Russian Navy. Sad look into the future. Coastal troops. findings
In the two previous articles we described the state of affairs in the coastal forces of the Russian Navy, which include coastal missileartillery troops and marines. In the article offered to your attention we will summarize and try to make general conclusions about the state of this type of forces fleet.
In general, it can probably be stated that against the backdrop of the frankly bleak picture of the gradual destruction of the fleet (the current pace of its “restoration”, in essence, only delays the inevitable, and does not even come close to replenishing the loss of ships), the current state and prospects of the Russian Navy’s BF look moderately optimistic. In terms of the BRAV, this optimism is based on the large-scale re-equipment of troops from the old “Rubezhi” and “Redoubts” to the quite modern “Bastions” and “Balys”, while, in all likelihood, the current pace of construction will provide us with forces equivalent to eight rocket brigades, half of which will be armed with Bastions (with Onyx anti-ship missiles, and perhaps, in the future, Zircon), and the other half with Bals with Kh-35 and Kh-35U. As surprising as it may sound, if such a program is implemented, the Russian Navy's BRAVs will definitely surpass the BRAVs of the USSR in terms of the quantity and quality of their missile weapons.
Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of the missiles is far from the only component of the combat power of the Brav. As we said earlier, although the Onyx flight range is unknown, it’s almost impossible that it exceeded 500 km, since in this case, by deploying the Bastions, Russia massively violates the INF Treaty, which, in general, is not interest. Thus, the “long arm” of the GRAVE is still far from being reachable, and in order to be able to hit the enemy, it must be deployed in the right place in a timely manner. Which once again brings us back to the problems of over-the-horizon intelligence and target designation, and they, as we know, have not been resolved to date.
Formally, the Russian Federation has all the necessary equipment to create an EGSONPO (a unified state system for lighting surface and underwater environments) that would provide total control over surface (with underwater — more complicated) objects at a distance of at least 1 500 km from our coastline. We also have reconnaissance satellites, there are over-the-horizon radar stations, there are early-warning radar aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft, as well as radio intelligence equipment and much more. But all this is either insufficient in quantity, or (as, for example, DRLO planes, specialized reconnaissance aircraft) is not part of the Navy and is “not tied” to obtaining the necessary information, since it is intended for solving other tasks and will be used in other areas. In general, EGSONPO does not work today, and, alas, it is unclear when it will work - if we evaluate the pace of its construction, we are unlikely to get it not by 2030, but also by 3030 year.
On the other hand, to say that everything is completely hopeless - it is impossible, because at least two elements of EGSONPO are very well developed today. The first is over-the-horizon radar systems, currently capable of detecting surface targets at a distance of 3 000 km or more.
These stations do a good job of controlling the air and surface situation, but they cannot carry out a “friend or foe” check, and most importantly, they are massive stationary objects that can be completely incapacitated or destroyed with the onset of a conflict. The second element is the presence in the composition of our coastal forces numerous units of electronic warfare, which also carry out including electronic intelligence.
Of course, the Coastal Forces are one of the most important components of the Navy, but it should be understood that even if we had a fully operational EGSONPO, BV of the Russian Navy in its present form still would not be an absolute defense against strikes from the sea. Of course, missiles capable of hitting targets at a distance of 300 (500?) Km are an extremely dangerous threat to any amphibious operations. But "Bastions" and "Balls" cannot completely impede the actions of the AUG (only make them stay at a certain distance from the coast, which, in general, is already quite a few) and enemy surface ships equipped with cruise missiles, like "Tomahawks", with a range of flight to 2 500 km. For example, Bala and Bastions, deployed in the Crimea, are able to “finish” almost to the Turkish coast, but they are powerless against an aircraft carrier deployed in the Aegean Sea and using the Turkish airfield network as hopping aerodromes.
As for the number of rocket launchers, then, on the one hand, the very real possibility of “catching up” to the level of the USSR is wonderful. But one should not forget that the USSR BRAV had to ensure the safety of our shores in the presence of the most powerful Soviet Navy, which practically nothing left today. And if we reach, and even surpass the GRAV of the Soviet Union, then ... will this be enough?
