“Generals are always preparing to fight the last war.” (Georges Clemenceau)
Dear Readers:
I am not much of a sailor at all. I mean, I have been on cruises and stuff like that, as a passenger. Only once in my life (and once is enough) was I on a small sailboat with a friend. He allowed me to steer a bit, and it was a weird feeling that, unlike driving a car, when you turn the wheel, there is a noticeable delay before the boat responds and starts to change direction… This is a metaphor of course:
It is no secret that those pesky Ukrainian/NATO drones have managed to do a lot of damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Well, it’s a new era that we are living in now: The era of the drones. And, like every cumbersome bureaucracy, Russia’s navy is not always quick to adapt. This is why they lost so many ships and recently had to fire an Admiral or two. But now slowly, attempting to adapt and learn. According to the official communique: “The Head of the Russian Military (Sergei Shoigu) gave an order to mount additional firepower on the ships, such as large-calibre machine-gun complexes designed to shoot down enemy drones.” Well, it’s a start.
I have this piece from RIA with the news that Russian Defense Minister Shoigu has completed his “working visit” to the Southern Military Okrug, to inspect the Black Sea fleet. Shoigu arrived in Sebastopol, where he was met by Sergei Pinchuk, who heads the Black Sea fleet, having replaced Viktor Sokolov, who was dismissed in February, along with Black Sea Fleet commander Nikolai Evmenov. Heads have been rolling like bowling balls, in reaction to unsustainable losses of ships and personnel.
Next, Shoigu, accompanied by Admiral Alexander Moiseev visited the Command Center of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The fleet commanders and officers of the General Staff reported to him about the overall situation, the actions of the enemy, and how they were faring in carrying out their various orders and missions.
Shoigu ordered the men to conduct daily trainings and exercises, both at nighttime, as well as during the day. No sleep for the weary! From the orders that were given, one can deduce some of the gaps and deviations that he wishes to correct, for example, perhaps some of the successful Ukrainian drone attacks might have been averted if the crew had been more alert, or even awake, at the time.
During these constant exercises and drills, the crew will practice shooting at drones, both the airborne ones as well as the underwater ones.
Shoigu also relayed orders about adding additional defensive barriers to protect the fleet. All of this is just common-sense measures, that probably should have been implemented sooner. It’s like the old saw about locking the barn door after the horse already escaped. But isn’t that so typical of all human institutions? We humans are empirical, reactive, beings in our essence. Very few people have the genius to actually look ahead and plan. And when we try, everything looks murky.
Commenters Snipe
RIA forum commenters to this article are mostly snipey, along the lines of “About time!” or “They had to wait until somebody told them to put up barriers?”
“How many ships were they able to save?”
“They finally woke up.”
“History is repeating itself. Just like the first few days of the Great Patriotic War, when we suddenly discovered that our ships were vulnerable to German aviation…”
“Shoigu has been Minister of Defense since November 6, 2012, but he never knew that drones existed until February 24, 2022.”
“This should have been done a year ago, if not sooner…”
“The Admirals couldn’t think of this and make the decisions themselves without Shoigu showing up to tell them?”
“We have to get ourselves ready, because there is going to be a battle for Crimea…”
Awful Avalanche 
Well yeah, drones are not new, as one commenter here posts about the V-1, V-2 almost daily but, cheap drones are relatively new and unlike many new things, drones, for better or worse are changing the world.
Just ask the US Navy tasked with dealing with the indomitable Houthis who, for the first time in history, are running a world-transforming naval blockade…without a navy.
As Col [Ret.] Douglas Macgregor constantly points out, surface fleets in all out war have a very limited shelf life.
I can’t speak knowledgeably to the Russian Navy’s woes but, the US Navy has a dearth of sailors who can shoulder rifle with any accuracy. With the rise of lightweight drones in mind, it would be my suggestion that the services, with the exception of the US Marines, run all their recruits/draftees through US Army basic training and then on to Navy/Air-Force/Space-Force schools. The M-16 [or whatever the bleep they’re calling it now] and it’s 5.56/.223 round, used en-masse is just the right shoulder arm to cull an incoming swarm of light-weight drones, in fact, an M-16 with a different BCG could handle a 2K-fps-22 WMR* round which given cost/weight and #of-rounds per magazine might be better suited for saturating the near target air with rifle rounds. Noting that a well designed high speed frangible-round might prove more effective.
