This is Ursa Major. It sank in 2024.
Well gee golly.
A Russian cargo ship carrying nuclear components for North Korea has a ‘surprise accident’.
I can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to arrange that accident, can you? I mean surely everyone wants North Korea to have nuclear stuff… Oh wait…
“You are experiencing a car accident”
That poor ship fell out a window
Very sad, always from same suite too.
Why would they go the long way round?
Does not make sense for alleged cargo. Just wait till summer and use arctic route, or use a train.
Pretty much, I mean North Korean troops were going by ship to Vladivostok, so why not just overland rail to Vladivostok then ship to NK?
Seems much easier than sending it around the world through potentially hostile waters
Root cause analysis determined that the reason for the incident was that it was a ship built in Russia.
The front fell off!
Since it’s a Russian ship, I’d like to point out that that is very typical.
Is something like that very typical?
Idk for other ships but their aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov became a meme for always being down for maintenance and/or on fire
Oh no - not typical at all.
Now that’s how you renege on a gift!
Those ship attacking killer whales are now a nuclear super power.
killer whales with nuclear powered lasers.
The going to add lasers
Apparently they just do that sometimes.
Oddly, the bottom of the ocean is a pretty good place to store a nuclear reactor. Which is lucky because Russia already had several of them down there and there are two American nuke subs on permanent patrol.
It’s hardly going to be fuelled
Actually the ocean contains billions of tons of uranium
Old news
don’t know why im geting downvotes, this is old news.
Yeah, isn’t this from last year? Or did it happen again? That photo looks familiar.
I hope it was Orcas.
The orcas have only been going after small sailboats (the kind small enough for a middle-class family to afford, if they own it instead of a house and live aboard full-time). They aren’t the class conscious anti-oligarch crusaders everybody wants them to be.
The phrases “middle class family” and “live aboard full-time” do not sit well with me.
A small boat is (well, was, these are probably ~2008 prices I’m remembering) cheap. It’s probably been ‘patched’ by marinas and such, but at one time you could get a small sailboat for 10-20k, and get electricity+dock space for a tenth of the price of an apartment’s rent. You would be living in ~200 square feet at best (and probably less than that) but it was doable. For a family of three, you could probably swing that lifestyle with a 40k boat, which is still well under a typical house. Again, it would be ridiculously small, but it’s possible. A friend of mine grew up on a sailboat like that.
I know a couple who both cashed in all their retirement to buy a boat and sail from place to place; their kids are ‘home schooled’ on the boat. they are not rich by any stretch, but they’re living their dream. not my idea of fun but, eh? the husband now just does odd marine jobs to keep their house floating. I respect their desire to live their way.
imagine how impressive the orcas that did this are.
we should give the orcas torpedoes… and a list of targets lol
they have war bears, giant squids, dolphins, and now orcas.
Let me just leave this here:
South Korea’s ADD showcases new Supercavitating Torpedo at MADEX 2025
ADD said that the development of this supercavitating torpedo is currently about two-thirds complete, and that after further maturing the torpedo’s stabilization control technology, it will finally secure the design and testing technology of the test body.
…The MRXUUV (Mission Reconfigurable eXtra-large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) currently under development by ADD could serve as testbed.
According to an interview with the ADD chief researcher, the supercavitating torpedo displayed at MADEX 2025 is an actual tested torpedo, designed in size to fit in a UUV, capable of being guided (in the initial phase of the launch, at low speed), and is being developed to sink enemy main surface ships with ultra-high-speed kinetic energy without a warhead.
The publicly released timeline doesn’t line up, but the motivations do.
What would a South Korean torpedo two-thirds of the way through development today have anything to do with a Russian ship sinking off the coast of Spain a year and a half ago?
I’d wager this was Ukraine’s handiwork using conventional or drone weapons.
The reactors were bound for North Korean subs giving a pot of mitivation for the South Koreana. The Spanish claimed evidence of a supercavating torpedo strike.
Also the Ukrainians are rarely this mysterious when they blow something up. They are openly at war with Russia and thus don’t need to be.
- the article is a year old, so those statements were made at least a year ago, 2) militaries aren’t always super up front about their weapons programs timelines 3) the statement specifically said that even though it was “2/3” of the way through development, it had been tested. How do you know this wasn’t the test?
It could have been Ukraine, but Ukraine does not have super cavitating torpedoes, so if that’s the case the reporting on those and the shape charges must be wrong.
- militaries aren’t always super up front about their weapons programs timelines
Not only this, but they also love to find reasons to test new weapons designs in real situations. Testing in a lab is great, but you’ll never know the real effectiveness until it’s used for real.
What makes you think supercavitating torpedoes are involved at all?
That’s what Spain’s investigation thought was most likely
Fair enough.
The investigation proposes the 50cm by 50cm hole in the Ursa Major’s hull would likely have been made by a Barracuda supercavitating torpedo.
Doesn’t seem like it’d be the South Korean one, though. Just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Yeah, no one in here is claiming they know 100% who did it.
But it would make sense if SK did. They have the motivation and potentially the means.
I think a limpet mine is a far more likely explanation, why risk such a heavily classified piece of technology falling into enemy hands?
To prevent the literal unpredictable madman neighbour with a mortal vendetta against you from getting a nuclear reactor.
Also, Russia already has super cavitating torpedoes, and there’s not necessarily that much to learn from their pieces after impact.
Not saying a limpet mine isn’t likely, but this also feels like exactly why SK is developing those torpedoes.
MRXUUV is a comically terrible acronym. Why even bother using the “x” from “extra” if you’re going to make an acronym that reads like a silicon valley pyramid scheme?
Maybe it makes more sense to a first language Korean speaker/reader and we’re too English language to get it?
Unfortunately paywalled. Is this a delayed report on the one which was hit by a supercavating torpedo off the coast of Spain a few months ago or is this another sunk russian ship with reactors bound for North Korea’s submarine program?
It is about the ship, which was sunk off the coast of Spain. However the supercavating torpedo thing is not really proven to my knowledge. It would be very interesting, as Ukraine does not have that technology.
South k does, they 100% intercepted that. To cock block NK from geting those reactors.
Depends on whether you consider December 23, 2024 “a few months ago”.
CNN did a video recently about the one off Spain in the last couple of days. This is probably that one.
Whatever the cause of the initial blast was, Russia definitely scuttled the ship rather than have anyone else know what it was carrying.
