Atmosferski trik je možda pomogao ukrajinskoj raketnoj bateriji da pronađe i potopi rusku krstaricu 'Moskva'

In days and weeks after a Ukrainian navy anti-ship missile battery sank the Russian Black Sea Fleet cruiser Moskva 13. aprila kružilo je mnogo glasina.

Mnoge glasine pokušavale su da objasne kako mornarica koja praktično nema velikih brodova ili aviona može poraziti mornaricu s puno velikih — i teško naoružanih — plovila i aviona. Neke od glasina zasnivale su se na pretpostavci da je Ukrajincima potrebna strana pomoć da bi izvršili napad Moskva.

Da li se jedan od dronova ukrajinske mornarice Bayraktar TB-2 turske proizvodnje prišunjao Moskva i odrediti njenu lokaciju, 80 milja južno od Odese, za bateriju Neptuna? Da li je patrolni avion američke mornarice Boeing P-8 prenio kritične koordinate?

Neither, apparently. According to an eyebrow-raising new story in Ukrainian Pravda, the Neptune battery—a quad launcher and its associated radar—found and hit Moskva uglavnom samostalno.

Pomoć baterija učinio receive … came from nature. An atmospheric phenomenon called “temperature inversion” created a kind of channel for radar waves that allowed them to travel over the curve of the horizon and back,

“Nature itself unexpectedly helped Ukraine on April 13,” Ukrainian Pravda reporter Roman Romaniuk wrote. “The operators of the Neptune should not have reached Moskva with ordinary radar, but this is exactly what happened.”

On the afternoon of April 13, the Neptune battery’s radar operator registered, on his screen, a large blip south of Odesa. “There could be only one object of a similar size in this sector of the Black Sea—the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, the cruiser Moskva,” Romaniuk wrote.

“But how could an ordinary radar show an over-the-horizon target at such a distance?” Romaniuk asked. “As Ukrainian rocket engineers are convinced beyond doubt, nature itself sided with the defenders.”

An atmospheric inversion is a boundary layer in the air where the usual temperative dynamic—warmer air below, cooler air above—switches. Above the inversion, the air is warmer than it is ispod the inversion.

The inversion, which might occur hundreds or thousands of feet above the surface, is only so thick. A few hundred or thousand feet higher, the atmosphere reverts back to its usual temperature dynamic: higher is colder.

Think of the inversion as an invisible ceiling. Stuff tends to accumulate at the altitude where the temperature abruptly changes. Clouds and pollution, for instance. Electromagnetic waves, too.

When the weather is upravo tako and an inversion forms at the right place and altitude, a radar that normally sees only as far as the horizon—30, 40 or 50 miles, depending on the radar’s height—might suddenly see više the horizon. That’s because the radar waves are channeled over the curve of the Earth by the inversion. Scientists call it ‘ducting.’

It’s hard to anticipate these conditions. So the Ukrainian radar operator was understandably confused when Moskva first appeared on his scope that April afternoon.

But not for long, Romaniuk explained. “After a few minutes of heavy hesitation and consultation, he gave the command ‘launch’—and two missiles flew towards the Russian cruiser.”