Having unbosomed myself of that dyspeptic political rant yesterday, it’s time to change the subject.
Here is an unsettling story about an encounter that the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75), an Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer, had with a Russian SU-24 in the Black Sea last April.
I have only just learned about this, and while it seems clear enough that the encounter happened, and provoked a minor squabble, I haven’t yet firmly corroborated the account linked above. (Admittedly, I’ve only been trying for about ten minutes.) I’d have thought InfoDiss might have had something to say about it, but apparently not.
If it did happen as described, this is a pretty big deal.
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I’d be very cautious about that report.
The only source for USS Donald Cook’s electronic systems having been disabled by the Russian plane is Voltaire.net quoting RossÁyskaya Gazeta.
Voltaire.net is a far-left, militant, conspirationist website, chock-full of anti-American, pro-Communist, pro-Muslim and pro-Russian propaganda. Its founder is the Frenchman Thierry Meyssan. He wrote a book which was instrumental in disseminating the theory that 9/11 was an inside job by the American government and Israel. Meyssan voluntarily gave out details about his personal life which amount to publicizing that he is a Syrian and Iranian payed agent.
Voltaire.net justs gives a reference to RossÁyskaya Gazeta, but does not provide a link, which would probably lead to a Russian language page anyway.
Knowing how Mr. Putin’s propaganda works, and how it is gobbled up and broadcast by Western sites such as Voltaire.net, with the aim of giving it a look of neutrality, I would go as far as stating that this is a flat-out lie, unless someone proves otherwise.
As far as we know, all that happened was that USS Donald Cook was buzzed repeatedly by a Russian plane which did not answer radio calls. That’s it.
This Voltaire.net “article” follows a tried-and-true method of Soviet — sorry, Russian propaganda : publish an outrageous lie, provide a link to a purported source — and be confident that enough people won’t check that this source actually backs your claim, which it doesn’t.
Most people don’t bother to check the contents of links and sources. It’s enough that a bunch of readers will fall for the story and spread it online — and by this time, the disinformation has worked. Any lone voices coming afterwards to disprove the propaganda won’t be heard.
Not even the RT video provided by Voltaire.net says anything about the Russian jet having disabled the American ship’s electronics. It just shows it sailing in the Black Sea, with no commentary at all.
And RT (Russia Today) has a huge track record of broadcasting the most outrageous lies from the Kremlin’s propaganda…
Believe me, this is just one more lie, straight from one of the nodes of Putin’s Western disinformation network…
Besides, even if Rossiiskaya Gazeta backed that claim, here is how it decribes itself :
http://www.rg.ru/about.html
So the credibility of the whole report is exactly zero. However, plenty of websites come on top of Google searches with exactly the same forged story and the same fake sources. The Internet is a formidable disinformation tool…
Thank you, Robert. I had my doubts; the lack of any positive corroboration from any of the usual military/security sites (in particular, Information Dissemination), seemed suspicious. But some of my readers are very well-informed when it comes to this sort of thing, so I thought that if I put the story up there would be some clarifying comments — as turned out to be the case.
(If I were a responsible journalist, with a professional obligation never to spread scurrilous rumors, I’d have vetted the thing for hours or days before posting it at all. I’m neither of those things, however, so I thought I’d just slap it up there.)
Next question: even if this did not happen in fact, is it possible in principle? Can an EMP weapon, at the current state of the art, be this effective?
You certainly made your reservations clear, Malcom.
Besides, trying to get to the bottom of this story has taught me a thing or two about the tricks of these people. Such knowledge is always useful.
I suspect this story is 90% bunk however we have only a limited knowledge of what Russian ECM (electronic counter measures) is capable of.
Jamming however is pretty difficult and its likely the reported aircraft does not have those capabilities.
I have read several put downs of this story from active duty sailors- the only device capable of such “tricks” is a full blown EMP of such power that the ship would not have returned to port. Such EMP devices (outside nuclear weapon explosions) are still science fiction, however it is still likely that many programs are being funded to develop such weapons. Jamming of electronics is quite common, but our vessels are furnished with rapidly changing and redundant systems to counteract jamming. It may possible that the Russians have developed sophisticated anti-anti-jamming systems which caused a cascade failure in redundant or backup systems. But not likely.
From your link Malcolm;
On 10 April 2014, the USS Donald Cook entered the waters of the Black Sea and on 12 April a Russian Su-24 tactical bomber flew over the vessel triggering an incident that, according to several media reports, completely demoralized its crew …
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Well, I reckon the crew got pretty “undemoralized” pretty quick (depending on what the chick-sit looked to be in Romania) a short four days later:
http://www.c6f.navy.mil/article890centerDonald-Cook-Welcomes-President-of-Romania.html
Oops.
Make that “48 hours later.”
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/russia-claims-its-bomber-jammed-u-s-destroyer-8b58c9b56515