Ukraine: a multitude of ironies

By Richard North - April 15, 2022

Almost exactly two months short of 40 years ago, on 12 June 1982, HMS Glamorgan – a 6,200 ton County-class destroyer – was steaming off the Falklands when a land-based Exocet missile was launched at her from an improvised launch platform.

The launch was detected, enabling evasive action to be taken. Although the ship was badly damaged and 14 crew-members were killed, it was the only British ship to survive an Exocet attack during the Falklands War.

Less than a year later, on 30 January 1983, the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva was commissioned, a ship which was on 13 April 2022 to be stationed some 60-65 nautical miles off Odessa, as flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, enforcing a sea blockade of Ukraine.

That day, the ship came under attack from two, land-based Neptune missiles launched by the Ukrainian forces, supported by a Bayraktar TB2 UAV which is said to have distracted the ship’s defences. The missile strikes gave rise to what was reported by the Pentagon as a “sizeable explosion” followed by a “significant fire”.

Yesterday, without acknowledging the missile attack, the Russian defence ministry admitted that the ship had suffered a fire and an explosion. It later claimed that the explosions had been controlled, and that the ship was under tow to port. Towards the end of the day, though, the ministry reported that the ship had “lost its stability” due to the hull damage received, and had sunk.

Although there is no independent corroboration of the missile strikes, the events described by the Ukrainian authorities are believed to be “credible”, and it would be difficult to imagine any other cause of such a catastrophic event occurring over such a short time frame.

Assuming that the ship had been sunk by Ukrainian missiles, there are multiple ironies at play. Firstly, the Neptune anti-ship missile is based on the Soviet-designed Kh-35, configured as the Uran SS-N-25 shore-launched missile, with the Nato reporting code “Switchblade”.

This brings into play the first irony, that it was essentially Soviet technology which sunk the Russian flagship, with the development having started back in 1977 as the Soviet answer to the French Exocet and the US-built Harpoon missile.

Although the development of the Soviet missile was somewhat protracted, with it not entering service until 1995, the technology was remarkably similar to that used by the Exocet, including the active radar seeker for final guidance and a sea-skimming approach at subsonic speeds.

That technology has carried over into the Ukrainian development, with the missile only being delivered in 2021 after being formally adopted by the Ukrainian forces on 23 August 2020. Sufficient missiles have been ordered to equip a division, nominally six mobile launchers and 72 missiles.

Therein lies the next irony. After the devastating impact of the missile on Royal Navy ships in the Falklands War (as well as occasioning the loss of the Atlantic Conveyor), there was extensive and rapid development of countermeasures, including the fitting of close-range radar controlled Gatling guns, known as the Close-in Weapons system (CIWS).

The Moskva was generously fitted with the Soviet equivalent of this system – the AK-630 six-barreled 30mm rotary cannon. The Russian flagship had six such guns, each mounted in an enclosed automatic turret and directed by MR-123 radar, augmented by television detection and tracking systems,

On the face of it, the Moskva should have been capable of overcoming the threat posed by the Ukrainian missiles, albeit that the CIWS is point defence – a measure of last resort. Additional, more modern protection systems include radar counter-measures (jamming and spoofing – as well as decoys and chaff) and anti-missile missiles.

Here, the ship becomes an exemplar for the entire Russian military. One of the Slava class, the Moskva was intended to be joined by nine other ships. But, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, only three were completed. A fourth, uncompleted hull resides in the Ukrainian shipyard of Mykolaiv.

Because of the hiatus caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the major refits and upgrades that one would expect of this type of ship did not happen on schedule. Only into the new century, under Putin’s leadership did the funds become available, with the ambition of restoring the power and prestige of the former Soviet blue-water fleet.

But here we confront a further irony. The ownership of the uncompleted fourth vessel, which had been launched, was transferred to Ukraine – and renamed Ukraina. With Russian interest in re-acquiring the ship, negotiations were started with the previous Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych but, as of 2011, no agreement had been reached.

The plan then had been to complete the ship, with technology upgrades, which could then have been used as a test-bed for upgrading the rest of the fleet. However, no further work was done on the Ukraina and the class remains in its existing form, running on outdated systems and 1980s technology.

Crucially, its analogue radar and fire control systems, by contrast with modern digital systems, perform extremely poorly. Long-range systems are said to be capable of tracking only six targets simultaneously and directing fire at three.

The UK’s Type 45 destroyers, for instance, are able to track over 2,000 targets and simultaneously control and coordinate multiple missiles in the air at once, with their Sampson radar capable of tracking 1,000 objects the size of a cricket ball travelling at three times the speed of sound.

Moreover, the Moskva’s short-range systems suffer badly from “clutter” in storm conditions and, at the time of the attack, there was a severe storm. The Ukrainians, with their intimate knowledge of the ship and its systems, would have known of this weakness, surmising that systems would have difficulty in dealing with multiple targets presented simultaneously.

Then, when we look at the fate of HMS Glamorgan, it was able to withstand the onslaught of a single missile. Although claimed to have been hit by two missiles, the very much larger ship might have been expected to have been more resilient.

However, it is suggested that the deck-mounted missiles were vulnerable to attack, while their fuel and explosives could have been the source of secondary detonation which ultimately destroyed the ship.

And that’s the story of Putin’s military might – the martial equivalent of fur coats and no knickers. We already knew he had gone to war with ageing tanks and other equipment, but now it appears that he is fighting with a geriatric navy as well.

In this case, though, the Russians have not just lost a ship. With the Moskva goes the fleet air-defence capability which would give cover to any seaborne assault on Odessa. The remaining ships are vulnerable to attack by UAVs, low-level helicopter attacks and even strikes from switchblade “kamikaze drones” if they come close enough into shore.

But there is also the symbolism to deal with. The Moskva is the ship which challenged the garrison on Snake Island when it was told to “f**k off”, the deed being recorded widely, even on a newly issued postage stamp. The effect on morale is all too evident. If there are substantial crew losses, those will be difficult to conceal and will have their own effect.

Oddly, anti-shipping missiles, in the form of the US-built Harpoon, have been promised to Ukraine by Johnson. Our inventories of these missiles, though, cannot be high, and what the UK has to offer would hardly seem to add to the Ukrainian’s now proven capability.

Altogether, this has been a bad day for Putin. Even if his propaganda effort keeps the news from the Russian population, his prestige has taken a dent and his war-making capacity reduced. And, to make matters worse, it is raining in Donbass, with further rain forecast. General Mud has intervened and Russian troops are going nowhere.