Recently, in the media space of the Fatherland, sad news has been heard more and more often for those who are not indifferent to the Russian armed forces. These news can be described something like this: "Why do we need" Y "if we have" X ""! And really, why should we rush into mass deliveries of the Su-57 to the troops, if we have an excellent Su-35 that fully meets the tasks of today? Why do we need a lot of "Armata" in the troops, if we have excellent, in no way inferior to Western counterparts (the last statement is entirely on the conscience of its authors) T-72B3? Why do we need to build Borei Bs, which have absorbed the maximum of modern technologies, if we can get by with boats of previous modifications? Why do we need PAK YES, if the TU-160M2 is an invincible super-powerful weapon? So powerful that, by the way, you don't have to hurry with him either …
However, against this very sad background, which testifies to the lack of funds in the sovereign's treasury to equip our Armed Forces with the latest weapons systems, some "peremogi" are also heard. Here the president announced the creation of the latest types of weapons: "Poseidons", "Daggers", etc. Here are reports on the development of the latest underwater unmanned vehicle "Cephalopod", designed to destroy enemy submarines. Here are the messages about the revival of military ekranoplanes … Let's rejoice?
In discussions of such news, the author of this article was repeatedly "put on display": they say, in Russia, dozens of different research institutes are engaged in the latest weapons systems, everything is thought out in advance and verified to the millimeter, and if it has already been decided to develop a particular type of weapon, then this is a wise, balanced decision, any criticism of which occurs solely for reasons of ignorance, incompetence, and simply the weak mind of those who dared to do so. Well, maybe it is, of course, and so, but here's what is interesting …
Take the Armata tank, for example.
A tank, which, generally speaking, is not a tank, but a platform for a whole family of combat vehicles - a tank, a heavy infantry fighting vehicle, self-propelled guns, a recovery vehicle and even a newfangled fire support combat vehicle, not counting many other variations like a bridgelayer, an engineering vehicle, a flamethrower vehicle, transport and loading vehicle for self-propelled guns and others, and others, and others. Is it correct? Yes, of course, because if adopted, we get a whole family of heavy tracked vehicles on a single base and for all occasions.
Here are just the money for the widespread introduction of this family into the troops, as it turned out recently, we do not have. And here a few snide questions arise. The first of which sounds like this: what was the RF Ministry of Defense counting on in general, funding such a development? The fact that a magician suddenly arrives in a blue helicopter, pulls out three hairs from his beard and the territory of the Russian Federation is filled with milk rivers with jelly banks? Doubling GDP annually? It is hard to believe that the specialists of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation did not see and did not understand the final cost of such equipment at the R&D stage, and if this happened, then we can talk about such a global omission in their work that it is hardly possible to imagine such a thing (even for the critical author of this article).
So, apparently, the RF Ministry of Defense was aware of the risks of the high cost of the "Armata", because of which the supply of this family of combat vehicles to the troops could seriously slow down. But then another question asks: why, then, was the Kurganets unified medium tracked platform created in parallel to the Armata?
Yes, someone will say that it is precisely because this platform is medium, not heavy, which is the Armata, and that such a platform has its own tactical niche that Armata cannot fill. This is understandable and reasonable. But the question is: if we cannot ensure a massive supply of "Armata" to the troops, then what were the chances that our ground troops would be able to receive both "Armata" and "Kurganets" in sufficient quantities at the same time? Yes, probably, it would be nice for the troops to have both, and in general it is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick. But in the conditions of a limited military budget, it was necessary to take into account another proverb, namely, "stretch your legs over your clothes." And what about us? As always, there are a lot of plans, because we, in parallel with "Armata" and "Kurganets", launched the procedure for creating a third unified platform - a wheeled one, called "Boomerang".