As for the marines, of course, it should be noted that in recent years the growth of its capabilities is quite obvious. Keeping the highest standards of personnel training, the Marines are armed with new military equipment (the same armored personnel carriers), ammunition ("Warrior"), controls ("Sagittarius") and much more. Marines return to the brigades Tanks, although not T-90 or “Almaty”, but only T-80BV and T-72B3, but any tank is better than its absence, etc.
Nevertheless, the ability of the domestic marines to carry out the key tasks of this type of troops today is questionable. As we said earlier, the main tasks of the Marines are:
1. the landing of tactical amphibious assault forces to solve independent tasks and to assist ground forces formations;
2. defense of basing points and other objects from airborne and naval assault forces, joint participation with ground units in antiamphibious defense.
We will return to the first point a little later, but for now we will pay attention to the second. Here the problem lies in the fact that Russia is a happy owner of a very long coastline: for example, the Black Sea coast of the Russian Federation extends over 1 171 km. And to ensure its protection by the marines alone is not possible simply because of the relative small size of the latter.
It is necessary to say that this problem was realized back in the USSR; therefore, during the formation of the Coastal Forces, in addition to the existing Brav and MP formations, four motorized rifle divisions and four artillery brigades taken from the Ground Forces were also included. Thus, each fleet received one reinforced motorized rifle division, which had, in addition to the state-ordered tank regiment and three separate tank battalions (one for each regiment), also an additional tank battalion comprising the 5 company (51 tank T-80, T -72, T-64, T-62). As for the artillery brigades, each of them had 120 guns in 152-mm caliber. In total, the Coastal Forces of the USSR numbered about 1500 tanks, more than 2500 armored combat vehicles (BTR, BRDM), more than 1000 guns of 100 caliber mm, etc.
Something from the former glory remains today. So, the Coastal Forces of the Black Sea Fleet have a 126-th separate coastal defense brigade, the Baltic Fleet has a motorized rifle brigade and a separate regiment, the Northern Fleet has two Arctic motorized rifle brigades. But, of course, even after equipping the naval infantry units with tanks (as expected - with 40 tanks per brigade), they would not even reach the level of the BV of the USSR Navy. Perhaps of particular concern is the Pacific Fleet. In the years of the USSR, its Coastal forces had a division of marines, a motorized rifle division as a separate artillery brigade, today they are two brigades of marines.
You can, of course, assume that the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation intends to solve the tasks of the defense of the coast, attracting ground forces for this. But you need to understand that today the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation have about 280 thousand people in their structure. and the order of 2 300 tanks (by state, with the revival of the divisions, perhaps their number has increased, but, of course, not by orders of magnitude). In terms of numbers, this roughly corresponds to what the Turkish armed forces have (260 000 people and, approximately, 2 224 tanks in the army). Of course, in terms of their qualities and armament, Russian troops are far superior to Turkish, but compare the territory of Turkey and Russia ... In other words, the Russian land army is not large at all and, to admit, it is not even clear how to achieve a similar number scale conflict. And certainly there are no “extra” units in them to assist the Coastal forces.
Thus, it can be stated that, despite the traditionally high training of the marines and the continued equipping of them with new equipment, the capabilities of the antiamphibious defense are limited simply because of the small number of units of the Coastal Forces.
As for the landing, there, alas, is still worse. The first thing I would like to draw attention to is the deplorable state of the amphibious assault ships of the Russian Navy. We listed in detail the types and main performance characteristics of amphibious ships and boats in the previous article, so we will not repeat: we only note that today the basis of the amphibious forces of the fleets are 15 large amphibious assault ships of the 775 project.
It seems to be a significant amount, but the youngest BDK of this project (Subseries III) - Korolev and Peresvet this year turned 27 years, Azov 28, and they are far from young, although with proper care they are quite capable serve another years 12-15.
But the age of other 9 ships of this type (II sub-series) today ranges from 30 to 39 years, so they obviously need to be replaced in the next 10 years. The oldest BDK in the domestic fleet are three ships of the first sub-series of the 775 project (one is forty years old, two more ships were commissioned 42 a year ago) and, of course, the 4 ship of the 1171 project, which today has "knocked" from 43 to 52 years - these seven BDK require replacement "yesterday." And what is going to replace them?
