Ukranian Naval Drones

[Kat Tsun]

Troops and ammunition, mostly. The reason the Kwantung Army collapsed to the Soviets so rapidly was because their best battalions had been deployed to the Home Islands in wake of the anticipated assault by Allied troops, and because a large number of units were sent south to participate in anti-partisan operations in southern China, which were conducted successfully up until the very end of the war. This left them with a large number of supply units, under-equipped artillerists, and military police troops. Shockingly, when these loser rear-area nerds met several tank armies and combat hardened Soviet infantrymen, they lost!

Anyway, I thought we were talking about Ukraine, not about Japan. As I said, the Japanese, Italians, English, and French have used fireships to fight superior navies, and generally speaking this is a loser's strategy. It worked okay in the Age of Sail, where wind had a nasty habit of sending two ships into each other, but when ships gained the ability to move under their own power instead of at the mercy of the natural forces, it was noticeably rather less effective.

Ukraine's use of robotic fireships/autonomous kamikazes/whatever is a loser's strategy that inferior navies use against superior ones.

It's what a navy on death's door looks like. Whether the Ukrainian Navy will survive as an institution is a genuine question. I doubt it will, beyond being a basic coast guard for Odessa/Kherson/Mykolaiv, and maybe search and rescue for downed aviators. If the Ukrainians wanted to keep their navy, they should have raised more Marine assault brigades, acquired more landing ships and frigates, have actual submarines, and gave the Navy some Su-24s for naval strike missions. However, they don't have enough troops, and the Marines' poor showing in the early days of the war has no doubt made them something of the red-headed step child of the UaMOD, while they don't have enough fighter jets to run their air force much less separate naval and ground mission air forces into their respective branches.

In the modern age, the only effective fireship might be a midget submarine carrying a nuclear warhead in a major war, such as Ukraine, or one disguised as a fishing ship that sneaks up on destroyers in ostensibly allied countries' harbors in less significant wars, like USS Cole. Otherwise they are too easily identified and destroyed in mass and the warheads they carry are too weak to be particularly effective. Ditto for FACs. We know this because of Operation Praying Mantis and Desert Storm, where puny navies were beaten by big ones, despite having the same missiles as the big ones. It was worse in earlier eras when puny navies had little 3" guns and 40mms at best. Russia has yet to suffer any losses from Ukrainian suicide kayaks because they are aware of the threat, ditto anti-ship missiles, and the main threat seems to be a ground invasion of Crimea. Maybe. That's not a job for navies...

Cruise missiles would be more effective at hitting ships at sea or in port, but Ukraine seemingly cannot pull off mass multi-axis cruise missile attacks using GPS waypoints against Sevastopol, or else they would have done it by now instead of sending their weird kayak things, and this is probably because they're husbanding those weapons for some unknown purpose, or they simply don't have them.

In the grand scheme, as far as the Ukrainian Navy goes, it's a waste of time and resources, but it's not the biggest waste of time and resources. Ukraine has many more miles of border with Poland, Hungary, and Romania to export grain with, and the Ukrainian Marines can still do a coup if the admirals want it.

If they were organized like a cross of the two German navies, they might be able to credibly contest the Black Sea, but that would require submarines, FAC squadrons, ASW frigates, LSTs, and tactical bombers, which they will never really be getting anytime soon. Mykolaiv can't build warships and Sevastopol is Russian at the moment.

The bomb kayaks simply aren't useful in any real, military terms.

 

[Dilandu]

As per some twitter sources 2 Ukrainian surface drones managed to escape fire. Here is another video released few hours back, which seems to show the drone strike from the opposite side of the ship. Gash quality video sadly.

Clearly not hit. Look, the center of explosion is very clearly behind the ship's stern. It's one of the drones, destroyed by machinegun fire on approach.

 

[Nik]

Like the SAS / SBS / LRDG in WW2, they may be nuisance raiders, but knowing they could be out there means a lot of resource must be diverted to honour the threat...
Plus, yes, next stage is to add 'ranged' weapons such as anti-armour missiles or a torpedo...

 

[Kat Tsun]

Like the SAS / SBS / LRDG in WW2, they may be nuisance raiders, but knowing they could be out there means a lot of resource must be diverted to honour the threat...
Plus, yes, next stage is to add 'ranged' weapons such as anti-armour missiles or a torpedo...

The SAS/SBS/LRDG were actively detrimental to the British war effort. General Slim's opinion of special forces is particularly damning.

