Did you know that Ukraine has destroyed a third of Russia's Black Sea fleet, nearly half of that just since September? I didn't:
The victories have been all the more surprising because Ukraine does not have a traditional navy or a fleet of warships. Instead, Ukraine has used sea drones and missiles to attack Russian ships.
U.S. officials believe Ukraine has sunk 15 Russian ships in the past six months.... As a result of the attacks, Russia has moved its fleet back from Ukraine’s coast and out of the western Black Sea.
....“Ukrainian grain is now again flowing through the Bosporus to Africa and China, which are Ukraine’s traditional markets,” [Radoslaw] Sikorski told reporters in Washington at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.
Apparently the Russians have virtually no defense against the irregular Ukrainian attacks. That's something to think about when you ponder the future of conventional navies.
"Ukraine has destroyed a third of Russia's Black Sea fleet"
Good.
Perhaps the only good news in that conflict, given that the MAGA party has shit canned any additional financial support for Ukraine and Fuck L'Orange has indicated he would not send a dime if elected (or re-elected?). Didn't the GOP (like Reagan and Nixon) once opposed communism and authoritarianist leaders?
US military planner's had better be looking at how such cheap remote munitions can change the landscape of future conflicts. Unless heavily defended, any US outpost near hostile forces (like Iraq/Syria/Red Sea) can be vulnerable to such low cost attacks.
For a while (two years ago) there was talk that tanks were so vulnerable to man-carried munitions that their use might have to be severely restricted. A lot of this is due to increased computing capability in the munition. Also, they are relatively cheap to make (once the hard work of programming and sensor development is completed).
Yes; one of the real discontinuities with fire-and-forget and loitering munitions, and airborne, land and sea drones is that so much of the improvement comes in the form of computation and communications, and the hardware for that keeps getting cheaper and smaller.
“Didn’t the GOP once oppose Communism and authoritarianist leaders?”
Reagan and “Mean Jean” Kirkpatrick did oppose Communism, which they described as “totalitarian”, but they always had a soft spot for “authoritarian” regimes.
Very true. Armed groups who opposed the left-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua were called "freedom fighters"; armed groups who opposed the right-wing dictatorship in El Salvador were called "thugs who are trying to shoot their way into power."
I watched news about Ukraine before and since the war started with Russia going into Crimea. I watched US and EU cargo planes landing at Rosnow delivering anti tank missiles. I watch US and EU spy planes flying around the Russian borders and the Black Sea. I watched M113's I worked on 60 years ago being shipped to Ukraine.
The U.S. will build seven or eight more multi-billion dollar battleships, despite admirals saying they don't want them or need them. Congresspersons will crow about the bacon they have brought home to their districts, as Venezuelan drones sink them one by one.
The US doesn't build battleships anymore, and the last one was commissioned in 1944. We do in fact build multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers, and while I don't think Venezuelan drones would have much impact on them, a mass attack of high performance anti ship missiles using a sophisticated targeting network will require a rethink of continued investment in such ships.
And while aircraft carriers are a big target, they can launch and carry drone carriers. They project our power where we don't have bases.
What do people expect? We let drones and authoritarians interrupt world commerce?
Yep. You know, most of the Ukraine OSINT folks remain on Birdsite, or you can track them on Telegram.
Also, Ukraine has been downing a Russian plane every other day for the last several weeks and they have wiped out a third of Russia's A-50 AWACS.
Putin desperately wanted a victory before the election, so the Russian military started releasing glide bombs against the Ukrainians in Avdiivka. This required the aircraft carrying the bombs to fly higher, and closer to the front line than if they were using cruise missiles*. Higher and closer is a more vulnerable place to be, hence the high loss rate. They also lost a lot of armor. For those reasons Avdiivka is a Pyrrhic victory for Russia.
*Glide bombs are harder to defend against; no engine, no heat signature; also smaller radar cross-section.
Coincidentally, the Bulwark's JVLast's morning email is about changing technology upending the traditional view of munitions effectiveness. Sample:
=-=-=-=-=
And the economic advantage of drones isn’t just cost—it’s the speed of their development cycle.
You know why it takes so long to design, build, and produce a plane like the F-35? Because if the F-35 crashes, it kills a valuable (and expensive-to-train) pilot.
If a drone crashes, you’ve got 30 more of them in the truck.
=-=-=-=-=
The email quoted extensively from War on the Rock's "DRONES, THE AIR LITTORAL, AND THE LOOMING IRRELEVANCE OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE"
https://warontherocks.com/2024/03/drones-the-air-littoral-and-the-looming-irrelevance-of-the-u-s-air-force/
Bottom line? There's going to be a lot of changes in the near future.
The Ukrainians are demonstrating remarkable ingenuity, adaptability, & resilience that only defenders of their freedom & very lives can muster.
Not only have they shown ways to maximize use of both antiquated & new weapons, & sunk those Russian ships, they have managed to attack oil refineries or stockpiles inside Russia - while Putin's forces continue to deliberately target mostly residential areas, hospitals & the like.
While I still send messages to the White House using the comment site (WH comment line is probably full these days, & the letters I used to send by snail-mail would now be delayed by security irradiation & possible destruction) probably were never read, but only counted as pro or con, I still hold out hope for Biden to get enough requests to release frozen Russian oligarchs' funds to Ukraine.
I really no longer care if he considers that illegal - what trump & his backers/profiteer pals have are misgotten wealth & behavior far more illegal than such an appropriation. Since there is no entity with the ability to block Putin's illegal aggression, the UN is powerless, & the pope & others envisage the defenders to capitulate, while Denmark is condemned for providing assistance, I don't see how any other option will save Ukraine.
If only Germany would release some Taurus missiles to take out Putin's precious bridge to Crimea...
We are watching the future rewrite itself around the drone revolution. How do you think an aircraft carrier would fare against 500 of the water drones that Ukraine has shown to be deadly, cheap and effective?
I think the idea that massive aircraft carriers can project power will soon be in the same category as muskets and slingshots. Aircraft carrier no. An unmanned self sustaining automated drone making platform that can churn out drones by the thousands? That will be the power projection that nations want.
Interesting times, I hope we are able to keep up.
At least as of now, a massive aircraft carrier would fare fine against those sea drones. The combat radius of its planes is greater than the range of existing drones, so it wouldn't be reachable. The Pacific is a lot larger than the Black Sea.
Realities from the field run up against pork-barrel politics. I wonder who will win?
Conventional Navies in all out war have a survival time of minutes. Hopefully our navy is better than the Russians in dealing with unconventional naval warfare.
And the navy brass are well aware of this.
So far, US warships have defeated the missiles fired at them by the Houthis. Presumably those were supplied by Iran, but if anything is known about the level of technology, it hasn’t been made public. I don’t think the Navy has even revealed how the missiles were destroyed; except that iirc aircraft shot down one or more. There are several antiship-missile-defense systems in USN service.
Before World War I, navies invested a lot in building dreadnaught battleships.
And yet what was the ship that helped the Allies win the war? the little, much cheaper destroyer. Both in anti-submarine warfare and in protecting convoys. Indeed, the navies back then rarely, outside of Jutland, risked their battleships in actual battle.
You know what they say, the bigger, they are...
That (battleships vs. not-battleships) had a lot more to do with the geography of the conflict.