It's time to learn from the enemy
Naval construction in post-Soviet Russia is an example of a combination of stupidity and inefficiency. Allocated to recovery fleet cash only led to an increase in the scale of the mistakes of those who were responsible for their development. This situation is absolutely intolerable, and there is an opinion that the patience of the political leadership is already running out. But how to make the construction of the fleet, especially shipbuilding, a more efficient and meaningful process? One way to achieve this is to turn to the experience of our enemies (Americans). In the end, if you learn from anyone, then from the very best, right?
Let us turn to what the rules in naval construction are guided and guided by our enemy and what the rules follow to follow.
Немного stories.
In the early seventies, the US Navy experienced an ideological and organizational crisis. One of its consequences was that the Soviet Navy was able to seriously "push" the US in the oceans, and, in some cases, force the Americans to retreat. This demonstration of force, however, only angered the Americans and forced them to sharply increase the pressure on the USSR in order to finally crush it. We must carefully study the experience of American naval construction at the end of the Cold War and after it, and be sure to use it.
At the end of 1971, the American ally, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which unleashed a war with India, found itself in a difficult situation. The Indian forces conducted a successful offensive on land, and the Indian Navy was able to inflict catastrophic losses on Pakistan at sea. Under these conditions, the United States, despite its employment in Vietnam, sent the TG74 aircraft carrier strike group, led by the atomic aircraft carrier Enterprise, to the Indian Ocean. The goal of the AUG was to pressure India, forcing India to withdraw from the front Aviation to counter the hypothetical attack of the AUG, distracting the Wikrant aircraft carrier from fighting and keeping India from an offensive in Western Pakistan. Together, this was supposed to ease the situation of Pakistan.
But the pressure did not work out: in the Indian Ocean, AUG stumbled upon a Soviet compound as part of the 1134 Vladivostok missile cruiser (formerly classified as BOD), the Varyag 58 missile cruiser, the 56 destroyer of the Excited project, the 61 BDS project cruiser , the nuclear submarine of the 675 "K-31" project, armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, the 651 "K-120" missile diesel submarine, and six torpedoes D EPL of 641 ave. Also in the squad included amphibious ship and support ships. The Americans were forced to retreat. It was a formidable sign - the Russians showed that, although their fleet was inferior in numbers to the US Navy, it was technologically at least equal and already had enough power to disrupt the plans of the Americans. Our sailors behaved very boldly and seriously forced the Americans to be nervous.
The TG74 hike turned into a meaningless cruise, and in January AUG received an order to leave.
At the same time, in December 1972, the USSR launched the aircraft-carrying cruiser “Kiev” - its first aircraft-carrying combat ship.
In the spring of 1973, the US was forced to get out of Vietnam, which significantly demoralized the personnel of all types of their armed forces.
But the main slap in the US Navy got 1973 in the fall, during the next Arab-Israeli war. Then the Navy deployed in the Mediterranean a grouping of nineteen warships and sixteen submarines, including nuclear ones. Missile submarines were continuously kept at bay by the crews of American ships, which then had nothing to defend against a more or less dense volley. Tu-16 continuously "hung" in the sky over the American ship connections. The US Navy had a general superiority over our fleet — there were two aircraft carriers alone, and the entire 6 fleet of the US Navy had forty-eight warships in the region, combined into three units — two aircraft carrier and one landing force. But the very first volley of Soviet submarines would seriously change the situation in a direction unfavorable for the Americans, would have very significantly thinned the Navy, and they understood that.
The United States has not entered into hostilities on the side of Israel, although it must be admitted that Israel itself managed, albeit “on the brink”. However, the stop of the Israeli tanks on the way to Cairo, the Arabs owe it to the USSR. At that time, the Soviet marines were already embarking on ships to land in the vicinity of the Suez Canal, and the air bridge from the USSR to the Arab countries was stopped in order to allocate the necessary number of aircraft for the Airborne Forces. The USSR was really going to enter the war if Israel did not stop, and a powerful fleet was a guarantee that this entry was realizable.
For Americans, this state of affairs was unacceptable. They are accustomed to consider themselves masters of the seas and oceans, and the fact that they are treated like this, led the American establishment into a rage.
In the 1975 year, during numerous meetings at the Pentagon and the White House, the US political leadership decided that it was necessary to “reverse the trend” and begin to put pressure on the Russians themselves, returning to unconditional domination in the ocean zone. In the 1979 year, when a friendly at the time China attacked the Americans is certainly hostile to them Vietnam, the Americans sent AUG to Vietnam as part of the idea of “returning to business” in order to support them and put pressure on Hanoi during the fighting with the Chinese. But AUG ran into Soviet submarines. And again, nothing happened ...
Americans bet on technology. From the seventies, the Ticonderoga class cruisers, the Spruans destroyers, the Tarava UDC, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier aircraft began to enter service, the construction of the Ohio SSBN began (the lead boat was commissioned in 1981). They were "helped" by the brainchild of the High-Low Navy concept of Admiral Zumwalt Perry-class frigates - the workhorse of the Navy. They didn’t stand out for anything special in terms of technical perfection, but there were a lot of them and they were actually effective against submarines.
But their opponent did not stand still. Aircraft-carrying strike ships of the 1143 project appeared, extremely dangerous with the very first strike that the Americans feared, the number of anti-submarine ships of the 1135 project, which were much more efficient than their predecessors, increased; weaponssuch as the Tu-22M bomber, the ARLO Ka-25РЦ helicopter, and from the end of the seventies a series of new destroyers of a large displacement were laid, allegedly surpassing any American surface ship in striking power. These were the destroyers of the 956 project. In 1977, the first BOD of the 1155 project was laid, which was destined to become a record anti-submarine in efficiency.
Finally, the 1977 nuclear missile cruiser of the 1144 project was launched in XNUMX, which alone required a full-fledged AUG to counter, and was able to crush a small country Navy without support.
At the same time, at the end of the seventies, the noisiness of Soviet nuclear submarines dropped sharply, and the USSR already surpassed the United States in the number of submarines.
All this in many ways leveled the Americans' stakes on technology - not only they had the technology. In addition, some technologies were only in the USSR - for example, titanium submarines or supersonic anti-ship missiles.