Much like the Italian commando frogmen, the Japanese suicide boats, and the German midget submarines and E-boats, the Ukrainian bomb kayak is not a serious threat to the Russian Navy. It requires no more resources to be diverted than normal in a war zone i.e. keeping a careful watch of torpedo trails and manning machine guns as needed, and requires many more resources on part of Ukraine to be used.

Again, this is something navies do in their death throes. When all fleet units are dead, and Ukraine sunk their own fleet, they resort to these little fireships. Using them in lieu of open ocean attack methods like submarines or aircraft is pretty poor planning, though.

If Russia were to attempt a naval landing at Odessa, these sort of drone ships would be absolutely lethal to landing craft, if launched in mass and with reliable communications, but as Ukraine's own frontlines show, this would be unlikely to be the case given immense electromagnetic attack methods a landing force would be able to muster. Suicide kayaks would be more effective since local control can't be jammed (aside from a CNS injury) but Ukraine hasn't quite reached that level of fatalistic investment of resources.

The only viable pathway of the Ukrainian Navy to contribute meaningfully to the war effort, aside from a mass cruise missile attack on Sevastopol, is seconding Marine assault brigades to a ground gaining offensive. Little else can be done, militarily speaking, and the kayaks don't really help any.

Even converting the kayaks to long cruise missiles, like the Engels-2 raid using reconnaissance drones, and indiscriminately bombarding Sevastopol would be more effective than attacking random boats at sea with miniscule dinghies.

 

[_Del_]

And what resources were flowing from the conquered parts of China/Mongolia/Siberia to the factories in Japan, and then on to the front lines in the islands?

Is this a serious question?

 

[Nik]

Still, the Rus Black Sea Navy must 'Honour the Threat' lest those little boats get lucky...
Perhaps serve as Maskirovka for a different or combined ops attack...

Extra watch-standers, extra vigilance, extra alerts-- And knowing the FSB will want a word have your head if you take any damage...

Wasn't it USS Cole that showed how one little mistake can gut a ship thus ??

Also, IIRC, General Slim revised his opinion when analysis showed how much resource the Germans and Italians had to commit to rear-area security, and used such tactics with his nimble Ghurkhas in Burma to wrong-foot, out-wit and bedevil the Japanese...

 

[Kat Tsun]

The USS Cole wasn't in a combat zone, as I said...

The Black Sea is a combat zone. You might as well suggest the U.S. Navy would be surprised by a cruise missile in Desert Storm.

There is no other significant action required than ordinary watchstanding and maintaining alertness. This is a lesson which was learned much more rudely by cruise missile attack than by anything else. If you might recall the Russians recently lost a very large Ukrainian-built cruiser to some off-brand Kh-35s. The only thing the Russian Navy has to do is tighten harbor security near Sevastopol, which was shown to be weak, but is weak no longer, and the Ukrainians shown they couldn't meaningfully exploit that weakness anyway.

Given the incredibly large economic disparities at work, there's less than nothing to be gained by these weird kayak attacks: it's actively damaging the combat power of Ukraine's military, but only slightly. Russia has to tighten local security around a single naval base, possibly two, in a sea which is mostly bordered by a hostile country. Ukraine has to assemble weird drones and use valuable warheads and computer systems on autonomous weapons, when it has a much better option available if it were being employed by the Army or Air Force instead of the Navy: It's costing Ukraine more to make the navy's dumb robot kayaks than doing similar modifications to Tu-141/143s.

I suspect the reason they stopped doing the latter so openly is partially from pressure by the U.S. on long range attacks, but the warheads and modifications needed to convert a Tupolev reconnaissance drone into a cruise missile are similar to the modifications done on the kayaks writ large, albeit far less effective in the latter case.

The kayaks could be useful if Russia were planning a naval invasion, but it isn't doing this anymore, as they would be effective against landing craft if launched in huge numbers, like the Japanese intended to do with their suicide boats. Ultimately, the necessary resources and measures needed to defend against them are not particularly great, and significantly less than what would be needed to defend against similar frogman attacks, in all seriousness.

Ukraine has no capacity for any sort of major naval operations, this is a symptom of it, not a replacement for it. Ukraine would be better off firing cruise missiles at Sevastopol, since the Russians have shown they have relatively weak air defense, and the Tu-141/143 conversions are not terribly vulnerable to electromagnetic attack. Then they might actually damage the capacity of Sevastopol to conduct basic port tasks, would certainly disrupt daily operations, and could actually damage ships instead of just harmlessly exploding along side or in their wakes.

