Last week Ukraine sank
the Russian cruiser Moskva. It was a remarkable attack. It will go down in naval history, and in a
hundred years it will still be remembered. And I am saying this because I think many
people still don't realize how big this was. It was huge. But in this video I want to use the incident
to illustrate something that I think is a significant weakness in many of Russia's weapons
systems, and that may have been the reason why Moskva failed to defend itself
against the incoming missiles. And I am talking here about the user interface
of the operator consoles. So it's a slightly naval-geeky topic,
but one that I truly believe could have sunk the flagship
of the Black Sea Fleet. So I think it's worth the time
to go into it in some detail. I recently made a video where I said that
Ukraine's strategy for winning the war with Russia is to make it so costly
to keep fighting that eventually Russia decides
that it's not worth it. And the sinking of Moskva
was just excellent in that context. I literally can't think of anything that Ukraine
could hit that would have been a more costly target
than the cruiser Moskva. This ship was a valuable platform for
air surveillance and air defense, and it was a command platform
for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. But the really important thing is that it
is an almost priceless loss for Russia. There were about 500 sailors on the ship,
and we don't know how many were rescued, but it is possible that
many of them perished. This was also a ship that all Russians know,
and it was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, so the symbolic value is huge. And it is an irreplaceable ship for Russia. They are not able to build these ships anymore
for a range of reasons. If you are interested in hearing about the
problems that the Russian navy has with shipbuilding, you can watch my interview
with Jonas Kjellén. But it was also surprising that this attack
led to such a dramatic outcome. Ukraine apparently fired
two Neptune missiles at Moskva. This is a newly developed
Ukrainian anti-ship missile, but it is also a missile that is fairly comparable
to other missiles on the market. It is pretty much the same type of missile
as the Harpoon missile which is used in many Western navies. I would have expected Moskva to be able to
handle two hits with these missiles and still stay afloat. There has been a lot of speculation afterwards
that maybe these Slava-class cruisers have some design flaws
that make them vulnerable. But the most interesting thing to me
is how these missiles got through the ship's
defensive systems. The Slava-class cruisers have several defensive
weapons, but the ones that are really interesting in this regard are the short-range
air defense missiles 9K33 Osa and the AK-630 close-in weapons system,
which is a kind of Gatling gun. They also have the S-300 long-range air defense
system, but because the earth is round and the incoming Neptune missile will fly
below the radar horizon, they wouldn't notice the Neptune missile
until they are too close to use the S-300. But on paper the defense systems were pretty
solid, and you would have to do something extraordinary
to get a hit on Moskva. When you are preparing such an attack,
there are at a basic level two ways that you can beat
a missile defense system. Either you can have a super fancy missile
like the new hypersonic Russian Tsirkon missile. That is really hard to defend against. Or if you have older missiles, you will have
to launch a bunch of missiles that arrive at the target at the same time
from different angles. This way you can overwhelm the defense system
so at least some of the missiles get through. And the Neptune missile is of this type where
you need a lot of missiles to be successful. So you would assume that it would take
a lot more than two missiles to sink a large cruiser like Moskva. So how did Ukraine do it? I don't know, but I do have an idea. There has been a lot of speculation online
that Ukraine used their Bayraktar TB2 drone to provide target data, and that they also
used this drone to distract the crew on Moskva so they didn't notice
the incoming missiles. I don't think this is
the right explanation. Moskva was specialized in air defense,
and it was capable of tracking way more than one target at a time. There have also been some rumors that its
radar only has 180 degree coverage angle but that is a misunderstanding of how
the different radar systems work together. So I think a more plausible explanation
is the exact opposite. That the crew was not tracking a drone
and being distracted, but rather that they weren't
paying attention to anything at all. And to explain this point I think
I'll start with some reflections on how the routines work
on Russian warships. It is my impression that they have a kind
of old-fashioned way of doing certain things, and that they also have a very
rigid understanding of procedures. For example, I used to have a job on some
of the smaller Danish patrol boats, and one of our tasks was to escort
Russian warships through the Danish straits. And their way of conducting these passages
and their approach to navigation is… let's say mechanical. They seem to stick very closely to the preplanned
schedule, which means that they do stuff that sometimes seems weird
when you are in the real situation. Because the real world is never exactly
the way that you planned. So for example, I've noticed that some of them
really don't like to change their course when there is traffic coming across,
where the easy thing to do would be to just turn a little
and go behind the traffic. But it seems like they really don't want to
leave the line that is drawn on the map. And also the Russian warships tend to
make weird adjustments to their speed. They don't keep the speed at a constant level,
but they increase and decrease the speed all the time, and it can be
quite confusing to watch. But I think what's happening is that they
have schedule with timestamps for specific waypoints, and then they are adjusting the
speed so that they can keep the plan. And most other ships would just adjust the
speed to match the arrival time at the destination, but the Russians seem to adjust so they can
make every turn along the way at the exact time
that it says in the plan. So it's a bit anecdotal, but it's just
a personal reflection to illustrate that the Russian navy can be pretty rigid
in the way it does things. And to take another example of how a Russian
warship works, I found this video on YouTube. It is from an exercise in the Baltic Fleet,
so it is not Moskva but another ship, but it illustrates my point. I have cut away some things in this video,
because the interesting part is the images from inside the ship. And the first thing that I notice is that nobody is wearing
any kind of protective clothing. So this is not what you actually look like
when you are doing a naval exercise or operation. If we stop the video for a minute, here is an image of what you really look like
when you are at battle stations on a ship. You can probably imagine that it's pretty
uncomfortable, and it's hot, and after an hour you really
want to take it off. But this is what you are wearing
when you are ready for battle. This is the bridge on one of
