In this article we will try to understand the issues of the comparative cost of building warships in the Russian Federation and the United States using the example of the corvettes of projects 20380 and 20386, as well as the latest version of the American destroyers "Arleigh Burke" - series IIA +, the serial construction of which the Americans began after how the decision was made to abandon the further production of Zamvolt-class destroyers.
Let's start, perhaps, with domestic ships, for which we will use the information from the bmpd blog, which, in turn, derived them from the annual report of PJSC Severnaya Verf Shipyard (St. Petersburg) for 2016. Order 1007 is a corvette of project 20380 "Zealous", order 1008 is a corvette of the same project "Strict", but "Daring", being built according to project 20386, is referred to in the document as "Order 1009".
So, we see that the estimated cost of "Zealous" is 17,244,760 thousand rubles, "Strict" at 85 thousand rubles. more expensive, but "Daring" costs an astronomical 29,080,759 thousand rubles, which is 1.68 times more than "Strogy". Seems to be a mind-boggling difference … but let's take a closer look at it.
The first thing that catches your eye is the difference in the "age" of the ships, because both corvettes of project 20380 were contracted under the 2014 State Defense Order, but the corvette of project 20386 "Daring" is within 2016. The total difference between orders is 2 years, and this is very significant given the domestic inflation, which in the period 2014-2015. was just colossal. According to Rosstat, in 2014 inflation was 11.36%, and in 2015 - 12.91%. Thus, the rise in prices from January 1, 2014 to January 1, 2016 amounted to an incredible 25.737%.
Let's take the cost of the Strogiy corvette as a basis, since in terms of its construction time (delivery in 2021) it is closer to the Daring (2022) than Zealous (2020). In 2014, the ship cost a little more than 17.3 billion rubles, but if we convert it into 2016 prices, then, taking into account inflation, its cost will already be 21 789 951.55 rubles. That is, in comparable prices, the cost of the corvettes of the project 20380 and 20386 differ not by 1.68, but only by 1.33 times. Is it a lot anyway? Well, let's count on.
Let us ask ourselves the question - how correct is the price of 17, 2-17, 3 billion rubles. for corvettes of project 20380? It seems strange to ask about this, but in fact, with a high degree of probability, these figures are lower than the real price of corvettes. The fact is that pricing for military products is calculated by the good old cost method: that is, the enterprise first “knocks up” the planned costs of creating the product, “winds” on it the rate of profit permitted by the RF Ministry of Defense and coordinates the resulting calculations with representatives of the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, in several instances, each of which seeks to reduce something in the presented calculation (otherwise they will think that people are not working!).
But the price is finally agreed upon, approved and a contract is concluded. However, if a product has a long (many-year) production time, or if many products are ordered that will be produced over several years, then the RF Ministry of Defense has an “excellent” way to optimize its costs. It looks like this.
The fact is that the prices of materials that are accepted in the calculations, enterprises are required to confirm with primary documents indicating that they really purchase materials for such a price. That is, at the time of the approval of the calculation, the prices for materials in it are quite adequate, but, of course, in the case of a long-term construction of a ship (especially a series of ships) over time, these same prices will rise - inflation. So, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, of course, will allow the enterprise to increase the cost and price of the product, taking into account the increase in the price of materials for its manufacture … but not by the amount of actual costs caused by the rise in prices, but only by the official inflation rate. Oddly enough, for some reason all the time it turns out that the cost of raw materials and materials grow in price much faster than the official inflation figures. That is, in simple terms, suppliers raise the price of materials by 7%, and a representative of the RF Ministry of Defense says: “Sorry, dear, I understand your difficulties, but the official statistics bodies are sure that inflation for this type of materials is only 5%, and who am I against Rosstat? Here is 5% and I will allow you to raise the cost of these materials in the next product, and the rest is your problem. And it turns out that the specified 2% of the difference in the cost of materials, the company is forced to pay extra from its own pocket.
