Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It Could Happen Here and our special
Speaker 2: two part series Irregular Naval Warfare and You, where James
Speaker 2: and I teach you how you too can challenge the
Speaker 2: US Navy's dominance of the seas, or at least the
Speaker 2: coasts for fun and profit. Actually today, last episode we
Speaker 2: talked about people challenging the US Navy's coastal dominance. Today
Speaker 2: we're talking about doing the same thing for the Russian Navy.
Speaker 2: So that's going to be fun. And of course the
Speaker 2: Navy of Meanmar, which is a bit of a different
Speaker 2: class from the US and Russian Navy, but no less interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, still fun. I'd love to see about lose.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well I just like boats going down, you know,
Speaker 2: I just hate a boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, USS, many many such cases. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 3: to start with Ukraine, and then we're going to throw
Speaker 3: to James to talk about our friends in Myanmar and
Speaker 3: how they have repurposed civilian technology and stolen weapons to
Speaker 3: counter a navy without really having one of their own.
Speaker 2: But first Ukraine. In twenty fourteen, when the Russian Army
Speaker 2: invaded eastern Ukraine and took Crimea, Ukraine lost a significant
Speaker 2: portion of it's already not that impressive navy. Most of
Speaker 2: their boats were just taken by Russia, along with a
Speaker 2: number of sailors who defected. A lot of other sailors
Speaker 2: fled the region, leaving behind their homes and cities like
Speaker 2: Sebastopol to continue serving their country in a war that
Speaker 2: a decade later is still ongoing. One of these sailors,
Speaker 2: who is a Sebastopol native and had to flee his home,
Speaker 2: possibly forever, in order to continue serving his country, is
Speaker 2: the current commander of Ukraine's navy, Admiral Nazpapa. He leads
Speaker 2: a navy that is almost without manned ships, and on paper,
Speaker 2: it is utterly incapable of challenging Russia's legendary Black sea Fleet.
Speaker 2: Since the age of the Tsars, the black sea Fleet
Speaker 2: has been infamous as a pillar of Russian military power. However,
Speaker 2: also since the age of the Tsars, it's had a
Speaker 2: nasty tendency to get utterly housed by enemies that should
Speaker 2: have been able to beat it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, not the first time. It's taking an
Speaker 3: unexpected loot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It has a legendary history. That doesn't mean good. There's bad.
Speaker 2: Legendsy out there, you know, Yeah, it's well known. Yeah
Speaker 2: today that enemy is Ukraine. Since the expanded Russian invasion
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, just two years, Ukraine has destroyed
Speaker 2: or badly damaged more than a third of the Black
Speaker 2: Sea fleet. Despite having no battleships or destroyers in the
Speaker 2: sea to counter Russian naval power. They have done enough
Speaker 2: damage to reopen Odessa and at least one other port
Speaker 2: on the Black Sea to international commerce, which has provided
Speaker 2: Ukraine with a crucial economic and strategic lifeline. And that's
Speaker 2: a remarkable achievement. Sinking a third of the Black Sea fleet,
Speaker 2: and basically when you reopen a port, that means that
Speaker 2: you have taken away naval dominance from a country that
Speaker 2: has a navy and you don't. That's pretty good, pretty
Speaker 2: good stuff. Over the last two years, had damaged, irreparably
Speaker 2: or sunk seven active landing ships and one to seven
Speaker 2: active landing ships and one landing vessel. I don't know
Speaker 2: the difference. They've They've fucked up a lot of boats.
Speaker 2: They have destroyed a submarine with seed to ground capability
Speaker 2: that was docked for repairs. They have sunk a cruiser,
Speaker 2: the capital ship of the entire Black Sea fleet, the Moskva.
Speaker 2: They've also sunk a supply vessel and a handful of
Speaker 2: patrol boats and missile boats, and a number of other
Speaker 2: boats have been damaged. That's a significant rate of casualties,
Speaker 2: especially when you consider that every actually destroyed vessel we're
Speaker 2: looking at a year's multiple years lead time to replace.
Speaker 2: You cannot make naval vessels very quickly anymore. Back during
Speaker 2: the big dub Dub dose, the US did, but nobody
Speaker 2: really does that anymore, not with the big ones. At
Speaker 2: least you just roll through that. We were just yeating
Speaker 2: aircraft carriers.
Speaker 3: Into the sea, just just flotting them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it don't take them out a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's because Raisi de Rivetay was really riveting
Speaker 3: at a high speed.
Speaker 2: She was quite a riveter. So at the start of hostilities, Turkey,
Speaker 2: which controls access to the Black Sea forbade any additional
Speaker 2: military vessels or at least military vessels of significant size,
Speaker 2: from entering the area. What this means this has a
Speaker 2: significant impact on how well Ukraine strikes work, because even
Speaker 2: if Russia can replace the losses physically, they can't actually
Speaker 2: get replacements into the Black Sea easily. They can't sail
Speaker 2: new shit past the Turks. The Turks are not allowing
Speaker 2: that right now. So again, this is a situation that
Speaker 2: has kind of favored the way in which Ukraine has
Speaker 2: adapted to countering Russian naval dominance. It is possible that
Speaker 2: at the present rate of attrition, the Black Sea Fleet
Speaker 2: could be rendered inoperable in less than two years. Like
Speaker 2: if they keep going at this rates, like eighteen months
Speaker 2: or something before, there's not really much of a fleet
Speaker 2: anymore now. If Ukraine had accomplished this task with a
Speaker 2: traditional navy using standard naval tactics, this would have been
Speaker 2: an impressive victory given the disparity in resources between the
Speaker 2: two nations. But they have done all this with a
Speaker 2: mix of cruise missiles, many of which are produced in country,
Speaker 2: aerial drones, and new bespoke locally produced suicide drone boats.
