So my timeline is currently full of videos of a raging battle between the Russian Pacific Fleet and [checks notes] a floating dry dock, in which the unarmed dry dock is not necessarily coming off worst...

Spoiler: it isn't the first time. https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1301525604072857600

Yes, it's time to talk about PD-50, sometimes more romantically named as Project 7454.

Ah, bureaucratic Russian. Truly the language of love.

Without the necessary skills and experience, when Russia realised the need to build a massive floating dry dock at the end of the 1970s they outsourced it to a Swedish dockyard.

The good news is it didn't arrive as a flatpack for self-assembly...

... the bad news is that they didn't think to check that the Swedes had any experience either.

It takes uncommon skill to build a haunted dry dock, but the Götaverken Arendal shipyard were keen to show what they could do.

On trials the ballast was pumped out as quickly as possible to see what happens.

The negative pressure causes your ballast chambers to implode. That's what happens.

Having hastily hammered PD-50 back into something approaching its original shape, the dock was handed over to the Russians for towing to Murmansk

It was next seen crashing into the Russian coast, which probably wasn't in the tow contract.

After nearly a year of repairs in Norway, PD-50 finally made it Murmansk, where it lived happily ever after.

Only kidding.

Here it is in 2011.

Yes, that nuclear submarine is on fire. And yes, it is still fully loaded with torpedoes. And ballistic missiles. And fuel. Why do you ask? What is this "health and safety" you speak of?

Having belatedly realised they could put the fire out by (twice) sinking PD-50 to immerse the whole submarine in seawater, the worst was avoided.

PD-50 went back to its job of hauling massive ships out of the water.

One of the ships that required the equally massive PD-50 for servicing is legendarily dubious smoke-generator and part-time aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov.

In 2018 the Admiral Kuznetsov was undergoing refit aboard PD-50.

Amongst other things the power plant was being updated, presumably because an exhaust plume so thick it can be picked up on radar is now considered passé.

Bad things now happened. PD-50 was fitted with four diesel power generators to keep it afloat.

In the name of "efficiency" they had no diesel. PD-50 was wired into the mains instead. This worked fine until someone took the plug out, possibly to do some hoovering.

The Admiral Kuznetsov was hastily dragged out of the dock as PD-50 started to list, but not before the aircraft carrier took some damage and gained a new crane for its flight deck.

I'm not convinced it'll do much for its combat effectiveness.

Meanwhile PD-50 continued to sink, eventually disappearing altogether.

It must have made repairing Admiral Kuznetsov fun - PD-50 was the only Russian dock that could take it...

So there you have it.

Russian dry docks: possibly NATO's greatest and most effective naval weapon. And they didn't cost them a dollar....