Therefore, it turns out like this - for the first product (if the costs of its manufacture are well planned, and the production workers did not disrupt the release), the enterprise will receive the profit due to it according to the law, but for the subsequent ones it will not, because the real cost price will already be higher than that which it agrees to accept Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Worse, it may well turn out that the enterprise will manufacture the last products almost at a loss to itself. So the corvette "Strogiy" is the sixth ship of this type for the manufacturer ("Severnaya Verf") and it can be assumed that the price tag is 17.3 billion rubles. is no longer entirely true, and that an honest recalculation of the calculation would give a substantially higher price for this corvette. This means that the price of the ship, adjusted for inflation, may turn out to be more than the 21.8 billion rubles we calculated.
But that's not all. The fact is that comparing the prices of "Strict" and "Daring" directly … not that it is not entirely correct, but, frankly, it is completely incorrect, and the point is this. "Strict" is the serial ship of Project 20380, while "Daring" is the lead (and possibly the only) ship of Project 20386. What's the difference? In the cost of manufacturing tooling and preparation of production.
When building a ship according to a new project, the manufacturing enterprise often requires a serious renewal of its fixed assets, the purchase of some new equipment, revision of the old one, etc. which he does not need to fulfill current orders and will be used only in the manufacture of a new ship. In this case, such costs are fully included in the cost of products for the sake of which these costs are made. And so, it turns out that the costs of the production of corvettes of project 20380, carried out by Severnaya Verf, were distributed among at least 6 contracted ships (Guarding, Savvy, Boiky, Stoic, Zealous and Strict "), Which was built and is being built by this enterprise, but the costs of preparing the production of corvettes 20386 completely" dropped "into the cost of the lead ship - after all, no other corvettes 20386 were ordered! And, I must say that there are quite a lot of design differences between 20386 and 20380, so it is entirely possible that the cost of a head corvette of this type has greatly increased precisely due to preparation for its production. Of course, if the construction of ships of project 20386 continues, then they will be much cheaper - since the costs of preparing for production are entirely "laid down" in the first ship of the series, then they will no longer fall into the prime cost of serial corvettes.
Of course, we cannot know exactly what amounts for the above needs were included in the price of “Daring” and how correct the price of 2014 was for “Strogi”. And even if they did know, this information is no longer for the open press - but one can more or less reasonably assume that if Severnaya Verf ordered equal series of corvettes of projects 20386 and 20380, provided they were simultaneously built, then the cost of a serial ship type "Daring" would exceed that of the serial ship of project 20380 by no means by 33%, but by 25 percent, but maybe less.
That is, we can reasonably assume that the cost of project 20386 corvettes is not at all 68%, but only a quarter higher than 20380. But what do we get for this additional money spent?
Quite a lot.
Firstly, corvette 20386 is a much larger ship, its total displacement reaches 3,400 (according to other sources - 3,500) tons. That is, it is almost a third larger than the corvettes of Project 20380. The advantage in size gives the ship an advantage in seaworthiness and autonomy: so, the Project 20380 corvette has a cruising range of 3,500 miles at 14 knots, and the Project 20386 corvette 5,000 miles, and although the economic speed of the Daring is unfortunately unknown, it appears to be no lower than that of the Strogi.
Secondly, it is a new type of power plant. As you know, project 20380 corvettes are equipped with diesel engines, and since all over the world normal ship diesel engines (talking about surface ships, not submarines) are obtained, perhaps, only from the Germans and Finns, it was supposed to put German MTU diesel engines on the corvettes. However, then the era of sanctions came, and the Germans refused to supply them to us, so the RF Ministry of Defense had no choice but to use the import-substituting products of the Kolomna plant. And Kolomensky Zavod, I must say, is a unique enterprise in terms of ship diesel engines. The fact is that this plant has been promising to provide the fleet with a normal diesel engine for 107 (one hundred and seven!) Years: for the first time, it vowed that it would supply working engines of this type for battle cruisers of the Izmail class in January 1911. Alas, to this day, his words remain words. Quite recently, by the way, the diesel engine of this distinguished manufacturer on the frigate "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov" broke down - at least it was possible to fix it without dismantling and cutting the side. And it is better not to let the corvettes on these diesels without tugs in the sea - you never know? In addition, it should be noted that, even setting aside reliability issues, a purely diesel power plant raises big questions on a ship, one of the most important functions of which is anti-submarine defense. After all, a diesel engine is a fairly noisy engine.
