Episode Notes:

On this episode of the Russia Contingency, Michael Kofman is joined by Doyle Hodges, executive editor at the Texas National Security Review and a retired naval officer, to discuss the recent attack with drones on the Russian Navy in Sevastopol.

The Russia Contingency is a bi-weekly podcast featuring in-depth analysis of Russia's military power and the war in Ukraine.

Episode Transcript: 

Michael Kofman: Hello everyone. Welcome back for another episode of the Russia Contingency with me, Michael Kofman. Today I have a good guest and colleague, Doyle Hodges. Doyle, do you want to take a second and introduce yourself?

Doyle Hodges: Sure. Thanks, Michael. I’m Doyle Hodges. I’m the executive editor of Texas National Security Review, the sister publication of War on the Rocks. Relevant to what we’re going to talk about today, I’m also a retired U.S. Naval officer, served for 21 years commanding a destroyer and a salvage ship.

Michael Kofman: I, in my day job, am director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses, the federally funded research development center for the Navy and Marine Corps. While I don't have a Navy service background, I do touch maritime things in my professional pursuits. With that aside, we are here to talk about the recent attack by a series of remotely operated vessels, maritime drones, what have you, against the Russian Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol that took place last week.

Doyle Hodges: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting and fascinating use of technologies that have been in existence for one form or another for a long time. I say that in part because as is typical when you see something new, I've seen a number of headlines and tweets declaring, "This changes everything," that naval tactics and strategy will never be the same. We saw similar declarations after the attack on the Moskva. What I would say is, no, that's not true, but what this was, was a particularly creative and well-executed combination of things that have existed for a long time.

Michael Kofman: Sure. What I'd say my point of view on this, as an analyst, usually, is that as soon as people begin saying that something's very new, I typically assume that's actually quite old, and it just happens to be new to the folks involved in the conversation. Very few things in my line of work professionally are new. Some things are novel, some things are interesting innovations, and it's very worth looking at, because you can combine things in your way or you can take something that existed and you can use it in let's say a much better sort of application in the way it's put together. But a few things are new. Maybe let's talk about some of these examples. People have raised the, I think 1940 raid of Toronto as an example. I've heard a couple others, and I've said it's somewhat similar to that. Do you find these analogies, do they strike you as merit-worthy?

Doyle Hodges: I think they are, yes. I would actually go back a little bit further. I think if I go back actually even all the way back to the Peloponnesian Wars in this time, you find the use of unmanned vessels to destroy vessels in port as an extraordinarily old and time-honored naval tactic. If I moved to the days of sail, we had what were called fire ships. This was also used again in the ancient times where you would take a vessel, you would rig it with flammable material, you would take it under the propulsion that it had to the mouth of the harbor with a very small crew, you'd set it alight and hopefully the crew would get away. The idea of suicide vessels certainly saw a lot of use in World War II, and so you saw similar sorts of things.

Toronto was fascinating because it proved the viability of attack on a fleet and port by naval aircraft and the use in particular of torpedoes to affect that attack. In a lot of ways, Toronto presaged Pearl Harbor, and I think the Japanese learned a lot from it. But again, it wasn't that no one had ever thought of this. Naval aircraft had existed, torpedoes had existed, attacking fleets in harbor had existed. It was the combination of these existing tactics and technologies and the execution in a particularly effective way. I think that's a good argument or a good lens through which to view the attacks this past week.

Michael Kofman: Let's talk a bit about what the attack was. My understanding of it is it was a combination, let's say simultaneously timed, attack by aerial drones, which to me generally fall into two types of categories. What is colloquially called suicide drones, to me, are generally either remotely operated aircraft or de facto cruise missiles, slower cruise missiles, actually, usually more often than not. These look much closer to slower propeller-driven cruise missiles and alongside them an attack by a series of naval drones. These were from the looks of them perhaps remotely operated systems just gauging by it. Especially because over a month ago, one of them, it looked like during maybe tests or sea trials, had actually washed up on the coast. A number of us analysts were discussing it because it looked identical to the kind of platform being used, the system being used in this attack, that is a drone several meters in length had looked like a double-contact trigger at the front of it, had an antenna, might have been a maritime version of Starlink or something similar, perhaps something of a shorter range and a video camera feed on it.

