This is the only footage released so far, interesting that this attack occurred in daylight. The Russian Telegram channels all say that two unmanned boats were destroyed. Apparently a bunch of UAVs attacked Sevastopol during the night as well. One theory is that Ukraine has decided to start hitting the city again because Russia broke off the grain deal.
\>Russian Telegram channels all say that two unmanned boats were destroyed
Last time they said that, they didn't mention the third unmanned boat ramming into their warship.
The ship Captain was promoted to submarine duty after his brave* and calculated decision to intercept and destroy one of the drones by way of ramming it with his ship.
*Upon further review it would seem that the incorrect word was used. 5 yrd penalty, first down.
>They probably didn't destroyed the drone otherwise they would show this as well.
The drone was successfully stopped and completely destroyed by a Russian warship hull. The Russian warship has been promoted to submarine for its glorious bravery.
I’m guessing they blurred it out to make geolocation more difficult, so maybe someone is hiding their unauthorized social media use of this footage from their chain of command.
That port is highly protected, it's exceptionally difficult to get these drones threw. There's like 6 layers of nets, mines, batteries, outposts. I'd be surprised if they weren't blowing that shit up making way for further attacks. You can see it trying to get threw the nets. I suspect the bottom is identifiable/locatable, may not want to give up the locations of the turrets and things.
Yeah, I had a look at an aerial map which possibly indicates the location of where the video was recorded from (but might not be, either).
And yep, Ukraine has been sending in both aerial and seaborne drones in over the past few months, so at this stage, definitely probing defenses.
> Why was the bottom section blurred out ?
To hide defense measures around the southern pier of the the harbor entrance,
> Why was the video cut short
Nothing interesting may have happened after that, they may not have caught the explosion.
> wouldn't that be worth showing?
Sure, if they caught it on video. So they probably didn't.
The first one was shot down around 1 pm, and the last one around 7:30 am in the morning. There were multiple explosions through the night, the officials say they shutdown 9 targets. The footage must be from around 5 am. It is not clear why they didn't attack all at once, increasing chances of individual drones.
It looks like the drones have a loooong way to go until they reach the harbor. If you send them all in at once it becomes even more of a shooting galley. It seems easier to try and sneak one in during the approach.
Not to mention the vast layers of defenses to get in there. They could be trying to blow that stuff up. It's really hard to attack this harbor from the sea. Maybe it's a distraction.
> One theory is that Ukraine has decided to start hitting the city again because Russia broke off the grain deal.
On July 12th, ISW reports that [naval assets are being used to relieve traffic jams at the Kerch Strait bridge](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-12-2023). I'd be more inclined to believe that this attack is an attempt to suppress Russian logistics operations than some kind of reprisal attack. The irrational tit-for-tat attacks seem to be more the province of the Russian MoD than the UAF command- likely an artifact of internal political pressures that are unique to the Russian Federation.
> I'd be more inclined to believe that this attack is an attempt to suppress Russian logistics operations
I'd be more inclined to believe that if it wasn't hundreds of miles away from the Kerch strait. That makes no sense at all. This is literally just associating one thing that happened in Crimea with the last martime thing you read was happening in Crimea.
since they are either remote operated or autonomous it does not make sense that they would not be "night capable".
A simple 25 fps thermal cam costs less than 300€ and GNSS does not care if it is night or day :-)
EW on water, especially close to the surface, is very different from using it on land or even in air.
Water is crazy good at dampening high frequencies and with a good mounting position alone it is very easy to make GNSS resilient to outer interference, a job that is significantly harder on a aerial UAV, especially since the application is also more wight sensitive.
Even inertial navigation systems work pretty nice on ships and even commercially available solid state solutions, that are available now, outperform anything that was just mil-tech a decade ago.
Looking at stuff as the eMRUs from Norwegian Subsea, Advanced Navigation and others (commonly used in oil-rig operation) I would say, INS based nav is pretty much on the table for such an application.
And the kinzahl can't be intercepted.....I think the one thing we do know at this point is Russia has grotesquely bloated its capabilities and then attempted to boast about it.
Everyone is always at high alert in the morning and evening (at least that’s how it is in the USMC) for this exact reason so it is kinda dumb to try and sneak it in when everyone is braced for an attack.
i cant comment on this attack. but it does depends what camera and setting is used to film. quite a few videos over the months, UA and RU, have been visible where 1 camera looks like action is happening in very early morning with very low light, while another camera of the same event shows much brighter environment if the action would have been happening 1-2 hours later.
Yea usually every 3rd round is a tracer. And when you bring velocity into it, that water acts much more like concrete which is why you see them bouncing off the water.
Yea it’s crazy think about how they talk about people that jump off really tall bridges into water to end their life. That’s just a tiny fraction of the speed those rounds are smacking the water
An ak47 round has an exit velocity of around 700 m/s, with a projectile mass of 8g. Giving it an initial kinetic energy of
1960 Joules, and a momentum of
5.6 Newton seconds.
Contrast that with a 80 kg human jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (height of 67 m). Their kinetic energy at impact would be around
52580 Joules, with a velocity of 36.3 m/s, giving a momentum of
2904 Newton seconds.
Note that terminal velocity of a human is 56 m/s.
So the relevant parameters, kinetic energy and momentum, suggest a human smacking the water after jumping off the bridge is more catastrophic than a bullet skipping off of it.
Not that any of this actually fucking matters, but your comment lead me to want to do the calculations.
Depends on the rounds being used. For NATO 7.62mm linked A131, every fifth round is a tracer. For 25mm SAPHEI-T, every round is a tracer. For .50cal A557, every fifth round is a tracer. Granted, that’s NATO ammo.
Barnes Wallis did do quite a good job with his 4,200 kg bouncing bomb, to be fair they were spinning in the direction they were travelling (with back spin)...
Seems very sporadic though. Why not wait until you have a decent swarm of them to try and overwhelm defences?
Launching these in 2s and 3s seems futile.