The situation for the Americans was depressing. Their domination of the oceans came to an end. It was necessary to do something. The idea of fighting the USSR Navy was needed, and a leader was needed who was able to generate and implement this idea.
This leader was destined to become the owner of a consulting firm and part-time captain of the Navy reserve, deck-on-board reservist John Lehmann.
The format of the article does not provide for consideration of how Lehman managed to infiltrate the American establishment and gain a reputation as a person who can be entrusted with the entire leadership of naval construction. We confine ourselves to the fact - after becoming president of the United States, Ronald Reagan offered Lehman the post of Minister of the Navy. Lehman, who at that moment had just turned thirty-eight and who, even with boyish enthusiasm, was throwing his business from time to time in order to take the A-6 “Intruder” attack aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier, immediately agreed. He was destined to enter the history of the West as one of the people who crushed the USSR, and one of the most successful leaders of the US Navy in history.
US Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman
What is behind this name? Very much: both the US Navy’s habitual appearance and the Lehman’s Doctrine, which included the need to attack the USSR from the East, in the event of war in Europe (including the Chinese at the same time, in some cases), and the huge “injection” of the latest technologies areas of intelligence, communications and information processing, sharply increased the combat capabilities of the Navy. This is a monstrous pressure, which the USSR Navy felt immediately after the beginning of the eighties, and repeated raids by the US Navy special forces on Chukotka, Kuriles, Kamchatka and Primorye (and you didn’t know, yes?) In the eighties, and the massive introduction of winged Tomahawk missiles on almost all the ships and submarines of the US Navy, and the return to the Iowa class battleships, and the most expensive naval program in human history - the 600 ships. And here begin the lessons that we would like to learn. Because before those leaders who will revive the domestic fleet, there will be restrictions very similar to those that stood before the US Navy Minister John Lehman and which he overcame.
The experience of the winners is well worth it, and it makes sense to disassemble the approaches of the Lehmann team and his predecessors to naval construction, and for contrast, compare this with what our Ministry of Defense is doing in the same field. We were lucky - Lehman is still alive and is actively distributing interviews, Zumvalt left behind himself memories and a formulated concept, the US Navy declassified some of the documents of the Cold War, and, in general, how the Americans acted and what they achieved is understandable.
So, the rules of Lehmann, Zumwalt and all those who were behind the revival of the US Navy in the late seventies and early eighties. We compare this with what the Navy and the structures of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation related to naval construction were doing.
1. It needs a lot of ships. Any warship is a threat to which the enemy will have to react, spend forces, time, money, ship resource, and in a combat situation - to suffer losses. Reduction of ships is an extreme measure, it can take place either when the ship’s potential is exhausted, or during the replacement of old ships with new ones using a pennant-to-pennant scheme, or if the ship was unsuccessful and its existence does not make sense. In any case, reducing the composition of the ship - an extreme measure.
This was the reason for the fact that the Americans were “pulling” the outdated ships to the maximum and returning the battleships to the veterans of the Second World War. I note that the declassified documents indicate that the “Iowa” were to work not along the coast, but together with the rocket ships — along Soviet ships. They were supposed to be (and became) the most armed carriers of Tomahawk. It is worth noting that their use was planned in those regions where the USSR could not fully use strike aircraft - in the Caribbean, in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and other similar places, although in fairness, the battleships even went to the Baltic. But it was precisely a show of force, in a real war, they would have acted elsewhere.
Similarly, together with the Spruences, the US Navy left dozens of obsolete destroyers, all Legy missile cruisers built in the sixties and their Bainbridge atomic version, their almost the same age as Belknap, their atomic version Trakstan, and the atomic version the cruiser "Long Beach", continued to stand in the ranks of nuclear submarines, built before the "Los Angeles", and even three diesel-electric.
Lehman saw that even a high-tech fleet was not enough to defeat the USSR at sea. Therefore, he advocated the number - the program of the development of the US Navy is not for nothing called the "600 ships." The number is important and God is not only on the side of the big battalions, but also of the large squadrons. So that the ships did not really become useless, they were modernized.
For comparison: the ships of the Russian Navy were written off long before the exhaustion of their resources and in conditions when there were no special grounds for decommissioning. First of all, we are talking about ships whose repair has been delayed and which have “died” under the conditions of this repair. This, for example, the destroyers of the project 956.
Of the total number of ships written off, six units were written off already in the middle of the two thousandth, when there appeared some funding, albeit minimal, but still for the Navy. Two are now rotting in repair factories, with unclear prospects. It is clear that the ships are already very outdated, but they created some level of threat to the enemy, especially if we consider their hypothetical modernization. The BOD Admiral Kharlamov is also rotting, also with unclear (and most likely, alas, clear) prospects.
Another example is the refusal of the Navy to accept the 11351 ships it does not need from the Frontier Service. At the turn of the two thousand years, the Border Guard decided to abandon these ships as too expensive - a slightly simplified frigate with turbines and anti-submarine weapons was too expensive to operate. The fleet was asked to take these PSCR itself. Of course, for service in the Navy, they would need to be modernized and re-equipped, but after that, the fleet would be able to build up ship crews for not very big money.
The fleet demanded that the FPS first carry out ship repairs at its own expense, then transfer. The Federal Border Service, of course, refused - why would they repair what they give away as unnecessary? The ships eventually went to the needles and today in the Pacific Fleet four ships of the first rank are on the move.
There are actually more such examples, including the submarine fleet. Now, when the old ships are cut and there is nothing to modernize, they will have to build new ones, but only when Sudoprom comes to life and is finally able to build something within a reasonable time, that is, apparently, not soon. And yes, new ships will definitely be several times more expensive than repair and modernization of old ones. On the one hand, they would still have to be built, on the other hand, they will have to be built more in number and faster in time. And this is money, which, generally speaking, no.
2. It is necessary to make maximum efforts to reduce budget expenditures, but not to the detriment of pennants.
Lehmann faced mutually exclusive conditions. On the one hand, it was necessary to knock out a maximum of financing from the Congress. On the other hand, to demonstrate the possibility of reducing the cost of an individual ship being commissioned. To the credit of the Americans, they have achieved this.
