4 ms·

Sure! 1) Let's look at the ship I am most familiar with, the NL Navy Zeven Provicien class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn-class_frigat

by WJW 5y ago

Sure! 1) Let's look at the ship I am most familiar with, the NL Navy Zeven Provicien class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn-class_frigate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn-class...). It generally would have 2 types of anti air defense missiles, the SM-2 and the ESSM (both US-built, see wikipedia for their publicly available specs). Apart from that, there are electronic and flare/chaff passive countermeasures and finally a Goalkeeper CIWS for last-mile defense. I have little doubt that we would have been able to take on an attack of 2 Harpoon missiles. OTOH, the Neptune missiles are a lot more modern than the Harpoon and modern missiles have been known to do tricky things like having a pseudo-random noise generator generate corkscrew like maneuvers to evade the defensive fires. I'll also note that the Moskva was built in the early 80s (though refitted after the fall of the Soviet Union) and it was apparently quite stormy (so additional radar noise from wave reflections may have been a thing). All in all, IMHO it seems quite likely that they were indeed hit. Warships don't just suddenly catch fire, and especially in warzones when the opponent has sophisticated anti ship missiles it seems more likely that the fire was caused by a missile impact. 2) For older warships it could be possible. Usually they would have a rotating air warning radar and a dedicated targeting radar for missile guidance. An example would be the STIR (https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/stir-tracking-and-illumination-radar https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/stir-tracking-and-illuminatio...) on NATO vessels, basically a powerful narrowbeam radar on a servo pedestal. There would rarely be more than two or three on a vessel, so it might be possible to distract all of them with several drones. Modern naval radars use active phased array technology where the amount of tracked targets is no longer the bottleneck (in practice, you'd need dozens of missiles), but as mentioned before the Moskva is from the early 80s so they would probably not have this yet. So it could happen, especially in a stormy sea where the waves provide a lot of additional radar noise, but it is really only speculating without a lot more information than we have right now.

dabeeeenster 5y ago
Thank you! Comments like these are the reason HN is so great.
veemjeem 5y ago
Do you know what happens to explosives on sunk ships generally? Are they usually left at the bottom of the ocean, and could they have the potential to detonate?
- cm2187 5y ago
  And would a ship of that size carry nukes?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The Moskva is nuclear-capable, but I don't think anyone publicly knows whether it was nuclear-armed in this particular conflict. My bet would be no.
    - throwanem 5y ago
      That said, if anyone decides to mount a recovery or salvage mission of any kind, it may be worth upgrading that "no" to a soft "maybe". As far as I know, nobody has tried to retrieve conventional munitions from a shipwreck, and reasonably enough - they're not dangerous enough to be worth the trouble. Nations will go after lost nuclear warheads, though; indeed, Bayesian search theory saw significant development and interest to serve that purpose [1], and the CIA's been known to go to Bond-movie levels of trouble to the same end [2]. Granted, these were both First Cold War projects, but it seems like there's some degree of possibility that this use of "First Cold War" may eventually prove not to have been a somewhat silly joke, so... [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RTt59BtFLqQbsSiqd/a-history-of-bayes-theorem https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RTt59BtFLqQbsSiqd/a-history-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
      - oldgradstudent 5y ago
        So by the wonders of Bayes' formula we can conclude that the F-35 that sank in the South China Sea carried nuclear warheads? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60607784 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60607784
oldgradstudent 5y ago
> Warships don't just suddenly catch fire Warships, just like everything else, do suddenly catch fire from time to time. Carelessness, negligence, sabotage, or bad luck could cause a fire that would sink a ship. Especially during a war, when munitions are being handled under pressure. Not the most likely cause, but shit does happen. BTW, By sabotage I don't mean some mustache twirling spy, but something more mundane, a disgruntled sailor, or a homesick one that wants to return to base as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)#2012_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)#2012_fire https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sailor-ryan-mays-court-martial-arson-uss-bonhomme-richard-fire/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sailor-ryan-mays-court-martial-...
- WJW 5y ago
  OK sure, they do. But on every warship I've ever been on (granted, none of them were Russian), every single person was a trained firefighter and very well aware that there was no fire brigade to call. In particular, setting fire to an ammunition store (as opposed to something more innocent but still vital like the galley) seems like an especially stupid thing to do. I'd also like to point out that every single missile system I've ever seen is not reloaded in any meaningful way at sea. Ships just pull into port an a crane lifts the replacement canisters into place. Given the potential causes basically being [accident, self-inflicted sabotage, hit by missile], "hit by missile" seems by far the most likely given all the other information about this.
  - polotics 5y ago
    Why not consider the sabotage option? A well controlled scuttle will ensure 100% survival for the perpetrators, sure beats dying of Vlady Putin's cancerous convulsions, plus you get to not commit war crimes... What's not to like?
  - oldgradstudent 5y ago
    On the warships I've been on, there were only a few well trained fire fighters, and the rest were poorly trained on the job. I doubt if I would have been a very useful member of the damage control team had something happened. Galley fires could happen anytime. During times of war, guns are being loaded, missile systems are turned on and tested to ensure they are ready. Somebody could easily screw up and cause a major fire. If missiles were fired by the Moskva, then a dud could have caused a fire, and so on. I'm not claiming this is likely in this case, but it does happen.
CuriousCosmic 5y ago
> Warships don't just suddenly catch fire Warships certainly do suddenly catch fire. They just don't usually catch fire in such a way that it's a casualty. DCS is usually competent enough to get things under control in reasonable amounts of time. Normally the sudden catching fire is due to electrical problems, particularly when repairs are done by non-electrical teams who fail to follow the correct procedures or doubly so if they are battleshorting for one reason or another. Now what happened here though definitely wasn't "suddenly catching fire" unless the crew were negligent and incompetent... which well actually looking at the performance of the Russian army that could actually be a possibility.