Speaker 2: This irregular naval warfare has been successful enough that one
Speaker 2: Rand Corporation engineer and analyst, Scott Savatz, described the Black
Speaker 2: Sea Fleet as a fleet in being quote, it represents
Speaker 2: a potential threat that needs to be vigilantly guarded against,
Speaker 2: but one that remains in check for now. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote from a New York Times article on
Speaker 2: the topic, it brought a little more context. Ukraine has
Speaker 2: effectively turned around ten thousand square miles in the western
Speaker 2: Black Sea off its southern coast into what the military
Speaker 2: calls a gray zone, where neither side can sail without
Speaker 2: the threat of attack. James Heapy, Britain's Armed Forces minister,
Speaker 2: told a recent security conference in Warsaw that Russia's Black
Speaker 2: Sea fleet had suffered a functional defeat, and contended that
Speaker 2: the liberation of Ukraine's coastal waters in the Black Sea
Speaker 2: was every bit as important as the successful counter offensives
Speaker 2: on land and Corsona and Kharkiv last year. The classical
Speaker 2: approach that we studied at military maritime academies is not
Speaker 2: work now, Admiral Nese Papas said. Therefore, we have to
Speaker 2: be as flexible as possible and change approaches to planning
Speaker 2: and implementing work as much as possible. That at articles
Speaker 2: about a year old or so so. The Neptune anti
Speaker 2: ship missile is one of the prides of Ukraine's nason
Speaker 2: arms industry. Neptune missiles are credited with destroying the Moskva
Speaker 2: in April of twenty twenty two. Ukraine also has access
Speaker 2: to several Western anti ship missiles, including these storm Shadow
Speaker 2: and Scalp missiles. I believe the storm Shadow comes from
Speaker 2: your folks, right, James, Yeah, convention, Yeah yeah. And these
Speaker 2: seem to be pretty effective missiles. These obviously much more advanced.
Speaker 2: And these are modern naval weapons, right. These are much
Speaker 2: more advanced than, for example, the weapons to who these have.
Speaker 2: These are the kind of things that can counter to
Speaker 2: some extent modern anti missile technology. For an example of
Speaker 2: kind of how that tends to work, they used a
Speaker 2: barrage of I believe it was mostly storm shadows to
Speaker 2: rain death on the crime import of Sebastopol. Recently. Seven
Speaker 2: out of eighteen of the missiles fired made it through
Speaker 2: Russian air defenses. And these damaged or just destroyed four
Speaker 2: landing ships and a single strike. And these are sizable
Speaker 2: maple vessels. This is the most recent attack, although as
Speaker 2: after I wrote this, there was another attack on the
Speaker 2: Kirch Bridge. I'm not really sure how that took place
Speaker 2: yet that seems to have shut it down again. But
Speaker 2: that gives you an idea of like what you actually
Speaker 2: have to do. How much of these missiles you have
Speaker 2: to put in the air to get some through. And
Speaker 2: that's not too bad, right eighteen missiles seven get through,
Speaker 2: four ships down. That's a really good rate of return.
Speaker 3: Especially when you consider that, like you know, we were
Speaker 3: talking in our first episode about how the US is
Speaker 3: spending significant resources on maintaining its defending its carriers, right
Speaker 3: Russia does not have the same ability to keep good
Speaker 3: lord munitions, no, and so like that's a finite resource,
Speaker 3: right there, their means of defining that. Defending their ships
Speaker 3: and defending really anything against missiles are a finite resource.
Speaker 3: So any time you can, even if the ship doesn't
Speaker 3: get sunk, if the ship has to deploy one of
Speaker 3: these missiles, which it doesn't, which the whole country doesn't
Speaker 3: have very many of, that's win.
Speaker 2: Now, this is we are talking about irregular naval warfare,
Speaker 2: and then this is not what most people would have
Speaker 2: considered a traditional naval conflict prior to the expansion of
Speaker 2: hostilities in Ukraine. However, we are talking this is very
Speaker 2: different than the case of the Huthis. Ukraine is a state.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a massive arms industry, but it has one,
Speaker 2: and it has the support of nations with sizable arms industries, right,
Speaker 2: So we are not talking about this part. We are
Speaker 2: going to talk about the aspects of Ukrainian irregular naval
Speaker 2: warfare that are some guys that are hobbyists building shit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is not that part yet. But I think this
Speaker 2: information is kind of significant and that it shows the
Speaker 2: tactical use of anti ship cruise missiles and their ability
Speaker 2: to significantly shape an operational environment even when the country
Speaker 2: using them has minimal conventional naval assets of their own.
