The latest news of the construction of our Navy can drive an unprepared person into a stupor. Perhaps even deeper than the one that the Queen of Great Britain could experience if a couple of our bums knocked on her window with the proposal: "Will you be the third?"
But let's start from the beginning. So, after the "wonderful" news about the flooding of the PD-50 dock, in which our only TAVKR "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" was located, the sailors and all people who were not indifferent to the Russian Navy were "happy" with the news about the extension of the repair time for another " admiral ". We are talking about the BOD "Admiral Chabanenko". If initially it was assumed that the ship would return to the fleet in 2018 or a little later, then, according to the latest data, its return to the fleet should now be expected no earlier than 2022-2023.
Why is that bad?
Let's take a quick look at the state of our 1st rank warships of the "destroyer" and "large anti-submarine ship" classes. More recently, 8 months ago, in March of this year, we did a review dedicated to these classes of warships. The conclusions were not very encouraging. Except for the "oldies" "Sharp-eyed" (the last "singing frigate" in our fleet) and the BOD project 1134B "Kerch" in reserve, which was in such a technical condition that the only question was whether to make a museum out of it, or send for disposal, formally at the disposal of the Russian Navy were 17 ships of these classes. Including 8 destroyers of Project 956, the same number of BODs of Project 1155 and one and only representative of the BOD of Project 1155.1 - the same "Admiral Chabanenko". It seems to be not so bad, but only ten of them were on the move: 6 BODs of Project 1155 and three destroyers of Project 956. At the same time, there were reasonable suspicions that two of the three destroyers, due to the state of power plants, were only limited suitability - the flagship of the Baltic Fleet "Nastoichivy" has not left the Baltic since 1997, and "Ushakov", which has served in the Northern Fleet for many years, does not sail beyond the Barents Sea. The rest of the destroyers and BODs were under repair, reserve, or even laid up with completely unclear prospects for returning to the active fleet.
What has changed today? According to the BOD of project 1155, fortunately, nothing - there are 8 of them in the fleet, so much remains, despite the fact that 6 of them are in service, one is being repaired (Marshal Shaposhnikov) and another Admiral Kharlamov, unfortunately, most likely it will never return to service, because it needs to replace the power plant, which is simply nowhere to take - according to the latest data, it is now performing the role of a stationary training ship.
As for the destroyers of Project 956, everything is a little worse here, because of the three "running" destroyers, only two remained: the "Persistent" got into repairs. It seems to be good news, they will be repaired - it will be as good as new and will still serve … But only the destroyer of the same type "Burny", as in the distant 2005, got under repair, and remains in it to this day, despite the fact that it is in the yard, actually, the end of 2018. And now an "interesting" question is being solved: what to do with this ship next? Will we repair it for some more years, or will we still put it into storage? Apparently, the remnants of conscience do not allow it to be honestly scrapped after thirteen (!) Repairs, but “conservation” still sounds decent.“Competence”, “innovation”, “conservation” … The trend, however, must be understood!
There is nothing to say about the other 4 ships of Project 956 - one by one, it seems, it was decided to turn it into a museum, others have been in sludge for a long time and, for obvious reasons, will never return to service.
Thus, if we look at things soberly, we have 11 destroyer / BOD class ships at our disposal, including 3 destroyers of Project 956, 7 BODs of Project 1155 and one of Project 1155.1, of which one is 956, one is 1155 and one is 1155.1 are under repair, and there are only 8 ships on the move, including the limitedly fit (that is, apparently unsuitable for ocean voyages) "Admiral Ushakov". For four fleets.
Naturally, under these conditions, the speed and quality of repairs of the remaining BODs and destroyers, as Vladimir used to say … no, not Vladimirovich, but Ilyich, is paramount and extremely necessary. But the BOD "Admiral Chabanenko", which was repaired in 2015, was stuck in it for either 7 or 8 years. By the way, an interesting fact. "Admiral Chabanenko" is one of the most modern ships of our fleet, it was laid down in 1989 and entered service 10 years later, in 1999. That is, during the time of "developed socialism" we built the head BOD project 1155 "Udaloy", 5 years, decisively dissociating themselves from the mossy communist past, similar in complexity, "Admiral Chabanenko" was created for 10 years, but now, overcoming the failures of the "wild 90s" and finally entering a bright innovative capitalist future, we will repair it about the same time as it took to build. Of course, 7 or 8 years does not equal 10, but who said that the recent "shift to the right" is the last?
The greatest interest is the reason for such … well, we will not say "criminal negligence", we are not thirty-seventh year. But still, why did it take so long? One could somehow understand if some kind of major modernization was started, fundamentally changing the appearance of the ship and including the installation of the latest, unfinished, still under-tested weapons and equipment. Production is not ready, contractors are letting down, “effective managers” have made a mistake, and so on. etc.
