![]() ![]() Still, the Ukrainians undoubtedly would love to get a shot at Admiral Makarov and her sisters, if they haven’t already. It doesn’t matter that Russia still has three powerful warships in the Black Sea if those ships can’t, or won’t, risk approaching the Ukrainian coast. Aboard the frigates of the Royal Navy were found the finest officers in the service and men who frequently sought duty aboard, not the press (forced recruiting) gangs of the era. In that sense, sinking Moskva-and scaring off the rest of the Black Sea Fleet’s major combatants-was as good as sinking the frigates, too. Frigates were the true measure of British seapower, holding the line in peace and leading the fleet in war. Without the protection of a frigate, the Raptors were sitting ducks. On Monday, a TB-2 struck two Russian Raptor-class patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both of the 55-foot boats as they motored toward Snake Island. Ukrainian TB-2 drones knocked out Russian air-defenses on the island then went hunting deeper at sea. The tiny hunk of rock, 25 miles off the coast of southwestern Ukraine, helped Kyiv assert some control over the western Black Sea-until the Russians captured it on the first full day of the current war on Feb. ![]() Keeping at a safe distance meant the frigates apparently were in no position to help when the Ukrainian navy last week mounted a furious drone assault on the Russian garrison on Snake Island. When the warships do sail from Crimea, they tend to stay 100 miles or so from the Ukrainian coast, potentially keeping them beyond the range of Kyiv’s Neptunes. MaAnalysis When will the Royal Navy have 24 frigates and destroyers Answering questions in Parliament in the wake of the Integrated Review announcements yesterday, the Prime Minister said we will have, by the end of this decade, 24 frigates as opposed to the 15 today. Many, including one Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate-it’s not clear which-were moored in Sevastopol as recently as Thursday. Ships are classified into civilian and military vessels, the former being controlled individually. They pulled back the surviving surface ships. The frigates design attributes-speed, small crew size, support for unmanned vehicles, and anti-submarine and counter-mine capability-also guided development of U.S. A ship is a spaceborne vessel controlled by an empire. Moskva’s sinking, along with the earlier destruction of the Black Sea Fleet landing ship Saratov following an apparent hit by a Ukrainian ballistic missile, spooked fleet commanders. She burned, then sank while under tow, taking with her potentially scores of her 500 sailors. But she was stacked with missiles: 16 Vulkan anti-ship missiles, 64 S-300 long-range surface-to-air missiles and 40 Osa missiles for short-range air-defense.Īll those missiles couldn’t save Moskva when a Ukrainian battery on land, perhaps near the strategic port of Odessa, put two Neptune missiles in her port side. She was old and hadn’t gotten a lot of major updates through her long service beginning in 1983. Moskva was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. ![]()
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