Unfortunately, it became possible to judge the post-war development of the USSR Navy only after the collapse of the superpower. Total Soviet secrecy did not allow either amateurs or specialists to comprehensively assess their fleet. But after 1991, a whole stream of information poured out on everyone, in which it was easy to drown.
The first assessments of the post-war Navy were immediately critical. For professionals, they are restrainedly moderate, while for others they are sometimes just scandalous. Then it was customary to scold everything Soviet. Today, many estimates have been revised, but in the part of the Navy - practically none. A critical assessment of the post-war development of the fleet was recorded in many works of many authors of those years. But no serious attempt was made to voice the revision of these assessments. It is today that a situation has emerged when it can and should be done. This article is just an attempt to take a similar step.
Assessment of shipbuilding of the USSR Navy. Acting point of view
Fundamental work on the post-war development of the Soviet fleet "Soviet Navy 1945-1991." (V. P. Kuzin, V. I. Nikolsky) gives the following characteristics:
If it were not for this tilt towards the unrestrained construction of submarines, then for the same money it would be possible to build a navy that is not inferior in terms of the BNK OK of the US Navy, and invest significant funds in the development of a stationary basing system. Thus, the concept of replacing some ships with others in solving the problems of the USSR Navy, both tactically, as mentioned above, and economically, was a clear gamble. WRONG POLITICAL-MILITARY DECISIONS have led to an EMERGENCY MILITARY-TECHNICAL POLICY, and the latter has led to UN-OPTIMAL ECONOMIC COSTS.
P. 458-459.
Let's try to critically evaluate the information provided.
Strategy
The navy is not a thing in itself. He is an integral part of the state's defense system. Therefore, it makes sense to consider it in the light of the global confrontation between the USSR and NATO.
In the post-war period, the great European war was seen as a transient conflict in which the USSR would strive with its ground forces to rapidly destroy NATO forces on the continent. (We will deliberately ignore the use of ICBMs and nuclear weapons.) Western analysts allotted no more than a month for this, and Soviet tanks reached the shores of the English Channel. It is clear that NATO forces in such a situation will strive to strengthen the grouping in Europe as quickly as possible, fending off a Soviet strike. And the most important in this was acquired by transatlantic convoys, transferring equipment from the United States to Germany and France, as well as convoys of important military goods from other directions (oil products, timber, gas, ore). There is no doubt that the USSR will destroy these convoys in order to isolate the theater of military operations and undermine the economic potential of the enemy as much as possible. This is a classic cruising task. The task is not the only one, but one of the most important.
And this is where the Navy begins to play the main role. The nature of the targets is quite definite - these are convoys and warrants in the Atlantic. It is quite obvious that using surface ships, especially given the numerical superiority of the NATO fleets, it is extremely difficult to destroy these convoys. The naval missile-carrying aircraft has a limited range and low combat stability. But it is precisely for this task that submarines are ideally suited. All that is required of them is to prevent massive military transport for a month until the ground forces of the USSR defeat the ground forces of NATO in Europe (we do not question the fact that the Soviet Army is capable of this).
Behind the beautiful aircraft carriers and cruisers hides "another fleet" of the United States - the world's most powerful transport fleet. It was he who could provide an incredible volume of cargo transportation in a short time. In the photo - USNS Gordon (T-AKR 296) at work
Discussions about the development of the fleet will inevitably take the form of opposing the submarine and aircraft carrier directions. These two whales define the face of modern fleets. If the USSR had abandoned the mass construction of submarines and deployed the construction of AB, what would have happened then? Solving the same problem, Soviet AUGs would have to break through from the cramped Barents Sea into the Atlantic with battles, repelling enemy coastal aviation attacks from Europe, dodging enemy submarines, and at the end of such a campaign, fighting American AUGs. Our aircraft carriers were easily detected and tracked after entering the outer roadstead of Severomorsk. It would be incredibly difficult for them to get to the convoys.
For submarines, on the contrary, the problem of a breakthrough was not so acute, because even today the detection of submarines in the open ocean remains a problem with many unpredictable factors. Even the most advanced anti-submarine weapons are not able to track the submarine for a long time and guarantee its destruction. A submarine, having obviously stronger hydroacoustic means than aviation or surface ships, maneuvering in three-dimensional space and using countermeasures in a heterogeneous aquatic environment, is capable of evading attacks and pursuit many times. Moreover, the secrecy of the submarine made it possible to deliver annoying strikes even where the enemy did not expect - in the Indian Ocean or in the South Atlantic. Naturally, in the course of the conflict, NATO forces will gradually increase the means of anti-submarines and will be able to find and destroy our submarines, but this will take time, which will not be given by the ground forces of the USSR, occupying all of Europe in a matter of weeks.