the Danish frigates, by the way. Notice what the instruments look like. It looks pretty modern and computer-based. I'll have some comments about
the Russian instruments in a moment. But, ok, the point here
was about the clothing. Let's get back to the video. I understand that it's an exercise, and that
there is also a film crew walking around so it's a bit artificial. But really, you train as you fight,
and this just looks unprofessional. Ok, enough about the clothes. What I really wanted to show here is
how old-fashioned all the instruments are. This looks like something
from the 1980s. And that also means that everything depends
very much on manual interpretation of sensor data and manual transfer of data
between the different systems. Let me just pause the video here
for a moment. This is the navigation radar. Look at that. Let me just put a picture
of the navigation radar on one of the Danish frigates
next to it. I mean, even if you don't know anything about
navigation, you can still see that there are multiple generations of technology
between these two radars. About a year and a half ago there was
a collision in Danish waters where a Russian warship hit
a merchant ship in heavy fog. When you see this picture of
what the Russian radar looks like, you begin to understand how
something like that can happen. My point here is not
that old stuff doesn't work. It really does, and the performance
of old stuff can be very good. So the Russian warships can also
perform very well. But the problem is that
it is labor intensive. You need a high-quality crew, and you need
them to perform at their best for all these manual systems
to work together. And that brings me to the important question
of operator fatigue. It's actually fairly easy to get good performance
from a crew in exercises. Easy is perhaps a wrong word,
but it's a question of practice. Because when you have an exercise,
then there also is a specified amount of time, and everyone knows that
something is going to happen, so it is fairly easy to stay focused
for the duration of the exercise. But when you are on a real mission, then the
assumption becomes that nothing is going to happen. And this radar picture is basically what a
sailor in the combat information center is expected to look at
for hours without end. Most people would probably find it hard
to maintain focus for just 30 minutes. And when you have been staring at this picture
for eight hours a day for seven weeks, and nothing has happened, then it
becomes really hard to stay alert. This is the effect of operator fatigue. Even if the crew performed perfectly great
during exercises, they can still make the most embarrassing mistakes
because of operator fatigue. So a ship crew has to be alert
to defend against a missile attack. Even with the slow subsonic missiles like
the Neptune, you only have about two minutes from the first dot on the radar screen
until the missile hits. So the reaction has to be quick. The crew has to notice the missile right away,
and then there has to be an immediate reaction to engage the missile. You don't have the time to call to battle
stations or to contact the commanding officer to hear what he would like to do. So it has to be an immediate
and pre-planned response. And that's why I don't think Ukraine used
a drone to distract the crew on Moskva. If there had been a TB2 drone flying around,
then it would have been easier for the operators to maintain their focus, because there would
have been something to do. But if things were extremely boring, it is
easy to imagine that the radar operator would be half asleep or talking to the guy
next to him or smoking a cigarette or something like that, and then it could
easily take a minute before the radar operator even discovered
that there was a missile on the screen. Maybe they didn't even notice the missile
until it opened its search radar, which would have triggered an alarm. Then there would be confusion, and everyone
had to figure out what was going on, and it could be too late
to engage the missile. So I think that this perspective of operator
fatigue gives a plausible explanation about why Moskva didn't manage to defend itself
against the Ukrainian missiles. It's really hard for human beings to stay
alert for long periods of time, and our eyes are not made to focus on a screen
where nothing is happening. So if you have a system that is based on manual
processes, then you have this vulnerability. And I've been kind of harsh on the Russian
systems in this video, but to be honest, it's a problem that many navies have,
also in the West. Most western warships have more modern consoles
where the producers have put some thought into the design so it isn't so stressful
for the eyes to look at. And they also have some
degree of automatic processes. But generally there are still many
manual processes in warships. So the way to solve the problem of operator
fatigue is to use so-called TEWA-systems, which stands for
Threat Evaluation and Weapons Allocation. This is basically a decision support system
that takes care of many of the processes, so the system automatically detects a threat,
and the operator just has to press a button, and then the computer automatically launches
the self-defense weapons. But today, most warships
are very far from that, and the sinking of Moskva
is a wake-up call for all navies. It is a reminder that warships are vulnerable,
and that everyone can be caught off guard. And then it is a reminder that TEWA-systems
are really important, because on the modern battlefield with hypersonic missiles and what
have you, it is just not good enough to rely on a high number of manual processes
in the operations room. Because manual processes can work
pretty well in exercises when everybody is ready
and on their post, but if you want something that
will also work on day 41 in a war, then it has to be computer-based. Ok, I started by saying that I wanted to use
this incident as a way to talk about how the user interface could be a weakness in several
of Russia's weapons systems. And I do think that this can be one of the
reasons why we have seen some of their best weapons systems
fail in battle. For example the Pantsir air defense system
disappointed in Syria, and that could perhaps also be because of a user interface that makes
it impossible for the operator to maintain focus over long periods of time. Definitely, the console on S-400
looks like something that would make it vulnerable to user fatigue. So the user interface matters, and it is something
we need to keep in mind when we design weapons. And of course, I don't actually know that
Moskva sank because of operator fatigue and because of a bad user interface
on the instruments. It's also one of those things where it's really
hard to prove causality, and in reality there have probably been several causes that have
worked together to create this outcome. But I think it is a plausible explanation
that it played a significant role, because I am pretty certain that operator fatigue
was a problem on Moskva before the accident happened. Ok, I should end it here, I think. This video is probably way too long already. Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you again next time.