Yes, in general, almost nothing. In the Russian Federation, two BDKs of the 11711 “Tapir” project were laid, of which the first, “Ivan Gren”, which was started in 2004, was finally incorporated into the fleet in June of this year. The second ship of this type, “Peter Morgunov”, is promised to be delivered in the next, 2019. Even ignoring the national custom to shift the deadlines for delivering ships to the fleet “to the right”, we get 2 BDK instead of 7, which in the very near future should be removed from the fleet. Even taking into account the fact that ships of the type “Ivan Gren” are perhaps twice as good as the BNS of the 775 project in terms of their amphibious assault capability, this does not look like an equivalent replacement. And no more BDKs in the Russian Federation have been pledged and built, and than we are going to make up for leaving 9 with another. BDK of the 775 project, which will gradually leave the system, is totally unclear.
It must be said that according to GPN 2011-2020. It was intended to solve this issue radically - it was planned to build four universal landing ships of the Mistral type, of which two were to be built for us by France, and two more by ourselves, according to the license granted by the French.
We will not consider in detail the issues of the expediency of ordering such ships abroad: apparently, in addition to the corruption component, this decision played the role of "repaying" the French for their loyal position in relation to the 08.08.08 war, but other reasonable considerations were also possible. In any case, this was a big mistake, and here life put everything in its place: having spent time and money, Russia did not receive the ships she needed. The money, however, then returned.
However, it should be recognized (irrespective of the merits and demerits of a specific French project) that a reorientation from BDK to UDC would certainly be the right step in updating our airborne fleet. The fact is that the main way of landing with BDK is ramp, in which BDK must come close to the shore.
It is clear that far from everywhere the sea coast allows you to do this - for example, in the BNC project 1174 “Rhino”, which had a full displacement over 14 000 t, the length of the ramp exceeded 30 meters, but they could land only the 17% of the world coast . There was another way of landing, which did not require the BDK to come close to the coast: the nose gate was opened, and then the armored personnel carrier reached land for its course, but it is clear that this method is only available with a slight agitation and surf, and also for floating armored vehicles - tanks do not unload in this way.
In the USSR, this problem was understood, so the BNC of the 1174 project, in addition to the usual ramp, also had a dock chamber that contained either the 6 landing craft of the 1785 or 1176 projects, or three hovercraft of the 1206 project, which allowed them to be transported and landed on unequipped coast heavy armored vehicles - tanks T-64 and T-72. Still, the “Rhinos” were not considered successful ships in the USSR, and they were replaced by the universal landing ships of the 11780 “Ivan Rogov” project, also known under the nickname “Ivan Tarava” (for substantial similarity with the American UDC). With a displacement of about 25 000 and T, these ships were to receive a full flight deck (air group - X-NUMX Ka-12 transport helicopters in the landing variant, it was possible to use the VTs Yak-29) and a sufficiently capacious dock chamber for four landing craft of the 38 or 1176 landing landing craft on an air cushion pr 2., despite the fact that, according to some sources, "Ivan Tarava" was able to carry up to 1206 tanks and 40 paratroopers (probably for relatively short distances).
Of course, UDC had significant advantages over traditional Soviet BDK. This and the ability to land landings on the coast, where the BDK could not come close to the shore, this is the excellent logistical capabilities provided by the air group of transport helicopters, and the ability of over-horizon assault landing, when the UDC itself is not exposed to the threat of fire weapons from the coast. Perhaps, the only advantage of the BDK was only the speed of the landing of the landing force - it is clear that in places where it was possible to disembark from the ramp, unload the marines and their equipment with the BDK would be faster than through helicopters and landing craft, which would have to make many flights in order to transport all the equipment on the beach.
It should also be noted that the UDC can be much better suited for combat services that the Soviet fleet conducted - when the landing ships "in full combat" and with the marines on board went to the same Mediterranean Sea and were there in constant readiness for disembarkation. The fact is that UDC is significantly larger than the BDK (“Ivan Gren” - 5 000 t, full displacement of the same ships of the 775 project are of the order of 4 000 t, but the same “Ivan Rogov”, as we said above - 25 000 t ), so that they can create much better conditions for the landing - both in terms of accommodation and medical care, etc. In general, there is no doubt that the same Mistrals, for all their shortcomings, would be much better designed for such combat services than the BDK project 775 or even the newest "Ivan Gren."