Doyle Hodges: I think that's a couple of really important things in what you just described. Number one is that these were remotely operated systems as far as we know. If in fact this had been an attack using autonomous systems, that would be game-changing. That would be absolutely different if we had something that on its own could go execute the attack, identify, acquire, and prosecute the targets, that would be unique. There are airborne systems that have some of that, but I'm unaware of any maritime systems with that particular set of capabilities on the surface side. But what we know of this and what it appears to be the case is that these were remotely operated systems.

Now, one aspect that I do think is noteworthy is the integration of air and surface platforms because this gives a much more challenging defensive problem for the units that are being attacked. In part because simply you now have to look in two domains. In part because your sensors then are divided, your fires are divided, your attention is divided. It also, perhaps echoes some of the things we saw on the attack on the Moskva where you distracted the Moskva with a UAV and then hit it with a high-speed cruise missile. This sort of combination of distraction in order to bring in the more lethal threat is a very effective tactic if that is in fact what was being done there.

Michael Kofman: Sure. I'm sorry my dog decided to chime in as we're discussing this, but he too has an opinion. But yeah, I think one of the biggest issues that you have is you often have a limitation of bandwidth and typically you can very easily have a distraction by an aerial threat that just consumes a lot of attention and what's taking place aboard the ship. Because we know for example, the Russian frigate was out, several ships were out, and they undoubtedly were very likely tracking by radar, maybe incoming drones, and were focused on them. Then coming in possibly from a very different vector, you have this set of naval drones that essentially were also remotely operated. To be honest, it's not clear to me what payload they had because typically in something that small you have to have an exchange, you're either going to have more fuel or you're going to have more payload in terms of explosive power. It looks like they were trying to use them at quite some range for something that small.

Doyle Hodges: Yeah, that's an excellent point. I saw a report somewhere saying that it had 400 kilograms of explosive, but that was on Twitter, so the ability to verify that is absolutely non-existent. But you're absolutely right that this trade-off between payload and range, and also to a degree between payload and speed, is an important one. My suspicion, and I would emphasize that this is just an intuition, is that these vessels were likely launched from some sort of base or mothership relatively close to Sevastopol. Whether that is that they were covertly brought ashore and launched from that location fully fueled or that there was a vessel, like a fishing vessel or something else, operating them from offshore.

I think that makes the most sense, simply because the transit across the Black Sea, even though it's a relatively short transit for a large vessel, is a long transit for a small vessel. It starts to chew up the fuel, those sorts of things. It also increases the chances of malfunction because the Black Sea this time of year can get pretty rough. Even in those protected areas, you can just absolutely beat the snot out of these vessels and you really want them to be able to perform when they arrive at their target.

Michael Kofman: Sure, it's a really good question because from the Ukrainian-controlled coastline right along the Black Sea, maybe by Mykolaiv is about as close as you're going to get, it's over a hundred miles potentially.

Doyle Hodges: That's just not a trip that you would make ordinarily in a small boat of that size. Again, very difficult to tell from the videos that were released, but my estimation would be that these were things no larger than about a 12-meter RIB. This is something that is not designed to travel a hundred nautical miles on its own. You really would be terribly embarrassed if you pulled off this magnificent attack only to have your vessels run out of gas in the middle of Sevastopol Harbor. I'm thinking that they had some sort of staging area, whether it was a maritime at-sea staging area or whether Ukrainian special forces had established some place from which they could launch them inside the Russian-controlled territory.

Michael Kofman: Sure, and the thing that caught my attention was the fact that they had recorded video feed and that they actually posted it, which gives a sense, first of all that they had the comm links to operate the system, but also they were essentially that they had the range and they had the durability of links to drive these drones and you saw they were attempting to hit ships. They were attempting to hit the Russian frigate with it. I don't know if they did, there are different claims. They might have struck a minesweeper, for example. They might have not. There's still, at the time that we're recording this, as many visual evidence to suggest what was hit beyond the actual aerial attack that might have hit some infrastructure at the naval base.

