Good news about the restart of production of corvettes at the Amur shipyard (ASZ) should not lead to the flaws inherent in these ships being transferred from one ship in a series to another. Now, until a contract for the production of these ships is signed and their final appearance is not "frozen", it is of great importance to raise the issue of eliminating the inherent defects of these corvettes.
Let's make a reservation right away: we are not talking about opening ALL the flaws so far. The fact is that some of them (for example, the use of the RTPU SM-588 for launching torpedoes of the "Packet-NK" complex instead of normal torpedo tubes or the lack of full-fledged hydroacoustic countermeasures) simply cannot be eliminated subject to the strict instructions of the Minister of Defense S. K. … Shoigu to the head of the united shipbuilding corporation A. L. Rakhmanov: "No new ROCs."
Therefore, it is worth raising exactly those problems that can be solved without starting the development of systems that we do not have in mass production, so that the problem is solved as quickly as possible and for the minimum money. But first, it's worth making an excursion into the history of project 20380 and 20385 corvettes.
Difficult children of shipbuilding
The creation of project 20380 corvettes began in the late 90s. the last century in the conditions of extreme underfunding of the Ministry of Defense. Initially, the question was this: to start building at least something (and it was originally conceived practically without development work, R&D), in order to simply preserve surface shipbuilding. So, for example, torpedoes were planned in a caliber of 53 cm, finished products and, in general, the development of something new on the corvette was one: a power plant from 16D49 engines of the Kolomna plant and a new transmission RRP12000. Everything else was basically planned for serial production.
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Those. There was a real opportunity to take a close look around and choose the really optimal option (a good example is the Project 22350 frigate, which appeared that way). But … subjective factors were at work (including the dissertation of the then Commander-in-Chief of the Navy).
Taking into account the fact that in the early 2000s, the prospects for project 22350 were vague and the only serial surface warship turned out to be a corvette of project 20380, it began to rapidly overgrow ROC.
At the same time, there was nothing wrong with the fact of the OCDs themselves, the problem was in their organization, especially when the most complex and technically risky work deliberately (that is, hiding his head like an ostrich from the quite expected problems) shifted to the last stages of implementation, after which, of course, “completely unexpectedly” (for the leaders of these developments) “winter came”, or rather, very serious problems and delays began (both technical and due to the same naive funding schedule: “at the last moment we will give everything” and “finish us all in a year or two ).
However, the most disastrous thing was that the new corvettes by their "fathers" were actually considered not as warships, but as "flag demonstrators", "technology demonstrators" and "pictures for export."
In narrow circles, the phrase attributed to the former head of the 1st Central Research Institute of Military Shipbuilding, said "about", is widely known:
“We will not fight with anyone. The corvette is needed to display the flag."
A few years later there was the first sea battle in the 21st century - "Mirage" against Georgian boats, but this principle, attributed to I. G. Zakharova, pursues our corvettes as some kind of evil fate. They are still built as if they were made not for the war, but "for the sake of it."
The situation is aggravated by the organizational problems of the Navy and the complete lack of coordination between the scientific institutions of the fleet.
So, the real "customer" is the Ministry of Defense (Department of State Defense Order, DOGOZ), and this is not a formal accountant, but a structure directly leading and supervising the development work. Moreover, in the Navy itself, the surveillance radar is the RTS (radio-technical) service, and the SAM and SAM is the RAV (missile and artillery armament) service. The fact that at the exit of this process the air defense missile systems are beaten either into “milk” or only at extremely simple targets (such as the RM-15M) is “irrelevant” to the ERP personnel, this is the “problem of RAV”.
Moreover, this whole fable of Krylov ("Swan, Cancer and Pike") is supervised by different institutions! During the pre-Serdyuk period, the Operations Directorate of the Navy stood above them, which was successfully defeated during the reform (the last person who fought for its restoration, Admiral Suchkov, passed away in August 2013).