Speaker 2: It is largely through the use of these missiles that
Speaker 2: Ukraine has been able to reopen their black sea ports.
Speaker 2: That matters to people seeking to understand both this conflict
Speaker 2: and the future of unconventional naval warfare. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess you could say this is the future of conventional
Speaker 2: naval warfare, but think we're still leaning on the unconventional
Speaker 2: side at the moment, at least in terms of how
Speaker 2: doctrine is changing as a result of this. So maybe
Speaker 2: I should update how we're defining this. But for our
Speaker 2: purposes as people unlikely to have access to cruise missiles
Speaker 2: but significantly likely to find ourselves waging an unconventional war
Speaker 2: than having cruise missiles, it's more relevant to look at
Speaker 2: the new weapons systems Ukraine has developed that have helped
Speaker 2: them lock down the Black Sea Fleet using civilian hobbyists.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get to drones. Ukraine's conventional
Speaker 2: aerial drones are a mix of actual military hardware. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about stuff like the Bairaktar, the Turkish drone, which
Speaker 2: is like kind of like the Predator, all right, it's
Speaker 2: like an actual military product. But the majority in terms
Speaker 2: of numbers of drones that Ukraine is fielding are civilian drones,
Speaker 2: or at least drones that started out a civilian technology.
Speaker 2: A lot of these are now built to be military,
Speaker 2: but they're still based on these designs that started with
Speaker 2: people hacking and cobbling together civilian drones and outside of
Speaker 2: naval stuff. Prior to the war, there had been a
Speaker 2: lot of veterans and hobbyists who were veterans trying to
Speaker 2: convince the Ukrainian military that it needed to adopt drone
Speaker 2: warfare on a large scale, the kind of drone warfare
Speaker 2: that you can do with these these less expensive drones,
Speaker 2: and they received a lot of pushback until the war
Speaker 2: started and these guys just took to the field and
Speaker 2: started fucking murking Russian armed units and infantry and killing
Speaker 2: generals and shit. And now Ukraine has integrated in a
Speaker 2: way that everyone is going to follow. Like Ukrainian like
Speaker 2: battalions have like companies now that are drone assault companies
Speaker 2: and like line battalions, and.
Speaker 3: Within infantry you have people used artillery eating transport zebibas.
Speaker 2: Yes, all over. They have set a goal for this
Speaker 2: year producing at least a million and ideally more like
Speaker 2: two million drones, and at least from what I read,
Speaker 2: that looks like very plausible. And most of these are
Speaker 2: quite small, right, but that doesn't mean obviously ineffective.
Speaker 3: I know they buy a lot of their drones in
Speaker 3: the UK because the UK has consistently kicked itself in
Speaker 3: the nuts when it comes to like breaxit, and so
Speaker 3: the pound is significantly weaker, and so they're able to
Speaker 3: get the drones cheap a price and then drive them
Speaker 3: all the way across. Yeah, people who've done that. I
Speaker 3: was going to go join them, but never wait it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know there are a number of different
Speaker 2: like these drones earlier in the war had an easier
Speaker 2: time being effective and causing casualties in the Russians. Then
Speaker 2: later this is something that you know, kind of the
Speaker 2: hooplaw and support which I think is necessary that Ukraine gets.
Speaker 2: Lead some people to discount the degree to which Russian
Speaker 2: forces have adapted and gotten smarter. And one of the
Speaker 2: ways in which they've adapted and gotten smarter is in
Speaker 2: blocking drones and using drones of their own. You know,
Speaker 2: one of the stories the last couple of weeks is
Speaker 2: that Russia has succeeded in carrying out strikes on advanced
Speaker 2: weapons systems like samsites deep in Ukrainian territory. They've extended
Speaker 2: their kill chain beyond what they used to be capable of,
Speaker 2: and that's because they've adapted. They're also adapted with less
Speaker 2: efficacy at blocking drones and attacks on naval vessels. Some
Speaker 2: of this has been kind of funny. I want to
Speaker 2: read a quote from a Business Insider article here. Russia
Speaker 2: is painting silhouettes on naval vessels on land to try
Speaker 2: and trick Ukraine, which keeps destroying its warships. In an
Speaker 2: intelligence update on Wednesday, the UK Ministry of Defense said
Speaker 2: that silhouettes of vessels have also been painted on the
Speaker 2: side of K's probably to confuse the uncrude aerial vehicle operators.
Speaker 2: They showed there's some images of this. They don't seem
Speaker 2: convincing to me. I don't know if I think this
Speaker 2: is working.
Speaker 3: This is great. I love this. Have a cardboard navy nags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very bugs bunny. Yes, they're not working as
Speaker 2: well as bugs would.
Speaker 3: More like a hole in the side of the cliff
Speaker 3: face and crushing.
