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| Simulation of a Russian warship being attacked (Source: Russian Ministry of Defense ) |
The danger posed by cruise missiles to Russian warships.
Two days later, on the night of December 26th, the port of Feodosia in Crimea was attacked by Ukrainian tactical aircraft using Storm Shadow cruise missiles, manufactured in the UK and France, with a range of up to 1,000 km. One of Russia's few large landing ships, the Novocherkassk, docked at the port, was severely damaged. The Russian Ministry of Defense officially confirmed that the ship was completely burned and sank on the spot. According to some reports, the ship may have been carrying valuable military cargo such as Geran-class attack drones, and there were also casualties. On their return, both Su-24 aircraft that attacked the Ukrainian port were intercepted and destroyed by Russian fighter jets.
Why does the Russian Navy continue to suffer losses even before engaging in combat? Let's follow Russian military analysts as they decipher this specific case.
The Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG is a long-range, hard-to-detect Western missile (with a range of under 300 km to over 550 km) launched from Su-24 bombers (Soviet-era) modernized and put into service by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Spring 2023. To perform low-altitude flights, the missile's guidance system is equipped with topographic data along its trajectory. This topographical calculation allows the missile to move very stealthily, so in some cases, air defense radars fail to detect these missiles when scanning the airspace.
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| Storm Shadow cruise missiles are mounted on bomber aircraft. |
At that time, Russian ground-based air defense systems deployed in the lowlands north of the Crimean Peninsula would have difficulty detecting missiles flying along complex trajectories from the sea in the south, and also hidden behind the Crimean mountain range. Even if the missiles were detected near their destination, there would be very little time to intercept them.
Regarding this issue, Russian experts argue that calculating such missile flight paths is impossible without the participation of Western experts. The American RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance UAVs regularly inform Ukraine of the location of Russian air defense systems, so it would not be difficult to construct a trajectory for the missile to evade Russian radar systems.
When the Ukrainian army received long-range cruise missiles of Anglo-French origin, and in the future, ballistic missiles of American origin, the Russian Ministry of Defense was forced to make the difficult decision to move surface ships of the Black Sea Fleet from their main base in Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, Feodosia, and even to the Abkhazia region, an ally of Russia.
However, the events of December 26th showed that this didn't help much. Ukrainian Su-24 aircraft were able to approach the landing ship Novocherkassk even on the other side of the Crimean coast in Feodosia. It remains unclear whether they came solely from the mainland, where Crimean air defenses were then stationed, or somehow made a secret approach by sea, bypassing the entire peninsula.
The challenges facing Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Novocherkassk was not the first Black Sea Fleet warship to be lost after a military operation, nor was it even the second large landing ship to be attacked. On March 24, 2022, several large Russian landing ships at the port of Berdyansk were fired upon while unloading cargo. The Tapir BDK, a Project 1171 vessel also known as Saratov, was severely damaged and sank at the dock. Other ships were able to set sail after the fires were extinguished.
In August 2022, a Ukrainian unmanned boat rammed the large landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak, which was docked at the port of Novorossiysk. On September 13, 2023, the BDK Minsk was hit by a cruise missile supplied by the UK and France while in dry dock at the Sevastopol shipyard. The Rostov-on-Don submarine, also docked there, was damaged. And this is not a complete list of the losses suffered by the Russian Navy in less than two years.
The main problem for the Russian Navy is the lack of truly safe anchorage in the Black Sea. Besides the cruise missiles supplied by the West, Ukraine is currently developing more powerful and longer-range versions of the Neptune anti-ship missile, launched from bomber aircraft.
To confront such increasingly harsh realities, according to Russian military analysts, Russia needs to take the following substantive steps:
First, questions must be raised about the Black Sea Fleet Command's response to what is happening in the region, their responsibility, and all the avoidable losses.
Secondly, it is necessary to strengthen Crimea's air defense capabilities, the naval aviation forces of the Russian Navy, and deploy additional surface vessels to the Black Sea along inland waterways. These should primarily be Karakurt-class frigates with good sea-based air defense systems, small landing craft, small anti-submarine vessels, and minesweepers.
Third, in the future, all warships built by Russia, from large landing ships to patrol icebreakers, must be equipped with at least one type of modern air defense system for self-defense.
Chasing missiles is a difficult task, so Russian military experts believe it would be much better to destroy missile-carrying bombers at their launch bases. Missile-carrying bombers are stationed somewhere. Missiles, fuel, and support personnel are certainly being transported there. Therefore, it is necessary to locate these positions and destroy them completely before sortie. According to the Russian side, Ukraine only has about a dozen Su-24s left. In addition, Russia needs to deploy aircraft with advanced radar systems and fighter jets to maintain a 24/7 combat readiness over the Black Sea, to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft and missiles launched from Odessa and Nikolaev.
However, overall, the Russian military needs to be further strengthened, preparing 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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