Thoughts on The Loss of the Moskva

 

In the ongoing tragedy that is the war in Ukraine, the invading Russian forces have suffered another significant loss. The cruiser ‘Moskva’, flagship of the Black Sea fleet, and one of the largest ships in the Russian Navy, has been sunk by the Ukrainians.

This is, to put it mildly a significant and stunning tactical victory for Ukraine, and an abject humiliation for Russia. To lose the most capable and powerful vessel in your naval task force, and one of the most powerful surface combatants afloat is gobsmacking. It is hard to take in that a ship, namesake of a class that caused a major series of tactical headaches in NATO when they appeared as the Slava class in the 1980s has been so easily destroyed.

This news matters on multiple levels, and will undoubtedly prove a significant point of reference when future accounts of the Ukrainian victory in the war against Russia are written in the, hopefully, not too distant future.

The loss of a major surface vessel in combat operations is a psychological hammer blow – unlike armoured vehicles or aircraft losses, which can, and do, happen regularly in war, since WW2 ships have rarely come under serious attack.

There have been skirmishes and some battles – for example Korea, Suez, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Vietnam War, the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 and the Falklands all involved some form of naval combat. Yet in the last nearly 80 years, only a handful of major warships (e.g. frigate or above) have been sunk in wartime.

The loss of a major ship can strike a massive psychological blow at the heart of a nation. The sinking of the Royal Navy vessels the Falklands War, 40 years ago, remains well known to the nation. People still remember where they were when they heard that the SHEFFIELD had been hit.

Why ships have this effect is debatable – arguably it is because they represent a very visible manifestation of a nation and its values. They carry the name of the country, usually a proud vessel name with a long history, and their looks, role and activity inextricably places them at the heart of a nations pride. Ships are large, impressive to look at and are by far the biggest of all war machines that humans have built.

People are proud of the effort that went into building them, and the skills and work involved, and they are proud too of those that form the crew. There is often a strong link between the population and ships, particularly their adopted or namesake towns that forms a deep and genuine bond that lasts for decades. There is a good reason why so many Royal Navy vessels carry the names of towns or dukedoms -they provide a point of reference and civic pride in affiliation.

When a warship is lost, this can be a hammerblow to a nations pride, and cause shockwaves that will change how things are done. 40 years after the Falklands War, the Royal Navy continues to draw on the lessons learned in the losses sustained in the conflict. The loss too of the Belgrano remains politically contentious to some, even though she was an entirely legitimate target.

The loss of the Moskva is likely to have a similar impact. For Ukrainians, it will be a rallying call and point of pride. To sink the pride of the Russian Navy speaks volumes for their determination and resistance against overwhelming odds, and helps show a path to victory.

For Russians, this is a humiliation on a scale with Tsushima in 1905, where the Russian fleet was wiped out. Once again a Russian warship has come off second best against the enemy. There will be anger, sadness and a desire for revenge for the Moskva – the worry is how does Putin seek to extract it?

At an operational level this attack is likely to have significant consequences. It will force the Russian Navy to carefully consider its operational posture and position in the Black Sea. If the Moskva, pride of the navy and by far the most capable vessel in the fleet was incapable of stopping Ukrainian missiles, then this bodes poorly for other Russian ships.

In a single blow, Ukraine has forced Russia to stop and re-evaluate how it handles maritime operations, and potentially disrupted plans for attacks off the coast. The continued presence of capable forces, likely to be bolstered with British provided anti-ship missiles (although, despite odd reports, these are emphatically not Harpoon missiles, but instead likely to be a more modern and equally lethal missile), will act as a deterrent and pose a real tactical problem.

Putin now faces a real challenge – the Russian Navy has been humiliated, and Ukraine, whose navy was wiped out early in the conflict has levelled the playing field. Short of outright destruction of the region, it will be hard to operate off the coast with impunity – there may well be further sinkings to come.

This is a timely reminder of the value of good coastal defence capability in certain circumstances. This is a lesson that the UK has pretty much forgotten, having disbanded most of its coastal artillery batteries, except in Gibraltar by the 1950s, and the last 9.2” guns there ceased to be operational in the late 1970s. Other than a short lived mobile Exocet battery in Gibraltar in the 1980s, the UK has long been out of the coastal defence game.

But other countries can and do benefit from it, due to their tactical situation. Look at Finland and Sweden, two exceptionally capable and competent military powers who NATO may soon be lucky enough to count as allies, and you see countries that have invested strongly in regional coastal defences to counter hostile acts. The investment in shore batteries and missiles would pose a real challenge in wartime, and make an invaders life difficult.

A wider lesson of the war is likely to be that nations with finite coastline and challenging maritime threats may well be tempted to reinvest in coastal defences to help reduce the threat posed by offshore maritime forces.

Another key lesson identified here is that the Russian Navy faces real and substantial long-term problems that will not be easily fixed. Although the internet has long fixated on the appearance of ships bristling with guns and missiles, the fact that a pair of missiles managed to penetrate past multiple CIWS, hard and soft kill decoy measures and still sink the vessel tells us that Russian ships are not as capable as perhaps thought.

The force is reliant on a hard core of 30-40 year old escort ships and designs that in any other navy would be facing retirement. The much vaunted successor escorts promised repeatedly have shown up in tiny numbers, and the fleet arguably faces block obsolescence as its Udaloy, Soveremenny and Moskva classes enter their fourth decades of service.

