Scratch 1 Special Russian Patrol Plane! To Protect Its Sea Baby Sub Raid, Ukraine Targeted A Parked Russian Il-38.
The Russian navy's Il-38s hunt Ukrainian sea drones.
On Dec. 15, a Sub Sea Baby unmanned underwater vehicle operated by the Ukrainian state security agency—the vaunted SBU—motored into a protected basin at the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s base in Novorossiysk in southern Russia and exploded just a few feet behind Kolpino, one of three Improved Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines then still active with the battered fleet.
Eight days later, it’s clear Kolpino suffered some damage. Many of the other Black Sea Fleet warships in the Novorossiysk basin have sailed away; Kolpino is apparently still there, likely because she can’t move under her own power.
The Improved Kilos account for around a third of the Black Sea Fleet ships that can fire Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities.
It was a high-stakes raid on a valuable target—and also a proof of concept for a new class of naval weaponry. To ensure the Sub Sea Baby reached its target potentially hundreds of miles from its launch point, the SBU targeted a rare Russian navy patrol plane the agency feared might intercept the UUV during its presumably hours-long voyage.
Just before Dec. 15, the SBU flew a specially equipped drone to Yeysk airfield in southern Russia, 100 miles south of the front line in eastern Ukraine, and exploded the drone directly overhead of a Ilyushin Il-38N parked on the tarmac. The four-engine, propeller-drive Il-38, a rough analogue of the American Lockheed P-3, “could have prevented the enemy submarine from being hit,” the SBU noted.
