The developments of domestic design bureaus are not inferior to foreign ones
Yes, again about the landing helicopter carrier Mistral, which France is imposing on Russia. "But how much can you?" - the reader will plead. How much do you need. All the more so that life turns this plot with new facets. It has already been noted that the military-technical and commercial issue of acquiring the ship smoothly spilled over into the political plane.
Here, however, they mean primarily the tension that has arisen in relations between the NATO countries. On the stage, on the one hand, there are the Baltic states, which are strongly opposed to the Franco-Russian deal, and the United States, which the Balts seem to support, on the other, Paris, which claims that the upcoming contract is an instrument of "building confidence between Moscow and the West." The other members of the North Atlantic Alliance are still playing the role of extras, waiting for whom they will eventually take, and in the depths of their hearts hoping that Russia will order something from them as well - after all, in times of crisis, this is not harmful.
But now Mistral is increasingly becoming an internal political problem. Moreover, the confrontation on the question "to be or not to be" Mistral "is not happening on the basis of party affiliation. The deal is opposed not only by the communists, but also by supporters of the liberal democrats, and even United Russia. Which is completely unprecedented in the latest Russian political practice.
Opinions were also divided in the government. A completely unthinkable episode happened at a meeting of the presidential commission on modernization, held on February 11 at the Tomsk Polytechnic University. On it, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Russian Federation Alexei Kudrin quoted the words from the diary of Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who wrote more than a hundred years ago: "Today I took money from the battleship and gave it to the establishment of the Tomsk Technological Institute." It is clear that the laconic Mr. Kudrin allowed himself a quote not in vain, but with a clear hint of the huge money that will be required to buy a French helicopter carrier, the benefits of which are not at all obvious, and the funds are not provided for in the budget. In response, Dmitry Medvedev remarked: “I understand why you started with this, because the battleship was abandoned and one problem was solved. It means - give up something else, and then there will be an investment and innovation paradise in our country. But we need to tackle these tasks in parallel. " This is certainly a correct judgment. But "solving problems in parallel" is desirable not to the detriment of oneself.
In the language of sailors, "discord" of opinions about Mistral is a natural phenomenon. After all, the alleged purchase of a helicopter carrier is one of such different, but dramatic and even tragic events, such as the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, the explosion of the Nevsky Express, the fire in the Lame Horse, and the failure of Russian athletes to compete at the Vancouver Olympics.
There are many pitfalls in the proposed deal. But first, let's turn to the motives behind the Elysee Palace. Here is what RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin writes about this: “Mistrals are also putting pressure on the Sarkozy government purely economically. With the signing of the deal, it will be possible to provide jobs for several thousand shipbuilders at the shipyards in Saint-Nazaire, and without it, several thousand will be lost. They don’t joke with such things during the recovery from the crisis”. Undoubtedly, the French president wants to earn points by keeping his jobs in French shipyards. And it is no coincidence that at a press conference in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy spoke about two ships that will be built in France, and two assembled under license from French components at Russian shipyards. The Russian side, on the other hand, insists on the "one + three" formula, that is, one ship is being built in France, and three in Russia. Obviously, this is one of the main points of disagreement over which negotiations are underway in Paris. Of course, Russian leaders lobbying for the interests of the French military-industrial complex would build all four helicopter carriers in Saint-Nazaire. There the sky is bluer and the sugar is sweeter. However, such a decision is unlikely to be understood in the Fatherland. So you have to bargain.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis is raging not only in France. There is no prosperity in Russia either. And if the number of employed shipbuilders at the shipyards in Saint-Nazaire does not decrease, then their number will decrease at Russian enterprises. But Russia has a series of elections ahead.
The budget for military shipbuilding this year has been sequestered by almost 15 billion rubles. According to the most conservative estimates, the construction of a head helicopter carrier for the Russian Navy in France will cost just that much. Thus, the shipbuilding industry in Russia will suffer a double blow.
