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. what were they shooting at it that they were able to sink it?
it never ceases to amaze me how much Ukraine is able to accomplish with next to nothing.
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.
Looked like three hits broadside, that second hit may have shown twice. Appears that the ship’s magazine blew up, if I know anything about naval explosions, which I do not.
You’re not far off. The second drone seems to have triggered a secondary explosion. It could have been the main magazine, or it could have been one of the missiles in the tubes on the side. Either way, Russian ordinance cooked off onboard.
the small boats are explosive drones. they can take a few hits.
Ukraine and their drones. amazing.
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.
Pretty sure they are being downgraded to ‘Regional Power’, and if they continue to prosecute this war, they might find the level below that.
Look, you may not like it, but they have the largest submarine fleet in the world!
(and it’s so capable, those
shipsboats stay down there indefinitely. Generational crews!)Well, they added their Black Sea flag ship to their submarine corps!
90° down bubble.
Russia isn’t a superpower. China arguable. Both lack the significant powerhouse alliances that a superpower needs to really direct global affairs and diplomacy. There is only one, arguably.
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.
The Chinese were using that idea over 1000 years ago
It’s older than that.
Wouldn’t be surprised of the Phoenicians (or their contemporaries) pulled some sort of stunt like this.
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
Interesting. Flint tools that make a spark when struck with an iron-bearing surface date back to at least 1,600 BC
I know sometimes when I plunge a tool into the ground it can spark a bit just digging a post hole or something. I imagine that from about 15,000 BC to 1,600 BC people spent a lot of time banging rocks together and sometimes made sparks, and some of them must have tried to refine the process. Frankly it would have surprised me if by 850 AD we had not figured a way to bang very refined rocks together in such a way as to make large explosions. The sparks must have seemed like magic.
This was described as a swarm attack. I didn’t catch how many vessels were involved. Seems like a shitload. And the ship saw them coming too. You can see gunfire throughout the video. Seems like at least 4 or 5 hits, wonder how many more got shot to pieces. Seems like there was nothing the ship could do, simply overwhelmed.