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Russia's Navy Day celebrations were a bit of a flop.

At Crimea's Sevastopol port, the Krivak-class frigate Ladny was supposed to do a little demo of the SS-N-14 Silex, a ship-fired anti-submarine missile (specifially, this was the URPK-5 Rastrub, modified to be used against both submarines and other warships).

But instead flexing Russian muscle, the missile badly misfired. The four-stage missile's boosters essentially went off on a joy ride, while the missile's flight body and payload made a sad little leap into the sea.

A Vine shot by another bystander shows one of the booster's mad spiral back into the ocean:

https://vine.co/v/egPKAmBUP3v/embed/simple

To make matter's worse, later that day, another demonstration was supposed to take place, this time firing off multiple rockets from a warship. The tubes open to launch, the missiles appear, and then... not much happens at all.

This is the face of a man who has repeatedly said he plans to bulk up his fleet's strength in the Atlantic after two separate ships badly malfunction:



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Headshot of Jake Swearingen
Jake Swearingen
Deputy Editor
Jake Swearingen is deputy editor at PopularMechanics.com. Previously he worked at The Altantic and was digital director at Modern Farmer. He lives in Queens and really wants to talk to you about what's going wrong in his dwarf fortress.