The key to half the Mediterranean in the hands of Moscow. What experience has been learned from the hunt for the Astute submarine?
If you carefully study news sections of Russian and foreign electronic media for April 2018, when the forces of the Western coalition launched an ineffective missile attack on the strategic targets of the SAA in the hope of weakening Damascus’s position in the face of the opposition-terrorist “cauldrons”, one can stumble upon something very important with military-technical and operational-tactical points of view, information from the British newspaper The Times, citing competent sources in the command of the Royal Navy fleet UK.
The well-known publication reported disrupting the strike operation of one of the three British multipurpose Astute-class nuclear submarines, which was supposed to launch the UGM-20E strategic Tomahawk Block IV missile 109 in Syria. According to the newspaper, the reason for the failure was the pursuit of the British submarine by either a modern modification of the ultra-low-noise diesel-electric submarine, 636.3 Varshavyanka Ave, or 877 Ave. Halibus, which is part of the Black Sea Fleet's 4 brigade.
Representatives of the English establishment are the real gurus in terms of creating panic in society based on demonizing Russia in the eyes of ordinary people. Therefore, there may be an opinion that this story was simply invented by the command of the British fleet to conceal the true problems of a technical and even inexplicable nature that haunt Astute class submarines for a long period of time. Thus, the chairman of the Fleet Support Movement, Captain I Rank Reserve Mikhail Nenashev, and the editor of the Arsenal of Fatherland magazine Alexei Leonkov, in conversations with Vesti correspondents and journalists of the Vzglyad newspaper, noted that the crew of the submarine could have technological problems that could lead to a catastrophe attempt to use "Tomahawks" in the Mediterranean, and themselves "Estyuty" regularly find themselves in the spotlight, either because of grounding, or because of falling into the net of the Portuguese fishermen, or because of the collision of the cabin with the hull friendly warship due to untimely dive to a sufficient depth.
Yes, theoretically, either an extraordinary situation could occur at the moment when the Tomahawk moved from the torpedo rack to one of the six 533-mm torpedo tubes, or the jamming of the torpedo leaf case could lead to unpredictable consequences. But in practice, this option is rather unlikely, since the ammunition from the torpedoes “Spearfish”, “Tomahawks” and mines is placed not on one, but on several racks that “feed” 6 torpedo tubes at once. Consequently, a certain part of the arsenal (6, 8 or 10) of the strategic UGM-109E cruise missiles could still be launched from the side of the “Estyut” on Syrian territory. For this, the British submarine needed to reach the Tomahawks launch site, located in the southern part of the Ionian Sea (about 1600 km from the coast of Syria), and calmly shoot rockets with a range of 1600 — 2000 km from working torpedo tubes. However, it did not work out! And therefore, in our case, the British version looks very plausible.
As for the statement of Captain I rank Vladimir Mamaykin about the impossibility of long-term pursuit of the nuclear submarine “Estujt”, moving at a speed of 27 — 29 nodes, through a slower diesel-electric Varshavyanka, capable of delivering only 18 — 20 nodes for several hundred kilometers, then it is true.
But here the whole point is that on the side of the crew of our ultra low noise submarine there was an important tactical advantage, eliminating the need to pursue the more speedy nuclear submarine “Estuit”. It is explained by the geographical factor playing in favor of the underwater component of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Obviously, one of the “Warsaw” women, who was in combat duty at the exit from the Aegean Sea at low speed (3 — 4 knot), was the first to trample the British submarine rushing to the firing line almost at full speed (25 — 27 kn). The British submariners behaved quite carelessly and impressively in the Mediterranean, relying on the presence of the water-propeller propulsion and the newest multi-level shock-absorbing platforms for mobile mechanisms, which increases the acoustic secrecy of the submarine.
Moreover, the central part of the Mediterranean Sea is almost constantly monitored by anti-submarine aviation NATO Naval Forces and the US Navy, including modernized P-3C Orion aircraft and more advanced P-8A Poseidon aircraft. But the “full speed” mode, contributing to a sharp increase in the acoustic noise of the submarine cruiser, apparently played a cruel joke with the British sailors, and the MGK-400EM Rubicon-M sonar system of one of our Varshavyanka found Astyut offshore several tens of kilometers, while the SARAR 2076 British submarine discovered our slow-moving submarine at a distance of 10-20 km. Our sailors could well have the opportunity to block the English submarine with a further regular change in its course. It is known that for the underwater launch of the Tomahawks in the UGM-109E variant, an Estuit-class submarine should go to a depth of about 45 meters and reduce the speed to a couple of knots. As you understand, the British submariners did not have the opportunity to carry out this procedure, since they were already under the sight of torpedoes TEST-71ME-NK, 53-65KE, and, possibly, the Physicist.
Even if the British submarine tried to break away from Varshavyanka and go to other positions to launch Tomahawk missiles, it would be safely met by our anti-submarine Il-38H planes sent from our submarine, because the submarine component of the Navy Russia and anti-submarine aviation are links of one chain linked into a single network-centric network. Therefore, the only adequate solution for British submariners was to leave the central part of the Mediterranean.
The only submarine that was able to slip unnoticed by Varshavyanka's sonar tools for participation in the April strike was the newest ultra-low-noise multipurpose submarine cruiser “John Warner” of the upgraded class Virginia Block III of the American fleet. In the course of the currently planned strike on Syria, it will be two orders of magnitude harder for the American and British submarines to break through the anti-submarine barrier, as the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces took into account all the mistakes made by 4 a month ago. For careful combing of the underwater space from the coast of Syria to the Ionian Sea, the Navy command used unique long-range anti-submarine aircraft Tu-142М3 / M capable of deploying 64 passive radio-acoustic buoys of the RGB-75 and RGB-15 men in a short period of time. According to the latest data, two vehicles of this type were transferred from the Yeisk air base to the 1 September Memorial 2018 air base to participate in the largest naval exercises of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, whose main purpose is to deter the United Navy from destructive actions against Syria.
Information sources:
https://vz.ru/politics/2018/4/17/893218.print.html
http://bastion-karpenko.narod.ru/Astute.html
http://airwar.ru/enc/sea/tu142m3.html
Information