Speaker 2: Into it, keeps throwing at it. It's very funny. I
Speaker 2: mean obviously they just Ukraine just sank like or damn
Speaker 2: it badly damaged four boats. So I don't think this
Speaker 2: is I haven't seen evidence this is working well. Their
Speaker 2: actual like jamming efforts have been much more successful.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they always will be on civilian One of
Speaker 3: the thing that's really interesting compared to me and is
Speaker 3: that Ukraine tends to rely on modified off the shelf
Speaker 3: civilian drone. Right your dji is that kind of thing
Speaker 3: in Mianma because of where a lot of the PDFs are.
Speaker 3: Because but they increasingly do control the borders, but they
Speaker 3: haven't always. They have been making their own drones. The
Speaker 3: group called Federal Wings you can find them on telegram,
Speaker 3: who make their own drones and I think those seem
Speaker 3: to be less. The Jammas that the sac that the
Speaker 3: Tamadoor has are Chinese made like Jamma rifles. You see
Speaker 3: them all the time in captured weapon cases, but they
Speaker 3: don't seem to be having as much impact on these
Speaker 3: homemade drones, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's you know, I've mentioned a couple
Speaker 2: of times we're doing this in part because the odds
Speaker 2: that people listening might be involved in an irregular conflict
Speaker 2: are not zero. You know what I think about when
Speaker 2: I say that is not that there's high odds for
Speaker 2: any individual person fighting themselves in that situation, but there is,
Speaker 2: given the number of people who listen to this podcast,
Speaker 2: probably someone who is not currently involved in conflict that
Speaker 2: will find themselves that way in the future. And I
Speaker 2: based that in part on the fact that all of
Speaker 2: our friends in Myanmar who are currently fighting a war
Speaker 2: were a couple of years ago delivery drivers and you know,
Speaker 2: playing pubg online and not really thinking they would wind
Speaker 2: up as insurgents.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've spoken to a number of people who are
Speaker 3: currently fighting on in Mianma who have listened to our
Speaker 3: Meanma podcast and realized the capacity of three D printing, Yeah,
Speaker 3: to be very useful and so like, even in that sense,
Speaker 3: it's already happening. But yeah, don't know one in Memma,
Speaker 3: Like many of them said, their entire combat experiences playing
Speaker 3: pubg Yeah, now they're murking ships.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, it bears thinking about this stuff. And
Speaker 2: this brings me back to Ukraine's irregular drone warfare units,
Speaker 2: which again a lot of these guys started out as
Speaker 2: civilian enthusiasts who expanded responded to the outbreak or at
Speaker 2: least expansion of hostilities by expanding their hobby into a
Speaker 2: real world military effort that had a real world effect.
Speaker 2: Civilian drones were crucial in the Battle of Kiev, allowing
Speaker 2: Ukraine to do severe damage to that mass of Russian
Speaker 2: armored column heading towards the city and providing intel that
Speaker 2: led to the assassination of multiple general level officers. So
Speaker 2: it is perhaps not surprising that Ukraine looked to the
Speaker 2: same group of volunteer hobbyists when it came time to
Speaker 2: expand their naval arsenal. And there's a really good article
Speaker 2: I found in CNN by Sebastian Shukla, Alex Marcott, and
Speaker 2: Daria Tarasova. And I actually want to give you the
Speaker 2: title of this article. Yeah, I'll try to thriller in
Speaker 2: the show notes is exclusive rare access to Ukraine's sea drones,
Speaker 2: part of Ukraine's fight back in the Black Sea. Haven't
Speaker 2: really seen the word fight back us that way, but
Speaker 2: there you go. So I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 2: from that article. A government link Ukrainian fundraising organization called
Speaker 2: United twenty four has sourced money from companies and individuals
Speaker 2: all around the world, pooling funds to disperse it to
Speaker 2: a variety of developers and initiatives from defense to soccer matches.
Speaker 2: The entire outfit is very security conscious, insisting on strict
Speaker 2: guidelines on filming and revealing identities. Those who see in
Speaker 2: and met with declined to give their full names or
Speaker 2: even their ranks within Ukraine's armed forces. On a creaky
Speaker 2: wooden jetty, a camouflaged sea drone pilot says he wants
Speaker 2: to go by shark. In front of him is a long,
Speaker 2: black hardshell briefcase. He unveils a bespoke multi screened mission control,
Speaker 2: essentially an elaborate gaming center combined complete with levers, joysticks,
Speaker 2: a monitor, and buttons that have covers over switches that
Speaker 2: shouldn't accidentally be knocked with labels like blast. The developer
Speaker 2: of the drone, who asked to remain anonymous, said their
Speaker 2: work on sea drones only began once the war started.
Speaker 2: It was very important because we did not have many
Speaker 2: forces to resist the maritime state Russia, and we needed
Speaker 2: to develop something of our own because we didn't have
Speaker 2: the existing capabilities. So again, these are hobbyist design I mean,
Speaker 2: this guy's not really a hobbyist in anymore, but that's
Speaker 2: how he started. He's only not a hobbyist because the
Speaker 2: military recognized the value of what he was doing. And
Speaker 2: the current iterations of this sea drone weigh a little
Speaker 2: over two thousand pounds with an explosive six hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty one pound payload, a five hundred mile range and
Speaker 2: a max speed of fifty miles per hour. That is
Speaker 2: a significant weapons system. Yeah, multiple sea drones have been
Speaker 2: used to strike Russian assets in the Black Sea, and
Speaker 2: drones were involved in a successful attack that severely damaged
Speaker 2: the Kirch Bridge last July, rendering it impassable since until September.