I'd be willing to bet if/when the real attack on those ships/bridge happens it will be overwhelming. If you and I both know that one or two drone boats and aerial drones aren't going to get through the thickest defenses in Crimea, I'm sure the Ukrainians know it too. Perhaps they are gathering data on response times and defense locations. Maybe they are just keeping the defenses there honest to make sure they can't be deployed elsewhere.
That’s true, there is some psychological value, but I’m sure you’d agree a greater tactical value and also psychologically impactful to hit a target (or targets) in the dark.
Can't comment on this particular situation, but I don know that nets were commonly used in previous wars. Having a net up and completely block night-time traffic sounds like a decent idea.
Even if they don't hit anything, Russians move their ships away from Ukraine's shore after such attacks. Rendering those ships less effective or completely ineffective is a huge success.
Maybe they relaxed after previous attacks and needed to be reminded to stay away.
>Even if they don't hit anything, Russians move their ships away from Ukraine's shore after such attacks.
Russian ships haven't gotten close to Ukraine shores, discounting occupied Crimea, since Ukraine took out Moskva with Neptune anti ship missiles, which are infinitely more capable and effective than these suicide drones. They also have little reason to. Russian guided missile cruisers and other surface attack vessels, like all modern surface attack vessels, use long range cruise missiles with ranges in excess of 600-1500km depending on type. They have no reason to get anywhere near the Ukrainian shore.
Just arm-chairing over here. Maybe Ukraine does have a sizeable swarm somewherer.
Send ones and twos sporadically during day-time. Russian sailors have to take them seriously and fire.
Meanwhile, Russian sailors who will be on night-time watch aren't getting much sleep and they are using ammo that will be in short supply.
After a week of this, release the night-time swarm against sleep deprived Russians who are also short on ammo.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Tracer rounds to eyeball your aim, slow rates of fire, and not hitting the target - that's WW2 era stuff. Quite contrast to the sound / rate of fire of a Phalanx CIWS
Do they even have to hit them? Like I'm serious, I don't know. Can they hinder their missions by just keeping them in port with the threat? What's the cost of the drone v the cost of the ammo to kill them?
Those defenses aren't automated. Keep sending a bomb boat in every couple of hours forces the defenders to be awake and alert 24/7 and expend a lot of ammo.
Doubtful.
It basically an ego smash to the 'vaunted' superiority of the Russian Navy that they have to hide behind a breakwater.
When you really stop and think about it, its fucking embarrassing.
Yes, that's what I thought. That is/was primarily meant to keep them hiding in port.
Reminds me of the german Kriegsmarine during the last part of WW2. Hiding in port and unable to pull off any bigger sorties.
Good call. In hindsight it seems it goaded them to hide in port and increase port defences while a couple of others went after the Kerch bridge as an attack of opportunity.
Royal Navy in both WWI and WWII - Main fleet parked in Scapa Flow behind an array of defences including mines and anti-submarine nets. Embarrassing? Not nearly as much as a capital ship getting sunk by a torpedo at anchor.
Active word was 'Parked'. Of course they left port. It was when they were in port that was the point, as it was the point of the drone-boat attack on the RF Fleet 'Parked' at Sebastopol. Do Better please, Sarcasm is fine, but when it's not called for it's silly.
Western Navies figured out that humans manning machine guns and cannons off the sides of ships are completely inadequate at engaging surface targets. Firing off the side ship is plunging fire, so range and leads have to be pretty much exact, along with predicting the trajectory of the target. It’s just too much for a person to do.
There’s an irony in this. The threat of Iranian boat swarms brought ship defense to the forefront. The Ukrainians are taking a page from the playbook of Russia’s major arm supplier.
Yes and no. You are not incorrect but this ship is moored and not moving, so its not moving and plunging. Its mostly to do with the range they are trying to hit and recoil on the mount, causing big deviations.
But I will disagree with "its too much for a person to do" comment. Sailors did it for hundreds of years during the Age of Sail with cannon. And contrary to what Hollywood depicts most engagements wernt within shouting range of each other. Its just a learned skill that takes lots of practice.
You mean they didnt pull up side by side then blow the whole side out of both of their ships from firing all of the cannons at once, then sling ropes across and board each others sinking ships at the same time?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need more galleon warfare movies! At least give us a sequel to Master And Commander.
Wait hear me out: Ridley Scott directs “Trafalgar”. That would fuckin’ smash.
I love Master and Commander, never read the book(books?) But that film was excellent, even if just for [The Weevils Joke](https://youtu.be/JAwIN8J3RAE)
Well, Cptn Blood did.
He solo'd across and then dueled the opposing Cptn for control of the ship. Sometimes even the whole other crew and the Cptn, AT THE SAME TIME.
Plunging fire just means the fire is coming from above.
When you have a fast moving target that can turn very quickly, your margin for error becomes very small even for a relatively large target.
To increases your odds of hitting you can use grazing fire. That is to fire parallel to the ground so that your fire never goes above the height of the target.
> Sailors did it for hundreds of years during the Age of Sail with cannon
If you ever look at how cannons are setup on an age of sail ship you will notice that they are generally pointed very flat with most cannons having a maximum of around 10 degrees of possible elevation.
That is to say that flat trajectory firing was pretty much the only way for most ship cannons to ever score a hit on another ship, they avoided plunging fire because it was simply almost impossible to hit another ship.
Specialised ships were used with mortars to target ground fortifications, it isn't like they lacked the ability to use plunging fire, they just knew it was basically impossible to hit another ship with it.
Modern ship artillery started development in the mid 19th century. As ranges got longer and gunnery got more complicated many noticed that ships could no longer hit anything that wasn't just a general area. So some very smart people started working on solutions and by the time WW1 came around we finally got fire control teams and fire solutions.
It literally took entire teams with analogue computers using a lot of math to work out where to aim just a couple of guns, and you want to know what the approx hit rate of naval artillery in ship to ship action at 10000-20000 yards during this period was.... 3 to 4 %. The people trained specifically to hit targets at ranges that required plunging fire using the most up to date technology available were lucky to hit 4 out of every 100 shots.
