Navies have had to work hard to protect their ships from sea-skimming missiles. Aerial protection is one of the best defenses, and a lack of it has vexed Russian sailors for decades.
, was heavily armed with 64 S-300 long-range air-defense missiles for area protection and 40 Osa short-range missiles for aerial self-defense, plus a bevy of guns. She also had Rum Tub and Side Globe jammers.nor how trained, motivated and alert their operators were at 1 in the morning when the alleged Neptune strike occurred.
Regardless, assuming the Ukrainians are telling the truth, all those missiles and jammers clearly were inadequate — the 17-foot Neptunes got through.Soviet thinkers anticipated the inadequacy of shipboard defenses. Warships should have air cover to guard against enemy cruise missiles, they explained. Airborne early-warning aircraft could spot missiles shortly after launch, while fighters could to shoot them down at a safe distance.
Naval air cover can be land-based, of course. And the Russian navy keeps a squadron of twin-engine Su-30 fighters in Crimea allegedly for the purpose of protecting the fleet. But those Su-30s have been pretty busy bombing Ukrainian troops and civilians on land. We know this because the UkrainiansThat air cover apparently was lacking off the coast of Odessa on Wednesday morning.
Some Soviet writers in the 1980s urged the fleet to consider an alternative means of throwing an aerial umbrella over vulnerable ships: build, equip and deploy aircraft carriers. That is to say, do what the Americans, British and French long have done. “Judging by the literature, the 1990s' fleet air-defense system of the Soviet navy will include a multitude of new systems,” including “a big-deck carrier with long-range fighters and AEW airplanes embarked,” Kennedy wrote., in 1982. She commissioned in 1991, just in time for the Soviet Union to collapse around her.
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