The title illustration depicts the process of unloading the US military Shewhart transport used to deliver equipment for the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps around the world. The trick is that the original name of this ship sounded completely different - before becoming a "peddler of democracy", the fast military transport "Shuhart" was a peaceful Danish container ship "Laura Maersk"! In 1996, the beauty "Laura" disappeared without a trace in the docks of San Diego, and a year later a 55,000-ton monster came out into the vastness of the World Ocean, capable of delivering 100 units of heavy armored vehicles and 900 "Hummers" to foreign shores in a matter of days.
At first glance, the purchase of container ships in Denmark looks like a natural decision for the United States - the NATO countries are solving their pressing problems, what do we care about that?
All the more surprising will be the story of another fast transport of the Maritime Command. In the old days, the Lance Corporal Roy Whit was a container roker-carrier named “Vladimir Vaslyaev”! A huge modern gas turbine ship, once the pride of the Black Sea Shipping Company, even after the disappearance of the USSR, continued to work hard on distant ocean lines until it was noticed by American strategists, after which it was bought out for a lot of money. The Americans cut the hull in half and welded in an additional section (the vessel increased to 55 thousand tons), installed 60-ton cargo booms, updated equipment, and now "Lance Corporal Roy Whit" plows the seas under a stars-striped "mattress", terrifying anyone with oil.
Paradoxically, even the United States, which has a developed shipbuilding industry and annually builds aircraft carriers, UDC and other large ships, does not hesitate to acquire foreign equipment to equip its naval forces. Half of Maritime Command's 115 military transports are of foreign origin!
Interrogation with predilection
The ancestral home of the modern Russian fleet has been established quite accurately - Holland. It was from there that the first shipbuilding technologies, the best maritime traditions and the very word "navy" (vloot) came to us. The "culprit" of these large-scale projects was the most enchanting character in Russian history - Pyotr Alekseevich (he is also the sailor Pyotr Mikhailov, the bombardier Alekseev, or simply Peter the Great). As a strong-willed, pragmatic and enthusiastic man, he rode "at a gallop across Europe" and, without unnecessary reasoning, acquired everything that in his opinion was necessary for the creation of the Russian Navy: ready-made samples of ships, drawings, tools, materials and a couple of hundred leading Dutch shipbuilders …
Twenty years later, the Russians firmly entrenched themselves on the shores of the Baltic, rebuilt the powerful fortresses of Kronshlot and St. Petersburg, and a series of naval victories under the St. Andrew's flag finally convinced the Europeans that a new serious player had appeared on the sea. It is a pity that Peter's life was cut short at the age of 52 - if he had lived longer, we might have flown into space already in the 19th century.
In subsequent years, the Russian Empire did not hesitate to periodically place its military orders at foreign shipyards - by the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, a significant part of the ships of the Russian fleet were built abroad!
Legendary armored cruiser Varyag - Philadelphia, USA;
Armored cruiser "Svetlana" - Le Havre, France;
Armored cruiser "Admiral Kornilov" - Saint-Nazaire, France (ironically - just in the place where the
"Mistral" for the Russian Navy!);
Armored cruiser "Askold" - Kiel, Germany;
Armored cruiser Boyarin - Copenhagen, Denmark.
Is it really good? This is bad. Such facts testify to the obvious problems in the industry of the Russian Empire. However, from the point of view of sailors, foreign-built ships were no different from their domestic "colleagues" - like any technique, they had their advantages and disadvantages. The failures of the Russo-Japanese War clearly lay outside the technical plane, and were explained by purely organizational problems.
It is fair to say that in the Tsushima battle, the Russian sailors were opposed by an equally motley Japanese squadron: the flagship battleship Mikasa was built in Great Britain, and the battle cruisers Nissin and Kasuga of Italian construction were bought by Japan from Argentina!
Purchases of warships abroad continued until the October Revolution. For example, before the First World War, a series of 10 destroyers "Mechanical Engineer Zverev" was built in Germany, and 11 destroyers "Lieutenant Burakov" were received from France.
To say that the Soviet Union used foreign ships is to say nothing. This is a whole ballad with a non-linear plot and rather simple conclusions. Even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the USSR beautifully "cut" two noble ships from its future enemies.
The first is the unfinished heavy cruiser Lyuttsov (Petropavlovsk), bought in Germany in 1940, but remained unfinished due to the outbreak of the war. The German soldiers who fought near Leningrad were especially delighted with the sale of the "pocket battleship" to the USSR - in September 1941 they were pleased to know that German 280-mm shells fired from the guns of a real German ship were flying at them!
