Monday, April 18, 2022

Slava/Moskva Sinking Lessons

Everyone is speculating and it’s topical so I guess I should address it …

 

The Russian cruiser Slava/Moskva sank recently while under tow for repairs due to a fire and ammunition explosion (confirmed by various Russian reports).  Reports vary whether the fire was caused by Ukraine missiles or some accidental mishap on board the ship.  As I’ve cautioned, drawing specific lessons from this conflict, where we have almost no reliable information, is a worse than pointless exercise.  However, regardless of the details, there are some general lessons and reminders we can take from this.

 

Slava Class Cruiser


Loss of Inventory – When the Moskva sank, it took its entire weapons inventory to the bottom with it.  This is, historically, exactly what happens when a ship sinks.  Very few ships are sunk with their weapon magazines depleted.  They’re almost invariably sunk with most of the weapons/munitions still aboard.  This should give pause to those who want to arm ships with 100, 200, 1000 VLS cells in a misguided notion that more is better.  This should, specifically, serve as a caution to the notion of arsenal ships. 

 

Even the Navy’s vision of the large unmanned surface vessel (LUSV) which is envisioned as remote weapons ‘barge’ has to be questioned especially since it is defenseless.  While the plans do not seem to call for ridiculous numbers of VLS cells, we simply cannot afford to put inventories of million or multi-million dollar missiles at risk on defenseless ships.

 

Obsolescence – The Moskva was a 1980’s era ship with 1960-70’s era sensors and weapon/sensor updates had been minimal, if any.  This is yet another example of, and argument against, ships with designed service lives over 15-20 years.  Upgrades rarely happen and, in the US Navy, the ships are retired early, anyway.  We need to save money on the initial design by foregoing ‘future proofing’ and, instead, just design for around a 15 year life so that our ships will always be new.  This bypasses both the maintenance issues – which the Navy is ignoring, anyway – and the obsolescence issue.

 

Escorts – High value ships need escorts and this incident dramatically reinforced that lesson.  To be fair, we don’t know what escorts, if any, the Moskva had but they clearly weren’t effective.  Ideally, the escorts provide layers of anti-air protection.  Worst case, it is the job of the escorts to take the hits instead of the high value ships.  Details are lacking but it appears that Moskva was lacking any kind of close, co-ordinated defensive escort.  Our peacetime practice of 2-3 escorts for a carrier is insanity and violates the ‘train like you fight, fight like you train’ wisdom.

 

There are reports that the Moskva may have been distracted by the presence of a Ukrainian UAV(s).  If true, this is yet another responsibility of the escorts.  Any UAV should have been shot down long before it became a concern of the Moskva.

 

Proximity to Land – It is a bit of a mystery why Moskva was, apparently, in close proximity to land, operating somewhere southeast of Odessa.  The ship has no dedicated land attack weapons.  The AK-130 (130 mm, 5.1”) gun is capable of providing limited fire support but there are no indications that’s what Moskva was doing.  It’s possible the ship was supporting an amphibious assault force.  Regardless, the closer to land, the greater the risk.  It requires a significant potential positive impact to risk a several billion dollar ship near land.  We need to carefully evaluate our [non-existent] CONOPS to see whether we can justify risking ships near land.  Alternatively, we need to stop the endless trend of ever more expensive and risk-averse ship construction and return to smaller, cheaper, single function ships that we are willing to risk near land.

 

Armor – No large ship should be sunk by one or two anti-ship missiles especially not something on the order of a Harpoon.  Armor may not totally stop an attacking weapon but it is guaranteed to reduce the damage done by depleting the kinetic energy (hence, depth of penetration) of the weapon and confining the explosion and damage to a more limited internal area.  All ships need internal and external armor, appropriate for their size and function.  This is not an option.  We cannot build multi-billion dollar ships and then leave them virtually unprotected.  The Burkes, for example, cost a couple billion dollars each and have one CIWS, no SeaRAM, and no armor.  They’re one-hit kills waiting to happen.

 

Damage Control – We have no information about the damage control circumstances other than the fact that the crew was evacuated early on.  This does, however, emphasize that damage control is vital.  Saving a badly damaged ship for eventual repair is still far cheaper and faster than having to build a several billion dollar replacement and needing several years to do it.  As has been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history, the number one factor in successful damage control is bodies … lots and lots of bodies to do the exhausting manual labor of damage control.  This is a lesson the Navy has long since abandoned and forgotten with their emphasis on business case inspired minimal manning.  Minimal manning will cost us ships in combat.  We not only need to drop the entire minimal manning concept idiocy, we need to go in the opposite direction and over-man ships with damage control and casualty attrition needs in mind.