But... here an important nuance arises. The fact is that a landing operation is not only marines and the ships transporting them. Landing troops in a modern large-scale conflict is a complex operation that requires the allocation of a large number of diverse forces: it is necessary to "cleanse" the coast, which should be carried out until the state of complete non-survivability of the forces defending it, combat ships to form a landing order, cover during the transition from the influence of the fleet and aviation enemy... And, let's be honest, the current state of the Navy's ship composition and aviation is such that it completely excludes the possibility of conducting any large-scale landing operations in a full-scale war with NATO, or in an armed conflict with any of the developed countries. In other words, we simply do not have enough resources to ensure the conditions for landing and the safety of ships with landing forces. As an example: one can, of course, talk at length about a "landing on the Kuril Islands", that is, the transportation of reinforcements to the "disputed" islands using the same "Mistrals" in the event of a hypothetical conflict with Japan. But the truth of life is that our entire Pacific Fleet in full force is not capable of providing Defense landing force within the range of the Japanese Air Force, which has about 350 strike aircraft, including about 200 F-15s of various modifications. We have nothing to counter the Japanese submarine fleet, which has almost two dozen (18, to be exact) very modern submarines. Let us recall that the Pacific Fleet has 4 large anti-submarine ships, one nuclear-powered multipurpose submarine of the Shchuka-B type and six old Paltus-class submarines. The four strike surface ships of the Pacific Fleet - two Antey-class submarines, the Varyag missile cruiser and the Bystry project 956 destroyer are clearly no match for the 4 Japanese helicopter carriers, 38 destroyers and 6 frigates.
In fact, in an armed clash with one of the developed countries or in a global conflict, the possibility of landing in enemy territory is reduced almost to the landing of reconnaissance and sabotage groups. By the way, high-speed amphibious assault boats of the “Dugong” and “Serna” types, which have entered service, are just right for such actions.
Thus, it turns out an interesting conflict. If to argue from the point of view of the development of domestic landing ships, then, of course, it is necessary to design and build full-fledged UDC. But this is a very expensive thing, and we can create them only to the detriment of other fleet forces: in the event of a serious conflict, we will not be able to use these ships for their intended purpose. In its current state, such ships of the Russian Navy can be used only in “police” operations, like the same Syria, but even there they are more likely to have the status “desirable” rather than “necessary”. Therefore, the creation of the UDC today (the project "Surf" and the like), with all its usefulness for the Russian amphibious forces, should be considered harmful and untimely for the fleet - today naval aircraft, minesweepers, submarines, corvettes and frigates are more important to us.
On the other hand, it is impossible to completely forget the amphibious forces of the fleet, or to limit yourself exclusively to high-speed amphibious assault boats. Perhaps we should continue the “Ivan Gren” series, laying several more such ships to replace the aging BDK project 775. Or to go a little different way: the fact is that the Syrian operation revealed another weakness of the fleet (as if there were few of them already) - the ships at the disposal of the Navy could not ensure the timely delivery of cargo to our military contingent in Syria in the volumes it needed. BDKs are able to perform the role of military transports, but, of course, the relatively small displacement of the 775 project ships played a negative role here - they could not carry a sufficient amount of cargo. "Ivan Gren" is noticeably larger, and, perhaps, would be better suited to the role of military transport. And if not, then it may be worthwhile to consider the idea of creating a ship – vehicle, which, “concurrently” could play the role of a landing ship: such ships will not lose their value even if we ever become sufficiently wealthy to build UDC.
On the whole, concluding the short series devoted to our Coastal Forces, I would like to note that, despite the fact that their condition today causes the least concern in comparison with other kinds of forces of the fleet, we see that today they still cannot solve their tasks are fully implemented, albeit for reasons not directly connected with the BV of the Russian Navy. The coastal missile and artillery troops strongly lack EGSONPO, which could uncover the movement of enemy ships in our waters and ensure timely deployment of mobile missile systems, as well as target designation for them. In addition, by virtue of the INF Treaty, the BRAV does not really have a “long arm” to counter the carrier strike groups of our “sworn friends”. The marines lack the numbers for the antiamphibious defense of the coast, and besides, due to the physical aging of the amphibious ships and the inability of the fleet to isolate the forces to cover them, carrying out some large-scale amphibious operations becomes extremely risky and hardly justified in the conflict with some serious opponent.