And if you don’t remember (not by nightfall, be remembered) plans for the purchase of Italian military wheeled vehicles …
In other words, for many years we have funded R&D on weapons that clearly could not be adopted at the same time. And here is the logical result: having created a bunch of samples of promising technology in the framework of Boomerang, Kurganets and Armata, we supply the troops with the BTR-82, which is a little trimmed BTR-80 (began to be produced in 1984), and we are modernizing the T -72 to the level of T-72B3. I would like to dwell on the latter in a little more detail. Currently, the T-90 is a well-deserved, but largely outdated machine. We can say that the requirements of modern combat to a certain extent are met by its latest modifications, created as a result of R&D "Proryv-2" and "Proryv-3", that is, T-90AM and T-90M, which are significantly superior in their combat capabilities. preceding them T-90A. Well, the modernization of the T-72B3 is a "cheap" version of the T-90A, which provides for bringing some performance characteristics of the T-72 to the level of the T-90A. In other words, the T-72B3 is a much weaker combat vehicle than the already outdated T-90A. But we speak of it as a modern tank and do not hesitate to include it in the very "70% of modern technology" that our aircrafts should be equipped with.
Strategic nuclear weapons. There is such a country, the United States of America, which possesses a nuclear arsenal that is quite comparable to ours, but does not harbor the slightest friendly feelings towards the Russian Federation. The United States, like our country, has a nuclear triad, while its ground component today is represented by exactly one type of ballistic missile - "Minuteman 3". This is a mine rocket, which was put into service back in 1970. Since then, the Americans, however, have developed another rocket - the LGM-118A Piskiper, an analogue of our R-36M Satan, but after the collapse of the USSR they did not deploy them en masse. limited to 50 missiles, and they were later removed from combat duty. "Minuteman 3" on land, "Trident 2" at sea - these are, in fact, two missile pillars of America's nuclear power, which quite realistically threaten us and require an adequate deterrent response.
And what do we answer? They created a solid-fuel "Topol" and took it into service - no, it will not work. They upgraded it to "Topol M", put it in the army - again, not that. We made a much more advanced solid-fuel SS-24 "Yars", suitable for both mine and mobile basing - still not enough! Now, in addition to Yars, we are making a heavy liquid-propellant missile “Sarmat”, and so that life does not seem like raspberries, we are also making a special missile for the Avangard units.
What about basing facilities? In the era of high-precision weapons, silo ICBMs in some situations may turn out to be vulnerable to our "sworn friends", so it would be nice to make some of the ground missiles mobile. This is exactly "Yars" - some of the missiles of this type are "based" on automobile platforms.
It would seem that everything is fine - but no, not enough! And work is underway to revive the Barguzin railway complexes. In other words, where the Americans got by with one single missile with only one type of basing (mine), we have already managed to create 4 types of missiles (if we count the Topol and Topol M as one missile, which is not entirely true, plus "Yars", "Sarmat" and a rocket for "Avangard") in mines and on cars, and even on railway platforms! Well, at least the latter was abandoned.
Now for the underwater affairs. As we have already said, everything is simple in the United States: there is one type of nuclear submarine, the Ohio, and there is the Trident 2, a very perfect ballistic missile for them. Everything.
But we are not looking for easy ways. We have a solid-propellant Bulava, but also a liquid-propellant Sineva, which in itself is not very good, but at least understandable: having made the transition to solid-propellant missiles, we, of course, could not abandon liquid-propellant missiles for older submarines … But this is not enough for us, so we came up with another carrier of strategic nuclear warheads - the "super torpedo" Poseidon.
And this is what it all boiled down to: the Americans scare us with two types of intercontinental delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads, and they, in general, succeed - not in the sense that we are afraid, but in the fact that we fully perceive the US nuclear threat. seriously. But we, in turn, frighten the Americans not with two, but with seven different systems for delivering nuclear warheads to the territory of the United States! What for? Do Americans take us 3, 5 times more seriously from this than we do them? It's somehow doubtful.
But various types of weapons are huge costs for their development, creation, production, maintenance, storage, transportation, and so on and so forth. It would be understandable if the United States had fun in this way - their military budget in 2017 was $ 610 billion, Russia - about $ 66 billion. But no, the United States does not do this, but for some reason we do it.
