The Aspects of the Sevastopol Attack You Need to Focus on
the Song Dynasty visits the Black Sea
The big navalist news over the weekend was unquestionably what appears to be a successful attack on the Russian Navy at Sevastopol by remotely piloted surface craft by the Ukrainians.
Some reports call them “drones” or other such descriptors, but really they appear to be an upscaled militarized remotely piloted surface vessel on a one way trip. There is a lot of expected hyperbole about the attack, and that is what I wanted to address today. I am concerned that the overhype by the ignorant, click hunting, or agenda driven people in the public space will cause us to miss the most important lesson here.
This attack was not historically significant in a larger sense, no more than the attack on the Moskva was. This is not a glimpse into the future of naval warfare. This was simply a continuation of sound naval tactics with a pedigree directly tracible thousands of years in to the past. Not to understand this is to dangerously not understand what happened.
First of all, let’s take a moment to state the obvious: the Russians should have been ready. They had about as clear of a warning as possible in September.
A MYSTERIOUS vessel widely believed to be a Ukrainian suicide drone has washed up near to a Russian naval base.
The vessel was found in Omega Bay, by the port of Sevastopol, which is home to Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea fleet.
We can safely assume – as the videos below seem to demonstrate – that the ones used in the attack are of the same design.
We will loop back to this point later, but just behold the simplicity of it via the article from The Sun linked above;

This is all COTS technology riding on either a canoe or ocean going kayak. If you have someone with an understanding of explosives and communications (the only part requiring military expertise +/-) and then any garden variety electrician, small engine pro, and fiberglass guy … you can run a production line of these on a shoestring budget at scale.
They look fragile, but … well … I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s finish setting the table.