powerful asset whose brunt
has been dulled.
Russia's starting to take measures that are going to complicate
Ukraine's attacks on its Black Sea Fleet.
But willows stop the attacks.
That's unlikely. Ukraine is evolving and is really at the
cutting edge of naval strategy,
spearheading a technology that may in time become as much
of A threat to surface ships as guided missiles.
The balance of power lies with Ukraine.
Ukraine has seized the momentum and its sideline,
the Black Sea Fleet. That's a victory in and of
itself.
A1 year old boy wishes he's all A10 or a
square.
Neither
for brown mortal would you start.