Firstly, the Navy was forbidden to revise technical requirements for ships after they had signed a contract. After the contractor ordered a series of ships, all changes in their design were frozen, it was only allowed to start work immediately on a new “block” - a batch upgrade that would affect many systems of ships and do everything at the same time, together with scheduled repairs. This allowed the industry to begin orders for components and subsystems at once for the entire series, which in turn reduced prices and reduced construction time. Terms, in turn, also played to reduce prices, since the cost of the ships was not so strongly influenced by inflation. Such a measure allowed the appearance of such a massive ship series as the destroyer Arly Burk.
Secondly, the ships were built only in long, typed series with a minimum difference in design from hull to hull. It also reduced costs in the long run.
A separate requirement was a direct ban on the pursuit of excessive technical excellence. It was believed that the newest systems could and should be installed on the ship, but only when they were brought to working condition, and choosing between a “just good” subsystem and a more expensive and less finished, but technically more advanced one, it was considered correct to choose the first one. . The pursuit of super-perfection was declared evil, and the principle “the best is the enemy of the good” became the guiding star.
The final touch was the introduction of fixed prices - the contractor could not seek an increase in the budget for the construction of already contracted buildings under any circumstances. Of course, with low American inflation, it was easier to achieve this than, for example, with ours.
Also, the US Navy categorically sought the unification of ship subsystems on ships of different classes and types. One of the positive consequences of those times is that all the US Navy gas turbine ships are built with one type of gas turbine - General Electric LM2500. Of course, on different ships, various modifications of it were applied, but this cannot be compared with our “zoo”. Interspecific unification was given great attention. But it also reduces the cost of the fleet.
Of course, it was in the eighties that the US Navy was a “zoo” from various types of warships, but then they had to crush the USSR in numbers. But the ships under construction differed abbreviated type.
And the last. This is a fair competition between shipbuilders and manufacturers of subsystems, which allowed the customer (Navy) to "move" the prices of ships "down".
On the reverse side, in the form of a retaliatory step, the most severe budget discipline was introduced. The Navy carefully planned budgets, docked them with the budgets of shipbuilding programs, and ensured that the money provided by contracts for shipbuilders were allocated on time. This allowed the industry to withstand the construction schedule of ships and did not allow an increase in prices due to delays in the supply of components and materials, or because of the need to create new debts to continue construction work.
Now compare with the Defense Ministry and the Russian Navy.
The first mass ships of the new Russian fleet conceived the corvette of the project 20380 and the frigate 22350. Both one and the other were planned in large series, but what did the Ministry of Defense do?
If the Americans froze the configuration of the ship, then at 20380 it was largely revised, and more than once. Instead of the DIRECT "Dirk" on all ships after the lead, the Redut system was installed. This required money for redesign (and the ships were very seriously redesigned for this). Then they designed 20385 with imported diesel engines and other components, after the introduction of sanctions, they abandoned this series and returned to 20380, but with new radars in the integrated mast, from the backlog to the failed 20385. Again, changes to the design. If the Americans planned their expenses and financed shipbuilding rhythmically, then we had both the 20380 series and 22350 financed with interruptions and delays. If the Americans massively replicated the tried and tested systems, changing them to new ones only with confidence that everything would work, then both the corvettes and the frigates were literally packed with equipment that had never been installed before and was not tested anywhere. The result is long construction times and fine-tuning, and huge expenses.
Then additional expenses begin, caused by the lack of intercooperative unification.
How would the construction of the same 20380, they are created in the US? First, CONOPS - Concept of operations would be born, which means “Operational Concept”, that is, the concept of for which combat operations the ship will be used. Under this concept, a project would be born, components and subsystems would be chosen, under a separate tender, some of them would be created and tested, moreover in real conditions, in the same conditions in which the ship should be operated. Then there would be a tender for the construction of the ship, and after its technical task would be frozen. The whole series would have been contracted right away - as thirty ships had planned, they would have proceeded according to this plan, with adjustments only in the most extreme cases.
Ships would be built completely the same, and only then, during repairs, if there was a need, they would be modernized with blocks - that is, for example, the replacement of torpedo tubes and AK-630М on all ships, the modernization of electronic weapons and some mechanical systems - again same on all ships. The entire life cycle would be planned from bookmarking to disposal, would be planned and repairs and upgrades. At the same time, the ships would be laid again in those shipyards where they were already built, which would guarantee a reduction in construction time.
We do everything exactly the opposite, completely. Only fixed prices were copied, but how can they work if the state can simply underpay money on time and the entire financing scheme for construction will fly somersaults, with an increase in the contractor’s costs and an increase in the (real) cost of the ship?
And of course, a scam with the new type of ship 20386 instead of the existing one and performing its tasks and the same for the 20380 class would not even begin.
By the way, we have many times more types of warships than the United States, but the fleet as a whole is weaker (to put it mildly).
Now consider the consequences of the example of specific numbers. According to Rosstat, the ruble to dollar exchange rate at purchasing power parity should be about 9,3 rubles per dollar. This is not a market or speculative figure, it is an indicator of how many rubles are needed in order to acquire as much material wealth in Russia as in the US you can buy for a dollar.
This figure is averaged. For example, food in the United States is four to five times more expensive, used cars are cheaper than ours, etc.
But as an average, the comparison of PPP is quite possible to use.
Now look at the prices. Headline "Arly Burke" flight IIa - 2,2 billion dollars. All subsequent - 1,7 billion. We think of PPP, we find that the head is 20,46 billion rubles, and the serial 15,8. There is no VAT in America.
In our country, the 20380 corvette costs without VAT 17,2 a billion rubles, and the lead ship, the cut, of the 20386 project, costs 29,6 billion. But where are the corvettes, and where is the ocean destroyer with 96 rocket cells ?!
Of course, you can make claims to the very concept of purchasing power parity, but the fact that we spend our money several times less efficiently than the Americans is beyond doubt. With our approaches and budget discipline, they might have a fleet at the level of France or Britain, but not the way they are. For politically concerned citizens, we will make a reservation - there are also “cuts” there, and corruption.
We should learn from them both financial planning and production management.
3. It is necessary to reduce unproductive and expensive R & D.
One of the requirements of Lehman was the suppression of the financing of various programs of miracle weapons. Neither super-torpedoes, nor super-rockets, in the opinion of the then US Navy, justified themselves. It was necessary to adhere to the standard set of weapons, standard versions of the GEM, unified weapons and equipment, and rivet as many ships as possible. If in the foreseeable future, the program does not promise not very expensive and mass, ready for mass production of weapons, then it should be canceled. This principle helped the Americans to save a lot of money, some of which they used to upgrade types of weapons and ammunition that were already being produced, and they obtained good results.