So, the corvettes of the project 20380 received a diesel power plant with a capacity of 23 320 hp. Well, the corvette 20386 has a fundamentally different power plant, which is based on two M90FR gas turbine engines with a total capacity of 55,000 hp, that is, more than twice as much as that of the project 20380 corvettes. I must say that these engines are installed today on the frigates of the project 20350, in Russia their production is mastered by "UEC-Saturn", that is, in this matter, the corvettes 20386 do not depend on either foreign suppliers or the Kolomna plant, but I must say that the school of gas turbine engines inherited from the USSR is extremely strong - this is exactly the kind of marine engines that we get very well.
But here's what is interesting - for the economic course, the project 20386 corvette uses electric motors, which look much more preferable than diesel engines in matters of capturing enemy submarines. Thus, there is no doubt that the “Daring” power plant is much better suited to the domestic ship of the “corvette” class - it is more reliable, more powerful and, very likely, quieter than a diesel one. Well, do not forget that the project 20380 corvette has a maximum speed of 27 knots, but the 20386 project - 30 knots, this is also a significant advantage.
Thirdly, the composition of the armament of the project 20386 corvette is much more "interesting" than that of the brothers of the 20380 project. But still, some other sources (for example, Military Russia) talk about the presence of more powerful and, of course, more expensive missiles of the Caliber family. "(This is exactly what the author of this article thinks), but even in this case its strike weapons are in no way inferior to the corvettes of project 20380, carrying the same 8" Uranus ", since the" Calibers "appeared on them starting with modification 20385, and it is already a completely different "price tag".
The ship's air defense is represented by 2 * 8 launchers of the Redut air defense system (16 launchers) against a dozen launchers on Project 20380 corvettes and a pair of six-barreled metal cutters AK-630M.
Other weapons of the "Daring" also correspond to those that were installed on the corvettes of the project 20380 - a single-barreled 100-mm artillery mount (apparently, "Daring" received an improved version of what was put on the "Guarding") and two four-tube torpedo small torpedo tubes " Package-NK ", which are mainly" sharpened "to resist enemy torpedoes, but on occasion they can" work out "on a submarine.
I foresee the bewilderment of the dear reader - what is so interesting in the armament of the corvettes of the project 20386, if it is almost the same with the ships of the "Guarding" class? Are the four additional Redoubt missile launchers really that big of a deal?
In fact, there is a difference, and it is colossal, only now it lies not in the number of barrels or missiles, but in the fire control systems.
We have already said many times that the "Guardians" took the wrong path. For ships of their displacement, one (or two, the second - instead of a pair of Ak-630M) ZRAK-a, like "Pantsir-M" would represent more than sufficient protection against an air attack, but where there! Give us all battleships in the displacement of a ship's boat, so after the "Guarding" the ships began to install the "Redut" air defense system. Everything would be fine if it were not for the peculiarities of its missiles - to control the fire, the Redoubt needs the Poliment radar, which was supposed to work in conjunction with the Redoubt, and which, apparently, has not been completed to this day, despite the fact that the first ship with the Polyment, the lead frigate of Project 22350 Gorshkov, was nevertheless adopted by the fleet.
But it was absolutely impossible to put the Poliment on the corvette, so we chose a different path, deciding to teach the standard radar of the general overview Furke-2 to control the Reduta missiles. Naturally, nothing sensible from the "union" of a modern air defense system with a weak radar of a general view could not work out and, as far as the author knows, he did not learn how to direct the air defense missile system with an AGSN "Furke" (except in the range, absolutely ideal conditions). The only way to somehow effectively use this air defense system in battle is possible only when using the Puma artillery fire control system for target designation, which seems to still be able to advance missiles in a difficult jamming environment, but, due to its artillery specificity, creates a number of restrictions on the use of air defense systems "Redoubt". In other words, an air defense system was installed on the 20380 corvettes, the capabilities of which simply cannot be realized with the available radar equipment.