Doyle Hodges: Yeah, again, a lot of lack of clarity about exactly what was achieved. But I think your point about the video is really important, because so far in this conflict, the Russian navy has not played any sort of decisive role in combat operations. They've played an important role in logistics. They initially started out playing a role in denial of space with the Moskva and things like that. But in fact, the headlines for the Russian navy so far in the conflict are almost exclusively bad. The video footage that you will find is of Russian vessels being struck, sinking, the sorts of rejoinders to Russian forces who offer ultimatums to Ukrainian forces, these sorts of things. I think making this attack wasn't going to change the balance of power, but the video is incredibly important from an information operations and psychological operations perspective. It reinforces the narrative that Ukraine is on the rise, is ascendent in the conflict and has the ability to strike at Russia in an area where they had felt secure and is historically very important to them.

Michael Kofman: Sure. It shows that Ukraine still has the initiative. That they have innovative operations they're conducting. I myself spent the better part of the past week in some conversation and engagement with members of the Ukrainian special operations forces. It maintains attention to the conflict and the war and to Ukraine's war effort, which I think is quite significant for them, because anytime there isn't tremendous amount of progress being made on the ground by their forces, there's often this erroneous sense of stalemate or attention wanders. There's always the fear that this is going to get off of page A1 and somewhere into the back section. I think it's very important in terms of strategic communications and what it accomplishes for them. On the practical side, here's the part I want to get into though. What does it tell us about the naval base and the harbor defense? What's new and what's old? Usually, as I said, the things that are new often end up being the things that are old and maybe are practices and types of defenses that have long been abandoned and need to be recreated again when looking at this type of capability.

Doyle Hodges: Sure. I'll start with the thing that it was apparent from the video that the Russians did right. There was an airborne armed helicopter in the video that is shown shooting at this suicide drone as it's heading in to try to attack one of the Russian vessels. That is actually an excellent tactic to defend against this type of threat. Obviously, as you can see from this, it's a difficult target to hit. You have a moving shooting platform, you have a moving target. The target is small, and unpredictably maneuverable. But once the target is inside the harbor, it is probably your best option, not least for the fact that it's shooting down, so you're less worried about what that round hits if it doesn't hit the vessel itself. Because I don't want to be in a position where I'm doing more damage to my vessels trying to kill the suicide drone than the suicide drone could do on its own.

Unfortunately, from the perspective of the Russian navy, that's about the end of the story on what it's apparent that they did right. Fortunately from the perspective of other navies, defense against these types of platforms is not all that difficult and it's not something we don't know how to do. If you go to a U.S. Navy base today, you will find outside the piers a floating barrier that is several feet in diameter, that is connected by fences and that has an underwater component. A barrier like that is very difficult for a small vessel like these drones to breach.

Hypothetically, you could take a lead from some of the vehicle-borne IED attacks and have one blow up on the barrier and others try to follow through the gap that's created. But the fact that the barrier extends below the surface mitigates the effectiveness of that explosive, and so is likely to foul the screw of follow-on vessels. These barriers, while very simple, are incredibly effective against this type of attack. If the Russians had such a barrier, it was not effective in this case. Why not? Again, the most likely explanation from my perspective, it’s likely that they did not have the barrier. If they did have the barrier, it may not have been of sufficient size, but the defense in that regard is pretty straightforward.

Michael Kofman: It might have been also context, as it's not clear to me, I really have to go back and look at it, how far outside or inside the harbor this attack took place. They may have been trying to catch the Russian ship outside any relative safety.

Doyle Hodges: What it appeared to me, and again we're operating in an area of highly imperfect information, but it looked like they were attacking the vessels at port in anchorage. I have seen photos of the Russian vessels at anchorage where they're tied up between two buoys and the arrangement of the vessels seemed similar to that. It also is the place where it makes the most sense. Because frankly, if I'm under attack, and I have a barrier, the worst possible thing I can do is go outside the barrier. It wouldn't make sense that the Russian vessels were nearby and put themselves into harm's way by approaching these vessels. If I have a choice, and I'm concerned about a suicide boat, I want to kill it with an aviation platform, not with a surface platform.

Michael Kofman: The reason I raised that is because when you see it coming in at the Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate, it's out. It's clearly out in the water and it's maneuvering away from this drone. You can see it and it zooms up close. You can't tell for a fact whether or not it hit the frigate or not. But you can see it's actually caught the frigate out of port. It's somewhere in the waters and the frigate’s sort of maneuvering to get out of this drone’s way. At least in that case, I don't know what they might have hit inside the port. In that case, it looked like they might have encountered the frigate somewhere directly outside the harbor.

