A lot of bad things can be said about the various forces of the Russian Navy, and not very much good, but against this background, mine action forces stand out. The fact is that this is the only type of force in the Navy, whose capabilities are equal to zero - strictly. Not more.
Yes, the submarine fleet does not have modern torpedoes, does not have hydroacoustic countermeasures, the level of training of personnel is low, and so on, but still it can do a lot, for example, against various countries of the Third World. Yes, and against NATO in some cases and with some luck.
Yes, the surface fleet almost died, but even in its current state it is capable of inflicting losses on most potential adversaries, especially off its coast, and a good grouping was gathered from Syria this summer, and it then played its role one hundred percent.
Yes, there are horns and legs from the naval aviation, but still we will recruit six aircraft that are somehow capable of fighting modern submarines, there are assault regiments, there is a Tu-142M for long-range reconnaissance - and they conduct it well.
And so everywhere, except for mine action forces. There is zero. Full. Starting from senior officers, who still believe in towed trawls, and brushing off the performance characteristics of modern western mines, and ending with ships unsuitable for performing tasks as intended. Zero.
At the same time, the injection of money into new minesweepers was simply in vain. The question of why this happened is multifaceted, complex, and its full disclosure is impossible within the framework of one article. Let's just say - in conditions when the Navy does not participate in hostilities for a long time, a whole class of military bureaucracy has grown up around it, seeing in the fleet only a financial flow that must be straddled, and no more. With this approach, issues of combat readiness do not interest anyone at all, no one is engaged in them, and as a result, there is no combat readiness.
We are interested not so much in the question "who is to blame?", As in the question "what to do?"
Consider how the situation in the Navy differs from how it should be.
Fundamentally, the tasks of the anti-mine forces can be divided into mine detection and destruction. Once upon a time, if mines were detected, it was only visually. From the second half of the twentieth century, as a means of detecting minefields, hydroacoustic stations began to be used, specially created to search for small objects in the water column at shallow (at first) depths. Such GAS, installed on minesweepers, made it possible to detect a minefield directly along the course. In the future, the GAS became more and more perfect, later they were supplemented with remote-controlled unmanned underwater vehicles - TNPA, equipped with sonars and television cameras, unmanned boats equipped with GAS appeared, side-scan sonars appeared, allowing you to open the underwater environment, moving along the edge of the minefield.
In the future, the emergence of accurate positioning systems for the ship and ROV, the growth of the capabilities of computers, the increase in the resolving power of sonars, made it possible to survey the bottom and water column in the protected water area, detecting changes, new objects on the bottom and in the bottom layers of water, which were not there before. Such objects could be immediately checked using TNLA, making sure that it is not a mine.
Low-frequency GAS appeared, the signal of which, without providing a good resolution of the resulting "picture", could nevertheless reveal silted bottom mines, which was a huge step forward. Now it has become difficult to hide the mine in the rubbish that is present in abundance on the seabed in the area of intensive economic and military human activity, in silt, in algae, among various large debris, drowned boats and boats, tires, and everything else there. at the bottom. Sludge deposited by underwater currents was a separate problem, it could hide the mine from other search methods, but the low-frequency signal helped to "sort it out" with it. All these means are effectively integrated with each other, providing, if necessary, the so-called “continuous hydroacoustic illumination”. High-frequency HAS give a good picture, allowing, for example, to detect a torpedo mine installed at a depth, low-frequency HAS makes it possible to look under the silt. It, plus computers and sophisticated software, helps to "cut off" the natural interference created by underwater currents. There are even more advanced ones capable of monitoring the situation - so it has been technically possible for a long time to implement the so-called continuous hydroacoustic monitoring, when the observation of the underwater situation is carried out continuously using a wide range of hydroacoustic means, detecting both the appearance of foreign objects (mines) on the bottom and in the water, so and combat swimmers, for example.