However, according to a respected resource flotprom, with reference to an unnamed source in the shipbuilding industry, it is not technical difficulties that are to blame, but a banal lack of funding. Such an explanation looks completely incomprehensible - it does not explain anything, but it raises many questions. The fact is that the reasons for such a deficit can be very, very different.
Option one. The specialists of the Ministry of Defense, together with the shipbuilders, thought over the volumes of the required repair of the BOD, agreed with the USC, jointly determined its cost, signed an agreement and included it in the budget of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. But after all, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does not earn money itself - it is allocated by the state, and if the state was unable to finance the Ministry of Defense in a timely manner, then, of course, there is a funding deficit. And the state is to blame for it, which was unable to provide funding for the budget of the Ministry of Defense approved by it.
Option two. The volume and cost of the repair of "Admiral Chabanenko" was determined, approved and agreed by the Ministry of Defense, the state timely financed the budget of the Ministry of Defense, but … unfortunately, there were some extra-planned costs, or miscalculations in determining the cost of other, more important than the repair of "Admiral Chabanenko" measures … And so, it turns out that you have to redistribute money within the budget, take it away from the BOD and something else in order to finance the deficits that have arisen. Here the Ministry of Defense is already to blame - it could not properly plan its spending.
There is also a third option - they planned the repair, planned the amount for it, started to carry it out … and, in the course of the work, they discovered that it was necessary to repair not only what was conceived, but also this, and this, but these units must be completely changed and urgently, because it is generally unclear why, being in such a state, the ship has not yet sunk right at the quay wall. So the volume of work has increased many times over, and no funds have been planned for this.
But, judging by the text of the statement, we are dealing with a completely different deficit. The fact is that when the penultimate time of the repair was mentioned, and it happened in December 2017, the source said literally the following:
"Due to a lack of funding, the entire scope of modernization work that needs to be carried out on the ship has not yet been determined."
That is, the situation with the repair of the BOD was as follows. At the very beginning of 2015, Nikolay Chabanenko started repairs at the 35th shipyard. Then, on February 5 of the same year, 2015, the production workers announced the completion of the first stage of docking - they dismantled the propellers and shafts, the steering gear, carried out extensive work on the repair and replacement of the bottom nozzles and nozzles of the kingston boxes, painted the outer skin, and then … then, it seems, the matter arose, because the Ministry of Defense did not determine the scope of the ship's modernization. And this situation persisted, at least until the end of 2017, that is, for almost three years! Of course, some work on the ship is probably underway (within the limits of absolutely necessary repairs, which absolutely cannot be done without), but this, it seems, is all.
The black humor of the situation lies in the fact that in 2015, when the ship was docked, the press service of Zvezdochka said that the repair would take at least 3 years. Well, given the fact that in the first three years of repair, the customer was still unable to decide what exactly he was going to repair, we can say that they were not mistaken …
And if it's no joke, then the situation with "Nikolai Chabanenko" looks like a form of slovenliness and indiscretion, but this time - not sovereign financiers, and not shipbuilders, but people in uniform responsible for updating and repairing the ship's staff.
Yes, after 2014, a lot has changed. Yes, the funding of the Ministry of Defense has undergone a major revision. GPV 2011-2020 was, in fact, curtailed, due to the fact that the state did not have enough funds for its implementation. And where would they come from, this money? Financing of GPV 2011-2020 with a total volume of 20 trillion. rub. it was assumed this: during the first five years - 5.5 trillion. rubles, in the next 5 years - the remaining 14, 5 trillion. rub. Where was the state going to get funds for an almost threefold increase in military spending in 2016-2020? Doubling GDP in Five Years? Oil at $ 500 / barrel?
Well, just then a coup d'état in Ukraine, foreign sanctions, a fall in oil prices, an absolutely illiterate policy of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to mitigate the impact of these threats on the domestic economy (which turned out to be much more terrible for the country's economy than the threats themselves), and it became clear, that we cannot afford such an ambitious program.
