On the 12th of September 2024, Naval News reported (by H I Sutton) that a Turkish-operated merchant vessel, the MV Aya, was hit by a Russian KH-22 anti-ship missile, approximately 75km south of Snake Island in Romania’s Economic Exclusion Zone.
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| Image: KH-22NA by David Holt @ Wiki Commons |
The initial news came from the X account of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and shows two images of damage done to the ship’s deck and port side. No crew was injured.
Russian missile against a wheat cargo bound for Egypt. Tonight, Russia launched a strike on an ordinary civilian vessel in the Black Sea right after it left Ukrainian territorial waters. Fortunately, there were no casualties, according to preliminary reports.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 12, 2024
Ukraine is one of… pic.twitter.com/nNCqNDVfJV
MV Aya left the Ukraine port of Chornomorsk on the 11th of September, carrying 26,550 tons of grain for Egypt, and after this attack, the vessel altered course to the Romanian port of Constanta, before resuming its journey to Egypt, clearing the Bosphrous by the 13th of September.
What is really strange about this reported event is that the KH-22 ASM is a heavy Cold War ASM designed to attack USN aircraft carriers and battlegroups. The missile, which is now only carried by the TU-23M3, has a reported 600km range, a maximum speed of Mach 4.5, and carries a 960kg warhead.
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| Image: MV Aya from vesselfinder.com |
A KH-22, travelling at Mach 4.5, hitting a 43,00 tonne bulk carrier should result in the vessel sinking immediately. How the MV Aya was able to resume its journey after a brief stop for repairs is as yet unexplained, but from a gCaptain report that a hold and a crane were damaged, I surmise that the missile struck the ship high on the side, resulting in most of the warhead dissipating itself above the vessel's hull.
Russia has used the KH-22 missile in the Ukraine ‘Special Military Operation’ to attack incredibly difficult targets such as two shopping malls and two apartment buildings, with almost 100 civilian deaths, but this is the first time the KH-22 has been used in its anti-shipping role in this conflict.
This attack has again heightened tensions in the Black Sea, although the MV Aya was outside Romania’s territorial waters when it was struck. In the short term, we should see merchant vessels staying within Romania’s territorial waters as they transit between Ukraine and Istanbul, but we could also see Ukraine retaliating against Russian commercial shipping with USVs - a crude oil carrier burning off Novorossiysk or the Kerch Straits would make for a significant reply.