 

 

Summary

 

These lessons and reminders are timeless and don’t really require the specifics of the Moskva incident to be seen or understood.  The incident merely serves as an illustration of the principles.  The US Navy has clearly forgotten most of what it ever knew about naval combat and perhaps this incident can serve to rekindle interest on the Navy’s part in understanding the lessons of naval combat.

 

The Navy has publicly stated that they expect war with China in the next 8 years.  We have got to start applying these lessons yesterday if we expect to successfully fight a naval war tomorrow.


42 comments:

  1. Those are good points, many are the same ones I have when I look at the trend around the world. I hope your Navy at the very least consider these very important factors. The Russians do have Corvettes although I am unsure if they were deployed as escorts in this particular case, USN has none. If Burkes are your "escorts" (bloody expensive ones at that), I wonder how many Burkes can you use as a shield before the lesson sink in. We certainly won't see anything like the battle off Samar where the escorts fulfilled their duties.

    About damage control, a quick flip through the history books tells you how USN ships in WW2 survive when the IJN ones did not.. it's a shame that those basic things have been disregarded. It will be a very expensive thing to re-establish IF there is even a chance to.

    Loc

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not knowing the ships operational weak spots & vulnerabilities and then not taking the possibility of these being exploited by an enemy seriously is just plain incompetence.

    Here is an interesting video of an attempt to recreate what may have happened. Some surprising results.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxwh6MGLJNc

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sure this cruiser didn't sink early on the fourteenth of April as it expected. What about the Ukrainian, Turkish and Romanian reports? It'll be interesting to see the same event from different sides.

    What you think about Ukraine missiles that hit the cruiser? Could we trust them in their war?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Either way, the ship should not have gone down to just 2 missiles & neither should an accidental fire have killed it, UNLESS some level of incompetence was involved in both scenarios.

      Delete
    2. Seen some suggestions that the deck top missile storage could have been a factor in either case. No way to really flood it if it was fire or in a sealed under deck compartment.

      Delete
  4. "This is a lesson the Navy has long since abandoned and forgotten with their emphasis on business case inspired minimal manning"

    This. I drives me crazy that the navy seems to running the crew goals for ships like all they had is MBA training. Just in time delivery and minimal manning is fine for a GM plant nobody is shooting at it. Although that just time crap seems to buckling under two different global supply shocks - guess that possibility was not part of cost minimization for the next quarter so I can cash out my stock options class.

    "Armor"

    Can't turn them up and lost them a HDD that seems to be dying on me but there have at least two out from the military war collages calling for the more armored and properly sealing transverse bulkheads in USN ships. The conclusion was the trend was to few and too weak.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "transverse bulkheads"

      I did a post on this. See, "Transverse Bulkheads"

      Delete
    2. Before the Moskva, the HMS Glamorgan found out about the dangers of operating close to sure after getting hit by an Exocet during the Falklands War.

      In 2006, the INS Hanit was hit by a Hezbollah-fired Chinese made C-802 antiship missiles.

      Delete
    3. "HMS Glamorgan found out about the dangers of operating close to [shore]"

      Conversely, 'shore' found out about the dangers of operating close to a ship when various shore positions were heavily shelled by HMS Glamorgan.

      There's nothing wrong, per se, about a ship operating close to shore IF THE SHIP IS AWARE (Hanit was totally unaware) AND CAPABLE OF EFFECTIVE DEFENSE. Clearly, Moskva and Galmorgan were not capable of effective defense.

      Delete
    4. Hanit seems to have the best of neither world. Intel reports said no worries as I recall and the worried their CIWS/AA would target their own aircraft.

      Delete
    5. ... that is if in auto(?) high active defense.

      Delete
  5. A possible alternative scenario that I've not heard anyone mention, yet, is that Ukraine launched a missile(s) and that Moskva attempted to launch defensive missiles but had some sort of mishap on launch resulting in fire/explosion. The US has had occasional VLS launch mishap fires/explosions so it's not without precedent and on an older, ?poorly maintained? ship like Moskva the risk would be even greater. This is pure, unsupported speculation on my part but would explain the conflicting versions offered by both sides.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Defensive missiles misfiring would allow the ukranian missiles to hit.