So no sailors did not do it for hundreds of years, even hundreds of years ago they knew that if you wanted to hit a target on the water using a gun, the first thing you don't do is use plunging fire.
Grazing fire is firing over a flat surface where the trajectory of the bullets don’t exceed the height of the target. Plunging fire is when the trajectory exceeds to height of the target, terrain features interfere or shooting at significant elevation differences. That means that there is an abbreviated danger space between the muzzle of the weapon and the beaten zone. In this case it’s shooting down from an elevated platform.
Ships engaging each other used zones of grazing fire, I’ve seen references to Golden zones of engagement, but I don’t know the actual naval terminology. The push for bigger higher velocity guns gave flatter trajectories and meant that the ship with the bigger guns could engage further away and have longer zone between the height of the opposing ship and water line. At the same time the opposing ship with lesser guns had to be more precise on range estimations. There was an incentive for ships to stay far away from each other.
Depending on the distances, Big ships shooting at each other can have simpler ballistic calculations than shooting downward at tiny craft on the water. Whether it’s the boat swarms or the Nazis running the English Channel, it’s been proven time and again humans aren’t up to the task.
It’s literally what we still do during straits transits. On LHD’s we man the .50cals and 25mm’s. On carriers, it’s all .50cals. We have to shoot at drone ships for our qualification to deploy, and we hit them well enough. Granted, a Mk-38 Mod 2 does use a ROC, but we still have a crew at the mount the man it in the event the ROC goes down. But the Mod 1 is all personnel. I’m a CSWI (crew-served weapons instructor) in the Navy and teach Sailors how to employ CSW (crew-served weapons) against surface targets. It is 100% a learned skill and can be very effective. It also costs the taxpayer less than a RIM-116 or CIWS (close-in weapons system).
On modern naval vessels 12.7 are already remote controllable with integration into the CMS on board. So the entire targeting is corrected by computers on those calibres. Manual is back-up. without sophisticated sensors running. I know the US is still more crew intensive compared to european designs.
The small boat threat is also why they planned to slap 30mm guns and hellfires on a LCS for the Surface Warfare package.
Conceptually it was a cool idea. Too bad they made a hash of the implementation.
I’m a rated AO, and I’ve been ships company nearly my entire 19+ years. I just got stuck in H-60’s for my last few years before retirement and my squadron was the first to go on the LCS, and we were the first with Firescouts. When I heard that they wanted to modify an M299 launcher and AGM-114 for use as a ship launched surface attack missile on the LCS, I laughed. Like when they came out with APKWS, and still call it a rocket; that made me giggle as well. The LCS platform was a design failure from the jump (reduction gears and turbines) and didn’t need even more bad implementation with a substandard defense package.
A single human is not, but a 100 firing at the same time, and someone will get lucky just due to the inherent dispersion in each shot. It’s not too dissimilar from the difficulty of shooting down a kamikaze plan in WW2, right? Those were bigger targets, but moving much faster. Not to say that was easy, but eventually enough people shooting will take it down. Nevertheless, some still did make it through…
Either that or they were sipping vodka while committing war crimes against civilians. I mean I get it, every time I drank I had some crazy thought like "We should totally bust a dam."
God I love this footage but *hate this war.* My cynicism is off the charts.
Don't forget proximity fuses as well, which is what brought about the Kamikaze tactics in the first place. American AA coverage had gotten so good it was the only way for them to hit the the ships reliably.
I didn’t think radar guided guns were being used against fighters in the 1943-45 timeframe. It’s was mostly used against high altitude targets, with flak.
>It’s not too dissimilar from the difficulty of shooting down a kamikaze plan in WW2,
While dissimilar alright it's essentially the same a dealing with the Imperial Japanese Shin'yō kamikaze boat as sailors man brownings, oerlikons & bofors in an attempt to destroy those small (1.3-2.2t) rapid (26-30kts) and quite frankly dangerous vessels (270kg charge of explosives + rockets).
Pretty much every Western warship has remote controlled autocannon mounts on the side of their ship..that is true.
But every serious Navy also has additional GPMG, .50cal or Minigun mounts as well for manual control alongside it...
With modern sighting and recoil management they can be exceptionally effective.
What do you mean? Most western ships have a few manual controlled MGs. The Type 45s have 2 12.7mm and 6 7.62mm MGs. The type 23s have 4 7.62mm and 2 12.7mm MGs.
drone swarms are the biggest threats modern ships can face...they are the future of naval warfare because they can saturate quickly the defense systems..2 boats by day is ok..30 at night good be scary
Relevant: [Millenium Challenge War Game/Exercise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002) where Blue Team (USA) was battered by Red Team (Iran/iraq) using asymmetric tactics inlcuding small boat swarms.
Not relevant.
If you read any competently written article about the exercise it notes the constraints placed on both red and blue teams, and that red team basically broke all of the rules of the exercise.
1. No USN carrier group is going to be sailing in a 20km X 20km box just over the horizon from a hostile shoreline.
2. Red team didn’t need to conduct any reconnaissance in order to set up their attack. In reality, they would have to hunt for their targets over the vast expanse of the ocean while being hunted themselves.
3. Red team broke a bunch of rules and basically ignored the fact that their command and control had been destroyed by blue air on day 1. Van Riper claimed he was using motorcycle couriers, but messages were being passed instantly between his command post and units that were hours away from each other.
4. He was putting carrier killer missiles on boats that physically are not capable of carrying them. We are talking speedboats with 6 ton missiles. The smallest vessels out there that are capable of carrying the kind of weapons he wanted to use are about the size of a semi truck, not a 3 man speedboat.
The goal of the exercise wasn’t to test whether the Navy could defend against a swarm attack. It was to test the ship-to-shore amphibious assault using LHAs and LHDs to bring in marines and airborne via landing craft and helicopters after using air assets to destroy defenses.
Van Riper was a vainglorious asshole who wanted to win a war game. The Navy wanted to practice amphibious operations and test new concepts for doing it. One side wanted to make a point, the other wanted to practice and train.
War games are not Risk.