So, the objective reality hit hard on the revenue side of the Defense Ministry's budget. But, on the other hand, the savings in the costly part of the military budget began to take shape very quickly. Forced economy, which arose not because the military was inclined to abandon some weapons, but because the domestic industry was largely unprepared to implement such a large-scale program. Development of key weapon systems, such as PAK FA, "Armata", SAM "Polyment-Redut", etc. etc. were delayed, in other cases enterprises were not able to produce military products in the volumes required by the Ministry of Defense. The epic failure of the shipbuilding program is especially characteristic here. Where 10 Boreyevs, 10 Ash trees, 20 non-nuclear submarines, 39 corvettes and frigates, not counting 4 universal landing ships, of which 2 we had to build at our own shipyards, 6 large landing ships of the Ivan Gren type, etc..? And this is not a money issue - no money was spared on nuclear submarines, but even the Ash series, cut down to 7 units, will certainly not enter service until 2020. And, frankly speaking, even if the American military budget fell on us right now, 2,300 "Armata" by 2020 will not be delivered to the troops.
In other words, if the revenue side of the budget of the RF Ministry of Defense has been greatly reduced, but the "reluctance savings" associated with the inability of our military-industrial complex to implement such ambitious programs, significantly reduced the expenditure side. Of course, all this complicated the planning of the budget of the Ministry of Defense, but not to the same extent that it was impossible to agree on the amount of repairs to the 1st rank warship over the course of three years!
After all, when the era of economies and sequestration begins, the armed forces, like any other structure, have to stretch their legs over their clothes, leaving only the most important and necessary. And, it would seem, it is quite obvious that it is much more useful for us to return a very modern and still not old ship to the active fleet than to keep it docked for years, indulging in thoughts about how it would be better to modernize it. After all, it is obvious that in conditions of foreign policy tension, when the President sets the task of ensuring a naval presence in the Mediterranean, every ship of the 1st rank is worth its weight in gold for us.
Let's remember what the Admiral Chabanenko BOD is. For a long time, the USSR Navy adhered to the concept of "pair confrontation", opposing a pair of American universal destroyers of the "Spruance" class to a domestic pair of specialized ships - the BOD of Project 1155 and the destroyer of Project 956. It was assumed that the effectiveness of the domestic pair would be higher due to specialization. However, in practice, this concept did not justify itself, the fleet needed universal ships. Strictly speaking, this required a destroyer of a completely new project, but, apparently, to speed up the process, they took the path of improving the BOD of Project 1155 - instead of eight Rastrub-B anti-submarine torpedo torpedoes, they installed 8 Moskit anti-ship missiles, but the PLUR on the ship was all they retained it, since the standard torpedo tubes can use the “Waterfall” rocket-torpedoes, the AK-630M was replaced by the ZRAK, instead of a pair of 100-mm gun mounts, a 130-mm twin was installed, and so on.
The resulting ship, of course, does not pretend to be "unparalleled in the world" and is seriously inferior to "Arleigh Burke" in a number of parameters, but it is still a rather formidable weapon, and is quite capable of providing "force projection" onto the fleet of a potential enemy.
No matter how great the capabilities of the AUG, it is hardly possible to drown the accompanying BOD of Project 1155.1 in a couple of seconds, but not a single commander of a US aircraft carrier would want to be hit by eight supersonic low-flying Mosquitoes. In other words, despite the suboptimal armament (lack of medium and long-range missiles, short-range Mosquito anti-ship missiles), the Admiral Chabanenko BOD is still a very dangerous ship for the enemy. And, since the money for everything needed was decidedly not enough, we should not have puzzled over the scope of modernization of "Nikolai Chabanenko", but simply to restore its technical readiness and return to operation. BOD today is not even 20 years old, this is one of the youngest ships of the 1st rank, it is a descendant of reliable, like the Kalashnikov assault rifle BOD 1155, to serve and serve, but … It has been at 35 shipyards for the fourth year already. And it will stand still for god knows how long, but at least - three or four years, because for several years (!) Someone could not decide on the "scope of modernization".
True, according to some sources, now these volumes have been decided. And the next stage began - the development of design documentation for its implementation, which the Severnoye PKB will be able to prepare … not earlier than December 2019. What prevented the determination of the possible scope of work and the preparation of technical documentation before the ship gets up for repair, or at least in the period 2015-2018 biennium? After all, this is not such a costly measure, which, in any case, will not be needed today, but the day after tomorrow, because Nikolai Chabanenko will serve for another 20 years, and this is clearly not its last modernization. However, having a ready-made technical documentation, it would be possible to begin to “translate it into metal” immediately, as soon as the decision to carry out the modernization is made.
But no. We'd better put the ship under repair, for three years we will think about how to modernize it, then for over a year we will make technical documentation for what we came up with, then …
And all this time, a ship of 7,640 tons of standard displacement, stuffed with Mosquitoes and Daggers, on board which is the best sonar complex of all that our BODs and destroyers currently have, will stay in the dock.
And combat services in the Mediterranean Sea will be carried by 950-ton kids of the river-sea class - small missile ships of the Buyan type.