In general, it can probably be stated that against the backdrop of the frankly bleak picture of the gradual destruction of the fleet (the current pace of its “restoration”, in essence, only delays the inevitable, and does not even come close to replenishing the loss of ships), the current state and prospects of the Russian Navy’s BF look moderately optimistic. In terms of the BRAV, this optimism is based on the large-scale re-equipment of troops from the old “Rubezhi” and “Redoubts” to the quite modern “Bastions” and “Balys”, while, in all likelihood, the current pace of construction will provide us with forces equivalent to eight rocket brigades, half of which will be armed with Bastions (with Onyx anti-ship missiles, and perhaps, in the future, Zircon), and the other half with Bals with Kh-35 and Kh-35U. As surprising as it may sound, if such a program is implemented, the Russian Navy's BRAVs will definitely surpass the BRAVs of the USSR in terms of the quantity and quality of their missile weapons.
Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of the missiles is far from the only component of the combat power of the Brav. As we said earlier, although the Onyx flight range is unknown, it’s almost impossible that it exceeded 500 km, since in this case, by deploying the Bastions, Russia massively violates the INF Treaty, which, in general, is not interest. Thus, the “long arm” of the GRAVE is still far from being reachable, and in order to be able to hit the enemy, it must be deployed in the right place in a timely manner. Which once again brings us back to the problems of over-the-horizon intelligence and target designation, and they, as we know, have not been resolved to date.
Formally, the Russian Federation has all the necessary equipment to create an EGSONPO (a unified state system for lighting surface and underwater environments) that would provide total control over surface (with underwater — more complicated) objects at a distance of at least 1 500 km from our coastline. We also have reconnaissance satellites, there are over-the-horizon radar stations, there are early-warning radar aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft, as well as radio intelligence equipment and much more. But all this is either insufficient in quantity, or (as, for example, DRLO planes, specialized reconnaissance aircraft) is not part of the Navy and is “not tied” to obtaining the necessary information, since it is intended for solving other tasks and will be used in other areas. In general, EGSONPO does not work today, and, alas, it is unclear when it will work - if we evaluate the pace of its construction, we are unlikely to get it not by 2030, but also by 3030 year.
On the other hand, to say that everything is completely hopeless - it is impossible, because at least two elements of EGSONPO are very well developed today. The first is over-the-horizon radar systems, currently capable of detecting surface targets at a distance of 3 000 km or more.
Reception part of the radar ZGO 29B6 "Container", Kovylkino, Mordovia
These stations do a good job of controlling the air and surface situation, but they cannot carry out a “friend or foe” check, and most importantly, they are massive stationary objects that can be completely incapacitated or destroyed with the onset of a conflict. The second element is the presence in the composition of our coastal forces numerous units of electronic warfare, which also carry out including electronic intelligence.
Of course, the Coastal Forces are one of the most important components of the Navy, but it should be understood that even if we had a fully operational EGSONPO, BV of the Russian Navy in its present form still would not be an absolute defense against strikes from the sea. Of course, missiles capable of hitting targets at a distance of 300 (500?) Km are an extremely dangerous threat to any amphibious operations. But "Bastions" and "Balls" cannot completely impede the actions of the AUG (only make them stay at a certain distance from the coast, which, in general, is already quite a few) and enemy surface ships equipped with cruise missiles, like "Tomahawks", with a range of flight to 2 500 km. For example, Bala and Bastions, deployed in the Crimea, are able to “finish” almost to the Turkish coast, but they are powerless against an aircraft carrier deployed in the Aegean Sea and using the Turkish airfield network as hopping aerodromes.
As for the number of rocket launchers, then, on the one hand, the very real possibility of “catching up” to the level of the USSR is wonderful. But one should not forget that the USSR BRAV had to ensure the safety of our shores in the presence of the most powerful Soviet Navy, which practically nothing left today. And if we reach, and even surpass the GRAV of the Soviet Union, then ... will this be enough?
As for the marines, of course, it should be noted that in recent years the growth of its capabilities is quite obvious. Keeping the highest standards of personnel training, the Marines are armed with new military equipment (the same armored personnel carriers), ammunition ("Warrior"), controls ("Sagittarius") and much more. Marines return to the brigades Tanks, although not T-90 or “Almaty”, but only T-80BV and T-72B3, but any tank is better than its absence, etc.