On the way, the massive introduction of parametric antennas even in the navies of small and weak countries - when beams of powerful sound waves with close frequencies radiated into the aquatic environment in parallel generate a zone in the water, a kind of "virtual" antenna, which is a source of powerful secondary vibrations, much more powerful than it can provide an ordinary sonar antenna of a reasonable size. This increases the efficiency of searching for mines by orders of magnitude. Such equipment is already entering service in some countries.
In cases where complex hydrology does not make it possible to “view” the entire water column, ROVs are used. They also provide the classification of mine-like objects found by the search, if this is difficult according to the GAS signals.
Naturally, all of the above is brought together into one complex with the help of automated mine action control systems, which turn various means of detection (and destruction) into a single jointly working complex, and form an information environment for operators and users in which the whole variety of underwater situation, and targeting is issued for both forces and means of destruction.
It is easy to guess that our Navy has almost none of this.
Currently, the Navy has several dozen minesweepers, of which one - "Vice-Admiral Zakharyin" has not the best, but adequate GAS mine detection, and STIUM "Mayevka", for searching and destroying mines under water. There are a couple of Project 12260 marine minesweepers, which have a high-frequency GAS, and in theory are capable of carrying the old KIU -1 and 2 mine destroyers (how much these systems are "alive" in practice now, it is difficult to say. There is information that one of the minesweepers was used for experiments with the "Gyurza" system, which did not reach the "series"), there are nine raid minesweepers of project 10750, which, so to speak, have a relatively acceptable GAS mine detection, and are also capable of using mine seekers.
There are the latest minesweepers of Project 12700 "Alexandrite", conceived as carriers of modern anti-mine hydroacoustic stations, but there are few of them, and they are characterized by such a huge mass of shortcomings, which reduces the value of these ships to zero. Bye.
There are certain developments in ACS that are significantly inferior to Western ones.
And that is all.
All other raid, base and sea minesweepers are completely outdated, and for anything more complicated than prying out homemade anchor mines, made in the garage by some self-taught militants, is unsuitable. Old GAS, towed trawls and memories of old Soviet mine hunters - there is nothing else there.
The Navy does not have systems that fully possess the functionality described above, and is not even close to trying to get something like that. From time to time, on the pages of specialized military publications, articles of middle-level officers or not very high-ranking employees of the relevant design bureaus or research institutes appear, where thoughts are expressed about the need to bring the possibilities of finding mines in line with the requirements of the time, but these calls usually remain a voice of a blatant in desert. It is possible that somewhere sluggishly there are some research and development projects on the indicated topics, but they will never reach the "series".
At the same time, the Russian industry has all the necessary potential to quickly improve the situation. There are no technical problems in order to "merge" seabed maps in areas that can presumably be mined in the first place, by protected computers, which would display information from the GAS. There is no technological impossibility to make a BEC with a GAS or side-scan sonar (SSS) and provide data transmission from it to the command post, where they would be "superimposed" on the bottom maps. All this can be done, tested and brought to a series within about five years. Well, a maximum of seven years.
Moreover, the domestic minesweepers previously supplied abroad underwent modernization there, and it turned out that the old domestic GAS of the mine search quite "reach" to a level more or less adequate to threats, even without replacement, simply by updating the peripheral equipment. This fact suggests that the same Project 1265 sea minesweepers, which are still the basis of the domestic mine-sweeping forces, like the 266M, and the above projects, may well be modernized in terms of hydroacoustics, receive ACS terminals on board, and equipment conjugation of the automated control system and our own search sonar systems.
This will take some time and some money. The only drawback is the age of the minesweepers 1265. Their wooden hulls are already seriously worn out, and for some ships, repairs will be impossible. But this is still much better than zero.
The situation with the destruction of mines is no better than with the search. As mentioned earlier, modern mines will not allow themselves to be wiped out in the usual way - by towing a trawl with a minesweeper over a minefield. This is no longer possible, a mine that reacts to a combination of acoustic, electromagnetic and hydrodynamic fields will explode even under a quiet and non-magnetic minesweeper, destroying the ship and killing the crew. And the Russian Navy, alas, has no other means. Old KIU-1 and 2, and various experimental seekers and destroyers have long become the property of history, somewhere there are no pictures left, more or less alive "Mayevka" corrupt officials from the fleet nailed, foreign equipment was under sanctions, and not that, what our Ministry of Defense wanted to buy. If tomorrow someone mines our exits from the bases, then ships will have to penetrate them, there will be no other options.