While Russia may be proud of the Kirov and Kuznetzov classes of battlecruiser and aircraft carriers, these too are elderly and maintenance hogs. The Kuzenetzov is highly unlikely to ever sail again as a meaningful carrier, having had multiple accidents in dry dock.

With sanctions biting and the sources of advanced equipment and technology needed to provide the infrastructure of new ships drying up, let alone the hard currency required to pay for this material, it is likely that Russian Navy dreams are not going to be fulfilled for many years to come.

For the Admirals, they face a real series of problems about how to keep the Russian Navy as a credible force. This is likely to lead to ringfencing resources for their submarine service, whose attack submarines and SSBNs remain highly capable and well operated – only a fool would suggest that the Russian Navy does not possess very good submariners who are very good at what they do.

But protection of the submarine force is going to come at a cost, and this means that older ships will need to run on, while replacements are delayed. Looking ahead to the next 10-15 years and it is hard to see the Russian surface force remaining credible in any meaningful sense of the word. A combination of very elderly ships, utterly outmatched by modern technology, and a lack of replacements in service means the Russian surface fleet faces a grim future. At best it may have a handful of modern ships, in reality most of them are likely to be cold war cast offs approaching their 50^th birthday.

This is even before we consider the lack of modern replenishment or mine warfare vessels, or replacement amphibious platforms either. To all intents, the Russian Navy of the 2030s is going to look like the Russian Navy of 1991, just with vastly older ships.

Another area that the Russians will need to focus on is their ability to use their ships in a modern conflict environment. Over the years many visitors to Russian vessels have commented that while they look visually impressive, they are often heavy on paint and light on damage control and other essential equipment. Whether this loss drives Russian naval personnel to radically revaluate their situation and try to focus more on effect, and less on appearance is unclear.

The loss of the SHEFFIELD (and other vessels) prompted deep soul searching in the Royal Navy, and created a culture where the ability to conduct effective damage control was treated with an almost religious fervour. Will this loss trigger a similar impact in Russian naval circles?

One area of real interest in the handling of the loss of the Moskva has been the information warfare space. It has taken a tactical military victory and delivered a strategic information victory for Ukraine. The rapid development of memes, images and propaganda linked to this in a matter of hours, and then dominating social media feeds globally shows the power of a good social media campaign.

Time and again in this war, Ukraine has proven itself a master of the information battle, helping gain information advantage and win nations over to its cause. By contrast Russia has come across as inept and outright lying – the fact that the best the Russian authorities could come up with was to say that the pride of the Russian fleet had suffered an internal explosion and was under tow indicates a sense of panic.

If the best your media handling plan can come up with is to portray the crew of your flagship, the pride of your nation as utterly inept to the level of blowing their own ship up, well it doesn’t really say much for Russian information capabilities more widely.

This war has shown that no matter how good your conventional military advantage is, you need to have a powerful and speedy information advantage too. This calls for an ability to release honest information in a timely manner that captures imaginations, and helps shape how your campaign is perceived by others. The war has once again shown that there is little point in spending hours creating a finely honed tweet that is fine tuned through layer upon layer of ‘chop chain’ to emerge in due course hours or days later and be utterly ignored.

Instead Ukraine has shown that to win the information war takes speedy responses, some of which will work, some will fail and others will just fade away. But quantity of output is, in the information space at least, as important as quality. That within hours of the incident hundreds of pictures and images were being shared globally speaks to the power of social media to work to your information advantage.

One area where people have questioned whether it is right or not to share images is that the loss of the Moskva means that around 500 people have died – many of whom were killed in some truly appalling circumstances. Lets not beat around the bush here, being killed at sea, trapped in a flooding compartment, or in the horror of a shipboard fire is not nice. It is a truly awful way to go.

Should we reflect on those in peril on the sea and draw on our humanity at a time like this and think of people far from home suffering, and feel for them? Personally, for Humphrey in this specific case the answer is no.

In any other circumstances, and in any other situation, where a war is fought with honourable conduct and intentions, then yes, it would be appropriate to offer thoughts. There is a strong tradition of this in the Royal Navy – Admiral Cunningham broadcast in clear the location of Italian survivors after a battle with the Royal Navy so that rescue could be affected in WW2. In the Falklands, HMS CONQUEROR did not sink the escorting destroyers to the BELGRANO, because they were moving to rescue survivors.

There is a sense of ‘for those in peril on the sea’ where all mariners share a common bond and desire to help, and we should reflect on this. There is no doubt that for the young crew of Moskva, their end was neither peaceful or pleasant. We should not wish this on anyone.

But equally, it is hard to find pity for their cause or plight. The blunt reality of the Ukraine conflict is that Russia has not just invaded, but its people have acted in a manner that is akin to the Soviet Army in East Prussia in 1945. Russian Forces at all levels are acting in a manner that is totally and utterly barbaric in nature and conduct.

The executions, rapes, murder and torture of innocent men, women and children. The truly horrific accounts emerging of Russian troops pillaging and raping – even to the point of murdering babies after sexually abusing them is too awful for words. There is a deeply rotten and hideous culture in the Russian armed forces which seems to indicate that at all levels, breaking the accepted norms of war and the laws of armed conflict is not just permissible, but actively encouraged.

It is hard to feel pity for those onboard the Mosvka, because as professional sailors who had been helping conduct this war, launching indiscriminate shore bombardments on civilians and blockading ports, they had helped make things worse. In their acts, they were complicit with truly awful things, and while it is right to feel sorry for their families and loved ones, they do not, in the authors eyes at least, warrant pity for their plight.