Nevertheless, the ability of the domestic marines to carry out the key tasks of this type of troops today is questionable. As we said earlier, the main tasks of the Marines are:
1. the landing of tactical amphibious assault forces to solve independent tasks and to assist ground forces formations;
2. defense of basing points and other objects from airborne and naval assault forces, joint participation with ground units in antiamphibious defense.
We will return to the first point a little later, but for now we will pay attention to the second. Here the problem lies in the fact that Russia is a happy owner of a very long coastline: for example, the Black Sea coast of the Russian Federation extends over 1 171 km. And to ensure its protection by the marines alone is not possible simply because of the relative small size of the latter.
It is necessary to say that this problem was realized back in the USSR; therefore, during the formation of the Coastal Forces, in addition to the existing Brav and MP formations, four motorized rifle divisions and four artillery brigades taken from the Ground Forces were also included. Thus, each fleet received one reinforced motorized rifle division, which had, in addition to the state-ordered tank regiment and three separate tank battalions (one for each regiment), also an additional tank battalion comprising the 5 company (51 tank T-80, T -72, T-64, T-62). As for the artillery brigades, each of them had 120 guns in 152-mm caliber. In total, the Coastal Forces of the USSR numbered about 1500 tanks, more than 2500 armored combat vehicles (BTR, BRDM), more than 1000 guns of 100 caliber mm, etc.
Something from the former glory remains today. So, the Coastal Forces of the Black Sea Fleet have a 126-th separate coastal defense brigade, the Baltic Fleet has a motorized rifle brigade and a separate regiment, the Northern Fleet has two Arctic motorized rifle brigades. But, of course, even after equipping the naval infantry units with tanks (as expected - with 40 tanks per brigade), they would not even reach the level of the BV of the USSR Navy. Perhaps of particular concern is the Pacific Fleet. In the years of the USSR, its Coastal forces had a division of marines, a motorized rifle division as a separate artillery brigade, today they are two brigades of marines.
You can, of course, assume that the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation intends to solve the tasks of the defense of the coast, attracting ground forces for this. But you need to understand that today the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation have about 280 thousand people in their structure. and the order of 2 300 tanks (by state, with the revival of the divisions, perhaps their number has increased, but, of course, not by orders of magnitude). In terms of numbers, this roughly corresponds to what the Turkish armed forces have (260 000 people and, approximately, 2 224 tanks in the army). Of course, in terms of their qualities and armament, Russian troops are far superior to Turkish, but compare the territory of Turkey and Russia ... In other words, the Russian land army is not large at all and, to admit, it is not even clear how to achieve a similar number scale conflict. And certainly there are no “extra” units in them to assist the Coastal forces.
Thus, it can be stated that, despite the traditionally high training of the marines and the continued equipping of them with new equipment, the capabilities of the antiamphibious defense are limited simply because of the small number of units of the Coastal Forces.
As for the landing, there, alas, is still worse. The first thing I would like to draw attention to is the deplorable state of the amphibious assault ships of the Russian Navy. We listed in detail the types and main performance characteristics of amphibious ships and boats in the previous article, so we will not repeat: we only note that today the basis of the amphibious forces of the fleets are 15 large amphibious assault ships of the 775 project.
It seems to be a significant amount, but the youngest BDK of this project (Subseries III) - Korolev and Peresvet this year turned 27 years, Azov 28, and they are far from young, although with proper care they are quite capable serve another years 12-15.
BDK "Korolev"
But the age of other 9 ships of this type (II sub-series) today ranges from 30 to 39 years, so they obviously need to be replaced in the next 10 years. The oldest BDK in the domestic fleet are three ships of the first sub-series of the 775 project (one is forty years old, two more ships were commissioned 42 a year ago) and, of course, the 4 ship of the 1171 project, which today has "knocked" from 43 to 52 years - these seven BDK require replacement "yesterday." And what is going to replace them?