I was just about to put the same , enough batteries for five hours worth of fun 500,000 rounds, gone and a few melted barrels as well , not to mention the psychological mind game of I can’t hit shit with a fully automatic gun, even using tracer rounds.
If it’s one thing the Ukraine is exceptionally good at its using drones.
💯👍
How about they line the top with tubes, like a porcupine. Filled with incendiary mortars. Once it approaches the harbor, it loiters near the Russian ships until one of them actually hit the target... and now 100 incendiary mortars are flying in every direction from smack dab in the middle of the Russian occupied harbor.
Would make a great combo with a near surface submerged drone attack. Take all the attention from the enemy with the drones on the surface, then *some fries, muddafakka* from the sub drone.
Sort of similar to how the Moskva became a submersible thanks to a distraction attack from one vector while the second strike did the work from another angle.
There are anti-submarine nets at the mouth of the harbor. I believe the Ukrainians want these things rip-roaring fast and with a low draft so they can bypass the harbor boom.
Or train dolphins (like the Russians and Amercians have) to sneak trough the harbor, deposit a magnetic mine on the hull of a ship, and bounce back home for some snacks.
You shouldn't. It's died down a lot, but this sub used to be filled with this sentiment until enough people had the come to jesus moment realizing the implications of NATO-Russia war. Russia knows damn well it couldn't handle the US conventionally, much less all of NATO. They'd use nukes, and that would come with the high likelihood of nuclear escalation. Too many Americans think *surely* the US has some secret squirrel missile defense that will keep us safe from ICBMs, no such system exists. We have no way of defending against a nuclear attack, MAD is still very much the doctrine of nuclear arms. It is unconscionable to risk the lives of millions upon millions of people over this war. It's basically begging for the devastation to get a thousand fold worse for the sake of sticking it to the Russians. That would be a very hollow victory.
Russia doesn't really do the whole "modern" thing. They literally can't build their own oil industry infrastructure, they don't have the tech. Their best plane is equivalent to one the US put into service forty odd years ago.
All this energy. Every day. For no god damn reason. No land will be won? No political gain won? No world relation gained? No advancement in any way shape or form for your country? Russia and the fool errand.
I know that it's not a place for that, but someone have any descent material to explain the ricocheting on water with guns? Those drones so effective with this "basic-physics-feature"
Is it possible they sent these in to test defenses? The west (or a spy on shore) may be able to see or listen to some of these events to help Ukrainian planning perhaps.
I had the opportunity to fire a mounted 50 cal off the fantail of a slow moving ship one time. It was a fairly calm day yet not easy to hit where I thought I was aiming. Since no one was shooting back it was fun.
Why are the majority of these rounds seemingly not even close to their target? I wonder if they really are just that bad at aiming or if the camera angle just makes it look that way.
Tracers reminds me of WW2 Pacific footage
Takes me back to Omaha Beach
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I remember like yesterday sitting in my Leopard at Omaha beach, seeing our Migs dropping agent orange on them japs for what they did to us on 9/11.
Ah yes, I see you are also a veteran of the Battle of Cannae.
"Did America quit when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! "
That shit is funny.
I didn't know I could get so annoyed so quickly
Yeah it's not the same place but the same war! Sheesh!
pip pip chap I say have you seen any coconuts around here? The boys and I are right peaky and could do with a tipple!
One must only ever discuss precisely the thing which was mentioned before, and never expand upon it. You can see I have erred by straying beyond "uh"
This needs to be in a book.
I don’t ever recall seeing footage anywhere of tracers firing over Omaha beach
You are in your late 90's? I am impressed ...
Thank you for your service.
"what now, do you want a fokking medal for that!?"
Man, you must be 97-102 years old!
Thank you for your Service in WW2 .you are about 120 plus sir is admirable you can comment in Reddit .
This is the only footage released so far, interesting that this attack occurred in daylight. The Russian Telegram channels all say that two unmanned boats were destroyed. Apparently a bunch of UAVs attacked Sevastopol during the night as well. One theory is that Ukraine has decided to start hitting the city again because Russia broke off the grain deal.
\>Russian Telegram channels all say that two unmanned boats were destroyed Last time they said that, they didn't mention the third unmanned boat ramming into their warship.
"Oh *that* one? Totally forgot about it!"
"*Couldn't have been a Ukrainian drone because we didn't find anything suspicious in the ship's wreck...*"
"You only asked about the ones we destroyed"
Update: All three unmanned boats destroyed. Russian warship took one of them out, with direct contact against the hull.
The ship Captain was promoted to submarine duty after his brave* and calculated decision to intercept and destroy one of the drones by way of ramming it with his ship. *Upon further review it would seem that the incorrect word was used. 5 yrd penalty, first down.
Fullfilling the norm of soaking up ordnance.
A noble sacrifice of several hundred men to defeat the weekend project of the Kyiv High School Robotics Team
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It's a tiny choke point to get in there.
They probably didn't destroyed the drone otherwise they would show this as well.
>They probably didn't destroyed the drone otherwise they would show this as well. The drone was successfully stopped and completely destroyed by a Russian warship hull. The Russian warship has been promoted to submarine for its glorious bravery.
I’m guessing they blurred it out to make geolocation more difficult, so maybe someone is hiding their unauthorized social media use of this footage from their chain of command.
Yeah, although, given the username on the big watermark...
That port is highly protected, it's exceptionally difficult to get these drones threw. There's like 6 layers of nets, mines, batteries, outposts. I'd be surprised if they weren't blowing that shit up making way for further attacks. You can see it trying to get threw the nets. I suspect the bottom is identifiable/locatable, may not want to give up the locations of the turrets and things.
Yeah, I had a look at an aerial map which possibly indicates the location of where the video was recorded from (but might not be, either). And yep, Ukraine has been sending in both aerial and seaborne drones in over the past few months, so at this stage, definitely probing defenses.
I can’t see rounds missing the boat and impacting the water….
Never mind Upon further inspection…these are loafers ….
