The open war between Russia and Ukraine has revived military concepts that were now considered obsolete by more modern (thought to be such) themes, such as counter-insurgency and the fight against terrorist, criminal or hybrid organizations. With the exception of Battle of Ilovaisk, 2014, when the Russian army intervened to help the Donetsk militias with significant results, and without considering the war in Georgia in 2008, where the disproportion was too marked to affect military theory, it was not since 1991 that a similar conflict had been witnessed in Iraq. Shifting attention to the naval sphere, we go back to 1982 to the Falklands to find a conflict with this level of losses on both sides.
An aspect of particular interest is found in the ability of the Ukrainian forces - which since the first days have lost the very few means still available - to compromise Russian naval activity in the Black Sea by hitting the port of Sevastopol and other installations with such frequency as to force the enemy fleet to move away towards the east. The sinking of the cruiser Moscow in April 2022 (cover photo) had a major media impact, but it should be considered that it was a modernized unit dating back to the XNUMXs, still fearsome but proven unsuitable for a modern war scenario. The latest proof in chronological order that a battleship can be destroyed by attackers equal to a tiny fraction of it: remember the Habsburg St. Stephen sunk by an Italian torpedo boat in 1918, or the Japanese Yamato, the world's largest battleship, destroyed by anonymous U.S. carrier-based aircraft in 1945.
Of greater note is the skill with which the Ukrainians have inhibited the use of Sevastopol. This inconspicuous success, spread over a time axis dotted with more or less notable actions, proves that even twenty-first century technology cannot protect crucial installations close to the battlefield. A vulnerability that has already been amply demonstrated in the past and that should be considered in a predictive perspective of future developments.
"The Cockleshell Heroes"
English film from 1955 (“Heroes on Walnut Shells”) is based on the practically suicidal mission with which in December 1942 some Royal Marines penetrated the French port of Bordeaux using canoes. They managed to sabotage some of the boats used to force the naval blockade, but at a very high price. Two drowned, six were captured and shot by the Germans, only two managed to reach Gibraltar. Despite these losses, the operation was a success. Almost the same fate as Operation GA 3, known as the “Execution of Alexandria”, which took place a year earlier. Six Italian raiders disabled the battle nucleus of the Mediterranean Fleet, an action that made the history of the special forces. All captured, fortunately no one shot.
It was mainly the Italians and the English - not coincidentally those who had the smallest conventional forces - who focused on raids against high-value targets. Ports, airports, bridges, research facilities (the destruction of heavy water facilities in Norway). Very often it proved impossible to rescue the raiders, who in the best of cases ended the conflict as prisoners of war.
In the modern Ukrainian scenario, these actions find a certain rationale, even if largely replaced by the use of unmanned vehicles, to save personnel who are difficult to replace and because of the moral damage that these losses would entail.
In August 2023, there were reports of a raid by a small unit, probably part of the GUR (Ukrainian military intelligence), which hit the western tip of Crimea, killing several Russian soldiers and destroying material, apparently also an S-400 anti-aircraft system. According to the Ukrainian version, the raiders reported no losses. Also on this occasion, a flag was raised for propaganda purposes.
In general, risks have limited the use of landing forces to a few very specific targets, such as oil facilities. off-shore recaptured in September (used by the Russians as platforms for anti-aircraft systems) or the continuous hit-and-run raids across the Dnipro River in the Kherson area, to capture prisoners and prevent the enemy from dominating the bank.
In the summer of 2022, the reconquest of theIsland of the Snakes was carried out with air and missile strikes that made the occupation untenable, not with the use of landing forces that would have encountered enormous difficulties. Other high-impact operations, such as the destruction of ammunition depots on the peninsula or the sabotage of the Kerch Bridge with a truck bomb, were carried out with the cooperation of Ukrainian intelligence services and resistance movements on the ground, and cannot be considered military actions.
