Frigate "Perry" as a lesson for Russia: machine-designed, massive and cheap
Oliver Hazard Perry Frigates
Studying the foreign experience of naval construction is extremely useful, especially now, when there is an ideological crisis in naval construction, on the one hand, and on the other, there is clearly a kind of turning point.
It is especially important to study the experience of the most successful states in naval affairs. Currently, this is, of course, the United States during the late Cold War. It was then that the Americans managed to show the highest level of organization since the Second World War, the correct setting of goals, the economical use of budget funds for secondary projects and the concentration of efforts in the main, breakthrough areas.
One of the brightest pages in stories The construction of American post-war sea power is the program for the creation of frigates of the Oliver Hazard Perry class. Although a frigate of its own could hardly have found a place in the Russian Navy, the approaches that were used in its design and creation would have been more than useful. It is worth exploring the issue in more detail.
Zumwalt Fleet
In 1970, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became Commander of Naval Operations. His main concern was the creation of a decisive advantage in power over the rapidly developing Navy of the USSR. For this, Zumwalt proposed the concept of High-Low Navy - fleet, which would have a number of complex, expensive and highly efficient strike ships, and a large number of massive, simple and cheap warships, the technical perfection and combat power of which could be somewhat cut down for the sake of lowering prices.
Elmo Russell Zumwalt
This approach allowed the US Navy to have “maximum fleet for the same money” and not lose in striking power - mainly expensive and complex ships could act in the direction of the main strike, simple and cheap on the rest.
Of all Zumwalt's projects, only one was able to be realized - the “patrol frigate”, and after that it was just the frigate of the Oliver Hazard Perry class. It was one of the low navy ships, a low-tech ship, simplified to lower prices. And it was precisely because of its low price that it became massive, as few other ships of the rocket era are 71 units, of which 16 are ships built outside the United States, allies.
In the conditions when the war in Vietnam was already lost, and Reagan with his “Reaganomics” had not yet come to power, it was possible to ensure such proportions only by creating a truly cheap ship. And the Americans did it.
"Design at a given cost" as a standard
In the article "We are building a fleet. Forces of the Poor", Issues of creating ships" at a given cost "are designated as fundamentally important. This is so, and you can see how it works on the example of Perry.
From the very beginning, to reduce prices, the Navy took the following measures: a preliminary design was created by the Navy officers, it was decided to limit the maximum cost and not step over this bar, changing the design of the ship to meet the required prices, to reduce the required power of the power plant and, according to its size and fuel mass, it was supposed to fight for every pound of frigate mass.
At the same time, an innovative decision was made - the outline design of the ship according to the given criteria was compiled by the computer in 18 hours, then people only finalized it. This led to a record time for the development of the ship and low costs. A noteworthy fact - the Navy engineer who created the software was 36-year-old African-American woman, Ray Jean Montague, actually the "mother" of the modern American warship design school.
Ray Jean Montague then and in 2017 year. "Mom" computer-aided design of ships and ships, died at 2018.
The strange and unconventional design of Perry is largely due to the fact that it was not man who invented it.
The ship’s design used seemingly controversial decisions, but then they paid off.
The most famous such solution is a single-shaft main power plant.
Domestic experts have criticized this decision and are still criticizing it. However, do not consider Americans stupid. They thought it over very well.
The single-shaft power plant "Perry" was created on the basis of "half" the power plant of the destroyer "Spruence". This automatically guaranteed a huge saving for the Americans both in the development of the power plant itself and in the cost of its life cycle subsequently during operation. Savings on everything from parts to training personnel. In addition, this saved the displacement, which means that it allowed to do with less power and smaller sizes of the power plant. According to the calculations of American experts, the minimum increase in displacement that could be required for any twin-shaft power plant on such a ship would be 400 tons. Without any increase in useful volumes in the ship.
From the point of view of operation, the Americans had a great and positive experience with single-shaft installations - Knox class frigates and the previous Brooke / Garcia types were equipped with single-shaft power plants.
Of course, it was necessary to make sure that it was the gas turbine single-shaft power plant that would not throw any surprise, for which special ground-based test benches were built. These engineering-friendly structures made it possible to save a ton of money on refining the power plant.
There was a question about the survivability of a ship with such a power plant.
After analyzing the experience of World War II, where single-warships were also used, the Americans found out that not a single ship was actually lost due to the single-shaft scheme. Ships with a similar scheme sank, but an analysis of their combat damage showed that a two-shaft ship would not have survived this. On the other hand, cases when ships with a single-shaft power plant experienced extensive damage and remained afloat were also not uncommon. The conclusion was simple - a single-shaft GEM has almost no effect on survivability - combat experience spoke about this.
However, questions remained about the loss of course and maneuvering when mooring. In order for the ship with one propeller and one rudder to get the necessary maneuverability, in the front of the hull propeller-driven units with 380 horsepower were provided. each with electric drive.
These devices were also used as backup ones; when a power plant failed, the ship could go through calm water at a speed of up to five knots. A little later, these calculations were confirmed in a combat situation.
Auxiliary screw-steering units.