Speaker 2: So these have had a real battlefield effect and they
Speaker 2: probably will continue to do so. The developer of these
Speaker 2: drones told CNN these drones are a completely Ukrainian production.
Speaker 2: They are designed, drawn and tested here. It's our own
Speaker 2: production of holes, electronics and software. More than fifty percent
Speaker 2: of the production of equipment is here in Ukraine. And
Speaker 2: that's really significant because you know, I think we're all
Speaker 2: aware of the difficulty Ukraine has had getting weaponry lately
Speaker 2: from the West as a result of fucking around in Congress,
Speaker 2: and so it is a necessity for them to be
Speaker 2: able to develop weapon systems like this that can interdict
Speaker 2: and counteract more advanced and expensive weapon systems and can
Speaker 2: be produced indigenously. You know, I don't think we have
Speaker 2: seen a mass suicide boat attack. I'm interested in what
Speaker 2: happens when we do, like with more significant numbers than
Speaker 2: we've seen deployed. I kind of wonder the degree to
Speaker 2: which the Russians have gotten good at spotting this stuff.
Speaker 2: I've come across at least a couple of stories of
Speaker 2: these boats like that destroyed on approach. So they certainly
Speaker 2: don't always work or even a majority of the time.
Speaker 2: But given the cost of these things, they don't have
Speaker 2: to get through the majority of the time, very much
Speaker 2: worth it right now. In that interview with The New
Speaker 2: York Times, Admiral Najpapa caution that Ukraine is still outgunned
Speaker 2: in the Black Sea. Even though the Russians no longer
Speaker 2: have supremacy, they still have air superiority. They are still
Speaker 2: able to launch from the sea long range missiles at
Speaker 2: Ukrainian targets, including civilian targets. So this is not again
Speaker 2: a situation that should be portrayed as them having their
Speaker 2: own way. Their ability to kind of interdict the sea
Speaker 2: has been the primary effects of it have been number one,
Speaker 2: the reopening of trade in the Black Sea, and earlier
Speaker 2: in the war, by locking down the ability of these
Speaker 2: landing ships to put more troops on ground and by
Speaker 2: doing damage to the Kurch Bridge, they were able to
Speaker 2: slow Russian reinforcements in Russian materiel from entering the war
Speaker 2: zone in order to and this aided in some of
Speaker 2: the advances, particularly in areas like Carson. At this moment,
Speaker 2: the situation has changed because again the Russians aren't just
Speaker 2: kind of like sitting around doing the same thing over
Speaker 2: and over again, or at least not always, and we
Speaker 2: don't tend to talk as much about successes on the
Speaker 2: Russian side of things, but that is an important part
Speaker 2: of the story. And one of the things the Russians
Speaker 2: have done is kind of acknowledge that the Black Sea
Speaker 2: Fleet may not be a fleet in being forever and
Speaker 2: certainly cannot be relied upon to handle everything they initially
Speaker 2: thought it would handle. And so Russian engineers spent a
Speaker 2: significant period of time building a sizeable new railroad that
Speaker 2: connects Rostov and southern Russia to Mariopol and occupied southern Ukraine.
Speaker 2: This has allowed them to get high volume shipments into
Speaker 2: the area and supply troops to the area along Ukraine's
Speaker 2: southern front without relying on that bridge or relying on
Speaker 2: naval landings.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the fact that Ukraine has been able to take
Speaker 2: out for landing ships recently is good. That's a win
Speaker 2: for Ukraine. It reduces Russian capability, but it is not
Speaker 2: half the same effect that it would have had, for example,
Speaker 2: two years earlier. Yeah, because Russia has also evolved, and
Speaker 2: among other things, railroads are a lot easier or a
Speaker 2: lot harder to destroy to like take out. Right, It's
Speaker 2: easy to damage a railroad, but they're easy to fix.
Speaker 2: It's not. It doesn't take a lot to get some
Speaker 2: guys over to fix a damage sunk of railroad. Fixing
Speaker 2: a bridge that's been blown up or a sunk boat
Speaker 2: is a lot harder.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, and there are people within Russia
Speaker 3: even who are sabotaging railroads, but as you say, it's
Speaker 3: like it's very high stakes for them, and it's relatively
Speaker 3: low cost for the Russian state to fix that stuff,
Speaker 3: so like it's not as effective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think this gives you an idea of
Speaker 2: kind of like what we're looking at when we look
Speaker 2: at this kind of ongoing irregular conflict is the side
Speaker 2: that does not have access to a functional navy, not
Speaker 2: able to interdict or destroy fleets, but able to stop
Speaker 2: them from dominating the coast. And when you can stop
Speaker 2: them from dominating the coast, you have effectively denied them
Speaker 2: terrain that they can act in without being countered, and
Speaker 2: you have also denied them from stopping you from acting
Speaker 2: in that same terrain, even if you don't have total
Speaker 2: safety in that area. That opens up the operational possibilities substantially.