Geography
A head-to-head comparison of the US and Soviet naval forces is always incorrect. For it does not take into account the peculiarities of geography for each of the parties. Are there really many maritime countries in the world? Countries that have wide access to the world's oceans? It seems that the USSR with its giant sea line is one of them, but if you forget about the fact that 90% of this coastline is 2/3 of the year covered with ice.
In fact, there are only a few full-fledged maritime countries. These are the USA, Japan, Great Britain, India, China and some of the less significant players such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, France, Vietnam. All these countries have a common place - a spacious coastline in non-freezing seas with convenient harbors and excellent coastal infrastructure. All US navies are located in the most developed parts of the country. The sun shines brightly there, warmth, and when leaving the bay, gigantic ocean expanses open up, with incredible depths where it is easy to get lost even for such a large object as an aircraft carrier. Is there something similar somewhere in Russia? No.
The spaciousness and convenience of the US naval base "Norfolk" did not even dream of our sailors
All maritime countries have an extremely small number of maritime theaters, which allows them not to split their forces into isolated directions and easily achieve an important concentration of forces in military affairs. The USA has two theaters (and that is conditionally), Japan, Great Britain, India, China - one theater. Only France has two unrelated theaters of war. How many theaters does Russia have? Four full and one miniature (Caspian).
Imagine that in a period of threat the Russian Federation decides to maneuver an aircraft carrier from one theater to another? This will be a new campaign of the 2nd Pacific squadron, no less. The maneuver of the nuclear submarine, on the contrary, most likely, no one will even notice until the nuclear submarines leaving the north surface on the roadstead of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and their appearance becomes obvious to satellite reconnaissance systems.
All this suggests that Russia, if it wants to seriously compete with the great maritime powers, cannot act symmetrically. Even if we spend as much money on our Navy as the United States spends, all the same, at each of our maritime theaters, all efforts should be divided by four.
I propose to compare our main bases by a number of parameters, so that it is clear how inconvenient sea geography Russia has.
As can be seen from the table, only Sevastopol is more or less equal to world standards, but it also has a feature that can negate all other advantages - the Turkish straits. According to this parameter, we can say that the conditions for the location of the base are even worse than "unsatisfactory".
Is it possible in such conditions to talk about the massive development of aircraft carriers, ships extremely demanding for space and possessing the minimum stealth of all classes of naval weapons?
Ship composition
As you know, the USSR had its own military bloc, conventionally called the "countries of the Warsaw Pact." The bloc was created in opposition to NATO. However, even today, when NATO remains, but there is no internal affairs department, analysts and journalists continue to compare the military capabilities of Russia and the United States. This is a completely unfair assessment, since the United States does not act alone. A correct comparison should be made between Russia / USSR on the one hand and NATO and Japan on the other. This is when there is cause for sadness!
The ATS countries were almost never taken into account, and even more so in the naval plan. For the United States has many strong maritime allies, while the USSR did not have them, and does not have them now.
Did the USSR Navy have sufficient naval personnel? Yes, it was the largest, largest fleet in the world. So far, we do not take into account that NATO is a single whole. And in terms of the total naval composition of the NATO fleets, they have always surpassed the Soviet Navy. The table shows that only in terms of the number of nuclear submarines, the USSR was on an equal footing with NATO. For other parameters, even taking into account the fleets of the ATS countries, the lag was serious.
Can we say that in such conditions the PL bet was wrong? How many aircraft carriers and other surface ships needed to be built for the Soviet Navy in order to defeat the combined forces of NATO in an open "aircraft carrier" battle? It's scary to even think …
Economy
It is extremely difficult to calculate the costs of maintaining and building such different combat systems as an aircraft carrier and submarine. In the book "The Soviet Navy 1945-1991." such a comparison is made in conventional units. At the same time, the cost of an aircraft carrier with an NPP is given as 4, 16 of the cost of a nuclear submarine, and a SSGN (with missile armament) - 1, 7 of the cost of a nuclear submarine. This assessment does not seem obvious. The net worth of an aircraft carrier as a surface ship may not be a correct indicator. An aircraft carrier without an air group and escort ships is just a floating hangar. It is more logical to compare submarines and armaments as weapons systems in the form of a minimum configuration sufficient to start full-fledged hostilities. For AV, such a composition, in addition to the carrier itself, necessarily includes an air group and escort ships. For the Premier League - only the submarine itself. We will deduce the cost of ammunition in both cases from the calculations, since it strongly depends on the current combat mission.