Russia has the weird target drones and Ukraine has the weird kayak drones I guess, but at least airborne drones can hit stuff, for both the Tupolev conversions and the Iranian drones. The kayaks are literally useless. Ukraine isn't helpless in the naval sphere, just inferior, and defensive. It should be stockpiling these kayaks for anti-landing defenses, instead of using them as bad torpedoes, and ideally not using them at all when it can be making kamikaze aircraft instead.

The point of a weapon is to kill the enemy and the only thing Ukraine's navy has shown it can kill the enemy with so far is cruise missiles. Had Ukraine decided to fly a Tu-141 with the same warhead into the intelligence ship, it might actually have suffered damage. Luckily for Russia's Navy, the Ukrainians are using weird dinghies instead.

 

[Forest Green]

Clearly not hit. Look, the center of explosion is very clearly behind the ship's stern. It's one of the drones, destroyed by machinegun fire on approach.

You can see the video from in the drone that reached the ship though.

 

[Nik]

Kat Tsun, may I remind you that 'Tsunami' translates 'Harbour Wave', literally a killer wave that strikes where you thought you were safe.

So, instead of some peace and quiet, every possible target must stand 'watch & watch', jumping at shadows and sensor ghosts, never sure if a sighting is local or migrating wild-life, a recon drone or portent of 'iron clog' descending...

Such extended alertness both eats up the nerves and degrades alertness / responsiveness...

Granted these early whatsits are comparatively crude, but that's the learning curve. Potential targets will under-estimate at their peril. Rus forces must try to anticipate any and every likely or unlikely iteration, the Ukrainians just need to deliver what they can, where they can...

It is asymmetric warfare, nimble wits vs 'Thud & Blunder'...

IIRC, Drakes' (in)famous fire-ship attacks did comparatively little physical damage, but utterly terrified his targets' officers and crews: Had many anchored ships not managed to cut their lines and scramble clear, some-how managing to mostly avoid each other in the chaos, losses would have been horrific, legendary: Harbours filled with wrecks burned to waterline or blasted to scraps, beaches littered with roasted 'long pig', the sharks feasted....

Oh, and the materiel costs ? Dragging harbour / anchorage with grapnels to try to recover anchors and such ??

 

[Dilandu]

You can see the video from in the drone that reached the ship though.

Apparently it did not explode. Either fuze malfunction, or combat damage. Or impact angle was wrong, and drone just crashed itself, without exploding.

 

[Dilandu]

Ukrainian-built cruiser

Soviet build, for Pete's sake.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Kat Tsun, may I remind you that 'Tsunami' translates 'Harbour Wave', literally a killer wave that strikes where you thought you were safe.

I haven't seen any videos or news of a attack of any kind on Taganrog since last year...

So, instead of some peace and quiet, every possible target must stand 'watch & watch', jumping at shadows and sensor ghosts, never sure if a sighting is local or migrating wild-life, a recon drone or portent of 'iron clog' descending...

Such extended alertness both eats up the nerves and degrades alertness / responsiveness...

It's a war zone. If you expect "peace and quiet" you can leave.

In the Falklands, when confronted with ambiguous target information, the British simply shot everything that moved, squeaked, and swam. This works great, provided you have the ammunition, and boy does the Russian Navy have a lot of ammunition.

Granted these early whatsits are comparatively crude, but that's the learning curve. Potential targets will under-estimate at their peril. Rus forces must try to anticipate any and every likely or unlikely iteration, the Ukrainians just need to deliver what they can, where they can...

Ukraine has been doing these silly drone attacks for a year. What learning curve is left? Perhaps learning they're not useful?

It is asymmetric warfare, nimble wits vs 'Thud & Blunder'...

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Ukraine has been trying and failing to raid Sevastopol for the past year but you don't see videos of that. Part of me wonders if this attack on a moving ship, which has so little chance of success, wasn't done solely to produce video footage to send to Reuters. That would be an actual nimble wits thing (sort of) and more in line with the HUR's methods of using weird mercenaries to generate news.

Regardless, the only effective way for small navies to contest big ones is by cruise missiles or sabotage teams.

Little dinghies and kayaks are a regressive form of weapon that was popular when people still flew wooden biplanes. Every drone launched is a frogman not trained, and a limpet mine unplanted, i.e. stuff that could do real damage to a surface ship in port.

Ukraine isn't strong enough to commit to full sea denial, but like the Vietnamese Navy, it could easily carry out significant sabotage operations using underwater combat teams. The Ukrainian Army does this with deep reconnaissance/sabotage groups on the land, not with robot trucks with bazookas on them, so why is the Ukrainian Navy needing to use kayaks? Why not paddle those kayaks within a few miles of Sevastopol at night, lash up to a buoy, and go into the port with a limpet mine? Perhaps they have already, we know the Ukrainians have been doing some sort of reconnaissance actions in Crimea, and they blew up a fuel bunker which is useful.