In contrast to the then US, the Navy is seriously keen on very expensive supertorped, super-rocket, super-ship projects, and the output has no money even for the repair of the Moscow cruiser.
In the United States, however, in recent years, they have also retreated from the canon, and received a lot of non-performing programs at the output, for example, littoral warships LCS, but this is already a result of their modern degradation, before this did not happen. However, they have not fallen to our level yet.
4. The fleet should be a tool for achieving strategic goals, and not just a fleet.
The Americans in the 80-ies had a clear goal - to drive the Soviet Navy back to their bases. They sought it and they achieved it. Their navy was quite a working tool for this purpose. An example of how these things were done was a well-known event in the West, but a little-known event - the imitation of an attack by the US Navy on Kamchatka in the fall of 1982, as part of the Norpac FleetEx Ops'82 exercise. By such methods, the Americans forced the Navy to spend fuel, money and resources of ships, and instead of being in the oceans, to force their forces to their shores to protect them. The USSR was unable to respond to this challenge, although it tried.
Thus, the Maritime Strategy, on the basis of which the Reagan administration (in the person of Lehman) defined the tasks for the Navy, exactly corresponded to what goals the US pursued in the world, and what they were pursuing. Such clarity in strategy and naval construction made it possible not to spray money and invest it only in what was really necessary, discarding everything superfluous. So, the USA did not build any corvettes or small anti-submarine ships to protect the bases. Their strategy was that by active offensive actions they pushed their line of defense to the border of the Soviet territorial waters and would keep it there. Corvettes are not needed for this.
There are several leading documents in Russia that determine the role of the Navy and its importance in the country's defense capability. These are the “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation”, “The Marine Doctrine of the Russian Federation”, “The Basics of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Naval Activities” and the “Shipbuilding Program to 2050 of the Year”. The problem with these documents is that they are not related to each other. For example, the provisions outlined in the Basics do not follow from the Marine Doctrine, and if you believe the leaked data on the Shipbuilding Program, then there are also provisions that, to put it mildly, do not correlate, to put it mildly, , the document is secret, but some of it is known and understandable. Well, that is, on the contrary, it is not clear.
How can you build a fleet in such conditions? If there is no clarity even in matters of principle, for example, are we “defending” or “attacking”? What to choose - two PLO corvettes or an ocean frigate URO? To protect the allies (for example, Syria) in the Mediterranean, a frigate is needed, and for the defense of their bases it’s better to have two corvettes, we don’t have any money for that. So how to be? What is our strategy?
This question should be closed as specifically and unambiguously as possible, otherwise it will not work. It is already impossible.
5. We need a massive and cheap ship, a workhorse for all occasions, which, moreover, it’s not a pity to lose in battle. Alone expensive ships do not win.
The principle of High-End Navy was coined by Admiral Zumwalt, and he was his main supporter. Congress buried all the ideas of Zumvalt and he, too, was quickly “eaten”, but he managed to do something. First quote:
This was written by Zumwalt himself. And within the framework of ensuring the mass character of the fleet, he proposed the following: in addition to expensive and complex ships, mass, simple and cheap ones are needed, which can be done a lot and which, relatively speaking, will “do everything” precisely due to mass character. Zumvalt proposed to build a series of light aircraft carriers on the concept of Sea Control Ship, Pegasus hydrofoil rocket boats, a multi-purpose ship with aerostatic unloading (non-amphibious airbag) and the so-called “patrol frigate”.
From all this, only the frigate, called Oliver Hazard Perry, went into the series. This non-optimal, primitive, uncomfortable and weakly-armed ship with a single-shaft power plant was, nevertheless, a real "workhorse" of the US Navy, and to this day it can not be replaced with anything. Decommissioning of these frigates gave rise to a “hole” in the naval weapons system, which has not yet been closed. Now the Navy sluggishly conducts the procurement procedure of new frigates, and, apparently, this class will return to the US Navy, but so far there is a hole in their weapon system, which has nothing to fill, and voices demanding to repair and return all Perry that can sound regularly and continuously.
With all its primitiveness, the ship was a good anti-warhead and was part of all American ship groups of the end of the Cold War.
In contrast to the Americans, the Russian Navy does not have, and the industry does not develop a massive cheap ship. All projects that we have in our work, or on which we pretend to be in work, are expensive projects of complex ships. Alas, the experience of others is not a decree.
We do the opposite and we get the opposite - not the fleet, but the neflot.
6. It is necessary to reduce bureaucracy and simplify command chains in the field of shipbuilding.
In all his interviews, Lehman stresses the importance of reducing bureaucracy. The Americans introduced a fairly transparent and optimal shipbuilding control system, and Lehman made a significant contribution to this formation. Besides the fact that the optimization of the bureaucracy seriously speeds up all the formal procedures that are required by law, it also saves money by reducing unnecessary people, without which you can do.
We have a little more complicated.
According to the testimony of persons working in the structures of the Ministry of Defense, there is complete order with the bureaucracy. Coordination of a project or a non-urgent order may take months, and the whole set of our self-indulgence is manifested in full growth. If this is true, then something needs to be done about it. In general, any human team can be approached with a “cybernetic” approach as if it were a car, finding weak and “narrow” places in it, eliminating them, speeding up the passage of information from the performer to the performer and simplifying decision-making schemes, while reducing “extra” people, those without whom the system already works.
It is possible, and such things have been done a lot. There is no reason why they could not be done in the Ministry of Defense.
The loss of naval power by Russia keeps a great danger in itself - any enemy will be able to conduct somewhere far from the shores of the Russian Federation a harmful and politically destructive, but at the same time low-intensity, conflict that cannot be answered with a nuclear strike. There are other reasons, for example, the enormous length and vulnerability of coastal lines, a large number of regions, communication with which is possible only by sea (with the exception of rare air flights), the presence of powerful naval forces among hostile countries. The situation with the fleet is absolutely intolerable and requires correction. And whoever is engaged in this correction in the near future, the experience of the enemy, the rules by which he builds his sea power, will be very, very useful and deserve close examination.
Of course, Russia is not the United States, and our naval construction goals should be different. But this does not mean that the American experience is inapplicable, especially in conditions when the domestic has shown useless results.