Corvette air defense problem
The head corvette was built with the Kortik-M anti-aircraft missile-artillery system (ZRAK BR). At the same time, the issue of placing 2 ZRAK on board (in the stern without a system for storing and reloading missiles) was initially considered, together with a command module with a radar "Positive-M" (3-cm range).
The installation of "Kortik", which initially had a parameter of 300 m (ie, capable of hitting targets that went directly to the ship) was due to the loss of the possibility of mass production of the "Dagger" air defense system and the unavailability of the promising Redut air defense system. At the same time, in the future, the series provided for the replacement of "Kortika-M" with "Pantsir-M" (which had much higher performance characteristics). The option was quite working, but … for beach conditions.
Note:
There were three main problems: a small parameter, restrictions on the defeat of maneuvering targets and a meteorological mm-range of a firing radar - it was corny "blind" not only from rain, but also from dense fog.
The first of this composition from the corvette was removed the stern "Kortik" and the surveillance radar "Positive-M" - in favor of the radar "Fourke", the problems of which were clear to the specialists from the beginning.
From the first serial corvette "with things on the way out" they asked for a "Dagger". Instead, the Redut air defense system that did not exist at that time was installed.
Purely formally, in terms of performance characteristics, it was the "best option" (a larger area of impact, a parameter, an all-round shelling was provided), but it was an "air defense system that does not exist", moreover, with extremely expensive anti-aircraft guided missiles - SAM.
At the same time, the "Redoubt" itself, in fact, did not exist as an air defense system, as a complex. In fact, they were the SAMs themselves with an active radar seeker. In the naval part of the complex, there were simply no means of radio correction of the missile defense system. The corvette housed a launcher for 12 cells (12 missiles 9M96 or 48 missiles 9M100), BIUS "Sigma", which developed the point of inclusion ("opening") of the seeker, and the flight mission of the missile defense system according to the surveillance radar. The target of the missile seeker must find itself.
The target designation requirements from the radar corresponded to the "Positive-M". Errors from "Fourke" were much more than acceptable. In addition, Fourke, operating at a wavelength of 10 cm, had serious problems in working in the drive layer (for targets at ultra-low altitudes) at the physical level.
This was superimposed on the fact that "Redut", having no line of radio correction of the anti-aircraft guided missile, worked on the principle of "fire and forget", i.e. even simple target maneuvers provided a high probability of evading missiles.
Of interest is the assessment of one of the specialists, for obvious reasons, extremely tough and emotional.
… no one is interested in how, in fact, these, no doubt, excellent missiles will fly in the absence of a radio correction line and disgusting target designation from "Fourke" … So to speak, according to the "fire and forget" scheme. About what!!!!!!! About the goal? Or a rocket? … the developers of the air defense missile system diligently bypass all sharp corners, such as: "How will your missile defense system see the target in case of target designation errors in the region of 1 degree?" … Answer: he will see … Etc.
It was written back in 2006!
Those. all the catastrophic consequences of such a replacement for the air defense of the corvette by officials were immediately understood, but "We will not fight with anyone … Corvette is needed in order to show the flag …"
In this situation, the air defense of the corvette became a very good artillery radar "Puma", which actually provided target designation for the "Reduta" (through the BIUS "Sigma"). It is clear that this option was actually a "crutch"; The 360-degree zone of destruction of the "Reduta" was "cut" to the small sector of the "Puma", the channeling of the air defense missile system sharply decreased, the working time increased, and the artillery could be used only according to the data of optical sighting devices, despite the fact that the gun of this ship could well used to repel a missile or air strike.
Tests of the head corvette clearly showed all the problems of "Fourke", but instead of replacing it with the "Positive-M", the Navy got involved in a scam to develop a "promising" integrated tower-mast complex (IBMK) developments. Subsequent events clearly show that the "justification" for this was far from "technical."
The IBMK, which has not passed the tests and has not shot down a single air target so far, was installed on the last ships of Project 20380 (ie, we essentially have not “ships for the fleet”, but “ships for the IBMK”).