What is the price of the issue? Well, we came up with "Poseidon". Judging by the available information, two carriers are being created for it - nuclear submarines: these are Belgorod and Khabarovsk.
The cost of the launch vehicles is unknown, but we know that the SSBN "Borey" cost the budget about $ 900 million, and the "Ash-M" - about $ 1.5 billion. Probably we will not be mistaken in estimating the cost of each Poseidon launch vehicle. $ 1 billion. What does this mean?
According to some reports, the cost of one T-14 "Armata", subject to mass production, in 2015 was estimated at 250 million rubles. At the time of this appraisal, the dollar costs 67.5 rubles, that is, the tank cost 3.7 million dollars, and at today's exchange rate it is 4, 16 million dollars. The amount, frankly speaking, is not impressive, the Abrams M1A2 SEP costs $ 8.5 million, French Leclerc - $ 10 million, British Challenger 2 - $ 6.5 million, despite the fact that, whatever one may say, the Armata is a new generation of military technology in comparison with the above machines. Well, based on this simple arithmetic, $ 2 billion for carriers for the Poseidons is 480-540 Armat in the army. Is it a lot or a little? Taking into account the fact that the number of our tanks has been determined at 2,300 units, this is quite a lot. But the real costs of deploying "Status-6" are much higher - the boats need parking, infrastructure, despite the fact that we are talking about the cost of only ships, but not the "miracle torpedoes" themselves. What if we optimized our nuclear missile shield to the state of "one missile for ground forces and a pair for the fleet"? Or even so - mobile "Yars" and mine "Sarmat" for land and "Bulava" and "Sineva" for the sea? It is unlikely that at the same time we have somehow noticeably lost in the strength and reliability of our nuclear shield, but huge funds, if not sufficient, then comparable in size with those that we lack to equip the army with heavy tracked vehicles based on the "Armata", we would have saved.
Here, however, someone may argue that the United States is building an anti-missile defense against our ICBMs, and we are not, and that this explains the need to create new missiles and carriers. But this is not true - firstly, our promising S-500 complexes (to a limited extent - even today's S-400) may well fight the space threat, so that missile defense is being developed here too (which, it seems, does not bother the United States at all), and in Secondly, the same cunningly maneuvering Avangard units could well be installed on ICBMs, a special missile is hardly needed for this.
We mentioned only wheeled-tracked vehicles and strategic nuclear forces, but such confusion is present in almost every area of our armed forces. Fleet? In 2011, we planned to revive our surface forces, build dozens of corvettes and frigates … completing their power plants with Ukrainian turbines and German diesels. Without even thinking about the localization of their production in the Russian Federation. The most complex, high-tech production that could be deployed in the Russian Federation (remember the slogans about creating new jobs?), Despite the fact that it would be quite within our power … And the epic with our corvettes? We built project 20380 - oh, something weak air defense. They tried to strengthen - oh, something is expensive, and the new missiles, disgusting, do not want to go where they need to. So what other result could be expected by tying a horse and a quivering doe in one team, that is, crossing the newest Redut air defense system with a rather primitive and weak Furke radar? Who authorized the deployment of three GASs for various purposes on a ship with a displacement of 1,800 tons?
In general, if someone prefers to believe that any modern weapon system in the Russian Federation is being developed for a reason, but only after a dozen scientific research institutes of the Ministry of Defense, based on the results of many years of research, come to the conclusion that this particular weapon system is, it is precisely with such performance characteristics that our troops need to ensure that in the future they effectively solve the tasks set by the leadership, then … well, we have a (still) free country and everyone has the right to believe what he wants. We will pay attention to the following: as you know, "Armatu" was created by "Uralvagonzavod", "Kurganets" - by the concern "Tractor Plants", "Boomerang" - by the Arzamas Machine-Building Plant, and all of them, in general, are not related to each other. "Bulava" was made by the Moscow Thermal Engineering Institute (MIT) liquid-propellant rockets for SSBNs - GRTs im. Makeeva, and the developer of "Status-6" is unknown, but clearly not MIT or SRC. That is, the structures are, again, different. Let us also recall that even in the USSR, with its most powerful military science, there was a certain (and very strong) dictate of industry - very often it happened that the armed forces received not what they needed, but what the military-industrial complex could produce, and this, as they say in Odessa, "there are two big differences." Let us also recall the unkind memory of our minister of war, A. E. Serdyukov, who managed to turn the process of creating new weapons upside down. While the normal procedure for creating new weapons includes the following stages (very simplified):
1. Determination of potential adversaries and the main tasks of the armed forces (this should be done by politics in general).
