More recently, such a class of ship as a minelayer, or minelayer, was quite common. Moreover, “recently” is recently in the truest sense: the same Denmark had such ships in service back in the late nineties. Today, less than twenty years later, such ships have all but disappeared. Nevertheless, there are countries that do not abandon ships of this class and continue not only to use them, but also to design new ones.
To the west of our country, Finland belongs to them.
For a long time, the flagship of the Finnish Navy was the Pohjanmaa-class minesag. This ship with a displacement of 1,450 tons towards the end of its life was modernized for patrol operations and even managed to chase Somali pirates, and successfully. On April 6, 2011, Pohyanmaa caught a pair of high-speed pirate boats and a pirate base ship.
In 2016, the old ship was sold to a private company and converted into a research vessel. But even after that, the minelay remains the main class of warships in the Finnish Navy.
Today these are ships of the Hameenmaa class. The Finnish Navy has two such ships - Uusimaa, which was accepted into the Navy on December 2, 1992, and Hameenmaa itself, in service since April 15, 1992. The latter has been the flagship of the Finnish Navy since 2013, after the withdrawal of the Pohjanmaa minelay from the Navy.
Video (English) from the board:
The ships are capable of carrying up to 150 mines of different classes, mainly of Finnish production. Finland has huge reserves of mines, which it considers as the most important means of ensuring national security.
In general, the ships are not impressive either in other weapons or in terms of parameters - 1 Bofors cannon with a caliber of 57 mm, an RBU-1000 bomb launcher, a pair of Heckler & Koch GMG automatic grenade launchers with a caliber of 40 mm, two NSV machine guns with a caliber of 12.7 mm, UVP SAM "Umkhonto" for 8 anti-aircraft missiles produced by the South African company Denel. There is a set of passive jamming. In addition, there are rails for dropping depth charges overboard (pair) and four rail guides for dropping mines overboard. All this, like the old ship "Pohyanmaa", is "packed" in a displacement of 1450 tons. The maximum speed is 20 knots. The crew is 60 people.
The ships received the above-mentioned composition of weapons during the modernization of 2006-2008. At the same time, apparently, reconnaissance equipment was installed on them.
Today, their main peacetime mission is to monitor the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy in the framework of joint EU military programs. It is impossible to say for sure who else Finland provides intelligence information to. In the event of hostilities, the main task of these ships will naturally be mining.
But the next (in descending order) ships of the Finnish Navy are also minelayers. We are talking about ships of the Pansio class. There are three ships in the class, Pansio, Pyhäranta and Porkkala. The first was accepted into the combat composition of the Navy in 1991, the rest in 1992.
These ships are substantially smaller than the Hameenmaa and carry fewer weapons. Their displacement is 680 tons, and they do not have anti-aircraft missile systems. In fact, they are not armed, except for one 7.62 mm PKM machine gun and one Heckler & Koch GMG 40 mm automatic grenade launcher. The ship is capable of carrying 50 min.
I must say that the "Pansio" is more of a universal minesag transport than a combat ship. He is quite capable of placing mines, but besides this, he can also carry various goods. This is the "workhorse" of the coastal fleet, capable, in addition to setting minefields, to perform a wide range of auxiliary missions - but not combat ones. So, they are quite good when performing military transportations and can be used during amphibious operations. In general, the "horse" is very good and successful. The Finns plan to keep these ships in service until at least 2030.
In the future, Finland plans to move away from specialized mines. Not completely, of course. In the future, when the ships of the Hamienmaa class are decommissioned by age, their place will be taken by a universal corvette, which in its ideology is very similar to our 20380 - even the layout is similar. This corvette is being created by the Finns as part of the Squadron 2020 program and it will become the basis of their naval power. It has already been named after its former flagship, Pokhyanmaa. This is what the new class of warships will be called. However, and this is very Finnish, unlike all analogues, including our 20380, the Finns on board the corvette will have places for storing mines, and rails for setting them.
Also of interest is its reinforced hull for the passage of thin ice.
In theory, surface mines are intended for, in Western terminology, "defensive" mining - laying mines in narrow areas and in the coastal zone, to prevent foreign navies from accessing there. For Finland, this means the mining of the adjacent water areas and areas of the coast that are dangerous for landing.
However, the specifics of the Baltic Sea, its coastline and size, and most importantly - the outline of the state border of Russia, and the location of its harbors give the Finns the opportunity to carry out the so-called "offensive" mining, similar to the one that they carried out in 1941 together with the Germans.
It must be admitted that the minesags quite fit into almost any scenario of a war in the Baltic that is possible for Finland.
