Very Briefly Noted: More NATO Unity; The
Moskva Mystery

Posted with permission.

Remember that Biden has told the Eastern European NATO countries that the USA will “backfill” all the old Soviet era weapons and weapons systems that they hand over to Ukraine, with modern American weapons and weapons systems in the near future. Who is going to manufacture and supply the new weapons and weapons systems to make good all that “backfilled” US military equipment? You guessed it the US Military Industrial Complex!

After Ukraine's been fully armed with sophisticated weapons to push back Russia, dictator Z might just turn around and use the very weapon to invade its neighboring countries. Who knows?!

Not buying the story being told by the "expert" that was quoted. First, the Neptune flies "close to the water" which for other designs has meant a few feet above the water. If you assume 50 ft Moskva radar height, and a missile flying four feet off of the water, if you neglect atmospheric refraction on the radar beam, the detection range is theoretically as much as 12.5 miles. But with atmospheric refraction, which is real, maximum possible detection range is more like 3.5 miles. At the speed of the Neptune (670 mph, or 0.186 mile/sec) that means max possible detection time is 3.5/0.186 = 19 seconds, not the 45 he claims - which ignores atmospheric refraction. This missile is about 15.5 inches in diameter. This gives a VERY small radar return, and discerning this very small target against the "ground clutter" (waves bounce radar back, too) isn't trivial. It is not a given that the Russian radar system could even detect this missile in that cluttered situation within the under 20 second radar horizon time. But what is their anti-missile system's reaction time? Was the anti-missile system on and in "autonomous" mode? If not, it can't do anything until turned on - not likely a person could have done that in 20 seconds. Also, reports are that the Ukrainians had several large aircraft-type Raybaktar drones flying intentionally within the range of the anti-aircraft radar systems of Moskva, but on the opposite side of the ship than the missiles approached from, providing obvious threats to deal with - distracting crew and systems. Other reports are that the Moskva radar can only track targets over a 180 degree angular swath, leaving a huge blind spot behind the radar. Ukrainian shipyards built Moskva, so you can bet that they know exactly what her systems could and more importantly, could not, do - and they probably used this detailed systems knowledge to ensure that the defensive systems were distracted or overwhelmed by multiple drone targets in the opposite direction when they attacked. Given the difficulty of detecting sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, they are a tremendous threat to any ship today. With multiple, layered, best-capability anti-missile systems, they can be defeated, but not trivially. The expert seems to imagine that defeating these missiles is a given, even trivial. And how many missiles were fired? What if six missiles were inbound simultaneously and the systems defeated four of the six? No mention of this very real attack strategy that may have been used. Do we imagine that Moskva had "multiple, layered, best capability anti-missile systems" installed? Maybe they did. Were they fully operational and turned on and set for autonomous defense in all directions - even when the apparent threats were from the opposite direction? Maybe, maybe not. Could they defeat all incoming missiles? In past wars, Soviet and Russian military equipment has typically functioned somewhere between pretty well and dismally, with the dismally seeming to be more common than pretty well. Ask any Arab country that has fought Israel with Soviet weapons how that went. Of course, Israelis are tremendous warriors, but the soviet equipment often didn't perform well. Russian armor has been getting the heck kicked out of it in this war so far. How many of the Moskva systems were inoperational for parts or lack of skilled technicians? Only the captain of the ship and a few officers knew the answer to that, and they are either dead or not talking. This has been a serious problem for the Soviet/Russian navy in the past. Not that his Russian-name expert says "I am sure if Nebo was operational it would have seen the salvo.”, which seems to admit that Russian navy systems are often NOT operational. If they were fighting that ship as effectively as they have been fighting their tanks in this war - it's not surprising that it is on the bottom now. Is it possible that Moskva was sunk by a sub? Are there NATO subs in the Black Sea? During the Cold War this wasn't done. Extremely dangerous in those closed in waters and not of significant military value. Sure, I suppose it is possible, but I like Occam's Razor approach rather than more complex conspiracy stories, frankly. The Neptune missile claim is pretty credible, especially with the Raybaktar drones distracting the defensive systems on the opposite side. And frankly, I seriously doubt that any of the NATO countries have the spine necessary to take this risk of even entering the Black Sea with a sub, let alone sinking a Russian ship. Seems incredibly stupid and risky. One of the great risks of modern warfare is that swarms of cheap drones will overwhelm detection and response systems and permit 'kill shots' to get through. This has been discussed at great length by military planners, and I know of no "solutions" that have been reached. It seems like we may well have had the first actual demonstration of what has been posed as a serious threat for a number of years. I think that assuming that the Ukrainians are too incompetent to do this, and the Russians are too capable to have this done to them.....completely ignores the events of the land war where the Ukrainians have been kicking the hell out of Russian armor, which also wasn't supposed to be possible.

As #4 says, even if the crew did detect an incoming threat their anti-air systems probably failed to respond when the buttons were pushed. And to the "inestimable" Mr. Martyanov, just 1 hit probably would have done the trick in this case - given what we've seen of the vaunted Russian military thus far in terms of training and morale, their efforts in the area of shipboard damage control once those missiles hit were probably near non-existent. In 1974, NATO tracked a Kashin-class destroyer in the Black Sea that was emitting smoke from an onboard fire. After a couple of days the entire ship went up in a ball of fire and sank.