It is time to be corrected.
Let us turn to what the rules in naval construction are guided and guided by our enemy and what the rules follow to follow.
Немного stories.
In the early seventies, the US Navy experienced an ideological and organizational crisis. One of its consequences was that the Soviet Navy was able to seriously "push" the US in the oceans, and, in some cases, force the Americans to retreat. This demonstration of force, however, only angered the Americans and forced them to sharply increase the pressure on the USSR in order to finally crush it. We must carefully study the experience of American naval construction at the end of the Cold War and after it, and be sure to use it.
At the end of 1971, the American ally, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which unleashed a war with India, found itself in a difficult situation. The Indian forces conducted a successful offensive on land, and the Indian Navy was able to inflict catastrophic losses on Pakistan at sea. Under these conditions, the United States, despite its employment in Vietnam, sent the TG74 aircraft carrier strike group, led by the atomic aircraft carrier Enterprise, to the Indian Ocean. The goal of the AUG was to pressure India, forcing India to withdraw from the front Aviation to counter the hypothetical attack of the AUG, distracting the Wikrant aircraft carrier from fighting and keeping India from an offensive in Western Pakistan. Together, this was supposed to ease the situation of Pakistan.
But the pressure did not work out: in the Indian Ocean, AUG stumbled upon a Soviet compound as part of the 1134 Vladivostok missile cruiser (formerly classified as BOD), the Varyag 58 missile cruiser, the 56 destroyer of the Excited project, the 61 BDS project cruiser , the nuclear submarine of the 675 "K-31" project, armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, the 651 "K-120" missile diesel submarine, and six torpedoes D EPL of 641 ave. Also in the squad included amphibious ship and support ships. The Americans were forced to retreat. It was a formidable sign - the Russians showed that, although their fleet was inferior in numbers to the US Navy, it was technologically at least equal and already had enough power to disrupt the plans of the Americans. Our sailors behaved very boldly and seriously forced the Americans to be nervous.
The TG74 hike turned into a meaningless cruise, and in January AUG received an order to leave.
At the same time, in December 1972, the USSR launched the aircraft-carrying cruiser “Kiev” - its first aircraft-carrying combat ship.
In the spring of 1973, the US was forced to get out of Vietnam, which significantly demoralized the personnel of all types of their armed forces.
But the main slap in the US Navy got 1973 in the fall, during the next Arab-Israeli war. Then the Navy deployed in the Mediterranean a grouping of nineteen warships and sixteen submarines, including nuclear ones. Missile submarines were continuously kept at bay by the crews of American ships, which then had nothing to defend against a more or less dense volley. Tu-16 continuously "hung" in the sky over the American ship connections. The US Navy had a general superiority over our fleet — there were two aircraft carriers alone, and the entire 6 fleet of the US Navy had forty-eight warships in the region, combined into three units — two aircraft carrier and one landing force. But the very first volley of Soviet submarines would seriously change the situation in a direction unfavorable for the Americans, would have very significantly thinned the Navy, and they understood that.
The United States has not entered into hostilities on the side of Israel, although it must be admitted that Israel itself managed, albeit “on the brink”. However, the stop of the Israeli tanks on the way to Cairo, the Arabs owe it to the USSR. At that time, the Soviet marines were already embarking on ships to land in the vicinity of the Suez Canal, and the air bridge from the USSR to the Arab countries was stopped in order to allocate the necessary number of aircraft for the Airborne Forces. The USSR was really going to enter the war if Israel did not stop, and a powerful fleet was a guarantee that this entry was realizable.
For Americans, this state of affairs was unacceptable. They are accustomed to consider themselves masters of the seas and oceans, and the fact that they are treated like this, led the American establishment into a rage.
In the 1975 year, during numerous meetings at the Pentagon and the White House, the US political leadership decided that it was necessary to “reverse the trend” and begin to put pressure on the Russians themselves, returning to unconditional domination in the ocean zone. In the 1979 year, when a friendly at the time China attacked the Americans is certainly hostile to them Vietnam, the Americans sent AUG to Vietnam as part of the idea of “returning to business” in order to support them and put pressure on Hanoi during the fighting with the Chinese. But AUG ran into Soviet submarines. And again, nothing happened ...
Americans bet on technology. From the seventies, the Ticonderoga class cruisers, the Spruans destroyers, the Tarava UDC, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier aircraft began to enter service, the construction of the Ohio SSBN began (the lead boat was commissioned in 1981). They were "helped" by the brainchild of the High-Low Navy concept of Admiral Zumwalt Perry-class frigates - the workhorse of the Navy. They didn’t stand out for anything special in terms of technical perfection, but there were a lot of them and they were actually effective against submarines.
But their opponent did not stand still. Aircraft-carrying strike ships of the 1143 project appeared, extremely dangerous with the very first strike that the Americans feared, the number of anti-submarine ships of the 1135 project, which were much more efficient than their predecessors, increased; weaponssuch as the Tu-22M bomber, the ARLO Ka-25РЦ helicopter, and from the end of the seventies a series of new destroyers of a large displacement were laid, allegedly surpassing any American surface ship in striking power. These were the destroyers of the 956 project. In 1977, the first BOD of the 1155 project was laid, which was destined to become a record anti-submarine in efficiency.
Finally, the 1977 nuclear missile cruiser of the 1144 project was launched in XNUMX, which alone required a full-fledged AUG to counter, and was able to crush a small country Navy without support.
At the same time, at the end of the seventies, the noisiness of Soviet nuclear submarines dropped sharply, and the USSR already surpassed the United States in the number of submarines.
All this in many ways leveled the Americans' stakes on technology - not only they had the technology. In addition, some technologies were only in the USSR - for example, titanium submarines or supersonic anti-ship missiles.
The situation for the Americans was depressing. Their domination of the oceans came to an end. It was necessary to do something. The idea of fighting the USSR Navy was needed, and a leader was needed who was able to generate and implement this idea.
This leader was destined to become the owner of a consulting firm and part-time captain of the Navy reserve, deck-on-board reservist John Lehmann.
