![]() ![]() Newever developments, like directed energy or laser weapons, may someday defeat missiles. There is only so far out to sea they can hit, and there are ship-board countermeasure systems like jamming the electronics of the missile, or hitting it with an anti-missile missile, that could thwart it. Guided missiles like the Neptune have real constraints. The missile had the range and punch needed for a pair of them to destroy a large, hostile ship, and the missiles do not appear to have been stopped by any defensive precautions. The Neptune is also, the brochure notes, designed to work in all kinds of weather, at night or day, and it works despite any enemy countermeasures, like jamming or shooting at the weaponsīy initial accounts, the nine-year process from design start to the sinking of the Moskva appears to have been a major success. “ is intended to defeat warships such as cruiser, destroyer frigate, corvette, airborne, tank landing ships and vehicles, which operate both independently and as part of the ship groups and amphibious groups,” reads a Luch Design Bureau brochure for the missile from 2020. The missile weighs a total of 1,477 pounds, including a payload of 320 pounds of explosive. The missile was again tested in April 2019 and April 2020. At the time of the later test, Neptune’s range was given at up to 174 miles, though a brochure for Luch Design puts the range at just over 186 miles. Later that year, a Neptune hit a target in the ocean 62 miles away. That might explain in part why it took until Janufor the Neptune to have its first test flight. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, in response to Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests and change of government. ![]() Kyiv’s Luch Design Bureau started developing the Neptune missile in 2013, with the goal of testing by 2016. While the Kh-35 was Soviet in origin, it took until 2003 for it to enter service with the Russian Federation. To travel towards its target, the Kh-35 uses both inertial guidance, which lets the missile know where it is and where it isn’t, and then an active radar to guide it directly to the part of the ship it is supposed to hit. This missile travels at around 671 mph, which is below the speed of sound, and it flies close to the water, especially as it approaches its target, making it much more likely to hit the ship at the water line. As designed, the Kh-35 missiles would be launched from a special truck on the shore, and then deliver a 330-pound warhead into the side of a ship up to 75 miles away. It is based on the Kh-35 missile, a subsonic anti-ship cruise missile the Soviet Union began developing in 1972. The Neptune missile is named for the ancient Roman god that was sovereign over the sea. To better understand the threat, it’s important to understand the specific missile. The US Navy is already investing in anti-missile lasers to protect its own vessels from such attacks, and any navy considering future wars near coasts will have to take into account the possibility of powerful anti-ship missiles in the arsenals of its enemies. The ability of missiles to destroy ships with existing anti-missile defenses will shape future planning. ![]() Those upgrades appear to have paid off, giving Ukrainian defenders on land the reach and power to destroy a hostile enemy. Those missiles were two Neptunes, a Ukrainian design based on an older Soviet anti-ship missile model, but upgraded for modern warfare. While Russia initially reported the damage and sinking as the result of a fire on board the vessel, US defense officials confirmed to NPR that it was Ukrainian missiles that destroyed the ship. ![]() The vessel sank as it was being towed back to port, bringing to the bottom of the sea Russia’s most capable ship in the region, as well as a religious artifact. On April 13, two Ukrainian missiles hit the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. ![]()
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