The US Navy, speaking of the Russian threat in the Black Sea, is actually referring to Moscow’s ability to quickly turn almost all of this water area into a zone of destruction with its anti-ship missiles, writes The Drive.
The American publication has tracked Moscow’s reaction to the last call of a pair of US Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers Donald Cook and Porter into the Black Sea. In particular, in The Drive publication, in addition to Russian combat aircraft equipped with anti-ship missiles, coastal missile systems (DBK), for example, “Ball”, are called a threat to American ships.
The publication is confident that in the Black Sea region Russia has concentrated one of “the largest concentrations of anti-ship missile capabilities in the world.”
Donald Cook entered the Black Sea on January 23rd. Porter – on the 28th. After their call, the Russian Armed Forces held exercises in the Black Sea. Later, a Russian Su-24 bomber flew next to Donald Cook.
In November 2020, the USS Arleigh Burke-class destroyer John Finn successfully shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) nuclear warhead simulator over the Pacific Ocean using the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) Block IIA anti-missile missile. To defeat the target, the Command and Control Battle Management Communications (C2BMC) system was used, which allows the destroyer equipped with the Aegis missile defense (ABM) system to receive guidance data from extravehicular sensors.