The format of the article does not provide for consideration of how Lehman managed to infiltrate the American establishment and gain a reputation as a person who can be entrusted with the entire leadership of naval construction. We confine ourselves to the fact - after becoming president of the United States, Ronald Reagan offered Lehman the post of Minister of the Navy. Lehman, who at that moment had just turned thirty-eight and who, even with boyish enthusiasm, was throwing his business from time to time in order to take the A-6 “Intruder” attack aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier, immediately agreed. He was destined to enter the history of the West as one of the people who crushed the USSR, and one of the most successful leaders of the US Navy in history.
US Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman
What is behind this name? Very much: both the US Navy’s habitual appearance and the Lehman’s Doctrine, which included the need to attack the USSR from the East, in the event of war in Europe (including the Chinese at the same time, in some cases), and the huge “injection” of the latest technologies areas of intelligence, communications and information processing, sharply increased the combat capabilities of the Navy. This is a monstrous pressure, which the USSR Navy felt immediately after the beginning of the eighties, and repeated raids by the US Navy special forces on Chukotka, Kuriles, Kamchatka and Primorye (and you didn’t know, yes?) In the eighties, and the massive introduction of winged Tomahawk missiles on almost all the ships and submarines of the US Navy, and the return to the Iowa class battleships, and the most expensive naval program in human history - the 600 ships. And here begin the lessons that we would like to learn. Because before those leaders who will revive the domestic fleet, there will be restrictions very similar to those that stood before the US Navy Minister John Lehman and which he overcame.
The experience of the winners is well worth it, and it makes sense to disassemble the approaches of the Lehmann team and his predecessors to naval construction, and for contrast, compare this with what our Ministry of Defense is doing in the same field. We were lucky - Lehman is still alive and is actively distributing interviews, Zumvalt left behind himself memories and a formulated concept, the US Navy declassified some of the documents of the Cold War, and, in general, how the Americans acted and what they achieved is understandable.
So, the rules of Lehmann, Zumwalt and all those who were behind the revival of the US Navy in the late seventies and early eighties. We compare this with what the Navy and the structures of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation related to naval construction were doing.
1. It needs a lot of ships. Any warship is a threat to which the enemy will have to react, spend forces, time, money, ship resource, and in a combat situation - to suffer losses. Reduction of ships is an extreme measure, it can take place either when the ship’s potential is exhausted, or during the replacement of old ships with new ones using a pennant-to-pennant scheme, or if the ship was unsuccessful and its existence does not make sense. In any case, reducing the composition of the ship - an extreme measure.
This was the reason for the fact that the Americans were “pulling” the outdated ships to the maximum and returning the battleships to the veterans of the Second World War. I note that the declassified documents indicate that the “Iowa” were to work not along the coast, but together with the rocket ships — along Soviet ships. They were supposed to be (and became) the most armed carriers of Tomahawk. It is worth noting that their use was planned in those regions where the USSR could not fully use strike aircraft - in the Caribbean, in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and other similar places, although in fairness, the battleships even went to the Baltic. But it was precisely a show of force, in a real war, they would have acted elsewhere.
Similarly, together with the Spruences, the US Navy left dozens of obsolete destroyers, all Legy missile cruisers built in the sixties and their Bainbridge atomic version, their almost the same age as Belknap, their atomic version Trakstan, and the atomic version the cruiser "Long Beach", continued to stand in the ranks of nuclear submarines, built before the "Los Angeles", and even three diesel-electric.
Lehman saw that even a high-tech fleet was not enough to defeat the USSR at sea. Therefore, he advocated the number - the program of the development of the US Navy is not for nothing called the "600 ships." The number is important and God is not only on the side of the big battalions, but also of the large squadrons. So that the ships did not really become useless, they were modernized.
For comparison: the ships of the Russian Navy were written off long before the exhaustion of their resources and in conditions when there were no special grounds for decommissioning. First of all, we are talking about ships whose repair has been delayed and which have “died” under the conditions of this repair. This, for example, the destroyers of the project 956.
Of the total number of ships written off, six units were written off already in the middle of the two thousandth, when there appeared some funding, albeit minimal, but still for the Navy. Two are now rotting in repair factories, with unclear prospects. It is clear that the ships are already very outdated, but they created some level of threat to the enemy, especially if we consider their hypothetical modernization. The BOD Admiral Kharlamov is also rotting, also with unclear (and most likely, alas, clear) prospects.
Another example is the refusal of the Navy to accept the 11351 ships it does not need from the Frontier Service. At the turn of the two thousand years, the Border Guard decided to abandon these ships as too expensive - a slightly simplified frigate with turbines and anti-submarine weapons was too expensive to operate. The fleet was asked to take these PSCR itself. Of course, for service in the Navy, they would need to be modernized and re-equipped, but after that, the fleet would be able to build up ship crews for not very big money.
The fleet demanded that the FPS first carry out ship repairs at its own expense, then transfer. The Federal Border Service, of course, refused - why would they repair what they give away as unnecessary? The ships eventually went to the needles and today in the Pacific Fleet four ships of the first rank are on the move.
There are actually more such examples, including the submarine fleet. Now, when the old ships are cut and there is nothing to modernize, they will have to build new ones, but only when Sudoprom comes to life and is finally able to build something within a reasonable time, that is, apparently, not soon. And yes, new ships will definitely be several times more expensive than repair and modernization of old ones. On the one hand, they would still have to be built, on the other hand, they will have to be built more in number and faster in time. And this is money, which, generally speaking, no.
2. It is necessary to make maximum efforts to reduce budget expenditures, but not to the detriment of pennants.
Lehmann faced mutually exclusive conditions. On the one hand, it was necessary to knock out a maximum of financing from the Congress. On the other hand, to demonstrate the possibility of reducing the cost of an individual ship being commissioned. To the credit of the Americans, they have achieved this.
Firstly, the Navy was forbidden to revise technical requirements for ships after they had signed a contract. After the contractor ordered a series of ships, all changes in their design were frozen, it was only allowed to start work immediately on a new “block” - a batch upgrade that would affect many systems of ships and do everything at the same time, together with scheduled repairs. This allowed the industry to begin orders for components and subsystems at once for the entire series, which in turn reduced prices and reduced construction time. Terms, in turn, also played to reduce prices, since the cost of the ships was not so strongly influenced by inflation. Such a measure allowed the appearance of such a massive ship series as the destroyer Arly Burk.
Secondly, the ships were built only in long, typed series with a minimum difference in design from hull to hull. It also reduced costs in the long run.