Unlike Project 20380, instead of Furke, "Daring" received a qualitatively different system - a multifunctional radar complex (MF RLK) "Zaslon", which uses phased array radars. At the same time, outwardly, it most of all resembles the American AN / SPY-1 (fixed grids), but according to the principle of operation it is more reminiscent of the British "Daring" - due to the combination of radars operating in the decimeter and millimeter ranges, the MFC RLC "Zaslon" is able to perfectly control both high and low-flying aerial targets. This complex can conduct not only active, but also passive search in a non-radiating mode - in this case, "Zaslon" is capable of detecting and tracking more than 100 targets at a distance of up to 300 km. The complex is able to put active radar jamming and control passive jamming, and in addition, it is capable of issuing target designation not only to missile weapons, but also to the ship's artillery weapons - of course, Furke-2 could not do anything like that. In other words, the MF RLK Zaslon provides a qualitative superiority in the control of the corvette's armament, which provides a significant increase in the combat potential of the Daring in comparison with the corvettes of the 20380 project.
Although the author cannot boast of absolutely reliable information, according to some sources, the hydroacoustic equipment of the project 20386 corvettes also surpasses that installed on the "Steregushchey" and ships of the same type, and this also applies to the means of electronic warfare and electronic warfare. Also, apparently, "Daring" is more automated than the corvettes of Project 20380 - the crew of the latter is 99 people, and on the "Daring" - only 80 people.
Thus, we can state that for a 20-25% increase in value (hardly more) we get a ship that, in terms of its reliability, seaworthiness, combat potential, significantly surpasses the corvettes of the 20380 project. seem to have an advantage. Based on the foregoing, the author of this article is inclined to assume that four "Defiant" are capable of doing much more in battle than five "Guardians", and at a price they will be quite equal. Therefore, there is no need to see in the corvettes of the project 20386 some kind of "mistake", "cut", "dribbling of the budget" and so on. Rather, the construction of the "Daring" is a kind of safety net in case the "Polyment-Redut" is never finished and the frigates of project 22350 do not justify the hopes placed on them - well, the fact that the corvettes of project 20380 obviously did not justify those, today, perhaps, no longer requires additional proof.
That is, in the event of the failure of the "Gorshkovy" construction program, the management of the fleet remains, literally, at a broken trough. Projects 20380 and 20385 are unsuccessful, frigates of the "admiral's" series 11356, in principle, are reliable and could be good if they were equipped with modern equipment (which, alas, is not present now). But power plants for them are not produced in the Russian Federation, so it will not be possible to serially build Project 11356 frigates for our fleet. And if at the same time the frigates of Project 22350 turn out to be a "paper tiger", then the fleet will literally have nothing to build. And then, like a devil from a snuffbox, corvette 20386 suddenly appears - having an intermediate displacement between the corvette and the frigate, it is capable, in principle, of performing the functions of both, it works on power plants mastered in the Russian Federation. Instead of a non-working "Polyment" - quite sane, although much inferior to him in characteristics, "Zaslon", which nevertheless allows you to effectively use short and medium-range missiles, well, and certainly cheaper … On the one hand, it seems that the ship turns out " not a candle to God, not a damn poker ", but on the other hand, it may well become an analogue of the SKR project 1135, which had a similar displacement and was deservedly considered the" workhorse "of the Soviet fleet, and this is what we need today.
In general, the project 20386 corvette is very similar to a kind of straw, which is underlain where you can slip, and besides, in combination, it is also a "testing ground" for working out the idea of electric propulsion - not that we did not have ships that went to electricity, but it was not used on military surface ships.
Well, now let's try to compare its cost with the cost of the newest Arleigh Burke class IIA + destroyers.
Just in 2016, when the corvette of project 20386 "Daring" was laid, the Americans allocated funds for the construction of two ships of this type with a total amount of $ 3,470.1 million, or $ 1,735.05 million per ship. The lead destroyer of the IIA + series, according to some sources, cost the United States $ 2.2 billion (but this is not certain). However, the comparison of the "Daring", the lead ship of the 20386 series of corvettes, with both is not entirely correct.