The second purchase is the leader of the destroyers "Tashkent", the legendary "blue cruiser" of the Black Sea Fleet, built at the shipyards of Livorno (Italy). The ship was built by real Masters - the leader's speed exceeded 43 knots, which made it the fastest warship in the world!
However, another attempt to use a foreign warship ended tragically - the captured Italian battleship Giulio Cesare (better known as Novorossiysk) was destroyed by an explosion 10 years after the end of the war. The death of "Novorossiysk" is shrouded in a mystical mystery - it is still unknown what caused the death of the ship: an accident, sabotage using an internal "bookmark" or an external explosive device installed under the bottom of the battleship by saboteurs from the "Black Prince" detachment Valerio Borghese.
The "Italian trail" looks very convincing, given that the Italians clearly did not want to part with their ship and were ready to destroy it at any cost, just not to surrender the battleship to the enemy. It is strange, of course, that they waited for 10 years.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union periodically allowed itself to place large military and civil orders at the shipyards of foreign countries. Of course, there was no talk of any "technical lag" - the reasons for foreign orders most often lay in the political or economic plane.
So, for example, in the early 1970s, the USSR, with a broad "master's" gesture, granted Poland the right to build large landing ships of Project 775. There were two reasons for this strange decision of the Soviet leadership:
1. Support your Warsaw bloc ally in every possible way;
2. Soviet shipyards were overloaded with more solid orders, the USSR had no time to tinker with "trifles" with a displacement of 4000 tons.
As a result, all 28 BDK units were built at the Stocznia Polnocna shipyard. Many of them are still in the Russian Navy, performing missions in various regions of the globe (for example, now BDKs of this type have been sent to the coast of Syria).
According to statistics, 70% of large-tonnage Soviet vessels (transport, passenger, fishing) were built at the shipyards of the GDR, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Against this background, "capitalist" Finland stood out. Russian sailors had long-standing ties with the Finns - suffice it to recall that before the Revolution, Helsingfors (present-day Helsinki) was one of the main basing points of the Baltic Fleet.
To the credit of the Finns, they bravely endured the defeat in World War II and were able to restore good relations with the USSR. “Our courageous enemy defeated us. Now every Finn must understand that the mighty Soviet Union will not want to tolerate a state filled with the idea of revenge on its borders,”Foreign Minister Urho Kekkonen addressed the Finnish population with this speech. The Finns were the only ones who ceded their territories to us without a single booby trap or sabotage squad.
Considering the benevolent attitude of the northern neighbor, as well as the unconditional successes of smart Finns in large-tonnage shipbuilding, the USSR increasingly began to place its special military orders in Finland - from simple floating barracks and tugs to sea rescue complexes and nuclear icebreakers!
The most famous examples are:
- ocean rescue complexes of the Fotiy Krylov type (1989), capable of towing any ships with a displacement of up to 250 thousand tons, carrying out deep-sea diving operations, eroding the soil and extinguishing fires;
- 9 oceanographic ice-class vessels of the "Akademik Shuleikin" type (1982);
- powerful polar icebreakers "Ermak", "Admiral Makarov", "Krasin" (1974 - 1976);
- nuclear icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" (1988).
And at this time, Finland lived well on "double rations": with one hand it entered into profitable contracts with Western countries, with the other hand it received generous rewards from the Soviet Union. However, this state of affairs suited everyone.
The presence of foreign naval equipment in their naval forces, to one degree or another, is a "sin" in all countries of the world. It is no longer a secret that almost all modern destroyers of developed countries are based on a single common project: the Spanish Alvaro de Basan, the Norwegian Nansen, the South Korean Sejon, the Japanese Atago or the Australian Hobart - modifications of one and the same the same Aegis destroyer "Orly Burke", with the same power plant, internal equipment and weapons. All the "stuffing" for the ships comes from the USA.
No less large-scale processes are taking place in the European Union: the French and Italians "cut down" their joint project - an air defense frigate of the "Horizon" type, the Spaniards built a helicopter carrier for the Australian Navy, and the French were able to "break through" a profitable contract with Russia - the epic with the purchase of Mistrals "Has become a popular multi-part show among Russians.
Another small but very curious example of the import of naval weapons is the Israeli Navy: submarines from Germany, corvettes from the United States, missile boats from France.
On the other side of the globe, similar processes are taking place: the naval forces of Taiwan are a motley game set of outdated US Navy ships … However, there are no riddles here - "who orders a girl, he dances her."
But on the other side of the strait, the destroyers Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Taizhou and Ningbo look menacingly at the shores of "rebellious Taiwan" - all ships of the project 956 "Sarych" from the Russian Navy - China successfully uses Russian equipment and does not worry about it at all.