2. Determine the current state, development prospects, goals and objectives, tactics and strategy of the armed forces of a potential enemy, as well as the available (and promising) weapons.
3. Determine the types of weapons and their approximate performance characteristics for the most effective solution of tasks in accordance with paragraph 1, taking into account the information in paragraph 2 and taking into account the criterion "cost / efficiency".
4. Set the appropriate tasks for research institutes and enterprises of the military-industrial complex, control their work.
Andrei Eduardovich saw this process in a completely different way. In his opinion, these enterprises of the military-industrial complex had to puzzle over what new types of weapons should be, develop them and offer ready-made models to the armed forces. And the armed forces, having considered the proposal (and comparing it with Western counterparts), can accept it if such a weapon is useful to them. Needless to say, the domestic military-industrial complex (and no other military-industrial complex in the world) should not determine the performance characteristics of promising weapons - this is the prerogative of those who will use them. But it is interesting that to some extent this "innovation" of the newly minted Minister of War resonated well with the interests of the industrialists of the Russian Federation, because thanks to this approach they could offer the armed forces not what they needed, but what the military-industrial complex could produce or develop … And, apparently, the echoes of those not so distant years are still hiccuping us. Simply because, on the one hand, we have rather large enterprises that are ready to do a lot for the sake of obtaining government orders and have a powerful political lobby (as you know, the modern oligarchic growth has excellent connections with the head of state), and on the other hand, a rather strong collapse of the structures of the armed forces responsible for the development of technical specifications for advanced types of weapons.
And now, dear readers, let's take another look at the “joyful” news that the RF Ministry of Defense has been trying to make us happy lately.
WIGs are back! JSC Central Design Bureau for SEC im. R. E. Alekseeva "is developing a super-heavy transport and landing ekranoplan, which is planned to be used in the Arctic and the Pacific Ocean for rescue operations and delivery of goods to remote bases. It is indicated that the new ekranoplan will have a mass of 600 tons, a length of 93 m and a wingspan of 71 m. Why is it so huge? Because it is these dimensions that are needed in order to "fly" over the waves with an excitement of 5-6 points. But that's not all - Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov announced the creation of the Orlan rocket ekranoplan in the state armaments program until 2027. Why do we need a rocket ekranoplan? The Deputy Prime Minister gave a mind-boggling answer: “His main function is the Northern Sea Route, where our infrastructure is not very developed. He can patrol, close these areas."
The first question that comes to mind: from whom will the domestic ekranoplans be closed to the Northern Sea Route? Since the Second World War (the raid of the German pocket battleship Scheer in the Barents Sea, in order to prevent the convoy en route along the Northern Sea Route, Operation Wunderland), never, in any of the wildest fantasies, neither the American nor any other foreign fleet was going to climb the Northern Sea Route by surface ships. The only exception is that the section along the coast of Norway, which was supposed to be tightly covered by the patrol and carrier-based aircraft of the United States and NATO, but there is absolutely nothing for the domestic ekranoplan to do - aviation is deadly for it and the ekranoplan is not able to protect itself from it. So what should a rocket ekranoplan do on our section of the Northern Sea Route? He cannot fight enemy surface ships due to the absence of enemy surface ships. To combat enemy cruise missiles (for example, launched from submarines or US strategic bombers), interceptors like the MiG-31BM are much better suited. For the fight against submarines capable of going under the ice, the ekranoplan is also practically useless.