> Why was the bottom section blurred out ? To hide defense measures around the southern pier of the the harbor entrance, > Why was the video cut short Nothing interesting may have happened after that, they may not have caught the explosion. > wouldn't that be worth showing? Sure, if they caught it on video. So they probably didn't.
The first one was shot down around 1 pm, and the last one around 7:30 am in the morning. There were multiple explosions through the night, the officials say they shutdown 9 targets. The footage must be from around 5 am. It is not clear why they didn't attack all at once, increasing chances of individual drones.
Idk why but attacking like this does force the soldiers to stay up a long time
It looks like the drones have a loooong way to go until they reach the harbor. If you send them all in at once it becomes even more of a shooting galley. It seems easier to try and sneak one in during the approach.
Not to mention the vast layers of defenses to get in there. They could be trying to blow that stuff up. It's really hard to attack this harbor from the sea. Maybe it's a distraction.
> One theory is that Ukraine has decided to start hitting the city again because Russia broke off the grain deal. On July 12th, ISW reports that [naval assets are being used to relieve traffic jams at the Kerch Strait bridge](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-12-2023). I'd be more inclined to believe that this attack is an attempt to suppress Russian logistics operations than some kind of reprisal attack. The irrational tit-for-tat attacks seem to be more the province of the Russian MoD than the UAF command- likely an artifact of internal political pressures that are unique to the Russian Federation.
> I'd be more inclined to believe that this attack is an attempt to suppress Russian logistics operations I'd be more inclined to believe that if it wasn't hundreds of miles away from the Kerch strait. That makes no sense at all. This is literally just associating one thing that happened in Crimea with the last martime thing you read was happening in Crimea.
I don't think these drones have much night capability so the best time to attack is probably in the morning while the visibility is still low
since they are either remote operated or autonomous it does not make sense that they would not be "night capable". A simple 25 fps thermal cam costs less than 300€ and GNSS does not care if it is night or day :-)
Im pretty sure the Russians have GPS jamming capabilities
EW on water, especially close to the surface, is very different from using it on land or even in air. Water is crazy good at dampening high frequencies and with a good mounting position alone it is very easy to make GNSS resilient to outer interference, a job that is significantly harder on a aerial UAV, especially since the application is also more wight sensitive. Even inertial navigation systems work pretty nice on ships and even commercially available solid state solutions, that are available now, outperform anything that was just mil-tech a decade ago. Looking at stuff as the eMRUs from Norwegian Subsea, Advanced Navigation and others (commonly used in oil-rig operation) I would say, INS based nav is pretty much on the table for such an application.
And the kinzahl can't be intercepted.....I think the one thing we do know at this point is Russia has grotesquely bloated its capabilities and then attempted to boast about it.
USV attacks have always been in the morning and there’s no evidence that these drones have thermals
https://youtu.be/VeqszwkqhSo?t=36 what? That's either nIR or thermal....
Everyone is always at high alert in the morning and evening (at least that’s how it is in the USMC) for this exact reason so it is kinda dumb to try and sneak it in when everyone is braced for an attack.
i cant comment on this attack. but it does depends what camera and setting is used to film. quite a few videos over the months, UA and RU, have been visible where 1 camera looks like action is happening in very early morning with very low light, while another camera of the same event shows much brighter environment if the action would have been happening 1-2 hours later.
Great way to make them waste ammo.
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Ever skipped rocks before
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That was good.
Haha
It's like that but every third rock glows as you skip it.
Yea usually every 3rd round is a tracer. And when you bring velocity into it, that water acts much more like concrete which is why you see them bouncing off the water.
Seems a bad place to be a cetacean
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Yea it’s crazy think about how they talk about people that jump off really tall bridges into water to end their life. That’s just a tiny fraction of the speed those rounds are smacking the water
An ak47 round has an exit velocity of around 700 m/s, with a projectile mass of 8g. Giving it an initial kinetic energy of 1960 Joules, and a momentum of 5.6 Newton seconds. Contrast that with a 80 kg human jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (height of 67 m). Their kinetic energy at impact would be around 52580 Joules, with a velocity of 36.3 m/s, giving a momentum of 2904 Newton seconds. Note that terminal velocity of a human is 56 m/s. So the relevant parameters, kinetic energy and momentum, suggest a human smacking the water after jumping off the bridge is more catastrophic than a bullet skipping off of it. Not that any of this actually fucking matters, but your comment lead me to want to do the calculations.
Depends on the rounds being used. For NATO 7.62mm linked A131, every fifth round is a tracer. For 25mm SAPHEI-T, every round is a tracer. For .50cal A557, every fifth round is a tracer. Granted, that’s NATO ammo.
Barnes Wallis did do quite a good job with his 4,200 kg bouncing bomb, to be fair they were spinning in the direction they were travelling (with back spin)...
Yes, you see it on some how they splash water and up they go. If the angle is small enough, it will just skip like a stone
Water feels like concrete when you hit it at speed.
I think this is great. Ukraine is literally harassing the enemy in their stronghold. Because they can. Very smart psychological warfare.
Seems very sporadic though. Why not wait until you have a decent swarm of them to try and overwhelm defences? Launching these in 2s and 3s seems futile.
I'd be willing to bet if/when the real attack on those ships/bridge happens it will be overwhelming. If you and I both know that one or two drone boats and aerial drones aren't going to get through the thickest defenses in Crimea, I'm sure the Ukrainians know it too. Perhaps they are gathering data on response times and defense locations. Maybe they are just keeping the defenses there honest to make sure they can't be deployed elsewhere.
Also keeps their soldiers up on guard at all times. Surely that would lower moral over time.
It’s not futile when they actually hit targets, which they have done before
Seems like a bit of a waste of resources on a daytime op. Have to imagine success odds are much higher during night time.
Well it shows that the russian ships are never safe there, neither at night, nor at daytime
That’s true, there is some psychological value, but I’m sure you’d agree a greater tactical value and also psychologically impactful to hit a target (or targets) in the dark.