      Delete
    2. Possibly. Or, possibly, they would have missed on their own or been decoyed by ECM and the misfire caused fire/explosion leading the Ukrainians to believe, and claim, that the missiles hit while the Russians would claim that an accidental fire and ammunition explosion occurred. To repeat, pure speculation on my part but it would explain both side's claims and version of events!

      Delete
    3. CNO which side do you sympathize in this war? Whom should we trust more - Ukrainians or Russians. What you think about it?

      Delete
    4. "CNO which side do you sympathize in this war?"

      For the purposes of this non-political blog, I have no leaning one way or the other.

      "Whom should we trust more - Ukrainians or Russians."

      Neither. Both are using media to shape global opinion in their favor. That's called propaganda and both sides are equally engaged in it.

      "What you think about it?"

      For the purposes of this blog, my only interest is in the military lessons we can learn from the conflict.

      Delete
  6. Is the radar on CIWS/SeaRAM (the same radar if I understand correctly) a pulse radar or a pulse-doppler? The former is going to do better in a 'normal' pure look-up scenario (can't be notched) but have a weakness to clutter if there's chaff or debris and a weakness against sea-skimming targets in anything other than an exceptionally calm sea state, while the latter will have less accurate ranging and will be possible to notch (more of a problem with aircraft or small boats than with a missile).

    The same question applies to the TRS-4D which is used in an LCS both to perform volume search and to guide ESSMs, with the caveat that it's going to have the advantage of a longer range to the radar horizon since it's mounted high up rather than being bolted to the deck as part of a CIWS mount, and the disadvantage of more engagements being look-down scenarios where clutter is a problem (again because it is mounted higher up).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CIWS actually has two radars: one search and one track. From a General Dynamics brochure,

      Search radar: Ku-band, digital MTI
      Track radar: Ku-band, pulse doppler monopulse

      Delete
  7. The only released image thus far shows the S-300F missile system radar in its 'neutral' position. Was it ever utilized? What about the OSA SAM system?
    What was the overall alert status on the ship?
    Being that close to shore would make it rather difficult to pick up a low-RCS sea-skimmer much less being able to defend against it.
    Also, IF there were Uki UAVs 'distracting' the Moskva...why hasn't video footage been released? We know how video crazy the Ukis have been when it comes to tanks being hit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All good questions. We have no answers. This is why I so caution against trying to draw conclusions about/from the Ukraine-Russia war.

      Delete
    2. Anon, a reason footage might not be shown, is it might have been a NATO supplied ASM.

      Delete
  8. "The only released image thus far"

    Photos of the Moskva port side show smoke coming out of torpedo tube cutouts but no missile hits. As the previous post said, fire control radars seem to be in "fore-and-aft" positions so they were not tracking anything. Bouyweather.com says weather at the time of the incident https://www.buoyweather.com/forecast/marine-weather/@45.16267407976458,31.7889404296875 was:

    "rough, with winds up to 25 knots and waves ranging between five to seven feet from midnight to noon."

    not exactly "ideal" for anti-ship missiles.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "fire control radars seem to be in "fore-and-aft" positions so they were not tracking anything."

      Or, they were simply turned off after the incident.

      In the only photo I've seen of the Moskva burning, the Top Steer and Top Pair radars are indistinguishable due to the smoke, so I can't tell how they're facing, and the aft Top Dome is facing aft.

      The fire damage appears to extend from amidships, forward of the twin stacks, to the aft end of the hangar structure. That's a pretty significant chunk of the ship's length!

      Delete
    2. "show smoke coming out of torpedo tube cutouts but no missile hits."
      The missiles would likely just have a made a small puncture hole and exploded well inside the ship, so the damage could be on the other side or just not a large external hole but lots of damage inside.

      Delete
  9. It just goes to show that the old soviet era ships won't survive a modern conflict.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, it shows that maintenance and training are more important than equipment.

      Delete
    2. I suspect that like Japanese cruisers of WWII, they're rather overloaded with weapons for the available hull, possibly with some consequences for damage control. Maintenance and training have been suspect since the Slava-class was built, but the 1980s may have been the high point of both.

      Delete
  10. The sinking of the Moskva the flagship of the Russian amphib fleet threatening Odessa, have seen it said to have been attacked 60 miles offshore, after the attack on Moskva the amphib fleet said not surprisingly moved further out to sea.

    What surprises me if as claimed Moskva hit by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles launched from ~20 miles inland and Moskva ~60 miles at sea was the ability of the missile seekers to pick out the Moskva amongst the other ships of the amphib fleet, impressive if true, mention use of Bayraktar TB2 drone for targeting?

