Originally Posted by
dead_pan
There was a concentration of NATO ISR effort along the very eastern edge of Romania in the days prior to the attack on the Moskva (as discussed on various spotter blogs). My working assumption at the time was that 'we' were trying to get a handle on events in eastern Ukraine, but who knows?
That said, Moskva's whereabouts would have have been relatively easy to determine, given that it is one enormous radio/radar emitter.
What is intriguing is the deployment of six USN EA-18G into Poland a few weeks ago. Why these particular aircraft, given the USAF have their own EW assets? USN keen to get in on the action, or maybe they have some specific capabilities useful for engagements with Russian naval vessels?
I and others have commented on social media that Russia could quite easily - and credibly - implicated NATO in the sinking. The fact that they didn't even hint at this speaks volumes.
In the middle of the pond, with no surface threat worth a damn, wondering why they would not have emcon in force. What would they be radiating for? just curious. As soon as they radiate on the topsail etc, they are able to be identified and triangulated, and even in a presumed low threat environment, they would not have a pressing reason to break emcon. Unless things have changed since the days we did that sort of stuff. I can imagine they would radiate the palm frond intermittently, at least in sector scans, but beyond that, what was the benefit to them, unless they knew that there was a specific threat. The story of the prior days events may give a reason for that, but golly, anything beyond a random search transmission would be asking for a bad day. May have some bias on that, my recollection from chasing boomers at the end of the cold war was the USSR boat drivers were pretty good, their rides were noisy, and the skimmers were happy to track us with their weapons at all times, they seemed quite competent then, prone to sunbathing on the fantail.