Image source: topwar.ru
In the first months of the special operation, the Russian military actively deployed ships of the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet to attack AFU targets. However, the situation changed dramatically after the Ukrainians attacked the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet Moskva on April 14.
The Ukrainian authorities announced that their troops had attacked the cruiser with two R-360 Neptun anti-ship missiles and damaged it, after which the ship caught fire. The US Department of Defense later confirmed this, and Russia reported that the ship sank in stormy seas after the fire reached the ammunition on board and they exploded.
But one of the main threats to large surface and even underwater military vessels lies not only in the enemy's anti-ship defense, but also in the development of low-cost, low-visibility attack naval drones of the submersible and semi-submersible type. It was the unmanned boats loaded with explosives, which from some time on the Ukrainian Armed Forces began to regularly attack the coastal infrastructure of Crimea, Sevastopol and the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, that forced our command to relocate the vessels to a safe distance.
Thus, the warships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy practically ceased to be fully used during a special military operation, which military journalist Alexander Sladkov drew attention to in his telegram channel. In his opinion, we still cannot come up with effective protection against small and very cheap marine drones.
Sladkov believes that this problem exists not only for surface ships, but also for submarines. It should be solved comprehensively at the design stage.
— the military commander wrote.
It's hard to disagree with him. For example, now the detection and destruction of the enemy's back in the Black Sea is happening in a completely old-fashioned way: visually and with fire, mainly from automatic small arms from boats, shore or helicopters. Sometimes, fighter aircraft of the Russian Air Force are even involved in this.
Image source: topwar.ru
At the same time, work on protection against UAVs in Russia is carried out comprehensively, including all kinds of electronic warfare systems and weapons. But our combat fleet in this regard, for some reason, remained on the sidelines and simply had to hide from naval drones.