by WJW 5y ago

dabeeeenster 5y ago

Thank you! Comments like these are the reason HN is so great.

veemjeem 5y ago

Do you know what happens to explosives on sunk ships generally? Are they usually left at the bottom of the ocean, and could they have the potential to detonate?

cm2187 5y ago
And would a ship of that size carry nukes?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The Moskva is nuclear-capable, but I don't think anyone publicly knows whether it was nuclear-armed in this particular conflict. My bet would be no.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    That said, if anyone decides to mount a recovery or salvage mission of any kind, it may be worth upgrading that "no" to a soft "maybe". As far as I know, nobody has tried to retrieve conventional munitions from a shipwreck, and reasonably enough - they're not dangerous enough to be worth the trouble. Nations will go after lost nuclear warheads, though; indeed, Bayesian search theory saw significant development and interest to serve that purpose [1], and the CIA's been known to go to Bond-movie levels of trouble to the same end [2]. Granted, these were both First Cold War projects, but it seems like there's some degree of possibility that this use of "First Cold War" may eventually prove not to have been a somewhat silly joke, so... [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RTt59BtFLqQbsSiqd/a-history-of-bayes-theorem https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RTt59BtFLqQbsSiqd/a-history-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
    - oldgradstudent 5y ago
      So by the wonders of Bayes' formula we can conclude that the F-35 that sank in the South China Sea carried nuclear warheads? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60607784 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60607784

oldgradstudent 5y ago

> Warships don't just suddenly catch fire Warships, just like everything else, do suddenly catch fire from time to time. Carelessness, negligence, sabotage, or bad luck could cause a fire that would sink a ship. Especially during a war, when munitions are being handled under pressure. Not the most likely cause, but shit does happen. BTW, By sabotage I don't mean some mustache twirling spy, but something more mundane, a disgruntled sailor, or a homesick one that wants to return to base as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)#2012_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)#2012_fire https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sailor-ryan-mays-court-martial-arson-uss-bonhomme-richard-fire/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sailor-ryan-mays-court-martial-...

WJW 5y ago
OK sure, they do. But on every warship I've ever been on (granted, none of them were Russian), every single person was a trained firefighter and very well aware that there was no fire brigade to call. In particular, setting fire to an ammunition store (as opposed to something more innocent but still vital like the galley) seems like an especially stupid thing to do. I'd also like to point out that every single missile system I've ever seen is not reloaded in any meaningful way at sea. Ships just pull into port an a crane lifts the replacement canisters into place. Given the potential causes basically being [accident, self-inflicted sabotage, hit by missile], "hit by missile" seems by far the most likely given all the other information about this.
- polotics 5y ago
  Why not consider the sabotage option? A well controlled scuttle will ensure 100% survival for the perpetrators, sure beats dying of Vlady Putin's cancerous convulsions, plus you get to not commit war crimes... What's not to like?
- oldgradstudent 5y ago
  On the warships I've been on, there were only a few well trained fire fighters, and the rest were poorly trained on the job. I doubt if I would have been a very useful member of the damage control team had something happened. Galley fires could happen anytime. During times of war, guns are being loaded, missile systems are turned on and tested to ensure they are ready. Somebody could easily screw up and cause a major fire. If missiles were fired by the Moskva, then a dud could have caused a fire, and so on. I'm not claiming this is likely in this case, but it does happen.

CuriousCosmic 5y ago

> Warships don't just suddenly catch fire Warships certainly do suddenly catch fire. They just don't usually catch fire in such a way that it's a casualty. DCS is usually competent enough to get things under control in reasonable amounts of time. Normally the sudden catching fire is due to electrical problems, particularly when repairs are done by non-electrical teams who fail to follow the correct procedures or doubly so if they are battleshorting for one reason or another. Now what happened here though definitely wasn't "suddenly catching fire" unless the crew were negligent and incompetent... which well actually looking at the performance of the Russian army that could actually be a possibility.