* https://d1w4q6ldc8l0qo.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/cache/8/image/630×630/4ca400bbce702bae632024287a0688fb/8/c/8c99f65333fae60c59eae979e3772803_2.jpg
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This whole war is about evolving, changing to hopefully overcome NATOs new weapon concepts, and if this change of ideas doesn’t work they’ve got to change again. It’s a bit sad worrying that it’s taken sacking the commander and pals of the Black Sea fleet to make much needed changes, but as you said it’s a big organisation so who knows why? NATO certainly has some dead wood or bozos at the top, at least Generals Hodges and Petraeus have gone! What other nuts are lurking about up there?
For what it’s worth I’ve known all about these ‘drone’ boats for the last 2 years since one of there practise areas is the coastline where I come from and they’re even visible on marine log website,,,so come on Russian Intel, 2/10 – must try harder.
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The problem with all military surface ships is that they cannot hide from modern ISR and their location is precisely known at all times. We are approaching a new era in which long distance smart torpedoes will soon rule the waves. These objects can be pre-positioned in oceans anywhere and lie dormant until commanded to attack. They can attack from far below and at very high speed using a cavitation bubble. They can be accompanied by decoys. They can swarm. They can autonomously conduct evasive maneuvers. They require no human interface once a target is programmed and activated. And they are ridiculously cheap compared to the cost of a capital ship. Finally, they are unmanned and no sailor is placed at risk.
The only known defense is a harbor secured by a heavy cable mesh anti-torpedo net at the inlet and ocean-facing perimeter. Navies of the future will become small fast hyrofoil lift speed boats, and lots of them. They will maximize stealth and camouflage. When this transition occurs, all legacy navy vessels will become anchorage queens.
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It’s kind of sad, but change is always sad.
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Oh good, someone else has been thinking about the implications!
The current crop of sea drones are mostly above-water, because it is easier to stick a satnav system on them and maintain control. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines for a reasonable summary of the major challenges with communicating to underwater objects.) There are some drones that stick a mast up and then run mostly below the waves where they can operate more efficiently, as well.
When your military is disrupted by new circumstances or technologies, it’s useful to stop and think whether anything similar has happened before. After all, you still have the same terrain and generally the same goals, even as materials change.
In this case, we don’t have to go far. When did “big” ships last get seriously threatened by swarms of small boats? The invention of the self-powered torpedo (differentiating from the naval mine “torpedo”, first used in quantity by the Russian navy last Crimean War) offers a good analogy: some early versions were in fact wire-guided with a mast and a hooded light on the top so a controlling boat could track it at night!
Torpedoes led to the torpedo-boat, a small, fast and generally suicidal option for attacking big ships in coastal waters. They were a huge concern to the big-ship navies, and led directly to the “torpedo-boat destroyer”–or as its still known, the “destroyer” class: smaller, faster ships still seaworthy to accompany and screen other vessels. They carried at first large numbers of rapid-firing, small-caliber guns, and later were found to be perfect as well for packing torpedoes themselves and later anti-air guns in large quantities. At every stage, their utility evolved to meet current needs.
At this point Russian destroyers pack hypersonic missile canisters, anti-air missiles, and few guns. They’re perfect for swatting airplanes and carrier battle groups, but less good for swarms of small boats. Everyone–not just Russia–will have to take a hard look at fixing that problem, immediately, thereby turning their destroyers (or smaller ships) back into the light gunships they started out as. Something probably with a few canister tubes, extensive electronic warfare capability, many mounts for machine guns, searchlights and night-vision capabilities, and maybe a couple of those BMP-Terminator turrets?
This is still not enough versus the autonomous torpedo, which would navigate by periodically surfacing for satnav bearings before descending until the next waypoint and seeking targets via active sonar and AI. But I don’t think things like this are in the wild, yet.
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History Note; the first wire guided torpedo [actually guided-anything] was developed by my great 3 [or 4] times removed uncle/cousin Louis Brennan. Louis Brennan also developed the first stable helicopter, gyro-stabilized mono-train [a technique still used on ships] and a few other do-dads. The mast above the torpedo for guidance was his idea.
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Thanks for great technical discussion, everybody. And S, that’s a nice historical touch about your family. Great photo too, I’ll ignore the moustache, but I can see a keen intelligence in those eyes!