Another one will be indirect. The acquisition of Mistral will negatively affect Russia's military-technical cooperation with other countries. Those who want to buy our ships and other weapons will be greatly reduced, "since the Russians themselves buy this …"
It is now fashionable to speak disparagingly about the capabilities of Russian shipbuilders. And often the blasphemy comes from high-ranking military and naval leaders. Some of the media are taking up their views. For example, Maxim Bekasov, a “naval expert” of the same RIA Novosti agency, says: “There is no time to think and weigh it for a long time. It is unforgivable to design and build ships for decades, suffering from a sense of pretentious patriotism. While we think, the stems of American aircraft carriers are cutting the waves of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Where today the St. Andrew's flag appears extremely rarely”. Generally speaking, it is never harmful to think, especially in the military sphere. It is even more unforgivable, if not criminal, to delay payments for decades for decades and, upon the entry into office of each new commander-in-chief of the Navy, who change more often than ships in our country, make radical adjustments to approved projects. And pretentious patriotism has nothing to do with it. From the appearance of Mistral-class ships in the Russian Navy, American aircraft carriers will not stop “cutting the waves” of the World Ocean. Compared to them, French helicopter carriers are cardboard boxes, nothing more.
In addition, these boxes will be sold to us without the most important thing in them - the electronic filling. The Baltic NATO partners were assured of this by the special emissary of Paris - Secretary for European Affairs Pierre Lelouch. During negotiations in the Lithuanian capital, he reassured his interlocutors that, they say, we are talking about a "civil ship", something like a ferry. Why does the Russian Navy need a civilian ship? Fighting off criticism from NATO allies, France keeps repeating the humanitarian missions that these ferries will carry out. But the Navy is going to buy them, not the Emergencies Ministry.
I remember that the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, spoke of a completely different purpose of the helicopter carriers. In 2009, he stated the following: “In the August conflict last year, such a ship would have allowed the Black Sea Fleet to complete missions in 40 minutes. It took us 26 hours to do this. This remark is, of course, a metaphor, and it concerned the landing of the Marine Corps in the Abkhazian port of Ochamchira. It couldn't have been faster with Mistral. It would take five or six days for the ship to receive armored vehicles and helicopters, and move to the landing site. By then, the war would have ended.
In addition, history, as you know, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. What if the Georgian missile boats had acted skillfully and decisively, rather than staged stupid demonstrations? A target as large as Mistral would hardly have evaded a Termit anti-ship missile with an almost 500-kilogram warhead. And then: "Our proud" Varyag "does not surrender to the enemy? But how many trump cards Vladimir Vysotsky's statement gave to the Baltic states, Georgia and some other states! Although the commander-in-chief told the pure truth. After all, initially helicopter carriers of this type were classified as "batiment d'intervention polyvalent" … Their main purpose is to land assault units on the territory of other countries, which are much weaker militarily. Because a strong adversary will drown these "polyvalent interventionists" in no time.
On the eve of the Russian president's visit to Paris, supporters of the acquisition of the French helicopter carriers launched an active propaganda campaign in support of the decision to purchase them. It was said, for example, that they are almost an ideal tool for fighting pirates off the coast of Somalia. But until recently, none of the French helicopter carriers had ever been involved in such operations. Numerous American universal amphibious assault ships (UDC) and dock ships, as well as their British "classmates" deployed in the Indian Ocean, were not involved in them either. Simply because it is a very expensive pleasure. And only when it came to the sale of helicopter carriers to Russia, the French sent a helicopter carrier Tonnerre to the Horn of Africa in order to add arguments in favor of the purchase of such ships by the Russian Navy.
It was also argued that these helicopter carriers would be used not as amphibious assault ships, but as command ships. But we know that they will be delivered to us without the electronic means necessary for the implementation of command and staff functions. Therefore, it will be necessary, as it is not humiliating for the Russian lobbyists of the French ships, to turn to the domestic developers of the corresponding equipment. They, of course, are. And with the required volumes and strict financing terms, the specialists of the Morinformsistema-Agat and Granit-Electron concerns, as well as other enterprises, will create the necessary management systems.
But then the question arises about the "box" for 400-500 million euros. The answer is: domestic shipbuilders are not able to build such ships. They, of course, do not know that the Soviet Navy had control ships converted from Project 68bis cruisers. They were to be replaced by special ships of Project 968 "Borey" designed in the Northern Design Bureau with a displacement of about 14,000 tons. The project was brought to the technical stage, that is, the ship could be laid down. But then there were no free stocks, and due to the saturation of electronic means, the "manager" turned out to be expensive. In the same Severny PKB, on the basis of project 1164 cruisers, work was continued in this direction. The Project 1077 command ship had a displacement of 12,910 tons, and six Ka-27 helicopters were based on it. But again, due to the high cost of electronics and the lack of free slipways, its construction was abandoned.