Doyle Hodges: If, in fact the vessels were at anchor and the explosive drones had gotten inside the barrier, getting underway from that anchorage is absolutely the best thing to do, because you literally are a sitting duck, well, I guess not, literally you're a sitting warship, but a very constrained warship if you remain at anchor. Whereas once you get underway, you have the option of maneuvering, maneuver is your next-best line of defense against these sorts of attacks if it gets there. Now, another one that we didn't discuss a lot is surface gunnery.

Michael Kofman: Right.

Doyle Hodges: If this was occurring outside the harbor, then surface gunnery is a pretty good option, because I'm not as worried about what I hit beyond the vessel. There exists the same sorts of gun systems with radar guidance that shoot down missiles that have been modified to operate against small boats. In the case of the U.S. Navy, that's the Phalanx close-in weapons system. Goalkeepers, a European version, the Russians have a 30-millimeter version, AGM something or another.

Michael Kofman: They have several. They have duet, they have older ones. They actually have an interesting mix of Gatling-type designs and dual-cannon type designs.

Doyle Hodges: Right, and these things are very effective against small boats because what you're doing, your chance of a kill on a single shot is quite low because it's small, it's high-speed, it's maneuvering. I want to put a lot of shots out there for it, and the more those I put out, the more likely it is that I'm going to have a lethal hit. These sort of high-speed, high volume of fire systems, the same principle you use to shoot down a missile is great. The problem, they're limited in the number of engagements they conduct by the number of shells or bullets that they carry for these systems. If there is a takeaway that I would have from this, if these systems are making a comeback, if I am a naval planner, I'm thinking about how do I increase the depth of the magazines for these systems so I don't put a commanding officer in the position of choosing between defending against an air attack or defending against a surface attack. Especially since in this case I had both going on simultaneously and these systems would be optimized against it.

Michael Kofman: Sure. I guess one of the questions is, I'm going to be a little naughty here, which is whenever you have a challenge like this, you'll have a spectrum of solutions proposed. On the one side of the spectrum, you'll definitely have the "Let's do billion-dollar lasers," as the answer to this kind of problem. On the other side of the spectrum, you can even look at, any classic Soviet-design ship or Russian ship has the AK630 rotary canon on it, that kind of thing. Then you ask, "Do you just need more ammo for it?" Or essentially, as long as that system can engage aerial targets and it can engage targets at the surface, then you already largely have most of the solution you need.

Doyle Hodges: You do, except how many of those do they have aboard? Now the Soviet navy tended to put more of these systems on their vessels than the U.S. Navy. If I take a look at the U.S. Navy, we tended to build something more exquisite and put fewer of them on there. If I'm genuinely moving into a world where these systems are an increased threat. Again, as we discussed at the beginning, it isn't that suicide votes are the new threat. This has been a threat forever. But what unmanned systems do is make them an attractive tactic for the side that's winning. It's been difficult in the past to be like, "Guys, we're doing great, so I need you to go on this suicide mission." That's just not something that persuades your sailors a whole lot. But now that I have the option of, "I need you to drive this suicide boat with a joystick from someplace that's safe and recorded on video," why wouldn't you do that?

If we're going to be confronted with that threat, we may want to think about not only increasing the magazine depth, but increasing the numbers of these things that are out there. Because putting a lot of lead out towards the water, while it may not be super high-tech, can be extremely effective. You can think of the same thing in dealing with the anti-air side of it. World War II air defense was not especially high-tech. It was pushing the boundaries of technology at the time, but by contemporary standards it wasn't. But we put up a curtain of steel. Well, that curtain of steel would be very effective against a drone. It might even prove to be effective against hypersonic systems that are flying on the edge of aerodynamic stability. Now, they're still going to hit something, but they may not hit their target.

Michael Kofman: You actually saw in the video that the Russian helicopter gunner that was attempting to circle and firing at the drone, he was actually firing all around it. It's clear that the only thing he was missing was volume of fire because you could see the splash impacts all around the drone in the video. It's clear whoever was doing had the right idea of what they were attempting to do. They were just lacking volume of fire.