A separate requirement was a direct ban on the pursuit of excessive technical excellence. It was believed that the newest systems could and should be installed on the ship, but only when they were brought to working condition, and choosing between a “just good” subsystem and a more expensive and less finished, but technically more advanced one, it was considered correct to choose the first one. . The pursuit of super-perfection was declared evil, and the principle “the best is the enemy of the good” became the guiding star.
The final touch was the introduction of fixed prices - the contractor could not seek an increase in the budget for the construction of already contracted buildings under any circumstances. Of course, with low American inflation, it was easier to achieve this than, for example, with ours.
Also, the US Navy categorically sought the unification of ship subsystems on ships of different classes and types. One of the positive consequences of those times is that all the US Navy gas turbine ships are built with one type of gas turbine - General Electric LM2500. Of course, on different ships, various modifications of it were applied, but this cannot be compared with our “zoo”. Interspecific unification was given great attention. But it also reduces the cost of the fleet.
Of course, it was in the eighties that the US Navy was a “zoo” from various types of warships, but then they had to crush the USSR in numbers. But the ships under construction differed abbreviated type.
And the last. This is a fair competition between shipbuilders and manufacturers of subsystems, which allowed the customer (Navy) to "move" the prices of ships "down".
On the reverse side, in the form of a retaliatory step, the most severe budget discipline was introduced. The Navy carefully planned budgets, docked them with the budgets of shipbuilding programs, and ensured that the money provided by contracts for shipbuilders were allocated on time. This allowed the industry to withstand the construction schedule of ships and did not allow an increase in prices due to delays in the supply of components and materials, or because of the need to create new debts to continue construction work.
Now compare with the Defense Ministry and the Russian Navy.
The first mass ships of the new Russian fleet conceived the corvette of the project 20380 and the frigate 22350. Both one and the other were planned in large series, but what did the Ministry of Defense do?
If the Americans froze the configuration of the ship, then at 20380 it was largely revised, and more than once. Instead of the DIRECT "Dirk" on all ships after the lead, the Redut system was installed. This required money for redesign (and the ships were very seriously redesigned for this). Then they designed 20385 with imported diesel engines and other components, after the introduction of sanctions, they abandoned this series and returned to 20380, but with new radars in the integrated mast, from the backlog to the failed 20385. Again, changes to the design. If the Americans planned their expenses and financed shipbuilding rhythmically, then we had both the 20380 series and 22350 financed with interruptions and delays. If the Americans massively replicated the tried and tested systems, changing them to new ones only with confidence that everything would work, then both the corvettes and the frigates were literally packed with equipment that had never been installed before and was not tested anywhere. The result is long construction times and fine-tuning, and huge expenses.
Then additional expenses begin, caused by the lack of intercooperative unification.
How would the construction of the same 20380, they are created in the US? First, CONOPS - Concept of operations would be born, which means “Operational Concept”, that is, the concept of for which combat operations the ship will be used. Under this concept, a project would be born, components and subsystems would be chosen, under a separate tender, some of them would be created and tested, moreover in real conditions, in the same conditions in which the ship should be operated. Then there would be a tender for the construction of the ship, and after its technical task would be frozen. The whole series would have been contracted right away - as thirty ships had planned, they would have proceeded according to this plan, with adjustments only in the most extreme cases.
Ships would be built completely the same, and only then, during repairs, if there was a need, they would be modernized with blocks - that is, for example, the replacement of torpedo tubes and AK-630М on all ships, the modernization of electronic weapons and some mechanical systems - again same on all ships. The entire life cycle would be planned from bookmarking to disposal, would be planned and repairs and upgrades. At the same time, the ships would be laid again in those shipyards where they were already built, which would guarantee a reduction in construction time.
We do everything exactly the opposite, completely. Only fixed prices were copied, but how can they work if the state can simply underpay money on time and the entire financing scheme for construction will fly somersaults, with an increase in the contractor’s costs and an increase in the (real) cost of the ship?
And of course, a scam with the new type of ship 20386 instead of the existing one and performing its tasks and the same for the 20380 class would not even begin.
By the way, we have many times more types of warships than the United States, but the fleet as a whole is weaker (to put it mildly).
Now consider the consequences of the example of specific numbers. According to Rosstat, the ruble to dollar exchange rate at purchasing power parity should be about 9,3 rubles per dollar. This is not a market or speculative figure, it is an indicator of how many rubles are needed in order to acquire as much material wealth in Russia as in the US you can buy for a dollar.
This figure is averaged. For example, food in the United States is four to five times more expensive, used cars are cheaper than ours, etc.
But as an average, the comparison of PPP is quite possible to use.
Now look at the prices. Headline "Arly Burke" flight IIa - 2,2 billion dollars. All subsequent - 1,7 billion. We think of PPP, we find that the head is 20,46 billion rubles, and the serial 15,8. There is no VAT in America.
In our country, the 20380 corvette costs without VAT 17,2 a billion rubles, and the lead ship, the cut, of the 20386 project, costs 29,6 billion. But where are the corvettes, and where is the ocean destroyer with 96 rocket cells ?!
Of course, you can make claims to the very concept of purchasing power parity, but the fact that we spend our money several times less efficiently than the Americans is beyond doubt. With our approaches and budget discipline, they might have a fleet at the level of France or Britain, but not the way they are. For politically concerned citizens, we will make a reservation - there are also “cuts” there, and corruption.
We should learn from them both financial planning and production management.
3. It is necessary to reduce unproductive and expensive R & D.
One of the requirements of Lehman was the suppression of the financing of various programs of miracle weapons. Neither super-torpedoes, nor super-rockets, in the opinion of the then US Navy, justified themselves. It was necessary to adhere to the standard set of weapons, standard versions of the GEM, unified weapons and equipment, and rivet as many ships as possible. If in the foreseeable future, the program does not promise not very expensive and mass, ready for mass production of weapons, then it should be canceled. This principle helped the Americans to save a lot of money, some of which they used to upgrade types of weapons and ammunition that were already being produced, and they obtained good results.
In contrast to the then US, the Navy is seriously keen on very expensive supertorped, super-rocket, super-ship projects, and the output has no money even for the repair of the Moscow cruiser.
