At the IMDS-2019 naval arms show, which took place from July 10 to July 14, 2019, one extremely atypical stood out among the many participants. One of the world leaders in the creation of remotely controlled unmanned underwater vehicles (ROV), the Swiss company Idrobotica (formerly Italian Gaymarine SRL), known in including (and even, probably, "mainly") as a manufacturer of the family of mine-action ROV PLUTO - one of the most widespread representatives of such equipment in the world.
This is extremely interesting for our time marked by the mass of anti-Russian sanctions, but this is exactly the case. True, IDROBOTICA promotes its equipment under the “domestic” brand “Yantar”, but this, in fact, cannot deceive anyone. Why is it important?
"Rock star" anti-mine NPA
The company manufactures and delivers ready-made mine action systems on a turnkey basis, united by the common PLUTO brand. Currently, PLUTO, in various versions, is in service with the Navy of nearly twenty countries, from Italy to Vietnam. In the USA, licensed production of such devices has been established.
ROV PLUTO can be classified as STIUM - a self-propelled remote-controlled mine seeker-destroyer (see the classification in the article “Death from nowhere. About the mine war at sea ). They can be used to detect mines both by their own GAS and by television cameras, and at the same time they can install explosive charges to destroy them.
Also, the Italian manufacturer has a "clean" destroyer - a disposable TNLA-killer of mines.
When developing PLUTO, the manufacturing company decided to deliberately simplify the regulatory legal acts, to "cut" some of its technical characteristics and reduce the performance characteristics. So, for example, a major drawback of the entire PLUTO line is the inability to deal with silted bottom mines - the GAS frequencies do not allow "looking" through the silt layer. Another major drawback is the inability of the TNLA PLUTO to act in conditions of the use of defenders by the enemy. For PLUTO, you need to "clear the road" with a self-propelled trawl, towed by a helicopter trawl or an unmanned breakthrough ship. Only after all defenders have been blown up, PLUTO can be used to search for and destroy the remaining unmanned mines without the risk of losing the device.
But there is also a downside to oversimplification - the price. All of the PLUTO family of UAVs are, perhaps, one of the cheapest devices of this class in the world. The Italians managed to "drop" the cost of the devices to such a value that their loss on mines becomes acceptable, it is "not overhead" even for small navies. It is this feature of the products of the Italian company that caused its widest distribution in the world. PLUTOs are primitive, but you can have a lot of them. They are easy to use. And the detonation of one device on a mine, which turned out to be too "difficult" for him, is not a problem from the word "in general" - you can simply launch another one. That is why PLUTO devices are so widespread.
The second key to success was the fact that the manufacturer supplies not just a TNLA or a line of TNLA. The supplier offers a turnkey mine action system.
It includes:
- the system, which received the name "Pilot" for the Russian market, which includes the ship's command center or centers that allow mine action control, the coastal Mine War Data Processing Center, which makes it possible to deploy on its basis an automated mine action control system for connecting mine action forces and training equipment;
- ROV of the PLUTO family of several standard sizes, capable of carrying “payload” of different mass (explosive charges) and operating at different depths; It includes PLUTO itself, PLUTO PLUS with increased payload and PLUTO GIGAS - the largest and largest in the family; there is a lightweight version of PLUTO-L;
- disposable destroyers PLUTINO / MIKI, designed to detonate detected mines;
- a special radio beacon, with the help of which the ship can control the TNLA remotely, via a radio channel, and not via a fiber-optic cable connecting the ship's command center with the TNLA "directly" - in the case of the buoy, only the TNLA and the radio beacon are connected by cable, and the command is sent from the ship and the feedback is carried out over the radio channel.
The tactical and technical characteristics of the ROV of the PLUTO family allow the devices to operate in the zone of strong currents, and the navigation subsystem built into the Pilot allows for accurate positioning of the ROV and the carrier on a minefield.
The experience of using PLUTO in demining has shown that, excluding the work on “mine defenders” and silted mines, PLUTOs are very effective, both in detecting mines and in destroying them.
And the most important thing. This, if you call a spade a spade, a mine defense system has already been installed on the Russian-made minesweepers - MTShch project 266E, previously supplied to the Vietnamese Navy. PLUTO has been tested on Russian technology, albeit not in Russia. Verified successfully.
Trishkin mine defense caftan, or Import to the rescue
Let us immediately ask ourselves the question: can our military-industrial complex create a system of a similar efficiency? Yes maybe. But, firstly, for this it is necessary to disperse the "mafia" that is still parasitizing on the topic of naval underwater weapons in our defense industry, and secondly, it is necessary to "set the brains" of the persons who substantiate the parameters required by the tactical and technical assignments for the anti-mine equipment, and thirdly, it takes time. As stated in the third article of the series "Death from Nowhere", from five to seven years old.
This means that even ideally, if all the organizational measures necessary to improve the situation with mine defense in the Russian Navy and the defense industry are taken "right now", then for the next at least five years, both we and our allies will be defenseless from the use of mine weapons … SSBNs going into combat service, surface ships and multipurpose submarines, the base in Tartus will be defenseless for years. Is this acceptable?
