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| Simulation of Russian warship under attack (source: Russian Ministry of Defense) |
The danger of cruise missiles to Russian warships
Two days later, on the night of December 26, the Crimean port of Feodosia was attacked by Ukrainian tactical aircraft using British and French-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles with a range of up to 1,000 km. One of the few large Russian landing ships, the Novocherkassk, anchored at the port was severely damaged. The Russian Ministry of Defense officially confirmed that the ship burned down and sank on the spot. According to some reports, the ship may have been carrying valuable military cargo such as Geran unmanned attack aircraft, and there were also casualties. On the way back, both Su-24 aircraft that attacked the Ukrainian port were intercepted and destroyed by Russian fighters.
Why does the Russian Navy continue to suffer losses even though it has not yet entered battle? Let's follow Russian military analysts to decode this specific case.
Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG is a long-range, hard-to-detect Western missile (from under 300 km to over 550 km) and is launched from Su-24 bombers (Soviet era) modernized by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and put into service in the spring of 2023. To perform low-altitude flights, the missile's navigation equipment is provided with terrain data along the missile's path. The calculation of the terrain allows the missile to move very secretly, so in some cases, air defense radars do not detect these missiles when scanning the airspace.
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| Storm Shadow cruise missile mounted on bomber |
At that time, Russian ground-based air defense systems deployed in the lowlands of the northern Crimean peninsula would have had difficulty detecting the missile flying on a complex trajectory from the sea to the south, and would have been hidden behind the Crimean mountains. Even if the missile was detected near its destination, there would have been little time to intercept it.
In this regard, Russian experts believe that such a calculation of the missile's flight path cannot be done without the participation of Western experts. American RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance UAVs regularly inform Ukraine about the location of Russian air defense systems, so it is not difficult to build a trajectory for the missile to escape from Russian radar systems.
As the Ukrainian military received Anglo-French long-range cruise missiles and, in the future, American ballistic missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry was forced to make the difficult decision to transfer the surface ships of the Black Sea Fleet from the main base in Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, Feodosia and even to Russia's allied region of Abkhazia.
However, the events of December 26 showed that this did not help much. Ukrainian Su-24s were able to approach the Novocherkassk landing ship even on the other side of the Crimean coast in Feodosia. It is not entirely clear whether they came only from the mainland, where Crimean air defense forces were guarding, or somehow approached secretly at sea, bypassing the entire peninsula.
Problems facing the Russian Black Sea Fleet
The Novocherkassk was not the first Black Sea Fleet warship to be lost in the campaign, nor was it even the second large landing ship to be attacked. On March 24, 2022, several large Russian landing ships were fired upon while unloading cargo at the port of Berdyansk. The Project 1171 Tapir BDK, also known as the Saratov, was heavily damaged and sank at the dock. The other ships were able to sail after the fires were extinguished.
In August 2022, a Ukrainian unmanned boat rammed the side of the large landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak, which was docked in the port of Novorossiysk. On September 13, 2023, the BDK Minsk was hit by a cruise missile supplied by the UK and France while it was in the dry dock at the Sevastopol Shipyard. The Rostov-on-Don submarine, which was based there, was also damaged. And this is not a complete list of the Russian Navy's losses in less than two years.
The main problem for the Russian Navy is that it currently has no truly safe anchorage in the Black Sea. In addition to Western-supplied cruise missiles, Ukraine is developing more powerful and longer-range versions of the Neptune anti-ship missile, which can be launched from bombers.
To cope with such increasingly harsh realities, according to Russian military analysts, Russia needs to take substantial steps:
First of all, it is necessary to raise questions about the response of the Black Sea Fleet Command to what is happening in the region, about their responsibility and all the losses that could have been avoided.
Secondly, it is necessary to strengthen the air defense capabilities of Crimea, the naval aviation of the Russian Navy and send additional surface ships to the Black Sea along inland waterways. These are mainly Karakurt-class corvettes with good sea-based air defense systems, small landing ships and small anti-submarine ships, as well as minesweepers.
Third, in the future, all Russian-built warships, from large landing ships to patrol icebreakers, must be equipped with at least some kind of modern air defense system for self-defense.
Chasing missiles is a difficult task, so Russian military experts believe that it is much better to destroy missile-equipped attack aircraft at their starting base. Bombers carrying missiles are stationed somewhere. Missiles, fuel and service personnel are certainly being transported there. Therefore, it is necessary to find these locations and destroy them all before launching. According to the Russian side, Ukraine has only about a dozen Su-24s left. In addition, Russia needs to mobilize aircraft with advanced radar systems and fighters to be deployed on duty 24/7 in the sky over the Black Sea, to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft and missiles launched from Odessa and Nikolaev.
However, overall, it is necessary to further strengthen the Russian army and prepare for large-scale offensive operations. The future of the Black Sea region, as well as other areas where Russia is conducting military operations, must be decided on land, not at sea.
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