Soldiers of the Group 13 special forces unit of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine destroyed the guided-missile corvette Ivanovets, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, on the night of 31 January-1 February 2024.
Soldiers of the Group 13 special forces unit of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine destroyed the guided-missile corvette Ivanovets, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, on the night of 31 January-1 February 2024.
Source: Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU)
Quote: "The operation was made possible with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the United24 platform.
The enemy vessel was on the roadstead of Lake Donuzlav in temporarily occupied Crimea.
As a result of a number of direct strikes to the hull, the Russian vessel sustained critical damage causing immobilisation – it heaved aft and sank."
the video makes it look like they took down that corvette with an inflatable motorboat.
That's basically what's happening. I don't know if they used inflatable motorboats specifically, Ukraine has used JetSki's previously, but what they're doing is packing shaped explosive charges onto small watercraft, running the craft up against the hull of the ship and then blowing it up. If you rewatch the video you can see that multiple attacking craft were used and at least two of them targeted and damaged the same area of the hull!
Those little boats pack a MEAN punch and as you can see in the video they are damn hard to hit with projectile weapons. The Russian crew was obviously shooting like crazy but they weren't able to stop the attack.
Al-Qaeda famously did this to the American Naval Vessel USS Cole back in 2000. The USS Cole didn't sink thanks to the efforts of its bad ass damage control team but the ship was seriously damaged and it took a year to rebuild her.
somewhere in Ukraine, there's probably some kid, sitting in a bunker, coming up with all of these insane idea of how to make all of these crazy war drones out of scraps and garbage, and they're the reason Ukraine is still in this fight.
columns of russian troops and tanks advancing our position? just fly a few drones over them and drop hellfire. boom, gone!
a russian gunship off the coat of crimea? drone boats. boom, sunk!
Ukraine is the first country to have an entire navy and air force exclusively of - essentially - hand-made drones that's kicking the ass of a world superpower.
Not to take anything away from Ukraine but IIRC the tactic of using small watercraft loaded with explosives against much larger naval ships was pioneered by Al-Qaeda. They damn near sank the USS Cole back in October of 2000 while it was refueling in Aden Harbor.
I had thousands at first but then I googled the invention of gun powder and it came up for 850 A.D. which seems wrong, but I don’t have a degree in ancient Chinese history.
It felt wrong to use fire boats since we are talking about explosions.
Although as an American I feel like I should know more about the invention of anything having to do with guns