The degree of "adequacy" of the development of the IBMK and its accompaniment by the Navy and the Ministry of Defense (DOGOZ) clearly shows such an example that, despite the critical problem of the RK SAM for the "Reduta" x), the installation of the RK for the IBMK was not planned. As the specialists of Zaslon JSC said at IMDS-2019 about this: “The customer did not order this for us”.
That is, the corvette with the IBMK is obviously unable to shoot down maneuverable targets
From the article by A. V. Zhukov "On the issue of justifying the requirements for the radar for detecting targets of the shipborne air defense system of the near border" (magazine TsNII VK "Marine Radioelectronics", No. 4, 2004):
… for missiles with a seeker, the use of SOCs with coarse target designation will lead to a chaotic survey of missiles along the stream of targets, and, consequently, the skipping of individual targets that have not been fired upon.
As for the cost of the IBMK "Zaslon" itself, then, according to experts, it is "close to the cost of the entire head corvette." In general, taking into account such "leadership" and "support" from the Ministry of Defense and the Navy, it is even surprising that the "Barrier" was so "cheap".
However, the appetite comes with eating. And a "new innovative project 20386" appears. How and with what “tail of uncomfortable questions” (to which the Navy was never able to answer anything intelligible)? Read the articles about it "Worse than a crime. Construction of project 20386 corvettes is a mistake" and "Corvette 20386. Continuation of the scam" … It should be noted that these articles had a great resonance, and among the consequences of the second of them, information appeared about the development of a missile defense missile system for the Corvette Redoubt and an emergency reworking of project 20386 began. But that's another story.
There are also questions about the AK-630M anti-aircraft artillery mounts installed on the corvette in the amount of two units.
Today their real efficiency is very low, and their developer himself writes about this directly.
From the article by A. V. Zhukov "On the effectiveness of naval artillery installations in repelling anti-ship missiles":
… the answer to the question about the low efficiency of the existing domestic artillery complex AK-630M is in a completely different plane. … In the AK-630M complex, the quality measurement system, gun mount and fire control system MR-123 MTK 201 are made in the form of four independent posts and are located at different seats … Separate placement of the gun mount and control system in the AK-630M leads to large firing errors from for the impossibility to take into account the deformations of the ship's hull and inaccuracies in the correction of the parallax between the posts. Shooting errors reach 6 mrad instead of 2 mrad in the "Goalkeeper" complex.
… a multi-point scheme is sometimes offered in domestic complexing systems. Obviously, the effectiveness of artillery fire in this case will be low, which will discredit not only the caliber of shells, but also the benefits of gun mounts in the short-range air defense system …
Only a single-post artillery system with a 30-mm installation and a full-size all-weather control system, radar and optical-electronic (heat-television), will ensure the high efficiency of the nearest border of the ship's air defense.
Air defense is the most "difficult" problem of this ship, it reduces its combat stability in an air or missile strike to almost zero. It must be solved, and on new, not yet built ships, it can be solved with "little blood" - quickly, inexpensively and, as S. K. Shoigu, - "without OCD."
Solving the problem of air defense of corvettes
In fact, today we have three fundamentally different air defense systems for a small displacement ship:
1. "Redoubt" (all-round shelling, the largest affected area and channel, but the inability to defeat maneuvering targets, extremely expensive missiles and the problem of missing targets in a dense salvo).
2. "Pantsir-M" (cheap missiles, but problems with the defeat of maneuvering targets and especially - the acute meteorological dependence of the complex).
3. "Tor-FM" ("machine for shooting down targets", but with significant restrictions on the sector and range of the affected area).
Objectively speaking, not a single air defense missile system individually provides reliable air defense (and this "swan, cancer, and pike" is a clear example of the "quality" of "scientific" support for the development of the Navy today). Ideally, an integrated system is needed, with the possibility of upgrading previously built ships and providing them with reliable air defense.
The problem of hitting maneuvering targets for the "Redoubt" can be easily cured: by installing a radio correction channel for the missile defense system, technically it is possible and must be done by the Navy yesterday (but it has not yet been done).