If the majority of fleets do not have enough means of high-speed demining, but there are at least point-like means - STIUMs, TNLA-seekers, destroyers - then we have nothing.
And, as in the case of mine hunting, we have all the necessary technology and expertise to fix everything in about seven years.
Let's take a deeper look at the tasks of mine clearance.
It is necessary to separate the tasks of demining in general and the "breakthrough" of a minefield, for, for example, an emergency withdrawal from a strike by surface ships. The first, when it comes to “being in time”, can be performed on a limited scale (“breakout of the corridor”), but must be done quickly.
In the old days, the fastest way to break through a minefield was a breakthrough ship. Such ships were specially hardened ships capable of surviving a mine explosion. They were sent to the minefields so that, moving along them, they initiated the detonation of mines along the course, "punching a corridor" in the minefield for the passage of normal ships and vessels. Until now, the Navy has several radio-controlled breakers (project 13000).
Time, however, does not stand still. The Americans use helicopter-towed trawls instead of breakthrough ships, but there is a much more rational solution - a self-propelled trawl.
Currently, self-propelled trawls are manufactured by SAAB. Its SAM-3 product is the most advanced of its kind in the world, and the most mass-produced. It is even more correct to say - the only fully serial one.
The trawl is an unmanned catamaran, kept on the water thanks to floats made of high-strength soft material filled with air.
The catamaran regularly tows a combined acoustic-electromagnetic trawl. In most cases, the SAM-3 is capable of actually simulating a surface ship and causing mines to go off.
The soft material of the floats is capable of absorbing a sufficiently powerful shock wave. In the photo below, for example, a detonation under a trawl of an explosive charge equivalent to 525 kilograms of TNT.
A very important point - the trawl is thrown through the air, and for assembly and launching it requires four people and a crane with a lifting capacity of 14 tons.
In case the mine situation is complex and a complete simulation of a large surface ship is required, the SAM-3 can tow the non-self-propelled mass simulators of the TOMAS ship. These devices are large and heavy floats with sources of electromagnetic waves, capable of simulating with their volume and mass the hydrodynamic effect of the ship's hull on the mass of water along which it moves. At the same time, To "fit" the impact, you can form a "train" of floats. Acoustic trawls are suspended under the necessary floats, and one can simulate sounds from the engine room, the second is the noise from the propeller-driven group. In fact, this is an ideal breakout tool, a kind of super-breaker capable of deceiving almost any modern mine.
After the self-propelled trawl has pierced the corridor in the minefield, unmanned boats with sonar stations are sent behind it, the task of which is to find unexploded mines in the "corridor". The detected mine-like objects can be classified by TNLA, and destroyed by STIUM - since all defender mines will obviously be blown up when what was defined by all parameters as a surface ship over them, it will not be a problem for STIUM to approach the mine and use an explosive charge against it.
It is possible that mines, including defenders, will be tuned to an underwater object. In this case, you will have to massively use the destroyers. On the other hand, the accurate determination of the location of mines and their classification will help to use old means such as a cord explosive charge, and to finish off with the help of destroyers only those mines that survived it.
Thus, the following solution would be ideal for the Navy.
Anti-mine units are being created at naval bases. They are armed with self-propelled trawls and simulators of physical fields, similar to SAM-3, unmanned boats with sonar stations, TNPA and STIUM carriers, as is done by the Americans, who do not build new minesweepers. Such a unit works according to the scheme described above - trawling the water area with a self-propelled trawl, withdrawing a BEC group with search means following the trawl, using TNLA to classify detected mine-like objects, and using STIUM to destroy mines that were not blown up during trawling. They should have disposable destroyers as a backup option, but due to their high cost, this will be the last resort. Which, thanks to a self-propelled trawl, will be needed in not very large, and therefore tolerable quantities.