An approximate calculation of the cost of AB and nuclear submarines is shown in the table:
Thus, AB in combat readiness costs 7, 8 of the cost of "submarine with missile weapons" in modern prices. Instead of 2.44 for the calculations given by Kuzin and Nikolsky. Perhaps this ratio will not be fair for the Soviet period of history, since the relative cost of aircraft was lower. However, such a comparison still shows a trend. The above calculations contain concessions to the aircraft carrier, since the air group also needs ground infrastructure, a full-fledged airfield and many other means of support, without which the aircraft carrier cannot become a combat-ready unit. The submarine does not require any of this.
During the post-war period, the USSR built 81 submarines and 61 SSGNs. Thus, abandoning the construction of 61 SSGNs, the USSR could build 8 full-fledged AUG. Or, due to the refusal to build 81 PLATs, it was possible to build 7 AUG. The numbers are not impressive, given that only in the US fleet during the Cold War there were 12-20 strike aircraft carriers in different periods, and the Americans did not deprive the nuclear submarine fleet either. Having completely lost the entire nuclear submarine fleet, the USSR would only get close to parity with the United States in terms of the number of AB, while completely losing its superiority under water.
Finally, what is a big threat to NATO fleets - 15 strike aircraft carriers, or 142 nuclear submarines? The answer seems to be obvious.
Target designation
The main difficulty in the operation of submarines in the oceans has always been target designation. If in the first hours of the conflict, submarines from the tracking mode could immediately attack ward targets, then later, with the appearance of new targets, there was a need for their reconnaissance. For this, in Soviet times, there were Tu-95RTs aircraft and space reconnaissance equipment. If the Tu-95RTs was quite vulnerable, and establishing contact with the AUG for him could mean a quick death, then with space everything is not so simple.
Most experts in the field of maritime topics have a poor understanding of the peculiarities of spacecraft operation. Therefore, an opinion was established regarding them about their rapid destruction in the event of a global war. This is not entirely true. Reliable means of rapid and guaranteed destruction of all enemy satellites did not exist during the Cold War. By and large, there are none today.
The destruction of low-altitude optical reconnaissance satellites with circular orbits of 300-500 km is now quite achievable for American GBI interceptors and even for naval SM-3s. But satellites of radar and radio-technical reconnaissance, the orbits of which are located above 900 km, are already a problem. And it is these satellites that play the main role in marine reconnaissance. Only the American GBI system has the potential to destroy them. In addition, the USSR, having a developed network of cosmodromes and launch vehicles, could for some time continue to launch new satellites instead of intercepted ones, providing, if not continuous reconnaissance, then at least periodic. This was quite enough for rough target designation of submarines, which, having entered the target area with the help of their hydroacoustics, fully provided additional reconnaissance on their own.
In the future, it is possible to create maneuvering satellites capable of periodically changing the parameters of the orbit, creating difficulties for interception. In addition, such satellites can be "short-lived", performing the opening of enemy forces at sea for just a few days. Their quick interception at the first turns may be impossible, and after the end of their work, interception simply does not make sense.
Versatility
One of the arguments of the proponents of aircraft carriers is the flexibility of their use. During the Cold War, aircraft carriers used their weapons many times, albeit mainly along the coast, but submarines fought only a couple of times during this time. The aircraft carrier looks like a multipurpose vehicle that will find work both in a local conflict and in a global war.
The PL cannot boast of this. Just a couple of cases of "work" against surface targets and incomparable in scale attacks on coastal targets using cruise missiles.
However, the importance of the aircraft carrier as a flexible multipurpose weapon for Russia is much less valuable than for the United States. In the entire post-war history, we have not had conflicts where the participation of such ships was unambiguously required. Even in the current Syrian conflict, an option has been found that does not require an aircraft carrier to enter the war zone.
On the other hand, the development of submarines led to the fact that they also received the possibility of using them in local conflicts without real naval targets. This is the shelling of coastal objects with cruise missiles. So the role of the PL in local conflicts has objectively increased, and its universality has increased.