Speaker 2: And this is something that I kind of don't think
Speaker 2: is going to get put back in the bag. Even
Speaker 2: if some of these Star Wars ass weapons systems do
Speaker 2: come out in the near future, you know, maybe that'll
Speaker 2: have an impact in the immediate term on people like
Speaker 2: the Houthis, but I don't think that it really will
Speaker 2: on you know, for example, what what Ukraine's doing right?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, Russia can't keep up with getting decent small arms,
Speaker 3: body armor, grenades and shit like it's there's no way
Speaker 3: it's going to implement some kind of massive Star Wars
Speaker 3: system over its navy. Not right now in the middle
Speaker 3: of a conflict. That's it's struggling to supply.
Speaker 2: Yep, you know what, here's an ad break.
Speaker 3: All right, we're back and we are traveling around the
Speaker 3: world's been your little globe in your head, and look
Speaker 3: for Meanma, which is of course in Asia. Now I'm
Speaker 3: talking about two different I guess anti ship sabotage or
Speaker 3: attack or two different ways the ships have been sunk
Speaker 3: in the EMMA. I'll start with the first one, which
Speaker 3: is undoubtedly the flashiest, just because it's fun. So a
Speaker 3: ship in the port of Yangon about about a month ago,
Speaker 3: so we're recording on A twenty. It's about the first
Speaker 3: of March. It was in the river in the river
Speaker 3: in yangon right, and it was carrying allegedly carrying jet fuel. Now,
Speaker 3: if you follow Burmese activists, people in the Burmese Freedom Movement,
Speaker 3: they will one of their demands for a long time
Speaker 3: has been to stop supplying the Hunter with jet fuel,
Speaker 3: which would in turn stop it being able to bomb villages, schools, civilians,
Speaker 3: PDF formations, just about anyone in the country. It's bombed
Speaker 3: at some point in the last couple of years. And
Speaker 3: they haven't been to exactly right. They haven't been able
Speaker 3: to stop the supply of jet fuel coming to the Hunter.
Speaker 3: So they've taken it into their own hands. And what
Speaker 3: they did on the first of March was that they
Speaker 3: snuck onto a boat. So two this is the story
Speaker 3: from the Burmese National Unity Government's Ministry of Defense. Anyway,
Speaker 3: combat divers snuck onto this boat planted a kilogram of
Speaker 3: TNT or a charge equivalent to a kilogram of TNT.
Speaker 3: Robert and I've both spoken to people who make explosives
Speaker 3: in memis we do. We definitely know the PDF has
Speaker 3: access to a range of explosives. They set it on
Speaker 3: a five hour fuse and it blew up in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night, and there's definitely footage of a
Speaker 3: ship on fire having blown up. Now, this is pretty
Speaker 3: remarkable for never real. This is why the United States
Speaker 3: has units like the Navy Seals, right, like the higher
Speaker 3: speed guys, because it is not easy to scuba dive
Speaker 3: across a harbor, climb onto a ship, send an explosive
Speaker 3: charge without being detected, and then leave that ship and
Speaker 3: have the charge go off and sink the ship without
Speaker 3: you being compromised, without the charge itself being like compromised,
Speaker 3: and the ship being saved. Right, this is some like.
Speaker 3: This is some classic like. This is why there are
Speaker 3: special units within the US military. Now. The PDF very
Speaker 3: obviously did not have combat divers. Two years ago, I
Speaker 3: was looking into hobby scuba diving in Yangon. The rivers
Speaker 3: in that area are extremely muddy and visibility is very low.
Speaker 3: So the people who you find diving in that area
Speaker 3: are not so much like hobby scuba divers or free divers,
Speaker 3: but they're salvage divers. And there's a whole little industry
Speaker 3: of people. And these people are diving in equipment that
Speaker 3: I would not consider safe or reliable. It's clamping an
Speaker 3: air hose in between your teeth and diving down and
Speaker 3: trying to find there's a large deposit of coal in
Speaker 3: one of the rivers in Yangon because of a ship
Speaker 3: that's sunk. There was, of course copper, which everyone all
Speaker 3: around the world, including the big Coong in Santia, stealing copper.
Speaker 3: There's iron, right, So these people are diving down and
Speaker 3: trying to collect scrap and sell that for whatever minimal
Speaker 3: amount they can.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's an extremely dangerous and extremely low income. It's one
Speaker 3: of the sort of really high risk, low reward jobs
Speaker 3: that you get in economies where people are really struggling
Speaker 3: to make ends meet. Right, So those are the only
Speaker 3: divers I can find evidence of in Yangon. I don't
Speaker 3: think it was them who did this, because you have
Speaker 3: to have a boat above you with a pump if
Speaker 3: you're diving with a rubber hose in your teeth, right,
Speaker 3: So it seems like somebody in within the They said
Speaker 3: it was a Yangon PDF, that's what they attribute it to,
Speaker 3: So that would be one of these. It would likely
Speaker 3: be an underground group within the PDF. Right. Some people
Speaker 3: living in the city who were able to sneak onto
Speaker 3: this boat set a charge and blow it up, and
Speaker 3: they would also had to have intelligence at the boat
Speaker 3: where it was, what it was carrying, et cetera. It's
Speaker 3: a pretty pretty daring mission that this is the first
Speaker 3: one like this we've seen, and we haven't seen anything since.