In theory, we should compare our lead ship with the American lead ship, but this will not be a correct comparison. The fact is that, according to the practice adopted in the United States, not only the costs of preparing for production (as we do) are "invested" in the cost of the lead ship, but also a significant part of the costs of R&D associated with the creation of this ship. At the same time, in our country such works are financed and paid separately by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. That is, according to our scheme of the state defense order, the Ministry of Defense first orders research, pays for it, and studies the result obtained - if it is unsatisfactory, then the Ministry of Defense either continues to fund research "to the bitter end," or pays the contractor for the actually completed work and completes this topic. Well, if the result is positive, then an order for the head and serial “products” follows, but R&D is no longer included in their cost - why, if they were carried out and paid separately? So it turns out that it is impossible to compare the cost of the "Daring" with the lead destroyer of the IIA + series, because the cost of the American ship includes R&D, which is not taken into account in the cost of our ship. On the other hand, it is also incorrect to compare the cost of the “Daring” with the cost of a serial destroyer, because our ship takes into account the costs of preparing for production, but the American one does not. And what to do?
To begin with, let's determine the value of the "Daring" in US dollars. There are two methods for this. If we use the current dollar rate for 2016 (in July it was 64.34 rubles / dollar), then we will see that the cost of the lead corvette of project 20386 is almost 452 million dollars. That is, if suddenly Severnaya Verf had a foreign customer for this corvette, the company would have received exactly the same revenue and profit as from the construction of "Daring" for the RF Ministry of Defense, selling this corvette at a price of $ 452 million - for example, the same to India.
Obviously, the comparison of the "price tag" of the domestic ship, even with the serial "Arleigh Burke", is extremely beneficial for the domestic manufacturer, because as of 2016 one serial "Arlie" of the IIA + series costs almost as much as 4 lead corvettes of the project 20386.
But in order to assess the efficiency of our economy, it makes sense to use not the exchange rate of the dollar, but the dollar rate at purchasing power parity (PPP). What it is?
The fact is that the dollar exchange rate is largely a speculative figure, depending on the market situation, supply and demand for currency, etc. But the dollar rate at PPP is formed in a different way. A certain set of goods and services is selected. Then it is estimated for how many dollars they can be bought in the USA, and for how much a similar set can be bought for rubles in the Russian Federation. The ratio of these amounts will be the exchange rate of the dollar to the ruble at PPP.
The easiest way to determine exchange rates by PPP is the so-called Big Mac Index.
In this case, only one type of product is compared - the same big mac produced by McDonald's. So, in 2016 in the Russian Federation a big mac cost 114 rubles, in the USA - $ 4, 93, respectively, the dollar exchange rate at PPP was 23, 12 rubles / dollar. These figures are taken from the weekly "The Economist", which publishes the "Big Mac Index" including on the Internet - you can see this by following this link.
State statistical offices determine PPP indices by much more complex calculations, which can only be made at the end of the year (The Big Mac Index is calculated by The Economist weekly). Oddly enough, according to domestic statistics in 2016, the dollar rate does not differ too much from the "Big Mac Index" and is 23.67 rubles / dollar. The official data of the federal statistics of the Russian Federation on the PPP exchange rates by year can be found here.
Here, however, a respected reader, who closely follows the publications of "VO" dedicated to the fleet, may have a question, because in his recent article "It's time to learn from the enemy" respected A. Timokhin quoted a completely different dollar exchange rate at PPP - about 9, 3 rubles / dollar. Alas, here the respected author had a mistake - such a rate (9, 27 rubles / dollar) really existed, but … in 2002, and it, of course, has long been outdated and cannot in any way be used to compare the cost of military equipment produced in 2016 d. PPP exchange rates change annually, and of course, it is necessary to apply the current rates, and not those that existed sometime earlier.
So, if you believe our statistics, and "adopt" the dollar exchange rate at PPP 23, 67 rubles / dollar., Then we will get the cost of the head corvette of the project 20386 at the level of 1 228, 6 million dollars, that is, a serial destroyer of the type The Arlie Burke, which, as we said above, costs 1,735.05 million dollars, is about 41% more expensive than our lead corvette. However, in reality, the ratio is more beneficial for our ship, because, as we have already said, it is incorrect to compare a serial American ship with our lead ship.
