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Z

Zichan

Junior Member
Registered Member
Stealthflanker said:
With speed of around 900 km/h like what subsonic missile does it left about 80 seconds of time for reaction. It can be questioned tho whether there would be enough time to engage. e.g slewing the S-300F's radar or to provide the OSA or AK-630's target designation.
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I did a simulation in Command Modern Operations. I set the weather conditions to sea state 6 and heavy rain. This halved the detection range from 18 nm in clear weather to 9nm against the SS-N-25 Switchblade.

I fired a salvo of 8 such missiles at the cruiser. Despite the shorter detection range, a combination of SA-N-6 Grumble and SA-N-4b Gecko shot down all 8 of them for an expenditure of slightly over 20 S-300s and 8 Osas.

I think the S-300 fire control radar was guiding up to 6 missiles against 3 targets at any instant during the engagement.
 
T

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
Yes. Supposedly at least one Admiral Grigorovich frigate was operating near the cruiser not that long ago.

And I refuse to get into an argument with Deino about what caused the sinking. It is quite clear the Russians do not want to speculate on the cause yet without further evidence. They know there was an explosion but they do not want to say what caused it without proof and an investigation. And we have no corroborating evidence on the Ukrainian side other than take their word for it. I do not dismiss the possibility it was a cruise missile, a Neptune one even, and I already said as much. But trying to clobber people into accepting the Ukrainian side of the argument as gospel truth is, I think, premature. And I do not like these kinds of false arguments anyway. I posted a link here to an ex-Soviet Navy guy's blog who quite likely knows this stuff better than we do. And he said as much. His theory is it was an AK-130 ammo detonation. And because of (known) malfunctioning sprinkler system of this old ship the fire was not put out and the ship went down eventually. He also thinks a cruise missile strike is unlikely and believes either sabotage or sappers to be more likely. And this is the guy who spends his time glorifying cruise missiles in his books as the end all and bugbear of all surface navies.
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The other thing I can think of is that the ship may have hit a mine. The explosion of the bow makes it a possible for me. An antiship missile would usually attempt to hit the center of the ship, which is where its critical machinery are.
 
S

sndef888

Captain
Registered Member
Tam said:
The other thing I can think of is that the ship may have hit a mine. The explosion of the bow makes it a possible for me. An antiship missile would usually attempt to hit the center of the ship, which is where its critical machinery are.
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There's a ton of possibilities, and so far no evidence has been presented by any side for any theories. The Ukrainian government's claim of neptune should not be taken at face value as they have been known to be compulsive liars
 
SinoSoldier

SinoSoldier

Colonel
Merely a brain dump on some possibilities of what befell Moskva, given what little information we have about the sinking. Suffice it to say, this is a huge embarrassment for Russia regardless of what actually happened to her.

Clues and information favoring the Ukrainian Neptune strike theory:
  • Ukrainian sources reported of the attack before Russian sources stated that an explosion had occurred onboard
  • US intelligence corroboration
  • There is no direct denial of a missile attack by Russian government mouthpieces
Clues and information favoring the accident/mishap theory:
  • Ukraine claims that two Neptunes were used in the strike. These are YJ-82/Harpoon/Kh-35-class weapons that are extremely unlikely to bring down a Slava-class-sized vessel by themselves. It has been speculated that the missiles set off secondary detonations, mainly among the deckside P-1000 missiles. However, there is no way that anyone on the Ukrainian side would've been able to ascertain this claim, and the Russians have not released any further details of the explosions.
  • Ukraine claims that it "distracted" the air defense systems of the cruiser with drones. If this is true, then that means that at least a portion of the ship's radars and SAM platforms were active and operating; it is very unlikely that they were unable to deal with simultaneous threats of drones and incoming AShMs. Ukraine has not demonstrated the capability to field drone swarms.
  • Back to the drones...such drones tasked with confusing a ship's ADS would surely be equipped with a camera. Which means that if their claims are true, there surely would be photos of the cruiser following the missile attack. Given the propensity of Ukrainian media to post photos/videos of their attacks on Russian forces, why have we not seen photos of the actual ship post-attack?
  • Historical precedent of misinformation: remember what happened to the Vasily Bykov?
I'd like to point out that it is in Russia's interest to keep this under wraps, assuming that it did get hit by an Ukrainian missile, unlike the Belgorod situation. The attack on Belgorod could be used by Russian propaganda and spun as an attack on a civilian target, whereas the cruiser enjoys no such designation. Moreover, losing a capital ship named after the freakin' capital to a country without a damn navy rings a different bell than a measly cross-border raid by helicopters.

The only way for this to be settled is if either Russia or Ukraine releases videos/photos of the damaged vessel or a dive is attempted to assess the wreckage.
 
O

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Each Kashtan CIWS gun has its own fire control radar right?

IFF this is indeed done by a couple of Neptune/Kh-35 subsonic AShM, while they're capable of sea skimming, are really far from resembling capable and modern AShM, this would be a simultaneous failure of Fort system, Osa, and 4x Kashtan CIWS systems. Five sets of fire control radars that could be used to engage. Of course this doesn't account for how many missiles were intercepted if any and many other assumptions made.

The available information on this event is really lacking. How many missiles? was it even missile/s? was it mines? was it sabotage? was it NATO jamming or EW? if missiles were interceptions unable to be carried out and why? If they were carried out was it a failure of the interceptors themselves and million questions.

The speculation around are good reading but most just make far too many assumptions on event.

But yes the electronic and defensive weapons onboard were very antiquated.
 
SinoSoldier

SinoSoldier

Colonel
ougoah said:
Each Kashtan CIWS gun has its own fire control radar right?

IFF this is indeed done by a couple of Neptune/Kh-35 subsonic AShM, while they're capable of sea skimming, are really far from resembling capable and modern AShM, this would be a simultaneous failure of Fort system, Osa, and 4x Kashtan CIWS systems. Five sets of fire control radars that could be used to engage. Of course this doesn't account for how many missiles were intercepted if any and many other assumptions made.

The available information on this event is really lacking. How many missiles? was it even missile/s? was it mines? was it sabotage? was it NATO jamming or EW? if missiles were interceptions unable to be carried out and why? If they were carried out was it a failure of the interceptors themselves and million questions.

The speculation around are good reading but most just make far too many assumptions on event.

But yes the electronic and defensive weapons onboard were very antiquated.
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Ukraine claims two missiles were used.
The interesting part is where they also claim that drones were used to "distract" the ship's AA systems, implying that at least some of the vessel's search radars and AA weaponry were not only operational, but active during the time of the missile strike.
 
O

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
SinoSoldier said:
Ukraine claims two missiles were used.
The interesting part is where they also claim that drones were used to "distract" the ship's AA systems, implying that at least some of the vessel's search radars and AA weaponry were not only operational, but active during the time of the missile strike.
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I know they claim two missiles used but my post stands. When I say how many missiles used if it were missiles, I still mean that. We've literally no idea what happened in this event. We as in the public. I'm sure many on the inside do know.
 
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