Perspectives
Evaluation of past events, of course, is of great importance, but it can only be of practical use when planning the future. What has changed since the days of the USSR? Our economic opportunities have become more modest, the Navy is smaller. NATO's supremacy at sea has increased and there is no tendency to reverse the process. Therefore, the experience of the Soviet Navy today may be even more important than ever.
Since the importance of dominance at sea for Russia remains secondary, and economic opportunities are extremely limited, there is a reason to concentrate our modest forces on the main thing. First of all, in preparation for the defense of the country from aggression. And only then think about promoting their interests in peacetime and in possible local conflicts.
The author of the article assumes that this is exactly what the naval leaders are thinking, who have been feeding the public with breakfasts for a year about the construction of ocean-going destroyers and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Until the needs of the Navy for nuclear submarines and diesel-electric submarines are satisfied, there is no need to start talking about aircraft carriers. However, politicians are forced to somehow reassure the public, thirsting for beautiful pictures in the form of Russian aircraft carriers cutting the water surface. Hence the promises to start their construction "just about, already tomorrow" in the absence of real action. But the construction of nuclear submarines and especially diesel-electric submarines has intensified quite tangibly (although still not enough).
This is how the Russian Federation has a chance to sink ships of stronger fleets. It is very difficult to find a submarine before the missile launch. And after the start, it makes no sense to look for it and, most likely, there is no one
Another important circumstance: submarines equipped with cruise missiles allow elegantly bypassing the treaty on the limitation of medium and short-range missiles, which is extremely difficult for the Russian Federation. SLCMs launched by conventional diesel-electric submarines from the Black and Baltic Seas shoot through all of Europe and, with a high degree of probability, hit American missile defense facilities in the Czech Republic, Poland or any other EU country. The same fate can quickly befall the early warning radar stations located in Greenland and Alaska. SLCMs are not invulnerable weapons, but their interception is extremely difficult and will require the utmost effort from fighter aircraft and other NATO air defense systems, which, presumably, in the event of a war with the Russian Federation, will have a lot of work without this.
The aircraft carrier remains the main force of the fleet, and its role is important, but this does not concern Russia specifically. It is better to protect coastal communications with coastal aviation, and in the open ocean our tasks are far from "gaining dominance" and require the secrecy and inevitability of the threat, and at the same time, if possible, simultaneously in many points of the world's oceans. An ideal task for the nuclear submarine. In any promising conflict, our submarine forces can become a wild headache for the enemy. And, what is especially important, the production of our submarine fleet has never been idle or stopped. The organization of mass construction of submarines requires minimal investment, which cannot be said about an aircraft carrier, for which it is still necessary to create a production site from scratch and master a number of technologies that are completely absent in the country.
The construction of the submarine did not stop even in the 90s. Despite the fact that the construction of aircraft carriers in the Russian Federation has stopped, and the construction of large NKs has been frozen. In the photo the nuclear submarine "Gepard", SMP, 1999
Nevertheless, the author does not at all call for replacing aircraft carriers with submarines. Russia also needs an aircraft carrier, because it will not always be possible to equip a new "Khmeimim" in the right area for every occasion. However, our aircraft carrier is a ship of "peacetime" and local war, which, in the event of a global military threat, will not go to the ocean to gain supremacy at sea, but will remain a coastal floating airfield. Therefore, it is not worth investing heavily in economic and scientific efforts in this direction. 1-2 aircraft carriers will be enough for us, nothing more.
conclusions
The USSR submarine fleet had a chance to become an important player in a future war. While the "aircraft carrier" fleet, most likely, would have been hiding in the skerries for fear of large and loud losses when trying to break into the ocean. Except for those ships that the beginning of the war would have caught at sea: they would have fought honestly and, most likely, would have died in the end, taking with them a certain number of enemy ships.
That is why it is necessary to change the assessment of the Soviet period in the history of our fleet. The stake on the submarine fleet was not flawed or erroneous. This was the only way to expect to inflict tangible damage at sea on an obviously stronger enemy. Another question is that the construction of the submarine fleet was not without traditional Soviet excesses, and, perhaps, the very process of development of the submarine fleet was not chosen in an optimal way. But strategically, reliance on the submarine fleet in relation to our geographic, climatic and economic capabilities was and remains correct.
