Domestic navy pays for the mistakes of Soviet admirals
Against the background of the entry into service of the patrol ship Yaroslav the Mudry, the start of sea trials of the Yuri Dolgoruky SSBN, the successful completion of state tests of the Project 971I Nerpa submarine, an event no less important for the Russian Navy passed almost unnoticed. On January 17, the Black Sea Fleet was enrolled in the first and today the only modern anti-mine ship (PMK) - the sea minesweeper (MTShch) "Vice-Admiral Zakharyin" project 02668. Construction of several promising PMK project 12700 "Alexandrite" is underway.
The "dream" continues …
However, this only underlines the general unsatisfactory state of the mine-sweeping forces of the Russian Navy. Its anti-mine capabilities are so low that they call into question the fundamental possibility of ensuring the deployment of Russian Navy forces from their bases in the face of a modern mine threat.
Today our fleet, still formally - in terms of combat potential - the second in the world, in terms of mine action, is significantly inferior even to such "powerful naval powers" as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Pakistan.
Project 266M MTShch, Project 1265 base minesweepers (BTShch), Project 10750 road minesweepers (RTShch), which are part of the Russian Navy, are morally obsolete at the time of construction, can effectively deal only with anchor mines, and even then in a simple environment. This situation arose due to gross errors in the military-technical policy of the leadership of the USSR Navy in the 70-80s. Then, in the West, a massive construction of a new generation of secondary armament was launched, which the command of the Soviet fleet actually "slept through". Alas, this "dream" continues to this day. For example, in our Pacific Fleet there is not a single (!) Minesweeper at all with the only relatively effective, albeit outdated, domestic GAS MI "Kabarga" (developments of the late 1980s).
The high anti-sweat resistance of modern samples of bottom mines (or, for example, anchor mines) practically excludes effective fight against them by means of “classic trawling”. The mines have become "smart", with several detection channels (including hydrodynamic ones, which practically cannot be imitated) and complex target signal processing.
At the same time, it should be noted that today, in the course of hostilities, in a number of cases, mines with a deliberately lowered anti-blast resistance can also be used. However, this primarily depends on the willingness or unwillingness of the parties to the conflict to take into account the restrictions of international law, according to which "… the opposing sides must do everything possible to remove the mines, and each side must remove its own mines." For example, when blocking the ports of Vietnam with mines from the US Navy, just such mines were used, since the Americans well understood that they themselves would have to remove them later (which was done as soon as possible).
We also note that modern multi-channel fuses are widely available on the world market, and the development of mine action forces must be carried out taking this fact into account.
What is a modern PMK?
The ideology of a modern secondary battery was developed and implemented in Great Britain in the early 60s: the minesweeper was equipped with an effective GAS MI, which ensures the detection of a mine (or a mine-like object). To classify and destroy an object, an uninhabited mine action apparatus (MAP) is issued from the secondary battery, which performs additional search and examination of the detected object (by a TV camera or its own GAS). Mines are destroyed by an anti-mine device. To ensure high efficiency of mine action, the secondary battery was equipped with an automated mine action system (ACS PMD), a subsystem for accurate positioning and location determination. At the same time, the search for PMK mines is carried out ahead of the course (that is, he no longer needs to "walk on mines"). To improve mine action, this standard scheme is often supplemented by towed underwater vehicles or unmanned boats equipped with high-resolution side-scan sonars (SSS). This type of PMK was named a minesweeper-finder of mines (TSCHIM).
The overwhelming majority of PMKs of foreign fleets since the 70s and 80s has been a THEM - both newly built and modernized from outdated minesweepers. In this case, the presence or absence of trawls (contact and non-contact) becomes secondary. However, taking into account the need to combat broadband mines (they have a large target detection range and a warhead in the form of a torpedo or a missile to destroy it), installed in a bottom position at great depth (which is especially important for us in the north), and a new task - to fight with deployable underwater lighting systems (including anchor buoys), a specialized secondary vehicle needs a deep-water contact trawl, which ensures the operation of the trawl unit at a minimum distance from the ground.
A new direction in the development of mine action forces was the use of modular mine action systems, with which surface warships of the main classes, boats and submarines acquire the ability to conduct effective independent mine action without the need to provide specialized secondary weapons. The most interesting is the US Navy RMS AN / WLD-1 anti-mine UAV, which is a semi-submerged remotely controlled (and integrated into the SQQ-89v ship system (15) with a towed HBO (serial sample from the AN / AQS-20 helicopter anti-mine system), capable of prolonged time to independently search for mines at a considerable distance from the carrier The release and lifting of the AN / WLD-1 is carried out by a standard ship's lifting and lowering device.
The development of modern means of searching for and destroying mines has led today to a significant increase in the search performance and effectiveness of mine action forces. According to Hector Donahue (Australian Navy), a participant in the demining of the Persian Gulf in 1991, out of 1238 mines defused by the coalition mine forces, 93% were destroyed by STIUM, 3% by divers, “by other means” - 1% (possibly “among them "mine explosions of the cruiser" Princeton "and the helicopter carrier" Tripoli ").
During Operation Shock and Awe in 2003, camouflaged minesign ships were seized by the Allied Special Operations Forces (SSO), and about 100 Iraqi mines were destroyed by NPA and divers (with about half a thousand mine-like objects discovered).
It is noteworthy that mine action today has moved away from "highly specialized" and became complex with the involvement of diverse forces and means: systems for lighting the situation in the theater of operations, reconnaissance, SSO.
With the first TSCHIM of project 02668 (developed by TsMKB "Agat"), the fleet today received a ship equipped with a modern anti-mine complex, including GAS MI "Livadia" (with a ship unit and GAS anti-mine NPA) - developed by ZAO Aquamarine, anti-mine NPA, ACS PMD (developer NPO "Mars"), promising contact trawls and trawls-simulators. However, despite the successful completion of the MTSH "Vice-Admiral Zakharyin" state tests, today he is alone in the Navy! For comparison: in the Polish Navy there are 3 modernized TSCHIM projects 206FM, Estonia - 5 TSHIM, Latvia - 5 TSHIM. Comments are superfluous.
The fleet begins with a minesweeper, and in conditions when the withdrawal of the forces of the fleet from the bases is not even minimally ensured, the construction of surface ships and submarines of the main classes naturally raises questions. Today, effective mine action is provided even by civilian systems, including those serially produced in our country. For example, they are carried out to inspect the Nord Stream route by Gazprom. Given the importance of the fleet for Russia, including the role of the NSNF, the current archaic and antediluvian anti-mine forces of the Navy actually call into question its combat effectiveness.
In this regard, the following measures are required:
- serial construction of promising PMK project 12700 should become one of the highest priority projects of the Navy;
- modernization of the outdated secondary armament systems in service with equipping them with modern anti-mine means;
- equipping ships of the main classes in the shortest possible time with modular container anti-mine systems - installing on standard ship boats of projects 371, 1390 and new types (rigid-inflatable boats of the BL-820 and BL-680 series) means of search and destruction of mines to solve the tasks of raid minesweepers (ensuring the exit of the forces of the fleet from the bases);
- development and adoption of a non-lethal aircraft for submarines and ships of the main classes, capable, among other things, of combating the mine threat in ice conditions.