Doyle Hodges: Right? Lacking volume of fire, lacking the ability to coordinate fires from multiple systems and put those in on the target. Yeah, I think that side of it is simple, you did discuss lasers and other directed energy, and that is something that the U.S. has been pursuing. I think you're not entirely wrong to attribute that to our fascination with high-tech solutions. We loves us something that is high-tech, expensive and gee-whiz. On the other hand, the advantage to a directed energy system, whether that's a laser or a high-powered microwave, is that my magazine depth is the same as how much fuel I've got. I can keep shooting them until I run out of gas. Except that I do have, especially with lasers, some issues with cooling the actual barrel of the laser itself. I can come around that with something like a Gatling gun type of design to put multiples in there and the amounts of power that I'm talking about that will actually damage these systems are enormous. This is not a trivial sort of thing. This isn't Han Solo's blaster, this is more the Death Star rep.

Michael Kofman: That's a good analogy as always. Yeah, no, I raised that for a reason because look, I'm not saying that they can't be part of a solution, they could be, but it's an important conversation to have. I've had colleagues I've worked with that are very much into the development of laser technology and it actually looks like it's moved quite a bit on the one hand. On the other hand, I’ve now spent several decades hearing how battlefield lasers and applications are just around the corner, and they're just around the corner. I'm definitely hoping to see more of it at some point my professional life. But guns and rotary cannons and various types of multi-barrel system have been with us for a very long time and they work.

Doyle Hodges: At some point the attraction of a hundred-dollar solution to a million-dollar problem as opposed to a 10-million-dollar solution to a million-dollar problem is very great and there's good reason for it. The other thing that the U.S. confronts on this, and I would highlight it here, it wouldn't be as much of a problem in an attack in an established naval port facility like Sevastopol, but it is a problem when you move into other places, is distinguishing a curious civilian vessel from a vessel with hostile intent.

That has led the U.S. also to pursue some non-lethal options to take a look at things that they call maritime stoppers. The idea that I can do things to disable the engine without harming the occupants or otherwise render the vessel not a threat, hopefully without killing everyone aboard. Now, in the case of an attack within the confines of a naval harbor, I'm not as worried I'm going to go ahead and assume hostile intent and assume that I've got somebody there who needs to be killed. But it is another piece that can make something like a high-powered microwave that will disrupt the engine an attractive option from a directed energy perspective.

Michael Kofman: That makes sense. You could see some of these systems as a close-end defense system going up on U.S. vessels. I think it's always a concern for U.S. ships because often we spend a lot of our time in allied harbors, not on our own. One of the biggest concerns was not that somebody's going to sail a hundred-mile range drone to one of our naval bases necessarily, but to an allied naval base, for sure, where our ships are deployed or typically they're on rotation. There we are often subject, I think, to the defenses and the investments of our allies.

Doyle Hodges: To a degree.

Michael Kofman: To an extent we have our own, but that too is a question mark.

Doyle Hodges: Right? Well, where that kind of comes out is that if I am in a foreign port facility that is controlled by a foreign navy, defense of the port facility is the responsibility of that navy, unless I am in some sort of alliance that brings in common defense. Defense of my vessel is still my responsibility. Once the outer defenses have been breached, regardless of where I am, I have a responsibility. Now, in the back of my mind, I still have the idea that going full berserker may create more problems down the road than I really want to deal with because what I don't want to be doing is killing or harming allies in the course of defending myself against this attack. There is a balance to be struck. But yeah, certainly the right and obligation of self-defense never leaves any U.S. vessel.

Michael Kofman: That makes sense. Here's our big question. How many articles do you think we're going to see in the next month declaring that this has revolutionized warfare, that it shall never be the same at naval combat, that naval platforms everywhere are now at risk from these types of harbor raids, and so on and so on and so forth, that all of this is new again.

Doyle Hodges: The over-under on that, I'm not sure that I would want to take the under. I think it's certainly an attractive trope, especially for the initial responses. A lot of folks love to do that, because you just frankly don't grab column inches by saying, "Yep, this is something that we kind of expected and has been coming for a long time." What I'm hopeful of is that in the more sober and thoughtful analyses that follow, there is some careful consideration of the command and control. There's careful consideration of the defensive tactics and whether ship design is sufficient to it, not because it revolutionizes warfare, but because it does make a particular type of destructive attack more attractive when I don't have to kill any of my people to carry it out. Then the other is going to be taking a look at the questions of defense against it in terms of the physical barriers and the other sorts of things that are there.

