(Black Sea) As you have may have heard the Russian Black Sea Navy flag ship “Moskva” A Slava class cruiser became a cropper yesterday (Russians claim it was a fire, Ukrainians claim it was a missile hit) whatever the reason it is now at the bottom of the sea.
Coming in at 12000 tonnes and designed to be a foil towards US Navy Carrier groups, The Moskva’s main armament was 20x P-500 Bazalt (SS-N-12 Sandbox) Surface to Surface missile which sports a 1000kg warhead out to a range of 300 miles, a somewhat swarm missile which can communicate with its siblings in flight sending them all data on what it can see. For air defence it comes with 8x S300 missile launchers and a couple of OSA-M(SA-N-4 Gecko) surface to air missiles and as a last ditch weapon 6 AK-630 Close in weapons systems (The Russian version of the Phalanx) so something of a potent weapon, however if the Ukrainians did hit it, then questions have to asked how such a formidable warship let its guard down.It appears the Russians were operating the ship on a predictable route off the coast of Odessa,
Presumably in which to tie down Ukrainian forces in that region with the threat of a sea borne invasion, however the problem there lies that the Ukrainians knew where to fire their missiles and all they required was mid-course guidance from a UAV in the area, which funny enough they did with the Russians themselves posting to social media how they had shot down a Turkish made Baykar Bayraktar TB2 that morning. Its seems that nobody presumed to think that it might have been in the area looking for targets.
Despite Russia claiming that an accident befell the Moskva, they have since upped the ante with missile attacks across the Ukraine.Video released by #Russian Ministry of Defense Shows demonstration of shot-down of a Bayraktar TB2 armed drone of #Ukrainian Navy by a 9M317ME surface-to-air missile launched from Admiral Grigorovich frigate of #RussianNavy. pic.twitter.com/kk1wDCqiPN
— Babak Taghvaee - Μπάπακ Τακβαίε - بابک تقوایی (@BabakTaghvaee) April 12, 2022