And what will happen if we compare the serial corvette of the project 20380 with the serial "Arleigh Burke"? As we have already said, the cost of the sixth corvette of this series, contracted in 2014 ("Strogiy"), amounted to 17,329,760 rubles, taking into account inflation, that is, in 2016 prices it will be 21,789,951.55 rubles. that is, at the dollar exchange rate at PPP 23, 67 rubles / dollar, the cost of "Strict" in dollars will be 920 572, 52 dollars.
Thus, the cost of the serial "Arly" is 1.88 of the cost of the serial corvette of project 20380. And if our assumption that the cost of the serial corvette of project 20386 is 20-25% higher than the cost of the serial ship of project 20380 is true (and most likely it is yes), the American destroyer will cost 1, 51-1, 57 times more expensive than the serial "Daring". Or, roughly speaking, for the resources that the Americans spend on 2 "Arleigh Burks", we can build either 3 corvettes of Project 20386, while saving a little money, or we can build 3 corvettes of Project 20386 and bring the construction of the fourth to about 80% readiness …
However, we have to admit that neither 3 “Daring”, nor 4 “Strict” in terms of their combat capabilities stood side by side in two destroyers of the “Arleigh Burke” class of the IIA + series. And this suggests that we are using our resources irrationally, since on the cost-effectiveness scale, American ships obviously outperform ours. But the problem here is not at all that our shipbuilding is working ineffectively, but in the flawed concept of building the surface forces of the domestic fleet.
The fact is that weapons and combat systems take a huge share in the cost of a modern ship. For the same "Arlie Berkov" it turns out like this - the cost of the ship (hull with superstructures and equipment) is approximately 35% of its total cost, the cost of the information system - 20%, and the cost of weapons and equipment for it - the remaining 45%. And now let's try to imagine how much a corvette like the "Daring" would cost if the Americans took over its construction.
When we try to stuff a destroyer's armament range into a corvette (medium-range air defense missile systems, anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, an artillery mount, rapid-fire "metal cutters", a helicopter, etc.), we are forced to install a BIUS on it, equivalent to what the destroyer receives. Total - 20% of the cost of the destroyer will be worth the BIUS corvette.
The body will be almost three times smaller. But in this case, a threefold reduction in size will in no way ensure a threefold reduction in cost - for example, the power of the Arleigh Burk power plant is less than twice the power of the Daring power plant, and in addition, the need to “propel” the maximum armament into a minimum of space will entail additional spending (we lighten the hull - we use more expensive materials), so we will be glad if the corvette hull with the equipment will cost us half the price of a destroyer. Total - 17.5% of the cost of the destroyer.
Armament. Suppose we somehow miraculously managed to shove a third of the destroyer's weapons into the ship, which is another feat - as we said above, our hull is three times smaller, and the power plant is twice as small, and the same will apply to many others. components and assemblies, that is, designing a ship three times smaller than a destroyer, we cannot expect that its payload will be only three times less - rather, it will be four or five times less. But let's say we managed to fit a third of the destroyer's weapon into the corvette - that's 15% of its cost.
And here's the result. In the best case, we will get a ship carrying a third of the destroyer's weapons … for 62.5%, that is, for almost two-thirds of its cost. And if someone wants to reproach us with partiality, then let them compare the corresponding indicators of the American LCS with the American "Arleigh Burks" of the last series, but at the same time - 40% of its cost).
In other words, the domestic stake on "supercorvettes" and "superfrigates" is not economically justified at all. If instead we were to design and build a light PLO ship (within 2,000 tons of full displacement, a good sonar system, 533-mm torpedoes as the main weapon, a helicopter, a SAM for self-defense), that would be very cheap and extremely important for ensuring the safety of our SSBNs, and a gas turbine destroyer-station wagon (air defense missile system "Redut" or the hot S-400, UKSK for missiles of the "Caliber" / "Onyx" / "Zircon" families, etc.) with a total displacement of about 8 thousand tons - the sense would be much more than from the bundle "corvette of project 20380 - frigate of project 22350".