Speaker 3: But it's of course possible that this is a story
Speaker 3: that we're being told. In fact, they had like someone
Speaker 3: undercover on the ship, right or like they had some
Speaker 3: other means of getting this charge onto the ship. But
Speaker 3: one way or another they managed to blow up this
Speaker 3: ship carrying fuel, which is a significant detriment. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: And that's how they get most of their ship. It's
Speaker 3: not over land, especially with more the.
Speaker 2: Terrain there is just absolutely, like even with modern technology
Speaker 2: difficult to get significant amounts of shit through.
Speaker 3: They're resupplying some of their outposts that are ten miles
Speaker 3: from a town with helicopters right now, like A the
Speaker 3: terrain is burly, and B they don't have They PDF
Speaker 3: has denied them access that any time they send out
Speaker 3: a convoy, it gets attacked, so sending out plus you
Speaker 3: know that their land board crossings are increasingly falling into
Speaker 3: the hands of the PDFs and the eros, So getting
Speaker 3: stuff through the ocean is one of the ways that
Speaker 3: they can still get stuff. And if this keeps happening,
Speaker 3: then they will make that more expensive for them. And
Speaker 3: they're not exactly a wealthy hunter, even though I guess
Speaker 3: Mina Lang just made himself an air Force one recently.
Speaker 3: I was just looking at it today.
Speaker 2: He's good.
Speaker 3: He's got himself too luxury. Yeah, they called it dictator class,
Speaker 3: like he's upgraded from president class.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, he has in many ways. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's one way that the PDF has been blowing up
Speaker 3: ships in the yang On. But Robert, do you know
Speaker 3: who else has been blowing up ships in the in Yangon?
Speaker 2: Well, we are sponsored entirely by the British Navy circa
Speaker 2: the mid eighteen hundreds, so I would guess them, that's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Lots of repressed, repressed feelings and growing.
Speaker 2: Up a lot of cabin boys with deep trauma. Anyway, it,
Speaker 2: Eric Rebeca.
Speaker 3: We hope you enjoyed that. That pivot one of our
Speaker 3: best ones yet. And we're talking about the Arakan Army now,
Speaker 3: So the Arakan Army are not to be confused with
Speaker 3: the Arakan Rahine of Salvation Army. Different group. Arakan is
Speaker 3: the name of what is now a kind state before
Speaker 3: it was colonized by the Burmese. That was I think
Speaker 3: Arakan was a king before it was colonized by the Burmese,
Speaker 3: so that that's where that refers to. It's a geographical
Speaker 3: appellation rather than like necessarily an ethnic one. The Racine
Speaker 3: would be the ethnic group. So what the AA have
Speaker 3: done is sunk. I think at least four Hunter ships now,
Speaker 3: and most of these ships are kind of they're like
Speaker 3: the They look like big Higgins boats. They're like landing
Speaker 3: craft or like car ferries, like flat bottom with a
Speaker 3: bow that goes down. Right. I ride around a lot
Speaker 3: in the Marshall Islands in little landing craft like that
Speaker 3: because they can get them in. They don't have like docks,
Speaker 3: so they can just ride that right up to the
Speaker 3: beach and then drop the front and off you go.
Speaker 3: And they use them a lot. The Hunter doesn't have
Speaker 3: like per se marines that they don't have maritime infantry,
Speaker 3: but they use them to transport their regular army around, right,
Speaker 3: and they use them to transport them up river. They
Speaker 3: also use them a lot in Rakhine State to shell
Speaker 3: AA positions and any townships that they've decided they want
Speaker 3: to wipe off the map and kill all the people
Speaker 3: in right, So, these these boats have been a real
Speaker 3: thorn in the side of the Arakan Army. After Operation
Speaker 3: ten twenty seven when they joined with two other groups
Speaker 3: to form the Three Brotherhood Alliances A launch attacks on
Speaker 3: the Hunter all over MA. And so what they've been doing,
Speaker 3: it appears, is using underwater mines to think these ships,
Speaker 3: which is interesting, right. I guess the mines are like
Speaker 3: a very old technology, right, Like it's probably one hundred
Speaker 3: years plus underwater mines have existed. It seems the way that, like,
Speaker 3: the reason they're able to get away with using what
Speaker 3: is their relatively dated technology is because the Hunter doesn't
Speaker 3: expect to encounter anything, right, and so has not equipped
Speaker 3: its ships as such. Like they do have stuff like submarines,
Speaker 3: but that's not what's getting sunk. What's getting sun to
Speaker 3: these big kind of landing craft riverboats, And it seems
Speaker 3: that they're using mines and then once they disable the ship,
Speaker 3: they're then attacking it with small boats, small arms like
Speaker 3: indirect fire mortars and stuff. I saw one post that
Speaker 3: suggested they'd use which is pretty cool if they did.
Speaker 3: The Burmese military has these like tank destroyers.