Michael Kofman: Sure. This type of attack, I think the interesting part of it for me is that it's attractive to actors that have the money, the defense-industrial complex, and that are high-end near-peer, but in particular it's very attractive to those who don’t.

Doyle Hodges: Sure.

Michael Kofman: This the kind of attack that would be very attractive to an adversary that cannot pursue an all-symmetric approach vis-a-vis the U.S. Navy, but can have the advantage of locality and can be able to invest in something like this or even buy this off the shelf. Because I'm going to bet you that almost everything in there is commercial off-the-shelf.

Doyle Hodges: Sure. I would say that this is a tactic that has already been attractive to those sorts of organizations. You had the attack on the former U.S. high-speed vessel operated by the Saudi navy, by Houthi rebels using an explosive boat in the Red Sea. You have a history of other sorts of drones and explosive boats in the Gulf of Aden. The Tamil Tiger Rebels used explosive boats as suicide vessel steering their conflicts. The only thing that this really changes is that now I can do it without the need for someone who is so fanatically committed to the cause that they're willing to die in the execution of the mission. Which again, it broadens the appeal, but I think curiously what that does is it broadens the appeal to states as opposed to these desperate non-states. Now, I'm more worried if I'm China, I may be worried about Taiwan seeing the efficacy of this to interdict amphibious shipping, or to make offloading of vessels import more challenging. An attack similar to that conducted against the USS Cole conducted against a RORO ferry would have a pretty dramatic impact there. What it changes, I think, is who is interested in the tactic.

Michael Kofman: Sure. You could see this being used in place of certain types of mine warfare in narrowly contested channels. For example, you could see Iran using this.

Doyle Hodges: Sure.

Michael Kofman: In it's ongoing sort of conflict with Saudi Arabia, let's put it that way. If you look at over the past years, various types of what looked like Iranian attacks on Saudi shipping, you can see somebody trying to use this on the Taiwan Strait, for example. Right?

Doyle Hodges: Sure.

Michael Kofman: Well within the range of that type of system, let's say necessarily in place of mining or other capabilities.

Doyle Hodges: The other interesting question that comes up is it an attack on the state if I attack an unmanned system of the state? The thing that popped in my head when you spoke of Iran is that for U.S. Navy vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz today, it is routine that you will have high-speed vessels transiting across your path. Some are Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, some are cigarette smugglers. It is just an absolute free-for-all out there. It's not uncommon to see that, we take appropriate measures to defend against it. One of the indicators that would cause me concern as the commanding officer of a vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz would be finding a high-speed unmanned vessel crossing in front of me. My tendency under those circumstances would be to say, "Well, if it's unmanned, I'm going to blow it up.”

Michael Kofman: Especially if I might have a contact fuse on that. Are you going to wait to figure out if that's true or not?

Doyle Hodges: When the U.S. had a Global Hawk-like drone shot down by Iran a couple of years ago, according to press reports, we were on the cusp of launching a retaliatory strike. How would another nation respond if the U.S. or an allied nation destroys an unmanned vessel at sea without killing any of the sailors, soldiers, or citizens of that nation, but in an act of preemptive self-defense? It's an open question and an interesting one. I could see, given the history of harassment in that region by Iranian forces of both U.S.-allied and neutral shipping them starting to push those parameters. If nothing else, just to see what will happen.

Michael Kofman: No, sure. I think that makes sense. I think it makes sense, and these are interesting, I sometimes call them in my field corner cases, right? In terms of acts of aggression. But as always, when somebody looks at something and asks, "Is that an act of war?" I always say those are political determinations. It all depends, right? Something's an act of war if your political leadership chooses to acknowledge it as such.

Doyle Hodges: Well, and you can execute these sorts of things in a way where you never do anything that is blatantly aggressive. There is nothing at all forbidden about operating an unmanned vessel at high speed across the bow of a warship.

Michael Kofman: Sure.

