Universal ice ships of the Russian Navy return to the Russian Arctic
In two years' time, the newest multifunctional vessel, the Ilya Muromets support icebreaker, will join the Arctic group of the Russian Navy. All in all, the Northern and Pacific fleets will include four such auxiliary vessels: as the military plans, the icebreakers will be built in a separate series.
The lead ship of the project was laid down at the Admiralty shipyards in St. Petersburg in April this year. Its appearance clearly indicates that plans to strengthen Russia's military presence in its Arctic territorial waters are being carried out not in words, but in deeds. Suffice it to say that the domestic military fleet has not received such auxiliary vessels for almost four decades. And now this gap, which significantly limited the capabilities of the Russian Navy in the Arctic theater, is being closed.
Icebreaker of tomorrow
The icebreaker "Ilya Muromets" is called for simplicity. In fact, this is a multifunctional support vessel with a high ice class. But since the Arctic will become the main place of service for him, the ability to pave the way for himself and the "wards" ships in ice up to a meter thick has come to the fore. In addition, Ilya Muromets will be able to supply coastal and island bases and airfields in the Arctic zone; towing of ships and other floating structures in ice conditions and on clean water; extinguishing fires at emergency facilities; containment of spills and collection of oil products from the sea surface; transportation of containers on the open part of the upper deck, including refrigerated containers with appropriate power supply, as well as other deck and hold cargo. In short, the Russian navy will receive a completely modern multifunctional vessel that will significantly strengthen the Arctic grouping.
“When this ship was being designed, the characteristics of the icebreaker were not even of today, but of tomorrow,” said the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Viktor Chirkov, on the day the Ilya Muromets was laid down. - It is seaworthiness, maneuverability, versatility and a completely new electric principle of movement. The conceptual principle of shipbuilding, laid down in the shipbuilding program for the period up to 2015, has been implemented - this is multifunctionality. And this statement accurately reflects the mission and capabilities of the new icebreaker.
General Director of JSC Admiralty Shipyards Alexander Buzakov during the ceremony of laying down the Ilya Muromets icebreaker in St. Petersburg. Photo: Svetlana Kholyavchuk / Interpress / TASS
Unlike its epic namesake, who had been lying on the stove for thirty years and three years before rising to defend his native land, the icebreaker Ilya Muromets will get back on its feet much faster - in just over three years. The contract between the Ministry of Defense and JSC Admiralty Shipyards for the development and construction of a new icebreaking vessel for the Arctic group was signed on March 21, 2014. A little later, in April, the Nizhny Novgorod design bureau Vympel signed an agreement with the Admiralty shipyards for the development of a technical design for a diesel-electric icebreaker with a capacity of about 7 MW. The project received its own number - 21180, and the chief designer of the KB Mikhail Valerievich Bakhrov led the development.
Nizhny Novgorod design bureau "Vympel"
Founded in 1927 on the basis of a branch of the Leningrad Central Bureau of Marine Shipbuilding. In 1930, the design bureau became independent and received the name "State office for the design of river and sea vessels" ("Rechsudoproekt"). In 1939 it was renamed into the Central Design Bureau No. 51, in 1966 - into the Central Design Bureau "Volgobaltsudoproekt", in 1972 it was named "Vympel".
In the 1940s, the bureau created a series of warships and ships: large and small submarine hunters, landing boats and barges, floating batteries, motorboats, mine sweeping and hospital ships. In the post-war period, one of the main directions of the design bureau's activity was the design and technical support of the construction of ships and floating facilities that ensure the combat capability of the Navy (in particular, vessels for demagnetizing and monitoring the physical fields of submarines and ships).
In recent decades, the bureau has developed (many of the developments have been put into series):
- road tug of project 705B;
- Project 22030 sea rescue tug;
- rescue and tugboat project 22870;
- small hydrographic vessel of project 19910;
- large hydrographic boat of project 19920;
- vessel for demagnetization of submarines and control of magnetic and acoustic fields of project 1799E;
- Project 21980 anti-sabotage boat "Grachonok".
A separate area of the design bureau's work is the design of ships for nuclear-technological support of the Navy: floating plants for the treatment of liquid radioactive waste and ships for transporting containers with spent nuclear fuel (SNF).
On December 12, 2014, the main contractor of the order - Admiralty Shipyards - and KB Vympel, as the developer of the icebreaker 21180 project, defended the technical design materials from the general customer - the military. By this time, at the preparatory site of the shipyards, metal cutting for the construction of a new vessel had been going on for a month. On April 23, 2015, the laying ceremony for the Ilya Muromets icebreaker took place. The lead ship of the new series should be commissioned at the end of 2017.
Long-range and all-terrain
Saying that the new icebreaker will be capable of much, since it will become a completely innovative vessel, neither the military nor the shipbuilders are cheating. Although at first glance, its characteristics do not demonstrate anything unexpected. Displacement of "Ilya Muromets" - 6000 gross register tons; length - 85 m, maximum width - 20 m (calculated - 19, 2 m), side height - 9, 2 m, minimum draft - 5, 9 m, maximum - 6, 8 m; full speed - 15 knots, economic - 11 knots. According to the classification of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, "Ilya Muromets" belongs to the ice class Icebreaker6, that is, it is capable of performing icebreaking operations in non-Arctic seas with an ice thickness of up to 1.5 m and continuously advancing in continuous ice up to 1 m thick.