Speaker 2: It's a tank, it's.
Speaker 3: What it is. And they've captured the AA has captured
Speaker 3: a number of these, right, and I've seen suggestions that
Speaker 3: they're using some of these on like they just set
Speaker 3: up an ambush along the banks of the river, right
Speaker 3: and as a ship comes in they can they can
Speaker 3: maybe disable it with a mine and then attack it
Speaker 3: with those. But there are videos online you can find
Speaker 3: them of the AA sinking these ships. And then they've
Speaker 3: done some amazing drone photography of like they obviously they
Speaker 3: then like staged their units on the ships, like all
Speaker 3: saluting the drone and they had the Arakan Army flags
Speaker 3: and they're actually really cool photos of them taking these ships.
Speaker 3: But again, like I think this might be the first
Speaker 3: sinking of a Bermese naval ship since since independence from Britain.
Speaker 3: Like I can't think that they were. They al really
Speaker 3: haven't played much of a role at all in its
Speaker 3: conflicts with the Eros, aside as from like basically kind
Speaker 3: of just shelling places when they want to do that.
Speaker 3: But there's never really been any significant opposition to them,
Speaker 3: and that's changed now they have to obviously just like
Speaker 3: everywhere else, watch out for drones. Drones have been used
Speaker 3: to a massive extent in Myanmar, and like the AA
Speaker 3: doesn't have as many like associated PDFs, I haven't seen
Speaker 3: them doing as much of the drone stuff as the PDFs.
Speaker 3: The pdf tend to be like the more urban folks, right,
Speaker 3: the younger folks and the gen Z folks that we've
Speaker 3: spoken about before, and a lot of them have been
Speaker 3: very savvy with their use of drones. Like I said,
Speaker 3: you can look up Federal Wings and you can see
Speaker 3: them dropping bombs with drones on all kinds of stuff
Speaker 3: with their heavy metal soundtracks that they like. But what
Speaker 3: it wasn't even drone here, It's pretty simple. It was
Speaker 3: just mine. So things they do love mines and meat
Speaker 3: of mines all over that country, but in this case,
Speaker 3: these I guess, massive what mines in the rivers. Given
Speaker 3: that the Hunter is the only only entity sending big
Speaker 3: boats up and down, you could set them at a
Speaker 3: certain depth where these small boats wouldn't hit them, and
Speaker 3: eventually one of the Hunter boats is going to hit them,
Speaker 3: I guess. And so it's pretty basic technology, but it's
Speaker 3: still a massive step forward in terms of like a
Speaker 3: place where the state had complete impunity. It now doesn't right.
Speaker 3: They can't just cruise up and down these rivers shelling people.
Speaker 3: They were actually using some of the ships to evacuate
Speaker 3: soldiers and their families from a position, and the soldiers
Speaker 3: they were trying to, like, rather than surrendering, they were
Speaker 3: trying to evacuate them and move them to somewhere else.
Speaker 3: The AA asked them to surrender, and they didn't. They
Speaker 3: tried to evacuate them. So then they mined the ships
Speaker 3: and took those out. I think the hunters like tried
Speaker 3: to spin this as like the AA is attacking civilians,
Speaker 3: But I think a Burmese Navy ship with a Burmese
Speaker 3: Navy flag, when those ships have just been shelling you,
Speaker 3: seems like a legitimate target to me. And I think
Speaker 3: it's very hard. It's you know, it's a hunter, but
Speaker 3: children on one of their naval ships rather than the
Speaker 3: AA who attacked the ship because it had children. You
Speaker 3: can hear in one of the things you can hear
Speaker 3: the AA are like attacking the ship in small boats
Speaker 3: and they're shouting like there are children on board, and
Speaker 3: you can hear them acknowledging it, and there are videos
Speaker 3: of the AA rescuing people who jumped overboard, rescuing them
Speaker 3: from the river, and then like, I guess they just
Speaker 3: held as POWs.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool. It's interesting. Obviously, not many of us
Speaker 3: have access to underwater mines, but you know, maybe in
Speaker 3: a fictional future we might.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there you go, folks. Uh, this has been
Speaker 2: a regular naval warfare, and you a podcast about a
Speaker 2: regular naval warfare, and you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, send us to your videos of yourself in irregular
Speaker 3: naval war Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, go out there. Look how about this, Every listener
Speaker 2: go out and sink one naval vessel, you know, don't
Speaker 2: matter who's just any boat. Any go sink a boat,
Speaker 2: any boat, Take a fucking superyot, knock it out. You
Speaker 2: see a dinghy, take that fucker out, people kayaking, fuck
Speaker 2: them up, you know. Ban on a boat, absolutely, a
Speaker 2: banana boat for sure. One of those weird duck boat
Speaker 2: car things that they have in some city. Oh yeah, actually,
Speaker 2: you know what, you don't need to do anything with that.
Speaker 2: That'll kill everybody on board on it. Those things are
Speaker 2: dead traps. Just pray for those people. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Any other boat. Yeah, you see a doughnut, you know
Speaker 3: behind behind a speedboat?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, market Anyway, Everybody go away.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.