Or it was simply located by one of the many, many NATO spy planes circling around in the Romanian territorial waters.
The missile still needs the radar to lock onto the target regardless of whether the target was spotted by satellites.
Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a huge surface ship, at sea. It was probably spotted in a 20 or more different ways - from commercial satellite imagery to HUMINT to its own radar transmitters to Russian sailors' cell phone signals. Every way of spotting a target suffers from uncertainty. Most suffer from delays (satellite photo is X hours old), security issues (keep your spies alive), and political considerations (Ukrainians might want to fe…
The initial reporting after was that: - Ukraine performed the initial radar detection - Ukraine asked the US to confirm it was the Moskva (the US did) - Ukraine attacked with their own targeting data (Then news articles clammed up about the US confirmation, and the Pentagon put out some carefully worded statements that tried to establish distance) Which sounds reasonable. Warships like the Moskva are strategic assets…
That sounds like a plausible sequence of moves. And the initial over-sharing of a "get US confirmation" step might serve some Ukrainian strategic goals, too...
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#43Man everything was against this ship.
Afaik, it was undergoing incredible mismanagement, a series of mechanical faults and poorly maintained systems. It meant that its air defense was down or severely limited, and their communications systems busted, they had to choose between communications with the crew or command. Once the ship was spotted, it couldnt defend against the missles and after the impact the crew could not communicate to address it.
All that from memory, im sure i got some details wrong but what a mess.
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#44Or it was simply located by one of the many, many NATO spy planes circling around in the Romanian territorial waters.
Any country spy planes don't need to keep to Romanian territorial waters. They are free to do their circling in international waters as much as they want to, whether that NATO, China or New Zealand.
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#45It is well known and even footage of the actual battle has been released, that Moskva was detected using Bayraktar TB-2 drone. Which also acted as a decoy to make the ship pointing it's air defence system (which has 180 degree coverage) in it's direction to counteract any attempt of attack from it (the drone was beyond engagement range). Thus letting Ukrainians attack with missiles from the other direction, leaving s…
It is interesting that any rumor can become “well known” after person with big following talks about it. People close to operation mentioned that having Byraktar nearby would have raised alertness of the crew, so it would not be beneficial. And the best luck was with a surprise attack. There was an interview with the commander of the unit and he mentions the atmospheric effect which allowed them to lock into the ship…
> having Byraktar nearby would have raised alertness of the crew
One theory I heard was that the drone was specifically used to distract the (mechanically steered) primary radar of the ship, thus allowing the antiship missiles to approach undetected from another direction.
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a huge surface ship, at sea. It was probably spotted in a 20 or more different ways - from commercial satellite imagery to HUMINT to its own radar transmitters to Russian sailors' cell phone signals. Every way of spotting a target suffers from uncertainty. Most suffer from delays (satellite photo is X hours old), security issues (keep your spies alive), and political considerations (Ukrainians might want to fe…
The initial reporting after was that: - Ukraine performed the initial radar detection - Ukraine asked the US to confirm it was the Moskva (the US did) - Ukraine attacked with their own targeting data (Then news articles clammed up about the US confirmation, and the Pentagon put out some carefully worded statements that tried to establish distance) Which sounds reasonable. Warships like the Moskva are strategic assets…
> Ukraine performed the initial radar detection
> Which sounds reasonable
If you don't know anything about radars, yes.
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#47https://web.archive.org/web/20231117010516/https://journals.... Abstract On 13 April 2022, the Russian warship Moskva was hit by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles in the Black Sea, leading to its demise. Before launching an anti-ship missile, a target must first be detected and positioned, for example by an accompanying radar system. However, when the missiles hit the Moskva she was well beyond the normal rada…
Can anyone that makes radar comment: does this just work or does that kit need to understand that this can happen to process it. Is an operator just using the thing and for a couple house is surprised at how much more shows up? like a telescope operator would be like "huh that's new" where as my router will be like "hmm TCP just got bigger, stop working."
I'm electronics expert. All radio equipment "see" such things from time to time.
For example I used car FM radio to hear reflections from meteors, from Warsaw radio (about 1000km from me, usually, you may know, about 100km from transmission tower).
But modern digital usually just filter out all signals with too much delay.
Old analog radars (widely in use in Ukraine), really could see much farther when good conditions, and if engineers could tune circuit. And we have to tune, because need to make all possible, because of war.
Re: Anomalous propagation and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is interesting that any rumor can become “well known” after person with big following talks about it. People close to operation mentioned that having Byraktar nearby would have raised alertness of the crew, so it would not be beneficial. And the best luck was with a surprise attack. There was an interview with the commander of the unit and he mentions the atmospheric effect which allowed them to lock into the ship…
> having Byraktar nearby would have raised alertness of the crew One theory I heard was that the drone was specifically used to distract the (mechanically steered) primary radar of the ship, thus allowing the antiship missiles to approach undetected from another direction.
Yeah, this theory was in the same "package".
People close to the matters told that this is most likely untrue and radars are capable of tracking from multiple directions.
Also, anaprop conditions are common and not something which happens ones in a hundred years.