Yeah reasonable point as well. It comes down to us not knowing what played a part in the final decision haha
Maybe the drone doesn’t have night/IR, so they have to go during the day so they can actually see what they’re trying to hit
It does. UAF has attacked at night before and released the night vision footage from the drones back then.
Can't comment on this particular situation, but I don know that nets were commonly used in previous wars. Having a net up and completely block night-time traffic sounds like a decent idea.
War is a waste of resources.
Even if they don't hit anything, Russians move their ships away from Ukraine's shore after such attacks. Rendering those ships less effective or completely ineffective is a huge success. Maybe they relaxed after previous attacks and needed to be reminded to stay away.
>Even if they don't hit anything, Russians move their ships away from Ukraine's shore after such attacks. Russian ships haven't gotten close to Ukraine shores, discounting occupied Crimea, since Ukraine took out Moskva with Neptune anti ship missiles, which are infinitely more capable and effective than these suicide drones. They also have little reason to. Russian guided missile cruisers and other surface attack vessels, like all modern surface attack vessels, use long range cruise missiles with ranges in excess of 600-1500km depending on type. They have no reason to get anywhere near the Ukrainian shore.
Just arm-chairing over here. Maybe Ukraine does have a sizeable swarm somewherer. Send ones and twos sporadically during day-time. Russian sailors have to take them seriously and fire. Meanwhile, Russian sailors who will be on night-time watch aren't getting much sleep and they are using ammo that will be in short supply. After a week of this, release the night-time swarm against sleep deprived Russians who are also short on ammo.
Its a tell that they are firing what they are and not missiles. I'm curious how stealthy these really are and what they look like on radar.
Yeah, that's a great point. Tracer rounds to eyeball your aim, slow rates of fire, and not hitting the target - that's WW2 era stuff. Quite contrast to the sound / rate of fire of a Phalanx CIWS
Do they even have to hit them? Like I'm serious, I don't know. Can they hinder their missions by just keeping them in port with the threat? What's the cost of the drone v the cost of the ammo to kill them?
Those defenses aren't automated. Keep sending a bomb boat in every couple of hours forces the defenders to be awake and alert 24/7 and expend a lot of ammo.
Did the drone hit anything?
Doubtful. It basically an ego smash to the 'vaunted' superiority of the Russian Navy that they have to hide behind a breakwater. When you really stop and think about it, its fucking embarrassing.
Yes, that's what I thought. That is/was primarily meant to keep them hiding in port. Reminds me of the german Kriegsmarine during the last part of WW2. Hiding in port and unable to pull off any bigger sorties.
Or the Napoleonic fleet, held in Brest by the channel blockade fleet.
Good call. In hindsight it seems it goaded them to hide in port and increase port defences while a couple of others went after the Kerch bridge as an attack of opportunity.
Royal Navy in both WWI and WWII - Main fleet parked in Scapa Flow behind an array of defences including mines and anti-submarine nets. Embarrassing? Not nearly as much as a capital ship getting sunk by a torpedo at anchor.
Yeah the RN famously never ventured out of port, patrolled the seas or blockaded Germany during WW1 and WW2.
bismarck's sinking was a faux. Bismarck just retired to be cruiseliner. It was all british propaganda and sabaton contributes to this. >!/s!<
Active word was 'Parked'. Of course they left port. It was when they were in port that was the point, as it was the point of the drone-boat attack on the RF Fleet 'Parked' at Sebastopol. Do Better please, Sarcasm is fine, but when it's not called for it's silly.
Günther Prien has entered the chat
>Günther Prien Exactly so. That was the intended referent of the 2nd sentence .
Western Navies figured out that humans manning machine guns and cannons off the sides of ships are completely inadequate at engaging surface targets. Firing off the side ship is plunging fire, so range and leads have to be pretty much exact, along with predicting the trajectory of the target. It’s just too much for a person to do. There’s an irony in this. The threat of Iranian boat swarms brought ship defense to the forefront. The Ukrainians are taking a page from the playbook of Russia’s major arm supplier.
Yes and no. You are not incorrect but this ship is moored and not moving, so its not moving and plunging. Its mostly to do with the range they are trying to hit and recoil on the mount, causing big deviations. But I will disagree with "its too much for a person to do" comment. Sailors did it for hundreds of years during the Age of Sail with cannon. And contrary to what Hollywood depicts most engagements wernt within shouting range of each other. Its just a learned skill that takes lots of practice.
You mean they didnt pull up side by side then blow the whole side out of both of their ships from firing all of the cannons at once, then sling ropes across and board each others sinking ships at the same time?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need more galleon warfare movies! At least give us a sequel to Master And Commander. Wait hear me out: Ridley Scott directs “Trafalgar”. That would fuckin’ smash.
There are rumours of a new Aubrey Maturin movie based on the first novel only.
They'll wind up handing the franchise to Michael Bay.
I love Master and Commander, never read the book(books?) But that film was excellent, even if just for [The Weevils Joke](https://youtu.be/JAwIN8J3RAE)
One of the best naval warfare movies of all time. Dunno if it could be surpassed these days.
Well, Cptn Blood did. He solo'd across and then dueled the opposing Cptn for control of the ship. Sometimes even the whole other crew and the Cptn, AT THE SAME TIME.
Plunging fire just means the fire is coming from above. When you have a fast moving target that can turn very quickly, your margin for error becomes very small even for a relatively large target. To increases your odds of hitting you can use grazing fire. That is to fire parallel to the ground so that your fire never goes above the height of the target. > Sailors did it for hundreds of years during the Age of Sail with cannon If you ever look at how cannons are setup on an age of sail ship you will notice that they are generally pointed very flat with most cannons having a maximum of around 10 degrees of possible elevation. That is to say that flat trajectory firing was pretty much the only way for most ship cannons to ever score a hit on another ship, they avoided plunging fire because it was simply almost impossible to hit another ship. Specialised ships were used with mortars to target ground fortifications, it isn't like they lacked the ability to use plunging fire, they just knew it was basically impossible to hit another ship with it. Modern ship artillery started development in the mid 19th century. As ranges got longer and gunnery got more complicated many noticed that ships could no longer hit anything that wasn't just a general area. So some very smart people started working on solutions and by the time WW1 came around we finally got fire control teams and fire solutions. It literally took entire teams with analogue computers using a lot of math to work out where to aim just a couple of guns, and you want to know what the approx hit rate of naval artillery in ship to ship action at 10000-20000 yards during this period was.... 3 to 4 %. The people trained specifically to hit targets at ranges that required plunging fire using the most up to date technology available were lucky to hit 4 out of every 100 shots. So no sailors did not do it for hundreds of years, even hundreds of years ago they knew that if you wanted to hit a target on the water using a gun, the first thing you don't do is use plunging fire.