    Raises the question again what is the operational use of the multi billion amphib ships if just big fat targets for anti-ship missiles, IIRC Berger used the emotive word "slaughted " if attempted a contested landing, early this month Berger has put a $2.3 billion LPD Flight II as top of his FY23 list of Unfunded Priority List, his logic escapes me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Non peer contested area use. Rightly or wrongly there is a lot the US military does in 'peace' time besides sitting around just potentially fighting a war with China.

      That being said and 'target' what is the justification for not fitting the ESSMs

      Delete
    2. For self defense against ASMs I would call LPD in better shape than Moskva. Air search and surface search radars on separate masts, low observable features, SEWIP, NULKA, and RAM. Those 30mm guns are useless. At least switching to Mk38 mod 4 would give some better UAV help. Obviously CIWS or Searam would be better still. The ESSM also should have happened. Still

      Delete
    3. There were some YouTube posts that showed ship iff/satellite positioning. It was post-attack and showed the Russian tug en route to Moskva, and it was the only ship within miles, so evidently any amphibs werent close enough to cloud the targeting picture...

      Delete
    4. "For self defense against ASMs I would call LPD in better shape than Moskva."

      ???? On paper, at least, the Slava class has LOTs of anti-air capabilities, far more than the LPD-17 class. Now, how effective they are - meaning, mainly, how good is the software? - is unknown and not really debatable due to the utter lack of information.

      Consider the Slava class with just the AK-630 30 mm CIWS. They have six of them with four available on almost any angle and multiple separate Bass Tilt fire control radars. That's quite formidable, at least on paper. And so on for the ship's other anti-air systems.

      Slavas also have extensive electronic warfare capabilities, again, on paper. Whether they've upgraded the software and hardware to keep them effective is, again, unknown although I suspect not much upgrade has taken place.

      Delete
    5. Northrop Grumman has been developing SEWIP block 3 with electronic attack capability. Not sure when this will be tested to find out how effective this will be .

      Delete
    6. SEWIP Blk 3 expensive as shown at $70+ million for first on FY2022 Burke Flt III, IIRC only 50 in program assuming for the carriers and newest Burkes,don't see them being fitted to the amphibs.

      If tests a success they could be very effective in soft kill of rf seekers of anti-ship missiles with their electronic attack GaN antennas jamming power.

      Delete
    7. I would contend their 30mm CIWS range is less likely to keep the ship safe than RAM. RAM has range and weight. The Moskva 30mm have a shorter barrel and I'd bet less muzzle energy than Phalanx. Its way shorter than the Avenger used in a Goalkeeper CIWS.

      Delete
    8. "I would contend their 30mm CIWS range is less likely to keep the ship safe than RAM."

      And the Slava class SA-N-4 and SA-N-6 offer more range and protection than RAM.

      "RAM has ... weight"

      ???? I don't know what weight you're referring to. RAM is a fragmentation warhead so weight is a meaningless concept other than suggesting the number of fragments that can be formed.

      Delete
    9. I don't buy that either of those can reliably hit other missiles.

      Delete
    10. So, you don't 'buy' that the AK-630, SA-N-4, or SA-N-6 will work and yet you believe that RAM will just fine. Do you have any data, whatsoever, that supports that belief?

      Delete
  11. Good analysis.

    I do think poor damage control played a big part in the loss. The Neptunes have a 150 kg warhead size, which is relatively on par with Exocet or C802 (165 kg) and two thirds of a Harpoon (220 kg).

    Yet looking at historical results:

    HMS Sheffield (4,800 t)- struck by 1 Exocet 1982 - LOST (poor damage control preparations partially responsible)
    HMS Genmorgan (6,000 t) - struck by 1 Exocet 1982 - SURVIVED
    USS Stark (4,100 t) - struck by 2 Iraqi Exocets 1987 - SURVIVED
    INS Hanit (1,200 t) - struck by 1 C802 - 2007 - SURVIVED
    Moskva (12,500 t) - struck by 2 Neptunes - 2022 - LOST

    So ships far smaller than Moskva survived hits from these kind of weapons due to good damage control.

    P15 Termits scored kills against Israeli and Pakistani destroyers in 1700-3200 ton range as well as Iranian FACs (under 300 tons) but these pack a 454 kg warhead size!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whoops - British ship is HMS Glamorgan. Typo!

      Delete

Comments will be moderated for posts older than 7 days in order to reduce spam.