Ukraine is stepping up it’s naval drone game, as they just hit a Russian tanker.
A Ukrainian sea drone full of explosives struck a Russian fuel tanker overnight near a bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea, the second such attack in 24 hours, both sides said on Saturday.
No one was hurt, but the Crimean Bridge and ferry transport were suspended for several hours, according to Russian-installed officials in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
A Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters that the drone with 450 kg of explosives hit the SIG vessel as it transported fuel for the Russian military in Ukrainian territorial waters.
“The tanker was well loaded with fuel, so the ‘fireworks’ were seen from afar,” the source said, of the joint operation by Ukraine’s navy and security service.
Kyiv says destroying Russia’s military infrastructure inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine is crucial to its counteroffensive after the February 2022 invasion.
Another sea drone attack on Russia’s navy base at Novorossiysk damaged a warship on Friday, the first time the Ukrainian navy had projected its power so far from its shores.
Suchomimus has two separate videos up about the attack, the second of which includes footage of the strike itself:
To me one of the interesting things in that video is not about the attack itself, but the sat pic 25 seconds in that shows over a dozen ships anchored some 20km south of the Kerch Strait Bridge. I don’t know why they’re doing that (Escorting them one at a time through the strait? Port capacity?), but an anchorage area like that offers a target-rich environment now that we know Ukraine has the capability to hit it.
That video shows a guided rather than pre-programmed drone, as it corrects course to hit the tanker.
In the second video, Suchomimus also covers the various Black Sea naval assets Russia might have to employ to defend against naval drone attacks. The choices are limited, and some of the ships they have available seem unsuited to the task. And a few that are suitable will have to be taken off duty firing Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Tags: drone, Kalibr, logistics, naval drone, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Suchomimus, Ukraine
Everything appears to be escalating towards a point where one or two merchantmen are going to get torpedoed by a Russian Kilo class (they have 3 in the black sea)…and then everything is going to get real, real fast.
I wonder how much of this is retribution from Ukraine for Russia blocking the grain sales deal
An high tech reenactment of the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 2000.
Decades of research and development has been put into the computing power and sensors necessary to create guided weapons that can seek targets in contested environments. It’s fascinating to see how all of that still pales in comparison to the human brain and active guidance, as is the case with these drones.
No one could’ve predicted that a broadband connection, the bandwidth needed, or even a radio signal to control these drones would be allowed to remain intact in 4th generation warfare, but here we are. Several possibilities exist: someone is dropping the ball, the capabilities of electronic warfare systems are nowhere near the hype publicly, or EW capabilities are as good or better than assumed and they’re not being used actively to keep capabilities secret and in reserve should things escalate further.
It seems to me that 1st person control of offensive drones is something that could be shut down immediately and completely, but isn’t being done for some other reason that isn’t gross incompetence on the part of Russian forces. We’ll never know, but I’d love to know why.
Russia may or may not have reliable EW assets in theater, but the theater itself is too large to deploy them everywhere. Maybe they’re effectively deployed at Sevastopol harbor, but deploying them throughout vast stretches of the Black Sea is clearly beyond Russia’s capabilities.
At least this was a tanker being actively used for military purposes. I’ve been waiting for Ukraine to scare merchies off from exporting Russian oil through the Black Sea ever since Russia killed the grain deal. Even just an explicit threat might be enough to get the insurers to jump ship.
Peter Zeihan’s take on the ramification of this attack is that it will scared off ALL maritime insurance in the Black Sea, which would seriously affect Russian export of everything they don’t have a pipeline going east. https://youtu.be/ydv_3n5__2I
[…] may or may not be able to handle military ships) and one in Rostov-on-Don, currently occupied by the damaged Sig oil tanker. They’re used for regular maintenance in addition to […]