India is a separate song! A team hodgepodge that still needs to be looked for: the Viraat aircraft carrier is British, half of the submarines are Russian, the other half are from Spain. BOD, frigates and missile boats - Russian, Soviet and Indian, own design. Naval aviation - equipment of Russian, British and American production.
But, despite such a disunited ship composition, Indian sailors have solid experience in modern combat operations at sea - in 1971, Indian missile boats defeated the Pakistani fleet dry in a short but brutal war at sea (naturally, all Indian boats and missiles were Soviet production).
And yet, such a frivolous attitude towards the choice of foreign suppliers, in the end, severely punished the Indian sailors: due to the well-known economic and political events that took place in Russia at the turn of the XXI century, the fulfillment of many Indian contracts was in question. The delays in the construction of the Vikramaditya aircraft carrier serve as a formidable warning to all who cherish hopes in the style of “abroad will help us” - one cannot rely entirely on even trusted foreign partners.
A curious touch: initially, one of the real competitors of the Vikramaditya (Admiral Gorshkov) was the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk - if you bought an old American aircraft carrier, the Indian fleet would have played with all the riot of tropical colors!
We are deliberately not going to consider in detail the export of naval weapons to the Third World countries - it is clear that billions of rubles (dollars or euros) are circulating in this market. Everything is used - from the newest designs to the purchase of obsolete ships decommissioned from the navies of developed countries. The last destroyer of the Second World War (the American "Fletcher") was decommissioned in Mexico only in 2006!
From all of the above facts, a number of simple conclusions follow:
1. Hysterical shouts of some representatives of Russian society: "Do not let the French into the Russian fleet!" or “Come on! A shame! We are already building ships in France! " - nothing more than a cheap comedy designed for an impressionable audience. We bought foreign ships, we are buying, and, for sure, we will buy in the future. This is a normal worldwide practice. The main thing is not to abuse this technique and do everything according to the mind and in moderation.
2. Ideally, any ships should be built at domestic shipyards. But, alas, this is not always the case - for many reasons (technical, political, economic), countries are forced to buy ships from each other.
If there is an urgent need to update the domestic fleet, which option is preferable - to purchase a series of ready-made ships abroad, or to be limited to the purchase of technology? At first, I planned to conduct a public poll on this topic, however, even without any polls, it is obvious that 75% of the public will be in favor of buying and studying foreign technologies with the aim of their subsequent implementation in domestic industries. Alas … this also does not always work.
3. The decision to purchase foreign warships should not be made on the basis of the logic "Soviet is more reliable" or "foreign cars are better", but proceed from the specific needs of the sailors. “Needed” or “not needed” is the question.
The time has come to tear off the veils and openly ask: Do Russian sailors need the Mistral UDC? I have no right to give an unambiguous answer to this question. But, judging by the reaction of public opinion and naval experts, the purchase of French UDC appears as another gamble. If the Russian navy needs Western technology so much, maybe it was worth purchasing the Lafayette or Horizon multipurpose frigates instead of the helicopter carriers? At least, such a purchase will immediately have a number of adequate explanations.
4. It is curious that in the entire history of purchases of foreign ships, not a single case of any meanness on the part of the exporter or destructive "bookmarks" in the structure of the ship was noted. Not a single case! Which, however, can be explained quite prosaically - one discovery of such a "surprise" and the arms market is closed for the country for decades, the stain on the reputation cannot be washed away.
However, without a doubt, any foreign technology needs to be thoroughly checked - just like that, just in case.
As for the epic with "Mistrals", it is worth recognizing that the Navy has once again found itself in the role of an “unloved stepson,” whose interests have been sacrificed to more pressing foreign policy problems. Nobody is interested in the opinion of the sailors themselves - in the current conditions, it would be a logical decision to accept French "gifts" and start preparing for the development of helicopter carriers - otherwise, the allocated money can easily go offshore.
"Gifts", frankly speaking, are by no means as bad as they are sometimes tried to be presented - even without taking into account the specific landing functions of the UDC "Mistral", its air group of 16 helicopters is a formidable force in the sea: anti-submarine missions, search and rescue operations, landing and fire support of "point" assault forces - the range of use of helicopters is extremely wide. One of the rotary-wing aircraft can perform the functions of a "flying radar" - the detection range of the radar at an altitude of 1000 meters is 10 times higher than that of the radar at the top of the ship's mast.
Finally, this whole tragicomedy cost “only” 100 billion rubles - a ridiculous amount is simply lost against the background of the promised 5 trillion for the development of the Russian Navy until 2020. There would be something to argue about, honestly …