Naturally, not only Finland pays attention to the issues of laying mines. In the Baltic, this is generally a common "topic", and it is not the Finns who are leading in it, but the paranoid Swedes. They openly mine their territorial waters in peacetime, and the Finns are very far from them. Poland does not stand aside either - any of its amphibious assault ships of the "Lublin" class, even by classification, is an amphibious assault ship, and is more intended for mining than for landing. But neither the Swedes nor the Poles have special mines in service, although the Swedes had them quite recently. Finland is an exception in this case, and it is not going to stop being such in the foreseeable future.
However, five small Finnish minelayers are nothing compared to the development this class of ships received in Asia.
In 1998, the Navy of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) received a new minelayer "Wonsan". It was an amazing fact - the opinion prevailing at that time in the expert community unequivocally asserted that minzags, as a class, were outdated. But South Korea denied such opinions by designing and building the latest minelayer. The ship received the MLS-1 classification (Mine laying ship-1, translated as “mine laying ship-1”). The Koreans planned to build three such ships, but limited the class to one for reasons of economy.
"Wonsan" has a displacement of 3,300 tons, more than double the size of the Finnish minesags. Its length is 104 meters, and the crew is 160 people. The ship has a landing pad large enough to receive MH-53 helicopters, which, however, the South Koreans do not yet have. The maximum speed of the ship is 22 knots.
The artillery piece is a 76 mm Oto Melara cannon, with a rate of fire of up to 85 rounds per minute. Air defense is provided along with it by two NOBONG gun mounts with paired 40-mm automatic cannons each. One tower is located behind 76 graph paper on the bow, the second, closer to the stern, on the superstructure, in front of the landing pad. The guns are Korean counterparts of the Italian Oto Breda submachine guns.
The most interesting feature of the Korean mine planes is that they all have anti-submarine capabilities.
So, "Wonsan" has the American sonar complex AN / SQS-56 and two three-tube torpedo tubes Mk.32 mod.5, produced in South Korea under license. The latter are designed to launch the 324-mm anti-submarine torpedoes LIG Nex1 K745 Blue Shark, Korean design and production, carried by this ship.
The ship is also equipped with the perfect Korean-made Dagaie Mk.2 jamming systems capable of operating in fully automatic mode.
But the main "caliber" of the ship is its ability to plant mines.
The mine-laying system, which the ship is equipped with, was developed and manufactured by the Korean company Keumha Naval Technology Co Ltd. Mechanically, the system is organized as six guides, along which mines are dropped through a pair of aft gate ports (three streams to the gate port). In total, the ship is capable of deploying 500 mines in one combat campaign, moreover, on three mine decks, mines of different types can be stored together and in one stream - bottom, mine-torpedoes, and anchor mines.
After the South Koreans abandoned the continuation of the Wonsan series, it seemed that everything would end there, however, on May 28, 2015, an even more powerful minelayer was laid at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard, designed on the basis of Wonsan - Nampo …
The ship received the MLS-2 class (Mine laying ship-2, translated as "mine laying ship - 2"). Nampo is an enlarged and improved Wonsan. Its length is 114 meters, and its displacement is 4000 tons. As you can see, it is larger than "Wonsan" and longer. Unlike the Wonsan, it has not only a helicopter deck, but also a hangar. The gun has only the swinging part of the 76mm Oto Melara, everything else is developed in South Korea. The crew is smaller than Wonsan due to greater automation. The mine-laying system has been modernized and instead of six guides for dropping mines it has eight and four aft gate ports, with a pair of guides in each. At the same time, the system allows automatic dumping of mines overboard at precise coordinates, with setting individual intervals between the dumping of the previous and subsequent mines and the dump itself in automatic mode.
The model clearly shows the differences from "Wonsan"
The ship is equipped with an even more powerful radar system than the Wonsan. If "Wonsan" has the main radar produced by "Marconi" (radar for detecting air and surface targets Marconi S-1810 2D, in addition to it there is a radar with an average range Thales DA-05 2D search radar KDT SPS-95K and fire control radar Marconi RS ST- 1802), the "Nampo" as the "main" radar carries a multi-beam radar LIG Nex1 SPS-550K 3D, which has significantly greater capabilities.
The anti-aircraft weapons are significantly more effective than those of the Wonsan - instead of a pair of 40 mm machine guns, the Nampo has an air defense system with K-SAAM missiles, the vertical launcher of which is installed in a common superstructure with a helicopter hangar. The UVP accommodates 16 missiles (4 in a cell).
But the most important thing is that up to 4 Red Shark PLURs can be installed in the same UVP, with the already mentioned Blue Shark torpedo as the warhead. This raises its anti-submarine capabilities very seriously.