The kayaks really won't amount to much if they keep getting stopped by machine guns and I don't think they'll become sophisticated enough to not do this. Commando frogmen and other special forces saboteurs are the mainline "I don't have airplanes or cruise missiles left" naval weapon for port strikes by a weak force against a strong one.

Ukrainian-built cruiser

Soviet build, for Pete's sake.

It was built in Mykolaiv...

That's more just how long it's been since any Ukrainian shipyard, outside Sevastopol, has built major surface combat ships tbh.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Kat Tsun, may I remind you that 'Tsunami' translates 'Harbour Wave', literally a killer wave that strikes where you thought you were safe.

I haven't seen any videos or news of a attack of any kind on Taganrog since last year...

So, instead of some peace and quiet, every possible target must stand 'watch & watch', jumping at shadows and sensor ghosts, never sure if a sighting is local or migrating wild-life, a recon drone or portent of 'iron clog' descending...

Such extended alertness both eats up the nerves and degrades alertness / responsiveness...

It's a war zone. If you expect "peace and quiet" you can leave.

In the Falklands, when confronted with ambiguous target information, the British simply shot everything that moved, squeaked, and swam. This works great, provided you have the ammunition, and boy does the Russian Navy have a lot of ammunition.

Granted these early whatsits are comparatively crude, but that's the learning curve. Potential targets will under-estimate at their peril. Rus forces must try to anticipate any and every likely or unlikely iteration, the Ukrainians just need to deliver what they can, where they can...

Ukraine has been doing these silly drone attacks for a year. What learning curve is left? Perhaps learning they're not useful?

It is asymmetric warfare, nimble wits vs 'Thud & Blunder'...

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Ukraine has been trying and failing to raid Sevastopol for the past year but you don't see videos of that. Part of me wonders if this attack on a moving ship, which has so little chance of success, wasn't done solely to produce video footage to send to Reuters. That would be an actual nimble wits thing (sort of) and more in line with the HUR's methods of using weird mercenaries to generate news.

Regardless, the only effective way for small navies to contest big ones is by cruise missiles or sabotage teams.

Little dinghies and kayaks are a regressive form of weapon that was popular when people still flew wooden biplanes. Every drone launched is a frogman not trained, and a limpet mine unplanted, i.e. stuff that could do real damage to a surface ship in port.

Ukraine isn't strong enough to commit to full sea denial, but like the Vietnamese Navy, it could easily carry out significant sabotage operations using underwater combat teams. The Ukrainian Army does this with deep reconnaissance/sabotage groups on the land, not with robot trucks with bazookas on them, so why is the Ukrainian Navy needing to use kayaks? Why not paddle those kayaks within a few miles of Sevastopol at night, lash up to a buoy, and go into the port with a limpet mine? Perhaps they have already, we know the Ukrainians have been doing some sort of reconnaissance actions in Crimea, and they blew up a fuel bunker which is useful.

Say what now?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Say what now?

Attack on USNS Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Scott Kenny]

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Say what now?

Attack on USNS Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh, a CVE. And one being used as a cargo ship at that...

 

[Kat Tsun]

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Say what now?

Attack on USNS Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh, a CVE. And one being used as a cargo ship at that...

You take your victories where they come. Two frogmen with a limpet mine destroying a helicopter transport carrier is genuine damage.

Vietnam was under naval blockade by the world ocean's premier navy so merely contesting, much less winning, was out of the question. It was a war decided on the land not on the high seas. This was also obvious, which is why the Vietnamese stopped attacking American frigates and cruisers after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, instead of chasing them around with sampans full of TNT...

The premier navy of the Black Sea happens to live in Sevastopol. Why Ukraine is chasing them with kayaks full of TNT, instead of more useful things, is genuinely bizarre.

Typically, navies that are weak will husband weapons like these as an anti-landing craft weapon in the event of invasion, to be deployed en masse, and cause casualties to naval assault troops. Repelling an invasion is a lot easier than contesting naval supremacy for a navy that lacks surface units, submarines, or maritime strike aircraft. Marine brigades can still bully an assault force back into the ocean (or die trying) by literally running through artillery fire if they need to.

Landing craft are also quite slow during the final stages of the assault, and such bomb kayaks can probably be easily sequestered and launched in large quantities by hand from unimproved beaches, which would demand a massive security net, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, to keep the kayaks from getting into the assault lanes.