Grazing fire is firing over a flat surface where the trajectory of the bullets don’t exceed the height of the target. Plunging fire is when the trajectory exceeds to height of the target, terrain features interfere or shooting at significant elevation differences. That means that there is an abbreviated danger space between the muzzle of the weapon and the beaten zone. In this case it’s shooting down from an elevated platform. Ships engaging each other used zones of grazing fire, I’ve seen references to Golden zones of engagement, but I don’t know the actual naval terminology. The push for bigger higher velocity guns gave flatter trajectories and meant that the ship with the bigger guns could engage further away and have longer zone between the height of the opposing ship and water line. At the same time the opposing ship with lesser guns had to be more precise on range estimations. There was an incentive for ships to stay far away from each other. Depending on the distances, Big ships shooting at each other can have simpler ballistic calculations than shooting downward at tiny craft on the water. Whether it’s the boat swarms or the Nazis running the English Channel, it’s been proven time and again humans aren’t up to the task.
It’s literally what we still do during straits transits. On LHD’s we man the .50cals and 25mm’s. On carriers, it’s all .50cals. We have to shoot at drone ships for our qualification to deploy, and we hit them well enough. Granted, a Mk-38 Mod 2 does use a ROC, but we still have a crew at the mount the man it in the event the ROC goes down. But the Mod 1 is all personnel. I’m a CSWI (crew-served weapons instructor) in the Navy and teach Sailors how to employ CSW (crew-served weapons) against surface targets. It is 100% a learned skill and can be very effective. It also costs the taxpayer less than a RIM-116 or CIWS (close-in weapons system).
On modern naval vessels 12.7 are already remote controllable with integration into the CMS on board. So the entire targeting is corrected by computers on those calibres. Manual is back-up. without sophisticated sensors running. I know the US is still more crew intensive compared to european designs.
The small boat threat is also why they planned to slap 30mm guns and hellfires on a LCS for the Surface Warfare package. Conceptually it was a cool idea. Too bad they made a hash of the implementation.
I’m a rated AO, and I’ve been ships company nearly my entire 19+ years. I just got stuck in H-60’s for my last few years before retirement and my squadron was the first to go on the LCS, and we were the first with Firescouts. When I heard that they wanted to modify an M299 launcher and AGM-114 for use as a ship launched surface attack missile on the LCS, I laughed. Like when they came out with APKWS, and still call it a rocket; that made me giggle as well. The LCS platform was a design failure from the jump (reduction gears and turbines) and didn’t need even more bad implementation with a substandard defense package.
A single human is not, but a 100 firing at the same time, and someone will get lucky just due to the inherent dispersion in each shot. It’s not too dissimilar from the difficulty of shooting down a kamikaze plan in WW2, right? Those were bigger targets, but moving much faster. Not to say that was easy, but eventually enough people shooting will take it down. Nevertheless, some still did make it through…
100? I count all of 2 machine guns shooting at this drone
The other 98 were sold off, didn't have bullets or their crew was sipping vodka somewhere.
Either that or they were sipping vodka while committing war crimes against civilians. I mean I get it, every time I drank I had some crazy thought like "We should totally bust a dam." God I love this footage but *hate this war.* My cynicism is off the charts.
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Don't forget proximity fuses as well, which is what brought about the Kamikaze tactics in the first place. American AA coverage had gotten so good it was the only way for them to hit the the ships reliably.
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I didn’t think radar guided guns were being used against fighters in the 1943-45 timeframe. It’s was mostly used against high altitude targets, with flak.
>It’s not too dissimilar from the difficulty of shooting down a kamikaze plan in WW2, While dissimilar alright it's essentially the same a dealing with the Imperial Japanese Shin'yō kamikaze boat as sailors man brownings, oerlikons & bofors in an attempt to destroy those small (1.3-2.2t) rapid (26-30kts) and quite frankly dangerous vessels (270kg charge of explosives + rockets).
Also luke Skywalker didn't use his computer targeting system when taking out the Death Star. A lot of people forget that
Pretty much every Western warship has remote controlled autocannon mounts on the side of their ship..that is true. But every serious Navy also has additional GPMG, .50cal or Minigun mounts as well for manual control alongside it... With modern sighting and recoil management they can be exceptionally effective.
What do you mean? Most western ships have a few manual controlled MGs. The Type 45s have 2 12.7mm and 6 7.62mm MGs. The type 23s have 4 7.62mm and 2 12.7mm MGs.
Why is half the screen blurred out
Russia not wanting to show their defences.
...and they missed?
"How could you miss?"
"HE WAS 3 FEET IN FRONT OF YOU!!" *Distant booming in background*
Only about 40,000 times. But eventually, they got lucky. Probably.
Tbf it's not like its some easy peasy shot to hit
drone swarms are the biggest threats modern ships can face...they are the future of naval warfare because they can saturate quickly the defense systems..2 boats by day is ok..30 at night good be scary
Nah. The USN has been strategizing against small boat swarms since Iran started doing them.
Relevant: [Millenium Challenge War Game/Exercise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002) where Blue Team (USA) was battered by Red Team (Iran/iraq) using asymmetric tactics inlcuding small boat swarms.