Once again, Russia has all the technologies necessary for this, and with a competent formulation of the problem, such a scheme can be deployed in five to seven years. In the future, it is necessary to move on to continuous hydroacoustic monitoring, to completely exclude the throwing of self-transporting mines into the water area between checks and combat swimmers.
At the same time, all minesweepers with a significant residual resource need to be modernized. It is necessary to equip them with TNLA of various types, equip with new GAS with integration systems into the ACS, perhaps it makes sense to equip these ships with diving equipment so that diving units could be used from their board to neutralize mines (another one that is massively used in the West, but what our fleet categorically refuses).
Separately, it is worth talking about the future of the ships of Project 12700 "Alexandrite".
These ships today have a huge displacement for a minesweeper - up to 890 tons. At the same time, the standard unmanned boat - the French "Inspector" does not intermeddle with these ships and it is generally unclear how to use it (frankly speaking, the boat is unsuccessful with poor seaworthiness). Also, what is called "did not work" developed for him underwater vehicles, and in terms of the mass of parameters. So, the standard TNLA of the ship has a weight of about a ton, which in itself will not allow it to be used when searching for mines. And the fact that he has some rumored prohibitively high price, and at the same time has to destroy mines himself, just takes him out of the brackets completely. However, the ship has a modern GAS and a command center on board.
It is worth completing all the mortgaged ships of this project, but in a slightly different quality. It must be admitted that sending such a huge ship for trawling is insanity, and criminal insanity at that. Mines will be blown up under the Alexandrites simply because of their mass and the water they move, they “don't care” that these ships have a fiberglass hull. This ship should be used not as a minesweeper or even TSCHIM, but as a new one for us, but a mine hunter, which has long been brought out in the West into a separate class, a mine hunter, which, in the conditions of the Navy, can get some traditionally "gray" name, for example just "mine-seeker ship". It is worth abandoning trawling weapons on board, but at the same time placing on board the ship unmanned boats for searching for mines, remotely controlled by UUVs for their classification, only normal, and not those idle and "gold" at the price of prototypes that now, STIUMs, a stock of disposable destroyers … It is worth studying the issue of towing a light combined (acoustics and electromagnetic fields) trawl with a BEC from a ship.
In the future, it is necessary to rethink the requirements for an anti-mine ship so that the replacement for the existing minesweepers is already fully consistent with the task at hand.
What other technology is missing to consider the mine threat closed?
First, we still need helicopters - trawl towing vehicles. The enemy can suddenly undertake mining on such a large scale that the standard anti-mine forces at the naval base are simply not enough to quickly ensure the exit of ships to sea. Then it will be necessary to urgently transfer the reserve there. Helicopter units may well claim to be such a reserve. They also provide the highest possible trawling performance, unavailable for other means. At the same time, since we have our own anti-mine forces at the bases, there will be few such helicopters. Today the only realistic platform for such a helicopter is the Mi-17 helicopters. An example of old tugs - the Mi-14 - shows that such a helicopter can handle trawl towing quite well, and it does not need amphibious capability.
Secondly, trawl towing helicopters must have lowered mine-action GAS. This will dramatically increase the search performance of mine action forces.
Thirdly, teams of specially trained sapper divers are needed.
Fourthly, it is necessary to carry out research work to determine the methods and means of finding mines under the ice. If the demining of such minefields can be carried out by various UUVs and divers through artificial openings and ice holes in the ice cover, then there are a lot of questions regarding the detection and search of mines in such conditions. However, they are solvable.
Fourthly, it is necessary to deploy anti-mine weapons on warships. At least BEC with GAS, Stock of TNLA, STIUM and destroyers on ships must be available. Apparently, it is necessary to have cord charges, started from the same BEC. As part of the BC-3, there should be specialists in the use of all this technology. If necessary, the actions of the BCH-3 warships will be controlled by the commander in charge of mine action, or in other cases, the ship will ensure its passage through the minefields on its own.
