Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
Moscow sunk.
The ship. The (former) flagship of the Russian southern fleet.
The ship. The (former) flagship of the Russian southern fleet.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer nation!. By all accounts,..and in this case untrustworthy accounts, all the crew had abandoned ship so all 500 accounted for. Russian Navy says an on board fire ignited explosives, ..almost certainly true. Ukraine says they sent the missiles which started the fire. Now since this ship was probably lobbing missiles into Mariupole and Odesa , the bottom of the sea is the best place for it.
I was surprised quite how old it is - launched 1979. Though lots of work done on it since. And changed name.
The Russian story was that they were firefighting - so some might have still been aboard.
Battleships are yesterday's weapons, there's no place for them in modern navies and they can't defend themselves well enough. The Moscow has gone the way of the Belgrano in the Falklands and those still around are mostly parked, never to fight again, like HMS Belfast in the Thames.
The age of missiles and drones has totally changed the face of warfare, old attacking hardware like battleships and tanks now very vulnerable.
.
Why, then, did the Mockba get a massive upgrade before returning to the fleet just last year?
I mentioned this before, improving the missile capability of the southern fleet. That included trying to make this battleship more useful with missile launching capability, but as what has happened shows, a forlorn hope. The much smaller, faster cruise missile launching ships they've added to that fleet will probably be more difficult to hit, but that remains to be seen.
To usefully survive missiles, navies now seem to be increasingly reduced to submarines, large aircraft carriers and sacrificial escorts like destroyers and frigates to protect the aircraft carriers.
For a while we also put faith in the beach assault ships like the Albion class, but the three built have each been very different, showing uncertainty, and have never been tested in action. Personally I think they will be sitting ducks.
.
However, the Vulcan Phalanx was supposed to be able to provide protection if anything got close. (At least, to ships from the USA and their allies.)
Maybe, but as I mentioned before, the problem for any defensive system is detection of sea skimming missiles like the exocet. With the radar angled low enough it picks up all the sea surface clutter, masking any missile in the same zone.
And that is without considering supersonic missile attacks.
Once we see what happens to the Russian's southern fleet, assuming the Ukrainians have enough anti ship missiles, we'll have a lot more knowledge on how useful surface fighting ships will be in future.
.
I wonder if the Ukrainians get satellite imagery from the US to lock onto the targets.
If the Russian navy has anything like the Phalanx, yes.
If not, we will continue not to know how effective such guns are.
Also, it seems unlikely that Ukraine currently has any supersonic anti-ship missiles.
The Neptune is claimed to be capable of sinking up to a 5000 tonne displacement ship. The Moskva, at around 12500 tonnes, being hit by two Neptunes suggests that capacity could be around reality.
Greater detection range is possible - one obvious example being radar drones.
Do we know what ASM we will be supplying Ukraine? Convenient that Sea Skua was fairly recently dropped - so stocks of them would have little real cost.
Quite possibly. But the satellite link delay might be too great to be of much use.
According to US media, they are putting it all down to the Ukrainians themselves. One of the Turkish drones loitering around provided real time data and a distraction, and then their missile has good accuracy. The combination of stormy weather and the drone provided sufficient distraction. But on the other hand Oyster , there would be no delay with satellite imaging ..a few seconds at most. As an undergraduate student, we were tasked with getting weather images from NOAA
satellites in low earth orbit about 1971, and we had real time images in 3 minutes after the camera clicked.
As further indirect evidence that it was a missile strike, US images are showing that Russian ships are stationed a lot further off shore, and Russia struck a missile factory today.
A US military person has trashed the claim that it was stormy weather.
Germany announces military aid for Ukraine – as it happened
Senior US defence officials confirmed Ukrainian missile strikes on Moskva; more than 900 civilians’ bodies discovered in Kyiv region with claims they were executed
www.theguardian.com
Who to believe?
Three minutes is an eternity when you are facing a missile travelling around Mach 1. Three seconds is somewhere around half a mile.
Just been thinking - I wouldn't put it beyond possibility they are getting satellite imagery from Russia.
It can also take a great deal of time to configure an orbit to pass over the area of interest.
I bet the atmosphere in the Kremlin was a bit stormy, followed by a deep depression.
A zone of high pressure with a very warm front indeed will probably appear over Ukraine over the next few days.
.
As someone who knows from personal experience, and that of others who have been far worse off, this is a mixture of heart-rending and heart-warming.
Poland’s buckling healthcare system nevertheless welcomes Ukraine refugees with open arms
Medical needs
“The Polish healthcare service, from what I see, is doing exceptionally well with the refugee situation,” says Roman Clegg, a Ukrainian doctor at UCLH in London, who is organising shipments of medical supplies to his home country through his charity Medical Aid Ukraine.
He says the major problems faced at refugee reception centres are missed medicines for chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypothyroidism. Supplies are “very affected” in Ukraine, he says, particularly insulin.
Poland’s buckling healthcare system nevertheless welcomes Ukraine refugees with open arms
Medical needs
“The Polish healthcare service, from what I see, is doing exceptionally well with the refugee situation,” says Roman Clegg, a Ukrainian doctor at UCLH in London, who is organising shipments of medical supplies to his home country through his charity Medical Aid Ukraine.
He says the major problems faced at refugee reception centres are missed medicines for chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypothyroidism. Supplies are “very affected” in Ukraine, he says, particularly insulin.