It's not really revolutionary at all. So much of the use comes off as it's amateurish, which is kind of to be expected for a navy without prior combat experience, though it's weird they're still doing it nearly a year later. Converting reconnaissance drones to cruise missiles proved so much more effective, and they've clearly been landing special forces frogmen within range of Sevastopol to detonate stocks of fuel and such

Why it keeps happening is odd when there are simply better options for similar costs.

 

[Dilandu]

Why Ukraine is chasing them with kayaks full of TNT, instead of more useful things, is genuinely bizarre.

Mostly because they could produce them in numbers. While high-tech anti-ship missiles could not be produced at all (or at least in reasonable numbers), and thus needed to be imported.

 

[Hood]

Moderator hat on: ok, maybe we could please stick to the topic of this thread. This is meant to be a discussion about the technical aspects of the actual boats themselves, not hit scorecards or musings about the usefulness of asymmetric warfare. Regardless of what members may think or postulate about the rationale or practicalities involved, the fact is they are being used as surrogate missiles for whatever reason.

 

[Scott Kenny]

In naval warfare, "asymmetric" means sinking warships in port as opposed to the high seas...

Lots of people try to do this but only a few countries figured out that frogmen or kamikaze aircraft (suicide or cruise missile) are the best method for a weak navy to attack a strong one. Every navy has to return to port but not every navy is capable of high seas engagements. Somali pirates lose to merchantmen and Ukrainian robots lose to a guy with a PKM I guess? Indians defeated a major naval force with a port attack using cruise missiles and the Syrians did the same. The Vietnamese sunk an American aircraft carrier and numerous Da Nang raids where less important things happened...

Say what now?

Attack on USNS Card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh, a CVE. And one being used as a cargo ship at that...

You take your victories where they come. Two frogmen with a limpet mine destroying a helicopter transport carrier is genuine damage.

Vietnam was under naval blockade by the world ocean's premier navy so merely contesting, much less winning, was out of the question. It was a war decided on the land not on the high seas. This was also obvious, which is why the Vietnamese stopped attacking American frigates and cruisers after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, instead of chasing them around with sampans full of TNT...

Oh, it was absolutely brilliantly executed, and I tip my hat to them for the sheer balls to pull it off. Crud, I'd buy them beers if they're still around to do so.

But it's really a stretch to call it a carrier at that point.

ANYWAYS.

The premier navy of the Black Sea happens to live in Sevastopol. Why Ukraine is chasing them with kayaks full of TNT, instead of more useful things, is genuinely bizarre.

Typically, navies that are weak will husband weapons like these as an anti-landing craft weapon in the event of invasion, to be deployed en masse, and cause casualties to naval assault troops. Repelling an invasion is a lot easier than contesting naval supremacy for a navy that lacks surface units, submarines, or maritime strike aircraft. Marine brigades can still bully an assault force back into the ocean (or die trying) by literally running through artillery fire if they need to.

Landing craft are also quite slow during the final stages of the assault, and such bomb kayaks can probably be easily sequestered and launched in large quantities by hand from unimproved beaches, which would demand a massive security net, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, to keep the kayaks from getting into the assault lanes.

It's not really revolutionary at all. So much of the use comes off as it's amateurish, which is kind of to be expected for a navy without prior combat experience, though it's weird they're still doing it nearly a year later. Converting reconnaissance drones to cruise missiles proved so much more effective, and they've clearly been landing special forces frogmen within range of Sevastopol to detonate stocks of fuel and such

Why it keeps happening is odd when there are simply better options for similar costs.

Because the UaN can make them for pennies. They have blow-molding kayak factories that cannot quickly or easily be repurposed into any military purpose. They have explosives factories (and imports), and I expect that these are using mining explosives like ANFO and dynamite instead of military high explosives for the most part. They have starlink internet terminals to use as their control channel. They have radio control hobby shops for the servos.

In a total war situation, you are trying to maximize the number of factories and workers available for wartime production. The de Haviland Mosquito in WW2 did this by allowing all the furniture and instrument makers to convert from peacetime production to wartime with zero retraining, using the skills and tools they had already developed.

These are basically slow torpedoes that don't require the torpedo or missile production lines to be made, that can be made by people that aren't capable of being infantry on the front lines. Whether that's because they're kids or because they're wounded and recovering is immaterial.

 

[Hood]

And that's a wrap folks. I did warn you but it seems people just can't keep the personal attacks out of things. LOCKED.