But the ekranoplan is capable of operating not only on the Northern Sea Route, Borisov noted that they can also be used in the waters of the Caspian and Black Seas. Well what can I say? If Russia has a body of water, bordering on other powers, in which Russia has absolute naval superiority over all potential adversaries put together, it is the Caspian Sea. Why is there also an ekranoplan needed there? Black Sea? Which is being shot through by modern anti-ship missiles almost through and through?
Simply put, we do not have any intelligible tasks for a rocket ekranoplan. And for the transport and rescue? Its dimensions, I must say, are grandiose (wingspan 71 m), but for what? According to the publications, this is necessary to ensure the ability to fly over waves with waves of 5-6 points. In the open sea, this is an average wave height of 3 meters. Quite a solid excitement, of course, but the author of this article thought that usually the need to save someone comes in a storm, which seems to be considered on the Beaufort scale from 8 points (wave height - 5.5 m). And if such a need has come, then what will the ekranoplan rescuer do? Well, let's say his crew can, without giving a damn about everything, still raise their car into the air, but what's the point, because he still won't be able to get on the water?
And after all, we are discussing all this on the condition that the development company really manages to create an adequate machine within the established TK. Will it succeed? I do not want to upset the supporters of ekranoplanes, but memory persistently suggests that work on ekranoplans of a military orientation in the USSR began in 1962 (funding for ekranoplanes research began even earlier). The result of activities up to and including 1990 was the adoption of as many as three Eaglet-type landing craft and one Lun strike type, and the latter was accepted only for trial operation, and in general they all met the requirements of the Navy very little. Was this result worth 28 years of work in this area? Did you justify the people's money spent on them? Do we need today to finance ekranoplans within the framework of the SAP in the hope that we will receive devices that we … will not know how to use for another 9 years?
Without a doubt, there are some areas of human knowledge in which it is necessary to invest even if they do not bring immediate results. Basic science is a classic example. But here it is important to understand the line that should not be crossed: funding research on controlled thermonuclear fusion is one thing, and trying to build a Death Star from Star Wars is completely different. In other words, it is possible that there are reasons for continuing work on the subject of ekranoplanes, but why try to implement them now in practice, if we do not have an obvious need for them?
The same applies to another novelty from the RF Ministry of Defense - the uninhabited underwater robotic complex "Cephalopod". Frankly, after reading the recent material on VO, the author of this article believed the news that this unit is a small hunter for enemy submarines, armed with the same small torpedoes MTT (standard ammunition of the "Packet-NK" complex with a caliber of 324 mm).
I must say that today the creation of such a complex does not seem justified from any point of view. It is indicated that the dimensions of the complex are relatively small ("the size of a bus"), therefore, there is no way to accommodate a hydroacoustic complex of any serious dimensions and capabilities. Thus, the "hunter" turns out to be blind from birth - it is extremely doubtful that the detection range of a modern nuclear submarine would be at least a few kilometers. Of course, the Cephalopod can be made relatively quiet so that it can hear the submarine from such a distance from which it could not hear it, but it is obvious that in this mode the Cephalopod cannot move at any high speed … Thus, "hunting" is possible only if the enemy himself accidentally stumbles upon the "Cephalopod".
But now, let's say I came across. What is the probability of hitting a target? Obviously, it is minimal. Modern anti-submarine torpedoes are controlled by wires, that is, the SAC of the submarine that released them monitors the position of the attacked target and corrects the course of the torpedo, thereby allowing "not to be fired" on traps being fired, etc. At the same time, our small-sized torpedo MTT has nothing of the kind.
