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Warships are peculiar; you do not need to commission them in a port. Prize ships were commissioned as warships at sea during both World Wars.
This means that the Ukraine could take possession of a merchant ship (ideally a small container ship), load and equip it at sea, commission it as a Ukrainian warship and start raiding Russian maritime trade in the Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and maybe even the Pacific Ocean.
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| German WW1 merchant raider "Wolf"
(first raider with aircraft onboard, 451 days patrol) |
Some additional fuel tanks, some containers and a helicopter for a boarding team of at least four (two for bridge and two for placing demolition charges with anti-tampering devices) would suffice. Most light turbine-powered helicopters (including almost all civilian ones) would be satisfactory. The helicopter would enable the merchant raider to be 30...100 nm away from the action and thus quite safe. Ships could also successfully be engaged with unguided rockets (bigger than 80 mm calibre) if and once counter-boarding measures are applied.
Things such as fancy sensors for the helicopter or a radio jammer would be unnecessary. The 'military' equipment could consist of civilian pistols and carbines and rather simple demolitions equipment (linear shaped charges would be extremely effective). The costs could be quite marginal if an old ship was used.
One could equip such a merchant raider much more lavishly, including recoverable high performance drones, multiple helicopters capable of dropping depth charges (torpedo-like effect of sinking a ship) with doorgunners and the like. There's no used one on the market, but imagine the propaganda value of using a black-silver Bell 222 as boarding helicopter.
The West would not even be implicated by providing the ship, providing weapons, providing non-public maritime intelligence. It wouldn't even need to resupply the merchant raider, which could easily begin the patrol with a year's worth of food and could occasionally siphon fuel from a prize ship before sinking it. Theoretically, Ukraine would even be legally able to keep prize ships as bounties and sell them off for profit (which is much more environmentally friendly than sinking, especially with oil tankers). It might also occasionally keep a prize ship to create yet another merchant raider. New crew members could be taken in just outside territorial waters (3 nm off the coast) using cheap boats.
I am not 100% sure, but it might even be possible in international law for Ukraine to issue letters of marque to privateers, but I suppose few people would risk a reservation on the GRU's assassination list by becoming anti-Russia privateers.
The decrepit Russian navy and satellite fleet would have great difficulty to find, track and engage such merchant raiders if they stay far-enough away from Russian coasts and if Russia doesn't receive substantial intelligence aid by the Chinese. They would likely eventually catch a raider or two, but that would not mitigate the damage done much.
The difficulties that Russia would have with such Ukrainian merchant raiders would create a giant embarrassment in addition to the economic damage.
related:
/2015/09/naval-commerce-raiding-today.html
/2021/12/future-naval-commerce-raiding.html
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A great idea in theory, but I'm unsure how the West (and neutral states) would take it. I imagine the Ukrainians would have done it by now if their backers were okay with it.
ReplyDeleteThat's quite an interesting proposition...IIRC the vast majority of the ships the Russians use to sell oil and other commodities are from a third party to easily bypass the sanctions. I don't know if they can attack them legaly, being that technicaly they are at a state of war, it's possible... They could use the Q-ships system to harrass ships if the Russian Black fleet would have been efective in putting a naval blockade...but they seem to be content to rest in a corner after loosing so many ships... seems that Jeune École 2.0 style harrasment from the coast is enough.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically though the loss of even a couple of ships may cause almost all the rest to switch flags, to Russia's detriment
DeleteIt's a war in all but name. Ukraine could board & seize ships that are not registered to Russia (ship registration is a farce anyway), but are exporting Russian goods.
DeleteAnother theory with the underlying assumption that the enemy won't reply in kind.
ReplyDeleteRussia already attempted to blockade Ukraine and learnt that the West doesn't tolerate a blockade of grain exports that would force famines in many poor countries.
DeleteRussia already played all its conventional cards and the nuclear cards are self-defeating - its hand is empty.