The use of very small, highly trained units still has a purpose in a modern conflict between two sovereign states, especially when it is necessary to support the morale of the home front (Churchill's extraordinary and operationally useless slogan "set fire to Europe" in 1940) or for operational purposes limited to a specific sector of the front. The English decision to use raiders at Bordeaux, as for the Italians at Alessandria, was the only possible one after the air alternative had proved too imprecise or simply beyond the range of existing aircraft.
Crimea in 2022-2024 does not require the sacrifice of heroes, on nutshells or on “pigs”, because it is well within the range of weapons systems such as the air-surface missiles that hit the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, or several naval units at anchor, or the continued use of unmanned maritime drones whose destruction by defense systems constitutes at most a setback. A situation that, very distantly, can rather recall the use of French artillery in Toulon in 1793 that prevented the movements of the English fleet in the city's port.
Successes and failures of the frontal assault
At the opposite end of the small, silently inserted nucleus, there is the landing of several hundred or even thousands of men. Something much smaller than the Normandy landings, but capable of bringing ashore a number of men sufficient to upset the enemy's device.
In the Second World War, one can point to the action against the port of Saint Nazaire (1942), crowned with success but costing very heavy losses, or the much more ambitious and much more unfortunate landing at Dieppe, which ended in disaster from which at least the necessary lessons were drawn for Normandy two years later.
Thinking of something similar in today's Ukraine is difficult to say the least, partly because it is unnecessary—Sevastopol has been neutralized with the use of drones and long-range weapons—and partly because it is technically borderline impossible. An action against the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia, if successful, would be a tremendous achievement. Even simply transporting the necessary forces, on the other hand, is beyond the Ukrainians' reach, not to mention the risk of being overwhelmed by Russian defenses and the enormous difficulty of bringing back those who survive.
Ukraine 2024 is not the British Empire of 1940, which was able to absorb one military disaster after another, albeit with serious trauma. A frontal assault was in fact carried out against the Kursk region, thousands of kilometers from the coast, and analysts and observers are wondering what the purpose is, beyond the undoubted wave of enthusiasm, of a victorious initiative that now seems to be quite bogged down. Transferring this scenario from the land front to the sea front would end in disaster, which is why (if one does not imagine an improbable land breakthrough from the Perekop Isthmus) a military reconquest of Crimea is almost certainly impossible.
For their part, the Russians attempted a reckless move behind enemy lines literally on the first day of the war, storming Hostomel airfield with airborne forces that were supposed to be joined by a land column and approach Kiev from the north. A re-run of Montgomery's Operation Market-Garden in Holland that ended the same way, with reinforcements never arriving and the bridgehead destroyed. A failure that irreparably ruined Russian plans for a blitzkrieg.
Sevastopol, and the serious and continuing damage suffered by the Black Sea Fleet, must be considered from both an offensive and defensive perspective.
From the first point of view, the ability that has been demonstrated for centuries to hit enemy ships in their ports, think of Francis Drake's raid against Cadiz in 1587 (image), has been exponentially increased by new technologies that - in the eternal duel between sword and shield - have left the latter behind. From a defensive point of view, however, these events should not be considered limited to the Ukrainian scenario alone.
Without considering the web of underwater cables for data transmission, Naples is home to the US fleet in the Mediterranean and to block Suez it was enough for a gust of wind to send a container ship aground. There is no shortage of potential targets, nor actors who might intend to hit them, nor the attack capabilities capable of catching a port unprepared.
Naval warfare between states has become a reality again, in forms and with methods that require the necessary adaptation to counter the threats posed to fleets in the operational area (a risk that the US must consider in the Western Pacific; the US Navy is the strongest in the world, but the last time it really fought was 1945) as well as to the economic security guaranteed by the sea lines of communication.
Sources
Ford, K. (2009) “The Day of the Commandos. The Impossible Challenge”. RBA Italia/Osprey Publishing
Ford, K. (2009) “Prelude to D-Day. Amphibious Disaster”. RBA Italia/Osprey Publishing
Ashdown, P. (2013) “The Secret Military Operation That Changed History”. Newton Compton Editori
Images: YouTube / web