Atmospheric Condition Enables Ukraine’s Neptune Missile To Sink Russia’s Warship Long-Range [Study]

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Адміністрація Президента України.)
Atmospheric Condition Enables Ukraine's Neptune Missile To Sink Russia's Warship Long-Range [Study]

Ukraine and Russia's conflict has been ongoing for over a year already. However, the former had successfully ranked the latter's ship due to a weird weather pattern seemingly favoring it.

How Ukraine's Neptune Missile System Sunk Russia's Ship?

On April 13, 2022, two R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles struck Russia's Moskva cruiser. During the attack, Moskva was 80 nautical miles (150 kilometers) south of Odesa and 50 mi (90 km) off the Ukrainian coast.

Ukraine's victory was unexplainable to many since the cruiser was reportedly out of its ground-based radar range. Thus, several wondered how the Mineral-U radar detected Russia's warship and brought it down. However, a team of Swedish physicists determined in a new study that the success was due to the capping temperature inversion when warm water traps cold air at a lower altitude.

The team modeled the behavior of radar signals on the day of the missile strike using weather data from that day. When radar signals bounce off the atmosphere and return to the planet's surface, they propagate at least 15% farther than the geometrical horizon.

Higher above the earth, the air is typically more relaxed. A capped temperature inversion reverses the typical gradient when cold air is held at low elevations by a cap of warmer air.

On the day of the attack, warm, dry continental air masses were carried out to sea over the excellent, moist marine layer of the atmosphere by persistent winds off the coast of Ukraine, according to meteorological data. This inversion went from the land to the location of the Moskva.

According to atmospheric simulations, Moskva appeared on the Ukrainian radar because inversion allowed radar waves to go even farther than it was designed to. It was easy to fire the two Neptune missiles and hit the cruiser once it appeared.

"The results show that atmospheric conditions must be considered carefully, even during warfare, as their impact on radar wave propagation can be considerable," the researchers added.

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Ukraine-Russia War Affects The Former's Space Industry

The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has gone too far. According to reports, it has affected Ukraine's space sector.

Ukraine lost its partnership with Northrop Grumman.

The Antares project cancellation is only one of the numerous blows that Ukraine's powerful space sector has suffered since Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. The vast Yuzhnoye State Design Office and Yuzhmash Machine Building rocket complex in Dnipro, where the first stages of Antares were manufactured, have been repeatedly targeted by Russian missiles.

The country's medium-lift Zenit rocket was previously used to launch commercial payloads from the Kazakhstani Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Russia runs. However, that has stopped since the war started.

Furthermore, Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye produce the top stages of the European Vega rocket's Vega C type. However, according to Volodymyr Usov, a space entrepreneur, that collaboration is also ending, just like Antares.

The loss of these contracts will hurt Ukraine, which has been working to create an independent space sector from Russia. Avio, the Italian company that makes the Vega rocket, has not yet stated if it will stop using Ukrainian advanced technology. However, it has already hinted that it might do so following the invasion by Russia.