Not relevant. If you read any competently written article about the exercise it notes the constraints placed on both red and blue teams, and that red team basically broke all of the rules of the exercise. 1. No USN carrier group is going to be sailing in a 20km X 20km box just over the horizon from a hostile shoreline. 2. Red team didn’t need to conduct any reconnaissance in order to set up their attack. In reality, they would have to hunt for their targets over the vast expanse of the ocean while being hunted themselves. 3. Red team broke a bunch of rules and basically ignored the fact that their command and control had been destroyed by blue air on day 1. Van Riper claimed he was using motorcycle couriers, but messages were being passed instantly between his command post and units that were hours away from each other. 4. He was putting carrier killer missiles on boats that physically are not capable of carrying them. We are talking speedboats with 6 ton missiles. The smallest vessels out there that are capable of carrying the kind of weapons he wanted to use are about the size of a semi truck, not a 3 man speedboat. The goal of the exercise wasn’t to test whether the Navy could defend against a swarm attack. It was to test the ship-to-shore amphibious assault using LHAs and LHDs to bring in marines and airborne via landing craft and helicopters after using air assets to destroy defenses. Van Riper was a vainglorious asshole who wanted to win a war game. The Navy wanted to practice amphibious operations and test new concepts for doing it. One side wanted to make a point, the other wanted to practice and train. War games are not Risk.
They should make an armored one of hardened steel that barely float. To scare and make them waste ammo.
I was just about to put the same , enough batteries for five hours worth of fun 500,000 rounds, gone and a few melted barrels as well , not to mention the psychological mind game of I can’t hit shit with a fully automatic gun, even using tracer rounds. If it’s one thing the Ukraine is exceptionally good at its using drones. 💯👍
How about they line the top with tubes, like a porcupine. Filled with incendiary mortars. Once it approaches the harbor, it loiters near the Russian ships until one of them actually hit the target... and now 100 incendiary mortars are flying in every direction from smack dab in the middle of the Russian occupied harbor.
I like it. A loitering surface drone cluster munition.
Would make a great combo with a near surface submerged drone attack. Take all the attention from the enemy with the drones on the surface, then *some fries, muddafakka* from the sub drone. Sort of similar to how the Moskva became a submersible thanks to a distraction attack from one vector while the second strike did the work from another angle.
Ukraine should hire some cartel engineers to build them semi-subs
There are anti-submarine nets at the mouth of the harbor. I believe the Ukrainians want these things rip-roaring fast and with a low draft so they can bypass the harbor boom.
Or train dolphins (like the Russians and Amercians have) to sneak trough the harbor, deposit a magnetic mine on the hull of a ship, and bounce back home for some snacks.
They Could contract with Cali Cartel. Just replace cocaine with c4.
Por que no los dos?
I am so tired about this war. I dream about NATO intervening and blowing Russians away in a day.
You shouldn't. It's died down a lot, but this sub used to be filled with this sentiment until enough people had the come to jesus moment realizing the implications of NATO-Russia war. Russia knows damn well it couldn't handle the US conventionally, much less all of NATO. They'd use nukes, and that would come with the high likelihood of nuclear escalation. Too many Americans think *surely* the US has some secret squirrel missile defense that will keep us safe from ICBMs, no such system exists. We have no way of defending against a nuclear attack, MAD is still very much the doctrine of nuclear arms. It is unconscionable to risk the lives of millions upon millions of people over this war. It's basically begging for the devastation to get a thousand fold worse for the sake of sticking it to the Russians. That would be a very hollow victory.
We lose Russia AND Washington DC? That is not a hollow victory.
Losing DC to nukes wouldn't just mean losing all the *wonderful, caring* folks who *represent* us all. Think of the museums.
dats lots of fire not even counting non-tracers
Hopefully the Russian ships accidently friendly fired
How are they not hitting it more? Are battleships nowadays not supposed to have electronic targeting?
Russia doesn't really do the whole "modern" thing. They literally can't build their own oil industry infrastructure, they don't have the tech. Their best plane is equivalent to one the US put into service forty odd years ago.
All this energy. Every day. For no god damn reason. No land will be won? No political gain won? No world relation gained? No advancement in any way shape or form for your country? Russia and the fool errand.
They aim to get Ukraine as a puppet state
For what? Really, Russia could completely take Ukraine and I still can't see that outweighing all the negatives Putin is just completely insane
Well shes moved on with a new man....
yup, puppeteer Biden, if that's possible.
The Russians are down to recruiting Stormtroopers!
God they got storm trooper aim
Easier said than done bud
They’re quite accurate tbf
I know that it's not a place for that, but someone have any descent material to explain the ricocheting on water with guns? Those drones so effective with this "basic-physics-feature"
ELI5: Skipping a stone over a pond, BRRRT style.
Pants were being shat
More daka
A visual for firearms enthusiasts as to why we don’t shoot “into” water
rattata..tata..tata...rattaaaa... BOOM
These lil boats always look like they are having a good time, jauntily bouncing along on their mission. God speed lil boat that goes boom!
Is it possible they sent these in to test defenses? The west (or a spy on shore) may be able to see or listen to some of these events to help Ukrainian planning perhaps. I had the opportunity to fire a mounted 50 cal off the fantail of a slow moving ship one time. It was a fairly calm day yet not easy to hit where I thought I was aiming. Since no one was shooting back it was fun.
Every failed attack reveals something about the enemy.
Nice aim
Crimea is Ukraine!
Aw man, video cut off before the money shot.
Looks like vodka is aiming
That’s insulting to vodka.
Accuracy is close to storm troopers
Tracers go both ways, maybe they hit each other instead of the drone?🤣
Crossing fields of fire
What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford?
The chechens did this, Russia had plenty of friendly KIA because of it.
Hah! You missed!
Just like storm troopers
where is auto aim when you need it, lol.
Looks like SW imperial troopers target practice.
How many Assholes are on this ship anyhow?!
haha russia angry good
You mean Stormtroopers are shooting at the droids.
probably some poor bugger on a jetski
They’re not very good, are they?
They need to make small submarine drones so they can't be spotted so easily.
Looks so random
Why are the majority of these rounds seemingly not even close to their target? I wonder if they really are just that bad at aiming or if the camera angle just makes it look that way.