The Rostov-on-Don submarine is damaged so badly that it will follow the Moskva
The submarine has suffered such large holes that they call into question the possibility of restoring the submarine at all
Photos have appeared in the public domain that clearly demonstrate the damage to the Russian diesel-electric submarineRostov-on-Don, which was hit by cruise missiles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on September 13, 2023, during a strike on the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol.
As it turned out, the actual extent of the damage to Rostov-on-Don exceeded all the wildest assumptions. There are large holes in the bow of the submarine, and in the center of the hull as well.
Until now, only satellite images of the waters of the temporarily occupied Sevastopol, taken after the effective attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on September 13, 2023, were publicly available. Based on those images, one could only assume that the Rostov-on-Don submarine had sustained damage to its bow and that the nature of the damage meant that it would require many years of repairs at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now we can see that the real scale of damage to this racist ship turned out to be orders of magnitude greater than previously imagined, and this actually means that the possibility of restoring this submarine is in doubt.
Such large-scale damage to the bow means that all elements of the submarine’s armament, including torpedo tubes that can launch Kalibr cruise missiles and fire control systems, may in fact be destroyed.
A hit in the central part of the hull could mean that all the ship’s controls and even the battery compartment could be destroyed.
The scale of the damage is such that there are only two options for the future of the Russian submarine Rostov-on-Don: either rebuilding the ship from scratch or, more likely, writing it off as a “spare parts donor” for other submarines in the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