In the same bureau, the project of a staff squadron ship with air cover was born, which could receive not only helicopters, but also short take-off and landing planes Yak-141. In fact, it was a light aircraft carrier. The bureau offered the Navy three options at once: a single-hull ("Mercury") and very original - a catamaran and a trimaran with a small waterline area ("Dolphin"). The last two developments were attractive, but too pioneering for that time. Therefore, they refused from multihull ships, opting for a single-hull version. The further development of the "Mercury" was transferred to the Nevsky Design Bureau, but first, in the era of perestroika, the program for creating the Yak-141 was stopped, and then the collapse of the USSR began …
In other words, Russian designers have more groundwork than French ones in command ships. The problem is different. There is practically nothing to manage. The ship composition of the Russian Navy is rapidly aging and shrinking.
There is considerable experience in the design of helicopter landing ships. Nevskoe PKB back in the late 70s. of the last century started developing a universal helicopter-carrying dock ship (UVKD) of project 11780 (the hull supposed to be laid down was even named "Kremenchug") with a standard displacement of 25,000 tons and a 30-knot full speed. In everyday life, he was called "Ivan Tarawa", because in many ways he had to perform the same functions as the first American UDC of the Tarawa type. However, the "range of responsibilities" of the Soviet ship turned out to be wider. In the landing version, it carried 12 Ka-29 transport and combat helicopters, 2 Project 1206 air-cushion landing boats or 4 Project 1176 landing boats and could transfer up to 1000 Marines to the landing site. In the anti-submarine version, the ship received 25 Ka-27 helicopters. Compared to Ivan Tarava, the French Mistral is just a self-propelled barge.
In the late 80s. The Nevskoe PKB created three versions of the Project 1609 landing ship dock with a displacement of 19,500 to 24,000 tons and a length of 204 to 214 m. In the final, larger-tonnage version, 12 Ka-29 helicopters and up to 10 landing boats (with the projects of the above listed ships can be found in the brochure by AN Sokolov "Alternative. Unbuilt ships of the Russian Imperial and Soviet Fleet", published by the publishing house "Voennaya Kniga" in 2008).
For some reason, the customers from the Navy did not turn to domestic developers when they made a decision, quite strange to say the truth, to purchase helicopter carriers capable of performing the functions of command ships. How did they not turn to factories where it is possible to assemble such ships that are by no means complex in architecture. Although, as the leaders of the Admiralty Shipyards and the Baltic Shipyard told us, they would have fulfilled such an order without any problems.
But with construction in France, problems will appear. It is already clear that the elevators will have to be redesigned for the Russian Ka-29 and Ka-31 helicopters. Their dimensions do not allow the use of those available on Mistral. Numerous other alterations will also be required. Due to the inevitable delays in the development and manufacture of electronic filling, the ship will have to wait for completion either in France, which is fraught with serious penalties, or at the wall of some Russian factory, where this "masterpiece" will rust and gradually be stolen. True, all this will make it very comfortable to "saw" money.
Another argument of Mistral's supporters is that Russian tank landing ships, which are four times smaller than the French ones, "eat up" three times as much fuel. Indeed, the domestic diesel engine building in the post-Soviet era is going through a deep crisis. This is not a sin, but a misfortune of this engineering industry. But if Russian engines are not suitable, it is easy to buy them abroad. The Finnish company Wartsila, which produces main and auxiliary diesel engines for Mistral, is a long-standing partner of our country and would certainly sell its engines at a more affordable price than the French company DCNS, complete with a helicopter carrier. This applies to both electric ship systems and Alstrom-type propellers. They are freely sold in the international market.
Suppose that Russian naval commanders have a persistent allergy to domestic factories. Then you can order the construction of a corps that meets not military, but civilian standards abroad. For example, in the same Finland or Poland, and even in Indonesia. And then this building will cost 30-40, maximum - 50 million euros, but not 400-500 million!
In general, military-technical cooperation with foreign countries is extremely useful. But for Russia, it should extend to promising areas, and not to what we can do now ourselves. For example, with the same French, it would be worthwhile to jointly work on the appearance of the promising warship Swordship, which DCNS is working on.
Obviously, one of the reasons for ordering warships abroad is not the inability of Russian designers and shipbuilders to create a helicopter carrier, perhaps in cooperation with foreign partners, but in the absence of specialists in the Russian naval department who can draw up a competent tactical and technical assignment on such a ship. Immediately you need to "think and weigh for a long time." After all, it is much easier, discarding "pretentious patriotism", to buy ready-made and squander public money.
It is these circumstances that cause political tension in Russian society. And the cold French mistral wind can bring a lot of trouble, if not trouble, as it rocks the Russian boat more and more.