First in History: Underwater Drone Hits Submarine
Today the SBU made an official announcement that right at the basing site of Black Sea Fleet remnants in Novorossiysk port, an underwater drone hits submarine 636.3 Varshavyanka. This is the same submarine often mentioned as a carrier of Kalibr cruise missiles. It undoubtedly participated in shelling Ukrainian territory with these missiles. Considering that surface ships have become extremely vulnerable to sea drones, the enemy uses precisely submarines to launch its Kalibrs. It’s understandable — the submarine leaves the base, submerges, and becomes inaccessible to BECs. And after launch, in the same submerged position, it returns to base. And as it turned out, that’s exactly where they got it. SBU quote:
For the first time in history, Sub Sea Baby underwater drones blew up a russian submarine of the 636.3 Varshavyanka class (NATO classification — Kilo). As a result of the explosion, the submarine suffered critical damage and is effectively disabled.
This was a joint operation of the 13th Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of the SBU and the Naval Forces of Ukraine.
Let’s recall, the blown-up boat was forced to stay in Novorossiysk port due to successful special operations of Sea Baby surface sea drones, which pushed russian ships and submarines out of Sevastopol Bay in temporarily occupied Crimea.
The Trolling Is Next Level
Also, we must give credit to the SBU’s humor. Prudently hacking the camera that stood on the enemy Headquarters building, to then show this beautiful video — this is trolling of a very high level. Here’s this video:
Judging by the appearance of the explosion that emerges from the video, the boat should have suffered substantial or even fatal damage. In a word, if everything is really as stated, this will be the second submarine of the Black Sea Fleet disabled during the war with Ukraine. As we remember, they hit the first one with a cruise missile at the Sevastopol repair plant, where it underwent repairs in dry dock. They struck this one right at the pier already with underwater drone forces.
From Mockups to Reality
Earlier, samples of underwater drones got demonstrated, but the exhibition happened on land. It was difficult to understand how much these were already finished products and not mockups. Obviously, only their application can indicate that such devices truly exist and can be used in real naval combat. And here came such first confirmation. Although before this there was a variant of an attack on the Kerch Bridge support, but then the result wasn’t very noticeable, and the information cover was too dense to draw conclusions at least about what it really was.
As is not difficult to guess, the device managed to penetrate inside the base unnoticed and strike the submarine. This indicates the device has serious navigation capabilities. Penetration into such a maximally protected location can only be performed by very correctly constructed devices. One can only imagine what would happen in this same base if a flock of such drones entered there. But in any case, the myth about the base’s protection just ceased to be relevant.
The Range Changes Everything
Taking into account that open sources talked about the presence of several types of underwater drones with a range of up to two thousand kilometers, it seems that the most long-range drones weren’t created for the Black Sea. There simply aren’t such distances there. One can only imagine that if they drop such machines into the waters of the Baltic or Barents Sea, not only Novorossiysk base will be able to boast such fireworks right at home. And in the North, nuclear missile carriers base, which since 2000 haven’t sunk even once yet. Probably, this break stretched beyond any measure. Everyone just saw something like an announcement of what may soon happen in Kaliningrad or Severomorsk, for example.
Well, and Black Sea sailors will now think ten times whether it’s worth staying aboard their vessel if it stands at the pier of their own base. As practice shows, such a choice may turn out to be not the best at all. When underwater drone hits submarine at its own protected port, no location remains safe.
Related posts:
Yaroslavl Refinery Fire: Good Birds Bring Heat to Gazprom Asset
Today, the population of the Swamps* had especially many reasons to film bright videos that will undoubtedly gather countless views on YouTube. For example, although not from the [...]
Drone Strike on Oil Platform: New Phase Begins
Today an event occurred that will be difficult to assess without context. Let’s try to understand precisely the second or even third layer of this new situation. For [...]