Forbes: Ukraine Has Increased Production Of Fatal Missiles For Russian Fleet By 10 Times

The last victim of the Long Neptune was a unique ship.

Neptune became Ukraine's favorite missile to destroy Russia's Black Sea Fleet. More and more of these missiles are coming off the production line.

According to the Forbes article, Neptune's meeting with many Russian ships ended fatally for the enemy fleet. The last victim of the Ukrainian rocket was the unique Russian navy rescue ship Kommuna.

The Russian navy rescue ship Kommuna was launched in 1913. He was lucky enough to serve in three fleets – the Russian Imperial, Soviet and Russian. The ship survived two world wars.

However, this weekend the Kommuna was hit by the Neptune. The attack took place while the ship was anchored by the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

It looks like the Kommuna ship was lucky to avoid significant damage. Satellite imagery after the attack does not show any obvious serious damage to the hull, deck, or superstructure. If the old vessel has received any serious damage, then they are purely internal, this cannot be verified.

“Russian sailors shouldn’t assume they, or their 111-year-old rescue ship, are safe. Perhaps, during the Sunday strike on Sevastopol, the Ukrainians used the latest Neptune cruise missiles. And many more of the ground-launched Neptunes are on the way," the article reads.

Ukrainian missiles, drones, and saboteurs have repeatedly struck the Black Sea Fleet, damaging or destroying more than a dozen of the fleet's large ships, as well as its auxiliary air bases, air defences, and command posts.

Usually, Ukrainians attack the Black Sea Fleet with Neptune missiles - new versions of the old Soviet Kh-35 cruise missile, which Ukrainian industry once created for the Soviet fleet.

The basic Neptune was only a prototype at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. The first operational Neptune missile system had six truck-mounted quad launchers plus a command vehicle and 48 missile reloads, it fired its first shots in anger in April 2022, sinking the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva.

In sinking Moskva, the Ukrainian navy proved the Neptune—with its rocket booster, turbofan engine, radar seeker and powerful warhead—could work.

The 5-meter missile body contained enough fuel to fly 190 km. This was enough to target the Moskva cruiser, as the cruiser's crew brazenly sailed just 96 km off the Ukrainian coast.

The "Long Neptune"

As Russian warships retreated further from the coast as a result of the sinking of the Moskva cruiser, they became much more difficult targets. It became impossible for the crews of the Neptune missile systems to hit their main anchor points – Sevastopol and Feodosia in the Crimea, Novorossiysk in southern Russia. Sevastopol at a distance of 250 km is the closest to the Ukrainian lines.

So the Ukrainian Luch Design Bureau took up the manufacture of the "Long Neptune". This long-range missile has enough fuel to fly 320 km. At the same time, Luch tweaked the missile’s seeker to make it better at hitting targets on land and at sea.

The Long Neptunes struck for the first time in August, damaging a Russian air force S-400 air-defense battery in Crimea. During a large-scale attack last month, he targeted four Russian ships in Sevastopol, as well as port facilities and an oil depot.

The missile attack on Kommuna, a month later, may not have badly damaged the 111-year-old ship. But there will be more attacks as the war continues.

Ukrainian officials told U.S. officials they’ve increased Neptune production tenfold, meaning strike planners in Kyiv could soon have scores potentially hundreds of the missiles at their disposal.

“If just a couple of dozen Neptunes could sink a cruiser and damage several other ships as well as air-defenses and support facilities, imagine what a hundred Neptunes could do,” the article reads.