Yes, in general, almost nothing. In the Russian Federation, two BDKs of the 11711 “Tapir” project were laid, of which the first, “Ivan Gren”, which was started in 2004, was finally incorporated into the fleet in June of this year. The second ship of this type, “Peter Morgunov”, is promised to be delivered in the next, 2019. Even ignoring the national custom to shift the deadlines for delivering ships to the fleet “to the right”, we get 2 BDK instead of 7, which in the very near future should be removed from the fleet. Even taking into account the fact that ships of the type “Ivan Gren” are perhaps twice as good as the BNS of the 775 project in terms of their amphibious assault capability, this does not look like an equivalent replacement. And no more BDKs in the Russian Federation have been pledged and built, and than we are going to make up for leaving 9 with another. BDK of the 775 project, which will gradually leave the system, is totally unclear.
It must be said that according to GPN 2011-2020. It was intended to solve this issue radically - it was planned to build four universal landing ships of the Mistral type, of which two were to be built for us by France, and two more by ourselves, according to the license granted by the French.
We will not consider in detail the issues of the expediency of ordering such ships abroad: apparently, in addition to the corruption component, this decision played the role of "repaying" the French for their loyal position in relation to the 08.08.08 war, but other reasonable considerations were also possible. In any case, this was a big mistake, and here life put everything in its place: having spent time and money, Russia did not receive the ships she needed. The money, however, then returned.
However, it should be recognized (irrespective of the merits and demerits of a specific French project) that a reorientation from BDK to UDC would certainly be the right step in updating our airborne fleet. The fact is that the main way of landing with BDK is ramp, in which BDK must come close to the shore.
It is clear that far from everywhere the sea coast allows you to do this - for example, in the BNC project 1174 “Rhino”, which had a full displacement over 14 000 t, the length of the ramp exceeded 30 meters, but they could land only the 17% of the world coast . There was another way of landing, which did not require the BDK to come close to the coast: the nose gate was opened, and then the armored personnel carrier reached land for its course, but it is clear that this method is only available with a slight agitation and surf, and also for floating armored vehicles - tanks do not unload in this way.
In the USSR, this problem was understood, so the BNC of the 1174 project, in addition to the usual ramp, also had a dock chamber that contained either the 6 landing craft of the 1785 or 1176 projects, or three hovercraft of the 1206 project, which allowed them to be transported and landed on unequipped coast heavy armored vehicles - tanks T-64 and T-72. Still, the “Rhinos” were not considered successful ships in the USSR, and they were replaced by the universal landing ships of the 11780 “Ivan Rogov” project, also known under the nickname “Ivan Tarava” (for substantial similarity with the American UDC). With a displacement of about 25 000 and T, these ships were to receive a full flight deck (air group - X-NUMX Ka-12 transport helicopters in the landing variant, it was possible to use the VTs Yak-29) and a sufficiently capacious dock chamber for four landing craft of the 38 or 1176 landing landing craft on an air cushion pr 2., despite the fact that, according to some sources, "Ivan Tarava" was able to carry up to 1206 tanks and 40 paratroopers (probably for relatively short distances).
Model "Ivan Rogov"
Of course, UDC had significant advantages over traditional Soviet BDK. This and the ability to land landings on the coast, where the BDK could not come close to the shore, this is the excellent logistical capabilities provided by the air group of transport helicopters, and the ability of over-horizon assault landing, when the UDC itself is not exposed to the threat of fire weapons from the coast. Perhaps, the only advantage of the BDK was only the speed of the landing of the landing force - it is clear that in places where it was possible to disembark from the ramp, unload the marines and their equipment with the BDK would be faster than through helicopters and landing craft, which would have to make many flights in order to transport all the equipment on the beach.
It should also be noted that the UDC can be much better suited for combat services that the Soviet fleet conducted - when the landing ships "in full combat" and with the marines on board went to the same Mediterranean Sea and were there in constant readiness for disembarkation. The fact is that UDC is significantly larger than the BDK (“Ivan Gren” - 5 000 t, full displacement of the same ships of the 775 project are of the order of 4 000 t, but the same “Ivan Rogov”, as we said above - 25 000 t ), so that they can create much better conditions for the landing - both in terms of accommodation and medical care, etc. In general, there is no doubt that the same Mistrals, for all their shortcomings, would be much better designed for such combat services than the BDK project 775 or even the newest "Ivan Gren."