Doyle Hodges: Now, if I start turning in and closing toward it, I may have a very valid threat perception. At that point it's different. But do I really want to wait till it's turned towards me? It puts the country that is transiting in an awkward position, the country that is carrying out the harassment has the option of saying, "We were just testing our high-speed vessel. Why did you blow up our high-speed vessel there? We were posing no threat to you, we weren't pointing at you or doing anything." It puts you into an awkward position. It doesn't mean that it's not the right answer to defend against it, but it makes it more difficult to explain.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. What do you think the Russian navy is going to do the next time they see something that looks like a drone approaching one of their vessels?

Doyle Hodges: Yeah, I would not want to be someone fishing or pleasure boating anywhere in the vicinity of the Russian navy right now. Although on the other hand, I also wouldn't want to be in the Russian navy right now. I think one of the other things that you can take away as a lesson from this, especially, I think, as we'll start seeing more reliable reports of what the extent of the damage was, is the importance of damage control training in everyday operations. As terrible as the summer of 2017 was for the U.S. Navy, when we had two accidents that between them killed 17 sailors in preventable collisions, the highlight if there was an upside to it, was extraordinary damage control, saving vessels that legitimately could have been lost.

Similarly, when you take a look at the attack on the USS Cole by an explosive boat in port, by all rights, that vessel should have been lost. The USS Samuel B. Roberts, by all rights should have been lost. That routine training, which has not been highly in evidence in the Russian navy, is essential to being robust and resilient to these sorts of attacks, even in the event that you can't prevent them from succeeding at some level.

Michael Kofman: I think we tend to pride ourselves probably on damage control, and quality of personnel, level of training, and what have you. The Russian navy has historically had issues with maintenance. That's why their biggest issue often has been fires and the damage resulting from fires. Not that we haven't had a few in port lately, but typically it's been an issue that plagued the Russian navy more so than others. The case of the Moskva, personally, I think it was a case of one, that ship not being operationally ready, if you looked at images of it genuinely looked like its radars were stowed and probably dysfunctional. Secondarily, likely it had, this is my own hypothesis, likely had major damage control issues. That was a 1979 vessel, which probably had the best of late seventies, beginning eighties, I think she was commissioned ultimately in something like '82, best of late seventies, early 1980s Soviet technology.

I, too, am a product actually of the Soviet 1980s, I'm the last generation from there. It was never modernized. The Russian navy actually debated for a long time whether or not it was much better off saving money just to mothball her rather than keep her into service. They chose to do the bare minimum to keep her in service. But I think she had a lot of issues across the board that led to the relatively rapid loss of that ship when it was struck by two cruise missiles. But the lesson for that is always, from my point of view, damage control, training, quality of personnel.

Doyle Hodges: Maintenance is critical there, as well. It's integral to damage control. Even something as simple as the fighting of rust inside the ship and outside, because every person I know who has spent time aboard a Russian naval vessel commented on the degree of rustiness and also the degree to which they would slap paint over the problem. Well, once I get into battle, a rusted surface lacks the structural integrity of one that is not rusted and a painted surface is flammable. Once I start getting load-bearing paint and other types of shortcuts on maintaining and fixing things, I compound the already serious problems that are caused by the battle damage. That's even assuming that I have the training and the equipment nearby to deal with it. It's likely that watertight integrity has been degraded if you're in a ship with that overall condition. The ability to make that ship float is severely compromised.

Michael Kofman: Yeah, absolutely. Also, the question of the modernity of your navy, so old ships are temperamental.

Doyle Hodges: Absolutely.

Michael Kofman: All right. On that note, I want to thank Doyle for joining me for this discussion. I learned quite a bit, because I was fascinated by this specific episode, but much more interested actually in what it told us about the trajectory in naval warfare and how to have a sober discussion about what's novel, what's new, and what is not so new, and how we should shares the situation based on this most recent vignette.

Doyle Hodges: I think, yeah, we're just, everything has changed. Nothing will ever be the same.

Michael Kofman: Right.

Doyle Hodges: Yeah, we can just take a look at the fact that it makes the aircraft carrier irrelevant.

Michael Kofman: That's the most important takeaway no matter what the aircraft carrier is irrelevant... No. But thanks, Doyle. Thanks for joining me on one of the early episodes of my new podcast. I appreciate it.

Doyle Hodges: Thanks very much. I enjoyed it.

Michael Kofman: All right. Take care.