All these are fairly typical indicators for most ice-class ships, which still sail along the Northern Sea Route and provide a Russian presence in the Arctic. Innovations begin when it comes to the range and autonomy of the Ilya Muromets, as well as the type of its engine. The new icebreaker will be able to sail for up to two months - a very good indicator for a ship that does not have a nuclear power plant. Even more remarkable is the cruising range: it is 12,000 nautical miles, or 22,244 km. And this is more than four times the total length of the Northern Sea Route from Kara Gates to Provideniya Bay - 5600 km and twice the distance along the Northern Sea Route from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, which is over 14,000 km.
Laying down of an icebreaker of the Ilya Muromets project at JSC Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg. Photo: Denis Vyshinsky / TASS
The data on the Ilya Muromets engine looks even more innovative. It will be equipped with four diesel generators with a total capacity of 10 600 kW (each generator has a capacity of 2600 kW). They will power two propeller motors with a capacity of 3500 kW each, installed in separate rudder propellers. It is they who make “Ilya Muromets” a unique vessel: the electric motors outside the hull with propellers on their shafts rotate 360 degrees, allowing the vessel to move in any direction! Exactly what is needed in ice, when sometimes it is required to give not just a forward or a back, but a "side" course, and "Ilya Muromets" is quite capable of doing this.
Such engines are called "type Azipod" - from the English name Azipod, which is made up of the words azimuth (literally - azimuth, polar angle) and pod (in this case - engine nacelle). Such rudder propellers are, for example, on the infamous Mistral helicopter carriers, as well as on the Arctic tankers of the R-70046 project (Mikhail Ulyanov), which were built several years ago at the Admiralty shipyards. But such engines are installed on icebreakers for the first time in Russia. Moreover, the Ilya Muromets will be equipped with domestically produced rudder propellers: specially for the vessels of this project, they were designed and produced by the Central Research Institute of Marine Electrical Engineering and Technology in St. Petersburg.
What is Ilya Muromets capable of?
It is usually easy to judge what tasks a particular vessel can perform if you study the list of its additional equipment and data on crew accommodation. And from this point of view, it is very interesting to study the specification of "Ilya Muromets". In particular, on board the new icebreaker there will be: a cargo crane (length - 21 m, lifting capacity - 21 t) and a manipulator crane (length - 21 m, carrying capacity - 2 t), a multifunctional work boat with an inflatable board BL-820, two water-foam fire monitors and a fire pump. And, in addition, 400 meters of booms and a launch boat for them: this is part of the equipment for collecting spilled oil. To this must be added the carrying capacity of 500 tons, 380 square meters of cargo deck on the icebreaker's quarterboard and 500 cubic meters of cargo hold. Plus a helipad on the tank, which can receive helicopters of the Ka-32 type or more common in the military fleet Ka-27.
All this confirms the words of the military and shipbuilders that the new icebreaker will be a very “versatile personality” and will indeed be able to solve a variety of tasks. But there is another interesting point in the specification. Somewhere it goes under the name "passenger capacity", somewhere - "additional crew", but the number is the same everywhere: 50 people. And this despite the fact that the own, permanent crew of "Ilya Muromets" - only 32 people! Why is it necessary to accommodate another fifty people on board?
And here the story of the name of the icebreaker can tell a lot. The fact is that he inherited it from the Ilya Muromets icebreaker of project 97 (Vasily Pronchishchev), built at the same Admiralty shipyards and serving in the Pacific from 1965 to 1993. A total of 32 vessels were built according to this unique project - the largest series of icebreakers in the history of the USSR! And the most interesting thing is that all three dozen icebreakers of Project 97 from the very beginning were intended for military service. Among them there was a place and eight icebreaking border patrol ships, and a hydrographic vessel, and the world's only research icebreaker "Otto Schmidt".
So it is likely that border guards, marines, escorts of military cargo, and members of military scientific expeditions may turn out to be an "additional crew". Another characteristic feature of the icebreakers of Project 21180 can perform not only auxiliary, but also quite combat functions. Unlike conventional icebreaker superstructures, which have a vertical front wall, military icebreaker patrol superstructures have a very recognizable sloping front wall, reminiscent of the superstructures of modern frigates and destroyers. Ilya Muromets has exactly the same. And the free space between the helipad and the superstructure is quite enough so that, if necessary, an artillery mount of the AK-230, AK-630 or AK-306 type can be installed there (the latter is most likely, since it was originally intended for the re-equipment of auxiliary mobilized vessels).
And yet another possible role of the new icebreaker is hinted at by the history of its predecessors. Another project 97 "bogatyr" icebreaker - "Dobrynya Nikitich" - during service in the Northern Fleet, repeatedly participated in ensuring the transition of nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet to the Pacific Ocean. Taking into account the program for the construction of new nuclear submarines of the Yasen and Borey projects at the plant in Severodvinsk, it can be assumed that icebreakers of Project 21180 will be engaged in their escorting to the Pacific Fleet. In any case, the cruising range, autonomy, passenger capacity, and carrying capacity, and the icebreaking ability is quite possible for them.