In essence, "Packet-NK" is an anti-torpedo system and, I would like to believe, is doing well with this task. The anti-torpedo function for him, rather, is an optional addition, because, frankly, it is impossible to make a serious and somewhat long-range anti-submarine weapon in dimensions of 324 mm. It did not work out - MTT is not controlled by wires, but has an inertial guidance system, which leads the torpedo to the calculated point, and there the torpedo seeker is trying to find the target. It is clear that the MTT torpedo has much less chance of hitting it with this approach than the wire-guided torpedo. Thus, in order to ensure a more or less reliable target lock, "Cephalopod" should approach the enemy atomarino at a distance at which the torpedo seeker can capture the target even before launch. But the maximum range of the seeker torpedo does not exceed 2.5 km and, as practitioners suggest, such a range is like a bright socialist future, in theory it may come sometime, but in practice no one has seen it yet.
Thus, "Cephalopod" is such a self-propelled MTPK-1, or "Captor", if you like. That is, it is, in essence, a mine-torpedo (a mine that uses a small-sized torpedo as a warhead), which was given the ability to move under water at a speed of 5-7 knots (hardly the silent course of the Cephalopod is higher). Probably, such a mine can be used for some kind of application, but you need to understand that such a weapon will be very expensive, on the one hand, and very limited in use, on the other. The "Cephalopod" will not be able to accompany the SSBNs, because, in fact, the SSBNs do not need such an escort - due to their "blindness", the Cephalopod will not protect the SSBNs from anything, and if the GAK suddenly detects the enemy, the modern 533- mm torpedoes SSBNs will cope with it better. Perhaps the protection of our stationary hydroacoustic stations at the bottom of the sea? But with such a task a pair of 533-mm torpedoes, which can be controlled by wires and which will be guided to the target according to the data of the guarded SAC, will cope much better than the Cephalopod. And what else? A wandering mine bank of several Cephalopods? Perhaps this makes some sense, but taking into account the costs of its creation (and "Cephalopod" will cost as a mini-submarine), such use is unlikely to be justified. And it turns out that the name "Cephalopod" for this unit is quite prophetic - "neither a mouse, nor a frog, but an unknown animal."
This could be the end of the article, but … unfortunately, the author decided not to limit himself to the aforementioned news about the "Cephalopod", but to dig a little deeper. Oh … he better not do it. Because, judging by the available data, this is not at all what we thought.
So, the state contract for "Cephalopod" was concluded with the Central Design Bureau of MT "Rubin" in 2014. To ensure the execution of the contract, Rubin received a bank guarantee from Sberbank for 789 million rubles. Taking into account that such a guarantee should cover from 10 to 30% of the contract value, the total cost of R&D on "Cephalopod" can be estimated at 2, 6-7, 9 billion rubles. But it is not this that is important (the amounts, by the way, are far from exorbitant), but the list of co-executors and counterparties with whom CDB MT “Rubin” is working.
The topic "Cephalopod" is mentioned in the annual report of OKBM im. Afrikantov. Since the latter is engaged in atomic energy, it means that it is an atomic reactor that is supposed to be on the "Cephalopod". But the co-performers:
1. Concern "Morins" Agat "- well, everything is clear here, this enterprise has been successfully engaged in information management systems for a long time. Who, if not them, should be engaged in robotic complexes.
2. JSC Research Institute Morteplotekhniki and JSC Concern MPO - Gidropribor. Everything is also clear, these are the developers and manufacturers of torpedoes, hydroacoustic countermeasures, underwater drones. All this is reasonable and understandable, but then …
3. OKB "Novator". Its products are our favorite "Calibers", including rocket-torpedoes, missiles for the Buk, Shtil and S-300 complexes and (tra-ba-ta-tam!) The Burevestnik nuclear-powered rocket. Yes, yes, the one that Vladimir Vladimirovich spoke about in his message to the Federal Assembly. Which of all this would you like to see on the Cephalopod?
4. Dear readers, maybe you don't need to go further? Was the previous point really not enough? Okay, the author of this article warned you. So, the last co-executor known to us is the Perm plant "Mashinostroitel". Engaged in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In general, it looks like we are doing the Death Star after all. However, while underwater. It would probably be funny … If T-72B3 did not go to army units instead of "Armata".