In fact, we have a situation that for a dense "barbecue" (a term used by experts to describe an anti-ship missile strike) the approach of an anti-ship missile system with a standard anti-ship missile system “Harpoon”, due to the absence of the “Redoubt” RC, deliberately misses targets (anti-ship missiles) into the aircraft. Those. Air defense of the corvette with "Redoubt" against the salvo of even old "Harpoons" is obviously not provided. Taking into account the arrival of the new LRASM anti-ship missiles from the so-called partners (with a much lower visibility and capture range of the GOS missiles), the situation is even worse.
For the "near zone" air defense, of course, you need a good all-weather firing radar with "tight control" of the situation - targets and fired missiles and their radio correction. This approach is implemented in the Pantsir-M air defense system, however, with a very acute issue of meteorological dependence (taking into account the mm-range of the Pantsir firing radar).
The old "surveyor" "Pantsir" became the naval "Fourke" (with all its problems). On the new "Pantsir" they switched to a shorter wavelength range ("long centimeters"), however, the feasibility of such a range for sea conditions raises questions (especially given the "threat of LRASM).
As a result, the placement of the Pantsir-M ZRAK on the corvette is currently impossible and impractical. It is impossible to allow such a situation when the ship's air defense "ends" with the onset of bad weather (and this is exactly the case with the "Pantsir").
At the same time, the question is very acute (including for the RTOs of project 22800) on replacing the "Pantsir" millimeter firing radar with a radar of at least a 2-cm range. Life will still force you to do it (and God forbid, that would not be a bloody combat experience). There are compact and efficient radar stations with "short centimeters" that reliably operate on inconspicuous targets in the drive layer.
Corvettes, however, need a quick fix. And it is.
The main thing is to return to the "Positive-M" surveillance radar originally planned for corvettes. For target designation of missile weapons - "Mineral" (with passive HEADLIGHTS, as on project 22800), for artillery - radar "Puma".
A similar composition of weapons is installed on the first MRK of project 22800, and these design solutions of the "Karakurt" may well be taken for new corvettes, especially since they are much more successful than on project 20380 (for example, the "blind sector" of the surveillance radar in the stern has been eliminated) … In addition, it will improve inter-ship unification.
Of course, it is necessary to install radio correction equipment, but this trouble of all corvettes must be eliminated in a comprehensive manner for all ships with "Redoubt" and separately from the contract of JSC "ASZ".
Taking into account the high cost of the 9M100 missile defense system, and, most importantly, the fact that in the series each 9M100 missile produced by the plant means an unreleased 9M96 missile defense system (taking into account the fact that 9M96 are extremely valuable and important for the air defense of the Navy and the country, and they are needed in the largest possible series), it is highly advisable to replace the 9M100 missiles with the 9M338K radio command systems (with the installation of a control system based on the "Torah"). This solution also solves the acute problems of "bare stern" for corvettes of the previous construction.
Issue 9M338K should be considered in the order of subsequent modernization, and not a future contract of ASZ JSC
Offensive weapon
S. Shoigu earlier in one of his speeches voiced the need to increase the number of warships with the Caliber missile system. Alas, the project 20380 corvette is not equipped with it. A strange situation arises when we are building small, less than 1000 tonnes of displacement, RTOs capable of using "Calibers" (and, when the firing system is refined, both "Onyxes" and "Zircons"), and large and multipurpose corvettes, which are incapable of this.
It is known that one of the initiators of the mass introduction of the KRO "Caliber" in the Navy is President V. Putin. It is also known that a series of six corvettes, which are planned to be built at the ASZ, will be built on the personal instructions of the president.
In such a situation, it would be logical if the new corvettes were armed with missiles of the Caliber family. For this, it is necessary that instead of project 20380 with a changed composition of electronic weapons (another radar), ships of project 20385, with the same proposed radar (with "Positive-M"), would be laid according to the finished working design documentation (with minimal changes).
Firstly, there will be no difference between 20380 and 20385 in terms of the complexity of construction for the NEA. The ships are in many ways similar, partially unified, the documentation is ready.