In the United States, however, in recent years, they have also retreated from the canon, and received a lot of non-performing programs at the output, for example, littoral warships LCS, but this is already a result of their modern degradation, before this did not happen. However, they have not fallen to our level yet.
4. The fleet should be a tool for achieving strategic goals, and not just a fleet.
The Americans in the 80-ies had a clear goal - to drive the Soviet Navy back to their bases. They sought it and they achieved it. Their navy was quite a working tool for this purpose. An example of how these things were done was a well-known event in the West, but a little-known event - the imitation of an attack by the US Navy on Kamchatka in the fall of 1982, as part of the Norpac FleetEx Ops'82 exercise. By such methods, the Americans forced the Navy to spend fuel, money and resources of ships, and instead of being in the oceans, to force their forces to their shores to protect them. The USSR was unable to respond to this challenge, although it tried.
Thus, the Maritime Strategy, on the basis of which the Reagan administration (in the person of Lehman) defined the tasks for the Navy, exactly corresponded to what goals the US pursued in the world, and what they were pursuing. Such clarity in strategy and naval construction made it possible not to spray money and invest it only in what was really necessary, discarding everything superfluous. So, the USA did not build any corvettes or small anti-submarine ships to protect the bases. Their strategy was that by active offensive actions they pushed their line of defense to the border of the Soviet territorial waters and would keep it there. Corvettes are not needed for this.
There are several leading documents in Russia that determine the role of the Navy and its importance in the country's defense capability. These are the “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation”, “The Marine Doctrine of the Russian Federation”, “The Basics of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Naval Activities” and the “Shipbuilding Program to 2050 of the Year”. The problem with these documents is that they are not related to each other. For example, the provisions outlined in the Basics do not follow from the Marine Doctrine, and if you believe the leaked data on the Shipbuilding Program, then there are also provisions that, to put it mildly, do not correlate, to put it mildly, , the document is secret, but some of it is known and understandable. Well, that is, on the contrary, it is not clear.
How can you build a fleet in such conditions? If there is no clarity even in matters of principle, for example, are we “defending” or “attacking”? What to choose - two PLO corvettes or an ocean frigate URO? To protect the allies (for example, Syria) in the Mediterranean, a frigate is needed, and for the defense of their bases it’s better to have two corvettes, we don’t have any money for that. So how to be? What is our strategy?
This question should be closed as specifically and unambiguously as possible, otherwise it will not work. It is already impossible.
5. We need a massive and cheap ship, a workhorse for all occasions, which, moreover, it’s not a pity to lose in battle. Alone expensive ships do not win.
The principle of High-End Navy was coined by Admiral Zumwalt, and he was his main supporter. Congress buried all the ideas of Zumvalt and he, too, was quickly “eaten”, but he managed to do something. First quote:
Fully high tech navy will be so expensive that it will be impossible to have enough ships to control the sea. A completely low-tech navy will not be able to withstand certain [some. - Translation.] Types of threats and perform certain tasks. Given the need to have both enough ships and fairly good ships, [the Navy] should be a combination of high-tech and low-tech [fleet].
This was written by Zumwalt himself. And within the framework of ensuring the mass character of the fleet, he proposed the following: in addition to expensive and complex ships, mass, simple and cheap ones are needed, which can be done a lot and which, relatively speaking, will “do everything” precisely due to mass character. Zumvalt proposed to build a series of light aircraft carriers on the concept of Sea Control Ship, Pegasus hydrofoil rocket boats, a multi-purpose ship with aerostatic unloading (non-amphibious airbag) and the so-called “patrol frigate”.
From all this, only the frigate, called Oliver Hazard Perry, went into the series. This non-optimal, primitive, uncomfortable and weakly-armed ship with a single-shaft power plant was, nevertheless, a real "workhorse" of the US Navy, and to this day it can not be replaced with anything. Decommissioning of these frigates gave rise to a “hole” in the naval weapons system, which has not yet been closed. Now the Navy sluggishly conducts the procurement procedure of new frigates, and, apparently, this class will return to the US Navy, but so far there is a hole in their weapon system, which has nothing to fill, and voices demanding to repair and return all Perry that can sound regularly and continuously.
With all its primitiveness, the ship was a good anti-warhead and was part of all American ship groups of the end of the Cold War.
In contrast to the Americans, the Russian Navy does not have, and the industry does not develop a massive cheap ship. All projects that we have in our work, or on which we pretend to be in work, are expensive projects of complex ships. Alas, the experience of others is not a decree.
We do the opposite and we get the opposite - not the fleet, but the neflot.
6. It is necessary to reduce bureaucracy and simplify command chains in the field of shipbuilding.
In all his interviews, Lehman stresses the importance of reducing bureaucracy. The Americans introduced a fairly transparent and optimal shipbuilding control system, and Lehman made a significant contribution to this formation. Besides the fact that the optimization of the bureaucracy seriously speeds up all the formal procedures that are required by law, it also saves money by reducing unnecessary people, without which you can do.
We have a little more complicated.
According to the testimony of persons working in the structures of the Ministry of Defense, there is complete order with the bureaucracy. Coordination of a project or a non-urgent order may take months, and the whole set of our self-indulgence is manifested in full growth. If this is true, then something needs to be done about it. In general, any human team can be approached with a “cybernetic” approach as if it were a car, finding weak and “narrow” places in it, eliminating them, speeding up the passage of information from the performer to the performer and simplifying decision-making schemes, while reducing “extra” people, those without whom the system already works.
It is possible, and such things have been done a lot. There is no reason why they could not be done in the Ministry of Defense.
The loss of naval power by Russia keeps a great danger in itself - any enemy will be able to conduct somewhere far from the shores of the Russian Federation a harmful and politically destructive, but at the same time low-intensity, conflict that cannot be answered with a nuclear strike. There are other reasons, for example, the enormous length and vulnerability of coastal lines, a large number of regions, communication with which is possible only by sea (with the exception of rare air flights), the presence of powerful naval forces among hostile countries. The situation with the fleet is absolutely intolerable and requires correction. And whoever is engaged in this correction in the near future, the experience of the enemy, the rules by which he builds his sea power, will be very, very useful and deserve close examination.
Of course, Russia is not the United States, and our naval construction goals should be different. But this does not mean that the American experience is inapplicable, especially in conditions when the domestic has shown useless results.
It is time to be corrected.
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