Fifth, it is necessary to integrate the command of both mine action and anti-submarine defense. A trivial example - if an enemy submarine is located near the zone being cleared from mines, then nothing will prevent it, determining the places where the mines have already been eliminated, to point the self-transporting mines there again. Even if the defending side has established continuous sonar monitoring, and these mines are detected in time, this will at least mean a loss of time. If the fact of re-mining of the "cleared" zone remains unknown …
ASW is vital both in and of itself and in the context of mine action.
Sixth, it is worth taking a closer look at the supercavitating shells for conventional naval guns - most likely, they can be used for firing at anchor mines at a shallow depth.
Sixth, it is necessary, following the Americans, to create laser-based mine detection systems, both airborne and ship-based.
In general, in the Navy, it is necessary to create a structure that will be responsible not for underwater weapons, as it is now, but for the conduct of mine warfare in general, including both mine action and "offensive mining".
It is easy to guess that all of the above will not be done in the foreseeable future.
Let's give a specific example - a few years ago, one of the Russian design organizations came close to creating such a product, which is so desirable for any fleet of the world, as a super-cheap STIUM. A reusable device, capable of effectively searching for mines in most conditions, turned out to be so cheap that it could be sacrificed painlessly if necessary. The price was promised to be so low that it would be possible to have dozens of such devices on any warship - it would not be particularly burdensome for the budget. Of course, the functionality of the device was somewhat curtailed to reduce the price, but so to speak, it is not critical. A number of subsystems have been brought to metal.
The persons in whose power to give or not to give progress to such work, slammed the project even faster than in due time "Mayevka". It will not be difficult for the author to give the ROC code and contacts to officials if they are interested in the question. However, the author is sure that officials will not be interested in this issue.
It is worth noting that the collapse of the anti-mine forces in the Navy occurs in conditions when, firstly, the international situation around the Russian Federation is aggravating, secondly, when the risks of being hit at sea are several times higher than on land, and thirdly, when our enemy is the United States, already has experience of an anonymous terrorist mine war (Nicaragua) and inciting its vassal states against our country (Georgia in 2008).
At the same time, the vassals quite have both mines and their delivery vehicles.
Take Poland, for example. All of its Lublin-class amphibious assault ships are classified in the West as a mine-layer amphibious assault ship. On the one hand, any tank landing ship is also a minelayer, on the other hand, the Poles keep them for sure not for landing operations. These ships are first minelayers, then amphibious ships. If we recall the Great Patriotic War, then the enemy began to mine the Baltic before the first military strike on the territory of the USSR, on the night of June 21-22. We seem to have forgotten the lesson.
Neutrals give reason to think too. Thus, seemingly neutral Finland, within the framework of military cooperation within the EU, spies on the movements of the Balticfolt ships. Nothing special, they just spy from the Hamienmaa minelayers. Their future corvettes of the Pohyanmaa class normally have compartments for placing mines and guides for dropping them into the water. Today, minesags are the largest Finnish ships. The Finns have the most specialized minelayers in the world. However, so far the Finns are mostly for neutrality, but changing this attitude is a matter of one well-conducted provocation. The United States and the British are good at provocation whenever they want. The main thing is to choose the right moment.
The apogee of the development of modern minelayers is given to us by South Korea. Her new minelayer "Nampo" (which is the ancestor of a new class of ships) carries 500 mines, and has eight guides for dropping them behind the stern. This is arguably the highest performing mine-layer in history.
Again, on the one hand, South Korea hardly sees Russia as its adversary. Now. But let's not forget that they are American allies, and allies who have historically shown their ability to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their American masters. Yes, North Korea, China and Japan are considered much more likely enemies than we are. But intentions change quickly and opportunities change slowly.
Against this background, even the refusal of the Americans from the mines installed from submarines (temporary) and the withdrawal of the Captors from the combat strength (perhaps also) is somehow not encouraging. After all, the United States, NATO and their allies still have hundreds of thousands of mines.
And we have only prehistoric towed trawls and unpleasantly loud military propaganda, not backed up by real military force.
We can only hope that we will not be tested for strength.