Secondly, the construction of just such ships corresponds to the correct position of V. V. Putin and S. K. Shoigu in terms of saturating the fleet with carriers of missiles of the "Caliber" family.
Thirdly, such a solution allows in the future to refuse from duplicating such corvettes in terms of the capabilities of the class of ships - MRK, and, accordingly, save money on this. Now each corvette will be able to replace the MRK when hitting ground targets.
Fourthly, equipping the corvette with a 3S14 vertical launch installation will allow the use of anti-submarine missiles (PLR) from it.
The latter, taking into account the catastrophic state in which the naval aviation is and the fact that the Ka-27 helicopters after the so-called modernization can be considered combat-ready only conditionally, are the only "long arm" of the corvette, allowing to strike an enemy submarine found at the limit of range detection of the hydroacoustic complex. A corvette without submarines and with our helicopters is a target for submarines.
He, but with a PLR, becomes a hunter, not a prey. Thus, in order to provide corvettes with real combat capability in our realities, it is necessary to move from project 20380 to 20385 with a changed composition of the radar complex.
Some other questions
For solving other (multipurpose tasks), side boats are very important, incl. with the possibility of using unmanned boats (BEC). Unfortunately, the project 20380 corvettes have launching devices for boats that cannot be used in stormy conditions, and ineffective boats. The presence of an "admiral's boat" on the corvette (instead of a worker) causes a certain bewilderment. The BL-680 boat has a number of serious shortcomings (see the article "Boat scam"), the main thing is that it is impossible to create an effective BEC on its basis.
Replacing these boats and SPU with modern ones is possible and extremely urgent, but here it is necessary to understand that a boat + SPU is a single complex on a ship. Without an effective SPU, the use of boats in stormy conditions is impossible, while the mass of such an SPU can be 1.5-2 of the mass of the boat itself.
In the part of hydroacoustics, the BUGAS installation with the longest antenna is required.
The deadlines for the new corvettes are very tough (the delivery of the entire series must meet within the framework of the current GPV), funding is extremely limited, so it is necessary to clearly divide what the Navy needs to do with corvettes "in general" and specifically with ships under the declared state contract with JSC "ASZ" and first of all, the question is under the "ASZ" contract.
Obviously, question number 1 now is the replacement of the radar system with a combat-ready one: without it, the corvette will be nothing more than a target, and not only for submarines.
Question # 2 - the decision to install the UKSK, i.e. construction of a series according to project 20385.
At the same time, the reduction in the cost of the radar complex (and many times in this case) will allow paying for the armament of the corvette with "Caliber" and other missiles used from the 3S14 UVP, including PLR, with a general reduction in the price of the entire ship compared to 20380 with the installed IBMK. Such ships will not only be more combat-ready than the usual 20380, not only better armed than the 20380, but also cheaper.
Another solution to reduce the cost may be the replacement of the composite superstructure with a steel one (hopes for a significant reduction due to composites of the ESR superstructure of corvettes have not been confirmed on production ships)
It is impossible to miss the opportunity to reduce the cost of a ship without reducing its combat capabilities.
Conclusion
Speaking about the disadvantages of corvettes, we must also mention the good: the industry (including the NEA) has done a great job of bringing this project into a combat-ready state. So, on the last corvette handed over by the ASZ, "Gromok", those shortcomings from which the Baltic corvettes and partly "Perfect" were tormented have been eliminated.
On the ship, almost everything is working, the reliability of the 100-mm gun has been brought to an acceptable level, the exchange of information in the group is working, the main power plant has been brought up. The ships of the project 20380 began to confidently navigate the distant sea zone.
Questions remain only on repelling missile strikes, and another radar will solve them.
It is necessary, while preserving the positive experience of fine-tuning these ships, which the NEA has today, to solve the problems mentioned above. According to experts in the field of shipbuilding, only the replacement of the radar system and the abandonment of composites in favor of steel will reduce the cost of the ship by 25-30% with a simultaneous increase in its combat capabilities. There are no objective obstacles to this.
This means that this must be done as quickly as possible.