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JC, that is a very great point you made about looking back and trying to remember, “when was the last time we had to deal with something similar, and what the solution back then?”
Very often, history itself contains the answers and the solutions.
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Roger that^^^!
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Roger, copy, over and out!
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Apparently the Navy doesn’t demand that its members develop and maintain a proactive, future-oriented attitude at all times. I don’t understand why Russia can shoot down about 95% of the drones that are aimed at Russian land targets and not be able to do the same for flying drones above the sea. Even ordinary Russian infantry soldiers are now outfitted with portable EW “guns” that paralyze approaching drones. Why is the Russian Navy using old, clutzy machine guns to intercept flying drones? As for semi-submerged drones, Russia seems to be doing a pretty good job protecting the Kerch Bridge. Has the Navy been asleep at the wheel? In any case, this is a problem the Navy will surely overcome when it finally gets around to seriously dealing with it in a focused way. Otan had a head start, and it’s only a matter of time until the proper adjustments are made.
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The naval drones are not using radio-frequency control, but are connecting via sat uplink. To jam these they need something like the starlink jammers some UAF have complained about.
And then they could just connect sat phones, so the jamming solution would need to be robust enough to cover the channels used.
That’s more than a handheld option. However, Russia certainly has the capability to focus strong jamming on a target–it just need to be systematized into an installation that can go on their ships.
Basically give them the output of their A-50s, more or less. But: keep in mind powerplants have to be build for the purpose of generating the electricity needed, so that’s a consideration.
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The vulnerability of surface vessels is on display in both the Red Sea and the Black Sea. I can see the wisdom in developing land corridors as quickly as possible. I’d like to hear what Andrei M has to say about the future of navies. Aircraft carriers are looking pretty silly these days.
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Yalensis, regarding the recent presidential election in Russia, it was good to see that, at least in Lugansk, electronic voting machines were not being used. Is hand-counting of ballots standard across the RF? As you know, hand-counting in the US is a minority practice, mostly limited to rural communities in New England. I know that hand-counting is still practiced in the UK, and I am an advocate of returning to mandated hand-counting throughout the US. I am not a computer expert, but I have come across numerous Youtube videos purporting to prove that the standard US electronic voting machines can be hacked very easily by those who know how to do it. In one famous example, a few years ago a fifth-grade girl won a voting machine hacking contest with a hack time of, I believe, under three minutes. Temporary reformatting, for example, or temporary connection of large numbers of voting machines to the Internet are said to be typical ways of changing the number and distribution of votes recorded by voting machines. Moreover, unlikely or unexpected results have been common in recent years in various US elections in states ruled by both large political parties — especially in “purple” or highly contested states. The US system of government is based on a basic distrust of human nature (e.g., politicians will cheat if they can) and the assumption that strict voting laws and rules and strict transparency are necessary to ensure fair and accurate elections. Electronic voting machines are clearly a weak link in the US system, yet they are constantly being pushed by federal and state politicians despite their apparent security problems. I imagine I am not the only American who suspects — without being able to prove it — that both major US political parties are covertly putting a lot of time and money into trying to find ways to secretly hack the US electoral system on various levels and to sometimes actually hacking voting machines, especially in national elections, so outlawing electronic voting machines would be one important way to make tampering with election results more difficult. The literal ferocity with which any suspicion of the safety of voting machines is denied by both pols and by the US mainstream media actually suggests how much danger the US electoral system seems to be in. As for Russia, if the recent presidential election was carried out under a hand-counted ballot system, then the likelihood that it was relatively manipulation-free might suggest that it was a fair and accurate expression of the will of the Russian people, a possibility loudly ridiculed by the US mainstream media. Was the vote count in the recent election in Russia actually more accurate than the count in the US presidential election in November will be? That possibility can’t automatically be ruled out.
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Yo, Yalensis, why are my comments being time-stamped with London time? Is WP a British host? Or is it just because the sun never sets on the British Empire (GMT)?
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Excellent Point! All balloting should be done “by hand” and counted in the same way..with ballots preserved until all reasonable parties are satisfied…all other methods allow for untraceable fraud.
