On March 4, the Izvestia Media Center will sum up the results of the first All-Russian industrial design competition in shipbuilding "Building the Fleet of a Strong Country", organized by the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC). The details to the Izvestia correspondent Yulia Krivoshapko were told by the president of the USC Roman Trotsenko.
Izvestia: How interesting was the competition to the participants - civilian designers?
Roman Trotsenko: Very interesting, and this is not surprising: domestic industrial design has always been predominantly a design of weapons, even in civilian products there has always been a "military style". After all, what has Russia given to the world in industrial design? The first thing that comes to mind is warships, fighters. Unlike, for example, the automotive industry, Soviet and then Russian military vehicles have never been secondary in comparison with foreign counterparts. The appearance of our ships, aircraft, tanks became a model for the whole world, creating trends for decades. These have always been unique and original design solutions, and today we see the continuation of this school.
and: How many works were submitted to the competition and what can you say about their quality?
Trotsenko: We received 150 entries. The quality is fantastic, despite the fact that the task was set quite difficult: to develop the concept itself, its three-dimensional computer model, with reference to weapons systems, to give answers to questions related to the future operation of the ship, and in the end also to create an animated video of the ship on alert … They took only five months to prepare. The work was colossal, especially considering the number of non-standard, breakthrough solutions offered by the participants of the competition. For example, the project of a vessel with two asymmetric hulls and a helicopter hangar in the interhull bridge won in the nomination "Appearance of a corvette" with the largest deck area that such a compact ship can have. It allows you to serve two helicopters at the same time.
I: This is the first experience of attracting civilian designers to work on large government orders in the field of military shipbuilding. Why did you need to create competition in the design of warships? After all, before this was done exclusively by specialized design bureaus
Trotsenko: The main reason is the growing gap between the progressive technologies of civil shipbuilding and military shipbuilding. This is a problem faced not only by Russia. It is relevant for all countries with a navy. The construction of warships, due to the complexity of their mechanisms, has one of the longest production cycles. Several decades pass from the development of the project to the departure of the last ship of this or that series from the shipyard. At the same time, electronic systems are the main value of a military vessel today. A revolution in them occurs approximately every five years. So the lag in electronic "stuffing" turns out to be very significant. The way out is to reduce the time spent on design and construction.
and: How?
Trotsenko: By developing competition, attracting as many specialists as possible to the process. The gain is not only in time. If we compare the prize money that will be paid as a result of the competition, and the funds that would have to be spent on separate research in these areas, then the savings are 10 times. And they got good results very quickly. But the problem is that there are not enough specialists. By organizing the competition, we just wanted to identify the best in order to then invite them to cooperation. By the way, the last time such an approach was observed during the Second World War, when the entire production potential of shipbuilding was thrown into the needs of military shipbuilding. Now there is a need for this as well. Only the reason is different.
and: Is this practice used abroad?
Trotsenko: Yes, they began to use it five or seven years ago. The first were the Americans. They held an open competition to create a coastal combat ship. The task was to develop a project of a ship with good deck space, but a small displacement. The developers of Independence, which is now in service with the US Navy, solved it. They took as a basis trimarans, previously used only in civil shipbuilding to transport passengers between the islands. Now, almost all large equipment that is produced in the United States under the military government order, open competitions are being held, including with the participation of civilian design bureaus. This practice is used by other countries as well. The Mistral helicopter carrier, which was also designed by civilian specialists. And the French shipyard owned by the Korean company STX, where it is being built, is a civilian shipyard.
and: It turns out that military design bureaus can no longer compete with civilian bureaus?
Trotsenko: They can. But the decisions of civilian designers and planners are like fresh blood for the industry. We have about 6 thousand industry standards for military shipbuilding, according to which design bureaus are forced to work. Some of these standards require revision. For example, a ship's telephone. The military standard for it is an apparatus made of ebonite, capable of withstanding temperatures of 400 degrees and an overload of 13 G. It costs colossal money. But the question arises, who will speak on such a phone, given the indicated overloads and temperatures. By the way, before starting the competition, we did a great job with the Navy to agree on a departure from a number of standards. Everything related to safety, the use of weapons and the protection of the life of the crew, of course, is not discussed. But others can be abandoned by replacing them with civilian shipbuilding standards. After all, military standards are adopted every 20 years, and civilian standards are adjusted annually. Therefore, civilian specialists offer fundamentally new solutions - what the fleet needs today.
and: Is there a guarantee that the projects of the winners of the competition will be implemented and the leadership of the Navy will not back up at the last moment?
Trotsenko: From our side, we promise to do everything to ensure that the most promising projects do not remain on paper. We plan to invite some of the contestants to our place of work. Much will really depend on the position of our main customer - the Navy. So far we have a complete understanding. By the way, some of the decisions, including on the corvette for the protection of the water area, will be made by the Navy over the next two months. We wanted to receive the results of the competition right now so that we could draw the attention of the fleet management to new technological solutions.
And: Why, having such resources of military shipbuilding, we do not build the same "Mistrals"?
Trotsenko: As for the Mistrals, the most important thing in this project was the timing: the Navy expected to receive the ship in 36 months. And only the design stage of such a ship takes at least two and a half years. Nine women, with all their efforts, will not be able to give birth to a child in a month, and so with the ship. And the decision to create a French-Russian consortium was correct. This should not be taken painfully, as there are pluses. In particular, we have the opportunity to learn new approaches and technologies. It is necessary to understand with understanding that the country cannot be equally successful in the production of everything. Yes, it is simply irrational - to take and draw your seventh project from scratch, if others already have as many as six similar high-quality projects that have been implemented in metal, have passed the stage of testing and operation. Aviation has already successfully passed this stage of its development, as we can see from the example of the European project of the Airbus, in which many countries are taking part, or the Eurofighter fighter.
The world is changing very quickly today. For example, who could have guessed five years ago that there would be such a problem with piracy in the Gulf of Aden? This situation developed instantly, and no one can solve it on their own. The future of military shipbuilding includes international alliances capable of solving the tasks set by the Russian Navy in the shortest possible time.
