Why Russia’s Navy in Ukraine War is Doomed (or Irrelevant)
Why Russia’s Navy in Ukraine War is Doomed (or Irrelevant)
By Brian E. Frydenborg
Ukraine is about to get (or maybe now just started receiving) Western anti-ship missiles and may even have its own advanced anti-ship missiles almost ready for deployment. A small number of such missiles could wipe out all of Russia’s big surface warships near Ukraine in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov or push Russian ships out of range and too far away to be able to meaningfully support Russia’s war effort. This missile technology in the hands of Ukraine’s competent and adaptive fighters will be a game-changer much like Javelin and other anti-tank missiles have been for Ukraine against Russian armor thus far in Putin’s failing war.
By Brian E. Frydenborg, April 13, 2022 (this article has been adapted and condensed from the original, longer version originally published on Brian’s news website Real Context News on April 10 and titled Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles)
An RGM-84 surface-to-surface Harpoon missile launches from a cruiser of the U.S. Navy. (U.S. Department of Defense)
The second major phase of this horrific campaign of the Russian military in Ukraine is underway. During the first, Russia has not impressed: the bear has been unmasked (it’s more like a rabid, angry cub with birth defects) and Russia has embarrassed itself with historical military malpractice. And in this second phase, a certain type of weapon can essentially neutralize the Russian Navy and keep the momentum shifting dramatically in Ukraine’s favor.
Rapidly Changing Dynamics
Russia’s insane, hubristic, careless “plan”—to commit forces to multiple fronts, dividing and weakening its forces over these many fronts, none of which individually succeeded in their main goals—is failing and suffered its greatest setbacks when its entire Kyiv front and two other fronts in north-central Ukraine collapsed entirely, all Russian forces in the area having been destroyed, decimated, pushed back, or routed in disorder. As they have been thrown out of Ukraine, many Russian units are committing war crimes along their paths of retreat if they were not committing them there and elsewhere already, which has generated a huge amount of warranted attention, as has the coming campaign in the east of the country.
But attention is lacking in an area where, with not much additional assistance from the West or perhaps even with aid already just now promised, Ukraine can easily achieve a resounding victory that would combine massive substantive defeats for the Russians with tremendous symbolism and loss of prestige for Russia in addition to greatly affecting the way ground combat plays out in the south and east.
I am talking about the near-annihilation of the Russian Navy presence in the Black Sea, including the entirety or almost the entirety of the substantive portion of the Black Sea Fleet.
Russia’s Big Ships Near Ukraine: Easy Targets…
Unlike armies, with thousands of soldiers, hundreds of units, and thousands of subunits, navies are mostly tied to a very finite number of vessels, almost always dozens or hundreds of vessels per navy at most.
Meaning: take out the ships, and the navy pretty much does not exist.
Russia has cannibalized its other three fleets (Northern Fleet, Baltic Fleet, and Pacific Fleet) and its one flotilla (the Caspian Flotilla) to reinforce the Black Sea Fleet and support its Ukraine effort, and, with Turkey closing the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to the Mediterranean in early March to incoming military vessels, that Caspian Flotilla is the only possible source of reinforcements to what is in the Black Sea, coming in though canal from the Caspian Sea.
As far as sizable surface ships in the Black Sea, by mid-March there were only twenty-one, according to a “senior defense official”: just twelve naval-combat-focused ships along with nine amphibious assault ships, accompanied by numerous far smaller patrol and support boats and, of course, submarines that are harder to track.
But that total was before the daring Ukrainian strike on the morning of March 24, which mysteriously destroyed a large Russian amphibious ship, the now sunk Alligator class Saratov, docked in the eastern Ukrainian Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk. Two other large amphibious ships, the Caesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk, were damaged and fled the port.
So, scratch one, Russia is down now to just twenty major surface vessels.
That is not a large number.
…With the Right Weapons (and They Are Coming)
Ukraine has been developing its own anti-ship cruise missile, the Neptune, since 2013. It began testing in 2018 and has since tested successfully repeatedly. The system has a range of 174-180 miles (280-300 km) and operates as a sea-skimmer, flying low and close to the water to make it almost undetectable until just before it hits its target. It was scheduled to be deployed this month with a full division of six launchers, seventy-two cruise missiles (more than three for each remaining major Russian surface vessel), and accompanying radar systems. But Russia’s seems to have derailed this timetable, and it is unclear when it will be able to safely deploy its system and have it and its crews be operational. Details are few and far between as Ukraine obviously would want to keep Russia guessing.
This must have been part of the discussion over the past month between Ukraine and NATO nations, and taking into account the issues with the Neptunes, NATO has been working to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles for weeks. Reports from early April indicated United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been keen to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles, that these would most likely be truck-mounted versions of its U.S.-supplied Harpoon missiles, its version having a range of 80 miles (128 km) and also capable of hitting land targets (Ukraine has actually been asking for these for some time).
Saturday, Johnson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv in a surprise visit and the UK announced it actually would be sending anti-ship missiles, among other aid. Also reported Saturday was that the U.S., too, will apparently be sending Ukraine anti-ship missiles. Other options from within NATO would be Norway’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM), already in several NATO arsenals (including the U.S.) and with a range of 115 miles (185 km), and its Penguin anti-ship missile launched from helicopters with a range of 21-34 miles (34-55 km).
UK PM Boris Johnson with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, April 9 (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)
Russian Naval forces are hardly concentrating along the Turkish coast of the southern Black Sea: they are mostly, perhaps virtually all, off the coast of Ukraine to varying degrees in the northern half of the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, trying to offer support and, presumably, debating whether or not to launch amphibious assaults, particularly on Ukraine’s main port in its West, Odesa (the fact that they have not yet shows how confident they are in such an assault’s chances of success; Putin may not care much about throwing his soldiers’ lives away recklessly, but his larger naval vessels are expensive and take time to construct).