But... here an important nuance arises. The fact is that a landing operation is not only marines and the ships transporting them. Landing troops in a modern large-scale conflict is a complex operation that requires the allocation of a large number of diverse forces: it is necessary to "cleanse" the coast, which should be carried out until the state of complete non-survivability of the forces defending it, combat ships to form a landing order, cover during the transition from the influence of the fleet and aviation enemy... And, let's be honest, the current state of the Navy's ship composition and aviation is such that it completely excludes the possibility of conducting any large-scale landing operations in a full-scale war with NATO, or in an armed conflict with any of the developed countries. In other words, we simply do not have enough resources to ensure the conditions for landing and the safety of ships with landing forces. As an example: one can, of course, talk at length about a "landing on the Kuril Islands", that is, the transportation of reinforcements to the "disputed" islands using the same "Mistrals" in the event of a hypothetical conflict with Japan. But the truth of life is that our entire Pacific Fleet in full force is not capable of providing Defense landing force within the range of the Japanese Air Force, which has about 350 strike aircraft, including about 200 F-15s of various modifications. We have nothing to counter the Japanese submarine fleet, which has almost two dozen (18, to be exact) very modern submarines. Let us recall that the Pacific Fleet has 4 large anti-submarine ships, one nuclear-powered multipurpose submarine of the Shchuka-B type and six old Paltus-class submarines. The four strike surface ships of the Pacific Fleet - two Antey-class submarines, the Varyag missile cruiser and the Bystry project 956 destroyer are clearly no match for the 4 Japanese helicopter carriers, 38 destroyers and 6 frigates.
In fact, in an armed clash with one of the developed countries or in a global conflict, the possibility of landing in enemy territory is reduced almost to the landing of reconnaissance and sabotage groups. By the way, high-speed amphibious assault boats of the “Dugong” and “Serna” types, which have entered service, are just right for such actions.
Thus, it turns out an interesting conflict. If to argue from the point of view of the development of domestic landing ships, then, of course, it is necessary to design and build full-fledged UDC. But this is a very expensive thing, and we can create them only to the detriment of other fleet forces: in the event of a serious conflict, we will not be able to use these ships for their intended purpose. In its current state, such ships of the Russian Navy can be used only in “police” operations, like the same Syria, but even there they are more likely to have the status “desirable” rather than “necessary”. Therefore, the creation of the UDC today (the project "Surf" and the like), with all its usefulness for the Russian amphibious forces, should be considered harmful and untimely for the fleet - today naval aircraft, minesweepers, submarines, corvettes and frigates are more important to us.
On the other hand, it is impossible to completely forget the amphibious forces of the fleet, or to limit yourself exclusively to high-speed amphibious assault boats. Perhaps we should continue the “Ivan Gren” series, laying several more such ships to replace the aging BDK project 775. Or to go a little different way: the fact is that the Syrian operation revealed another weakness of the fleet (as if there were few of them already) - the ships at the disposal of the Navy could not ensure the timely delivery of cargo to our military contingent in Syria in the volumes it needed. BDKs are able to perform the role of military transports, but, of course, the relatively small displacement of the 775 project ships played a negative role here - they could not carry a sufficient amount of cargo. "Ivan Gren" is noticeably larger, and, perhaps, would be better suited to the role of military transport. And if not, then it may be worthwhile to consider the idea of creating a ship – vehicle, which, “concurrently” could play the role of a landing ship: such ships will not lose their value even if we ever become sufficiently wealthy to build UDC.
On the whole, concluding the short series devoted to our Coastal Forces, I would like to note that, despite the fact that their condition today causes the least concern in comparison with other kinds of forces of the fleet, we see that today they still cannot solve their tasks are fully implemented, albeit for reasons not directly connected with the BV of the Russian Navy. The coastal missile and artillery troops strongly lack EGSONPO, which could uncover the movement of enemy ships in our waters and ensure timely deployment of mobile missile systems, as well as target designation for them. In addition, by virtue of the INF Treaty, the BRAV does not really have a “long arm” to counter the carrier strike groups of our “sworn friends”. The marines lack the numbers for the antiamphibious defense of the coast, and besides, due to the physical aging of the amphibious ships and the inability of the fleet to isolate the forces to cover them, carrying out some large-scale amphibious operations becomes extremely risky and hardly justified in the conflict with some serious opponent.
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