Seven years in our world is a very long time. This is the period that separates the war in South Ossetia from Russia's entry into the war in Syria. This is a whole era during which anything can happen, for example, the already mentioned possibility of Ukrainian "mine terrorism" can be realized in the same style in which the Americans, with the hands of their mercenaries, laid mines in the waters of Nicaragua. Or the same setting of mines in Tartus. The explosions of Russian ships on mines, and especially the inability of the Navy to neutralize them, will become a political disaster for Russia. Under these conditions, it would be wise to cooperate with foreigners.
Let's evaluate the cons of PLUTO.
The inability to detect silted mines is a problem, but in the case of the defense of their bases, its severity can be partly removed by the fact that continuous monitoring of the underwater situation, which in our time should be the basis of mine action, will not allow mines to silt. The deployment of a sonar operating at low frequencies on an unmanned boat, which could be detected by such mines for their subsequent destruction, may become a "safety net" for the defense of their bases, and mandatory for operations in other regions of the world.
Also, part of the problem can be solved with the help of low-frequency HAS mine detection on the minesweepers themselves, as it was already in the Persian Gulf in 1991. when using (effective use!) simple TNLA type RAR-104, in general, for the most part did not have a GAS (only a TV camera).
The problem of mine defenders can be solved by the revival of such a class of military equipment as trawl towing helicopters, as well as self-propelled trawls - ideally something similar to the Swedish SAAB SAM-3, but as a last resort, radio-controlled breakers, similar to the old radio-controlled breakers, would do. project 13000 (or even they are the same, but restored and modernized, if it is still possible to do it). By the way, this same remedy also helps against silted mines.
At present, in Russia, several dozen old minesweepers of various classes and designs are in service, each of which is equipped with a mine detection system. Also under construction is the MTShch series of project 12700 - highly controversial ships in their concept.
In relation to the old minesweepers, the rapid modernization of hydroacoustic stations, especially the peripheral equipment of the GAS, the deployment of the Pilot system terminals on the ships, the replacement of the trawling equipment with the launching equipment, with the help of which the TNPA PLUTO (for our fleet, apparently, they will be "Yantars") could be launched and taken back, and the equipment of places for placing on the ship both STIUM PLUTO and explosive charges for them, and disposable UOA-destroyers. Such a solution will allow, very quickly, in no more than two years, to basically restore the ability of our Navy to deal with mines. In any case, all sorts of terrorist handicrafts, American "Quickstrikes" dropped from the air, and in general any mines that did not have time to overgrow with silt, will cease to be a problem immediately, and defender mines, in extreme cases, will be undermined when TNLA approaches them, which is possible to endure, as the ROV PLUTO, we recall, is distinguished by a low price.
With regard to the new minesweepers of Project 12700 (for details, see the article by M. Klimov "What's wrong with the" newest "PMK project 12700") it is worth recognizing that the ship has an excellent mine detection system and a command center on board, and first of all it needs to replace the seeker-destroyer, which is inadequate in its “ideology,” the only SPA (self-propelled underwater vehicle) ISPUM, with cheaper and sane TNLA and disposable destroyers of the “military” "Type. Retrofitting the ships of Project 12700 will increase their combat value simply "Infinity times", especially considering their size, thanks to which it is possible to carry on board a large supply of both TNLA and destroyers, sufficient to clear almost any minefield (and in this case, a large displacement MTShch project 12700). In this case, SPA ISPUM can be left solely as a means of searching for mines, without using it to destroy them.
It is also unambiguously necessary to have anti-mine detachments deployed on warships so that warships in some cases could overcome minefields on their own. PLUTO is the optimal weapon for such units.
An additional bonus is the opportunity to complete the project 266ME minesweeper located at the Sredne-Nevsky shipyard, the readiness of which is 80%, and which is already equipped with diesel engines that are in short supply today, as well as to quickly re-equip the minesweepers of this project, available in Kamchatka, whose task is to ensure the deployment of SSBNs project 955 "Borey" / 955A "Borey-A", and which with the existing antediluvian trawls cannot perform this task.
PLUTO can give new life to raid minesweepers of project 10750E - small and inexpensive ships that also have mine detecting HAS, but too small for SPA ISPUM, and do not have the necessary electrical power to use it. PLUTO, on the other hand, is quite suitable for these ships both in terms of their mass and dimensional characteristics, and in terms of power supply parameters. Thus, even a theoretical restart of the production of these simple and inexpensive ships becomes justified.
Are there any disadvantages to purchasing Italian equipment? About the mines-defenders and silted bosom mines has already been said above. Another argument "against" may be that domestic developers "lose" the client - the Navy, foreign.
However, there is nothing to worry about, the purchase of foreign mine action systems does not cancel the need to develop our own, this measure allows you to close the critical "hole" in the country's defense capability "here and now", moreover, both our Navy and the defense industry will be able, looking at foreign products clearly understand “how to do it”, and in the future build on this understanding, having before our eyes a “standard”. And the time factor does matter.
Thus, it is worth working with Idrobotica / Idrobaltika. While other manufacturers of military equipment refuse to cooperate with Russia because of the sanctions imposed on our country, one of the world leaders, striving, on the contrary, to bypass them, is just a gift that cannot be refused.