Comparative photos of "Wonsan" and "Nampo"
Among other things, "Nampo" has, as stated in the press, "mine action systems", as well as enhanced capabilities for the search for submarines. Taking into account the possibility of basing an anti-submarine helicopter on a ship, it turns out to be in demand not only as a minelayer. Apparently, therefore, recently both "Wonsan" and "Nampo" in English-language sources began to be called "Anti-submarine minelayer".
Apparently, therefore, in addition to anti-submarine weapons, the ship also received Korean-made hydroacoustic countermeasures - two LIG Nex1 SLQ-261K devices (devices).
On June 9, 2017, two years after the laying, the Nampo entered service, and the flag of the Korean Navy was hoisted on it. Thus, South Korea today is a country that has two large and modern minelayers of special construction. At the same time, the Koreans have never announced that they will be limited to the already built minesags, so it is quite possible that other ships of the same class will follow the Nampo.
However, apparently, this is not the last example. “Apparently,” since the next ship is Japanese, and with the Japanese it's not easy.
As stated earlier, in the article about the future Japanese aircraft carriersJapan is masterfully throwing dust in the eyes of all mankind with its military programs. The Japanese underestimate the performance characteristics of their weapons, assign them "incorrect" names (for example, they have a "helicopter destroyer" on an aircraft carrier on 27-28 aircraft, and even photograph their ships so that their actual size is not obvious. launched around their two ships - the so-called "floating bases of anti-mine ships", class "Uraga." There are two ships in the class, "Uraga" and "Bungo".
These ships were accepted into the combat strength of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces in the 90s, the Uraga in 1997 and the Bungo in 1998. These are large ships, the Uraga displacement is 5640 tons, the Bungo has 5700. Diesel power plant in 19500 h.p. gives ships the ability to travel at a maximum speed of 22 knots.
The Bungo is armed with the 76mm Oto Melara cannon, the Uraga carries no weapons.
Both ships are classified as "tenders", that is, "floating bases", and specifically for minesweepers. And although technical information on these ships can not be found either in Russian or in English, press releases about their participation in mine action exercises jointly with the United States or Australia appear regularly. The ships do what clearly follows from their declared purpose - they transfer fuel and supplies to the minesweepers at sea. There are even touching photos of the floating base with Australian minesweepers - well, do not give, do not take the mother with the children.
And the design of the ship corresponds to the declared purpose - there is a hangar for a large helicopter capable of towing a trawl, and a compartment for the trawl itself in the stern.
However, there are nuances.
We look at the view from the stern.
Four hatchways on the right and left clearly hint to us that the Uraga and its sister ship not only destroy mines, but also place them. Obviously, these ships have 4 mine decks, and to save space, the hatchways for dropping mines from these decks are made on each of them - specifically, so as not to drag the mine to the rails common to different decks. Opened the lid and that's it. And judging by the size of the ship and these covers, the mines there are about the same as those of "Wonsan" or "Nampo".
And this means that those who call the Uraga-class ships the largest mine layers in the world are right.
Both the Japanese and the Koreans are able to carry out mining operations on a truly strategic scale with the help of these ships. Korean minesags are capable of setting at least a thousand mines in a matter of hours. Within a week, covered with minimal aviation forces, this pair of ships is capable of placing as many mines as it turns out to be a planetary factor. With the maximum degree of probability, both Korean and Japanese ships are designed to carry out an emergency organization of anti-amphibious defense or a blockade of narrows.
However, in the event of an offensive operation by Japan in the Kuril Islands, the Uraga and Bungo will be very useful in the subsequent organization of the defense of the captured islands, the blockade of navigation in the La Perouse Strait and, in the event of an escalation of the conflict, the mining of the Kuril straits, or, in case of an unfavorable development of the conflict, the strait Tsugaru (Sangar). Thus, Japanese ships indirectly increase not only the defensive, but also the offensive potential of Japan.
Summarize.
Despite the fact that almost all fleets in the world have abandoned specialized minelayers, this class of ships quite exists for itself, moreover, oddly enough, it is developing. At the same time, the "trends" are an increase in the displacement of minelayers (even the new Finnish corvettes will have about 3,300 tons of displacement - mainly due to the mine-barrage function, and the Nampo already has 4,000 tons), the combination of the functionality of other warships in the mine-loader (for example, giving the ship anti-submarine capabilities, like the Koreans, or combining a mine-loader and a corvette, as the Finns will have). It is to be expected that at a certain level of aggravation of the military-political situation in the world, which will again make the "strategic" "defensive" mining relevant (for example, the blockade of the Faro-Icelandic barrier or the Danish straits), minesags can quickly return, and on a new, earlier unprecedented technical level.
