Here is a column I wrote, under the pen-name of Desiderius Erasmus an old Dutch philosopher, for a monthly Illinois newsletter on the Second Amendment. Old Desiderius’ motto was In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King, which meant that you didn’t have to be perfect in your skillset, just better than your opponent. In Latin, the phrase is “in regione caecorum rex est luscus.”
In regione caecorum rex est luscus
In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King
By “Desiderius Erasmus,” a GSL member
What Happened to the Russian Warship Moskva?
Talking heads and “experts” on television drive me crazy. Many have no true experience; they also demonstrate no system to assess accuracy of their conclusions. You can do better in assessing accuracy by assigning levels of certainty.
The highest category of certainty is one with a “100% certainty” of accuracy. The sun comes up in the East is one of them, most events aren’t this certain. A little less certainty, but still a great deal, is “beyond a reasonable doubt” used in criminal trials. While I’ve never seem a judge assign a numerical value to that, it seems that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is in the 85% to 99% category of certainty. It does not mean there is no doubt, only that it is so small as to be unreasonable.
The lowest category of certainty is “more likely than not” to be accurate, the standard used in many civil trials, and for military Inspector General investigations. Think achieving 51% or more and it is “more likely than not” it occurred. On the other end, if you assess a 50% chance something happened, you’re flipping a coin; the further less than 50%, the greater the possibility it is inaccurate.
Let’s apply that to the Russian cruiser Moskva, flagship of their Black Sea Fleet, that sank in the Black Sea off the coast of the Ukraine on Thursday, April 14, 2022. Ukraine says it hit the Moskva with anti-ship cruise missiles which sparked a fire that detonated the ammunition.
On the other side, Russia’s Defense Ministry says a fire of unknown origin detonated the ship’s stored ammunition; the resulting explosions left the Moskva with structural damage; and then the warship sank amid rough seas as it was being towed to a nearby port.
So the central question to analyze is this. Was it poor air defenses on the Moskva that allowed Ukrainian anti-ship missiles to hit, and cause a fire and/or explosion which was made fatal by inefficient damage control? If so, we can rule out an accidental fire caused by lax safety procedures.
I am not a naval expert, but I know a lot of people who are, including some who served on U.S. destroyers and cruisers similar in some degree to the Moskva, others who were submariners who were trained to hunt ships like the Moskva, and even one who was actually on a Russian ship VERY similar to the Moskva. Here is an educated take.
Russian ship defense systems have major inadequacies. While they do have a varied number of anti-missile systems, they are not integrated into a fast-response system such as a Combat Information Center (CIC), which collates thousands of pieces of information, using really sophisticated tracking and info-processing, and determines the best solution to neutralize any threat at the most advantageous distance from the ship, with backups in case of a miss, and not allowing a threat to slip through because it had not been tracked.
If the Ukrainians fired multiple missiles, and used decoys or electronic warfare to confuse the Russian defenders, and given that these missiles fly really low (9 to 30 feet above the water), where it is really hard to detect or hit them, given Russian inadequacies in this area, it is “more likely than not” that at least one missile hit.
Now the Russians have problems. The warhead weighs 350 pounds; add in some of the fuel left in the 1900-pound missile and you are going to get “beyond a reasonable doubt” of a large explosion per strike. Both accounts conclude “100% certainty” a number of volatile and flammable explosives were nearby. But a lot of warships in history have had explosions or large fires and have not sunk.
Except the Russians have major problems in damage control. US Navy ships have many watertight compartments to limit the spread of toxic gases, fire and flooding. Officers touring the Moskva saw no such extensive compartmentalization. It is “beyond a reasonable doubt”, approaching “100% certainty”, that the Moskva did not have adequate watertight integrity.
On many warships, painted areas on which sailors walk have special grip surfaces to prevent slipping. That’s an added expense and Russian ships like the Moskva substituted tar for special paint. Tar is highly flammable, and is easily tracked to other areas of the ship, so instead of trying to limit the spread of flame damage, it is “more likely than not” that Russian ship design made their warships fire-traps.
Access to classified information would increase our certainty one way of the other, but using good, old-fashioned logic and observation, and you can reach a better solution than a talking head – or an “expert” with an agenda.