Watch A Russian Navy Missile Explode Like That American One Last Week
An American missile exploded just after launch from the USS The Sullivans last week, simultaneously making you feel better at work for your own screwups and providing a spectacular photo. Not to be outdone, the Russian Navy suffered a similar mishap this weekend, and this time, there's video.
Now that Russia unilaterally decided that the Crimean peninsula belongs to the Motherland, it's started hosting military parades in the newly-designated Crimean "federal city" of Sevastapol. So in honor of Navy Day, the Russian government sent a number of ships down the coast for a parade. For some reason, that parade involved firing real ordinance, which went well until the Burevestnik-class (NATO reporting name: Krivak) frigate Ladny tried to shoot off one of its SS-N-14 'Silex' anti-submarine missiles.
From the angle up top, it looks as if the missile just completely disintegrates upon launch, but from this second angle, you can see the missile actually careen around wildly before falling apart:
No one was injured in the incident. Luckily.
But if some schadenfreude can be discerned from all of this (and I know we all are looking for it, because it's Monday and Monday sucks), it's that the missile launch was supposed to be the star of the show for the Russian Navy. In fact, the whole thing was supposed to demonstrate just how far Russia's military had come from the Bad Old Days of the 1990s, according to the Moscow Times:
Making the incident particularly embarrassing for the Navy, the Black Sea Fleet had praised the planned launch as a show of its strength, saying that the firing of a missile would be included in Sevastopol's Navy Day festivities for the first time in more than 10 years.
"As part of a demonstration of the fleet's combat capabilities, after a long break, missile fire will be conducted from a complex of anti-submarine weapons against an imitation target by the guard ship 'Ladny,'" the Defense Ministry's Southern Military District said in a statement last week.
Poor Russia. I'm sure one of your parades will go right, eventually.
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