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cc: I agree that hand-counting is the best way to ensure a fair election. In theory, computerized voting should work, the same way computerized banking works: with double-authentication and a paper receipt! But, reality being what it is, and both sides trying to cheat, then I agree hand-counting is probably the best and most accurate way.
As for wordpress timestamps, I never really paid attention. Maybe they use Greenwich time? I honestly don’t know.
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P.S. – you’re right, though. I just looked at the timestamp of the one I just posted, it says 9:17 AM, but I am actually in U.S. East Coast, where it is 5:17 AM. Yup, I just checked, that’s Greenwich time. Maybe it’s just some blog setting that I messed up and never noticed? I’ll check later in the admin settings.
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I can testify that electronic voting machines and their handling processes have been “easily” hacked/defrauded since the ’90s. At the time my father worked in law enforcement and uncovered enough evidence of this in country elections to submit a case to state prosecution.
Which went exactly nowhere because the county party figures involved were aligned with state politicians.
But yes: electronic voting machines transfer your physical vote into an electronic representation of ones and zeros that then has a VERY tenuous chain of custody. It’s the same issue that electronic banking has, and the work-arounds there are intricate and amount to “because you trust me (institution) and my controls”.
The future of electronic trust really does lie with blockchain-based timestamping services, such as were employed with Russian electronic voting measures. They took an approach that both anonymized individual voting and made the results transparent. (I only know on this what I’ve read, btw.)
The US in particular has been quite resistant to putting in place more secure measures (physical and/or blockchain) because a) there are highly lucrative contracts (graft) in play, and b) doing so would make it harder to cheat. And both “sides” cheat. It just so happens that one cheats more, more recently, and on a higher-profile scale.
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Great comment. I am sure there actually is a robust technical solution, if people were only willing to implement.
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With the exception of submarines, navies (and navy culture) seem abit obsolete, but don’t say that to the British. They “rule the waves”. It is the British Royal Navy who will engage the Russians in the Black Sea and they have their latter day Nelson, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. They perceive this as their destiny. It is the raison d’être of Britannia’s rule. It is……existential!
The navy of the United States has been allocated the “Indo/Pacific” as the zone of presence. The objective is “containment” of China (China China). But in the spirit of Atlanticism the U.S. and British navies share the patrol routes and the facilities. An example of the latter is Australia. Hence AUKUS. From my window I can see across Cockburn Sound (Indian Ocean) to the Stirling Naval Base on Garden Island. Nice target. It’s always hosting nuclear subs from the U.S. and U.K. But the British basically run the base, and many British naval employees live in the area.
And let’s not forget Diego Garcia, which is an atoll of the Chagos archipelago smack bang in the middle of the Indian Ocean. A big, not so secret U.S. naval installation. Back at the turn of the millennium, husband and self spent many delightful months on anchor at Salomon island atoll in the Chagos archipelago, enroute to east Africa from South East Asia (and back again). Real desert island lifestyle, only shared with perhaps a dozen other yachts. (Nationalities socialised separately). It is of interest to note that the ICJ which deliberated the Gaza genocide also ruled that the copra workers who lived for generations on the Chagos atolls (they had a cemetery on Salomon island) have a right of return. But there is no practical way to achieve this, and the atolls remain British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Craig Murray put tremendous effort into the right of return of the Chagoseans. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/02/uk-government-humiliated-over-chagos-islands-again/
He’s a decent Englishman. But the British ruling class, of which Craig Murray has been a participant, is a malignancy.
U.S. hubris has allowed Atlanticism to fester. Australia cannot mature as a nation because of its vassalage to the Atlanticist project. (Australians believe their existence depends on the U.S and U.K.) Nor can Canada. And the U.S., which fought a war of independence, appears ideologically hamstrung. Russians however are aware that they belong to a civilisation which comprises many ethnicities and has a long, tumultuous but continuous history.
This does lend coherence to warfare’s objectives.
Once again I post Voltairenet’s latest article, because Thierry Meyssan always has the measure of the Anglos.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article220588.html
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Very interesting, thanks. I wonder if we will get to witness a classic naval battle between England and Russia, in their mutually obsolete ships. Ghost of Admiral Nelson commanding the English limeys. Wouldn’t that be something to watch?
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We are living through an epochal change in war, when, like the galleon and the battleship before them, all surface warfare vessels are obsolete against anyone capable of fielding attack drones. In the future submarines will go the same way.
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