Thus, the decision to use a single-shaft GEM was not just correct, it also saved a lot of money and about 400 tons of displacement.
A similar solution is placement weapons aboard a ship.
Domestic experts criticized it no less than a single-shaft power plant, pointing to small and suboptimal angles of fire with an air defense system and the Mk.75 artillery gun (76-mm, manufactured in the USA under the license of the Oto Melara company).
Location 76-mm guns.
"One-armed bandit" - universal PU Mk.13
Partly they are right, the angles are not optimal. But such questions cannot be considered in isolation from the conditions under which and against which enemy this ship was to be used.
The US Navy saw the sea missile carrier as the main and most dangerous enemy Aviation Navy of the USSR. However, the actions of single frigates or groups of them against the Soviet Navy were not planned. "Perry" could be in battle against the Tu-22 and Tu-16, but with the highest degree of probability they would be part of a large battle group, which would include missile cruisers and destroyers, and there would be a lot of frigates in the warrant . And with a collective defense, neither their air defense systems, nor their guns would simply have to deflect all-angle attacks. And in relatively simple conditions, against a weak enemy, limited angles would not be a problem - a ship can turn quite quickly and take an air target into the firing sector, and this speed usually surprises an unprepared person.
A definite minus can be considered one channel for the guidance of air defense systems - "Perry" could not fire more than one target at the same time with its anti-aircraft missiles. But - again, one must take into account the purpose of the ships. The frigate was not supposed to fight as the British then fought in the Falklands, for this the United States had other ships.
And the typical opponent of the Perry would be a single Tu-95RC, or Tu-142, which would lead Soviet submarines to an American convoy in the ocean - in the 70's, when these frigates were being designed, the Americans saw the Soviet threat just like that (which was mainly wrong, but they found out about this much later). That is, here everything was "out of place." In general, the Perry air defense cannot be considered weak, it could hit an air target at a distance of up to 80 kilometers, and the fire performance of the Mk.13 launcher, the famous "one-armed bandit", was high at that time - according to American data, it could fire one SAM every 10 seconds, although some domestic experts thought it was faster, up to 7,5 seconds per rocket. SAM-1 missiles themselves, even now, cannot be considered bad, although they are significantly outdated compared to modern missiles.
The universal launcher, with which Perry used rockets, made it possible to complete any combination of SAM missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The drums of the installation contained 40 missiles, while the time for launching the Harpoon was high - reloading the installation of this missile and its launch required 20 seconds of time instead of 10 for the missiles. But these missiles could be many. In the Russian Navy, for example, only 1 rank ships have a larger total number of missiles.
Recharge Mk.13
Thus, the placement of weapons on board the ship corresponded to its purpose with all the external irrationality.
But at the same time, it, like the single-shaft power plant, helped to significantly reduce displacement. So, an attempt to transfer the gun to the bow of the ship would lead to a significant lengthening of the hull, which would increase the cost of the ship, would require an increase in the power of the power plant and would increase the required amount of fuel on board. In general, according to the results of frigate design, the Americans came to the conclusion that, using traditional design approaches, the frigate would have about 5000 tons of displacement with the same composition of weapons, while with “design at a given cost” it would have a full displacement of 4200 tons .
Moreover, with such a displacement, the Americans were also able to reserve a place on the ship for a towed hydroacoustic station, which later turned the Perry into an anti-submarine, although it was not intended to be such.
It turned out to pack two helicopters into the same displacement. For comparison, in the Soviet Navy, two helicopters carried the BNK of the 1155 project with a total displacement of 7570 tons.
Two hangars, view from the stern
A major minus was the absence of ASROC anti-submarine missiles on the ship. But initially the frigate was not conceived as an anti-submarine in the first place, it had to act in conjunction with ships that had such missiles in the second, it had a “long arm” in the form of two helicopter-carrying torpedoes in the third and its own 324-mm torpedoes for self-defense and close combat in the fourth. When working in a group, the presence of a large number of helicopters and highly efficient towed ASGs among frigates made them effective anti-submarines without PLURs, and reduced to zero the importance of a weak padded ASU. Even later, the introduction of systems for the mutual exchange of information between ships of the US Navy turned any ship’s battle group into a single complex and reduced the disadvantages of a single ship to zero.
Vitality
The frigates were very popular in military operations of the U.S. Navy. They were used to protect shipping during the “tanker war” in the Persian Gulf and during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Perry class frigate with another Gulf War veteran — Iowa class battleship
In this case, a series of episodes occurred that characterize well how well this ship was made.
The first of these can be considered an incident with the frigate "Stark" related to this type of ship, which was hit by Iraqi missiles "Exoset". Much has been said about this, so you just need to give an assessment of what has happened.
"Stark" on that bad day
The plane from which the missiles were launched was discovered by the frigate in 20.55, and the attack occurred only after fifteen minutes. All this time, the radar of the ship "led" the Iraqi plane. At the same time, monstrous mistakes were made in the organization of the shift in the BIC in the performance of their duties, for example, when an unknown plane turned over to a frigate, the air defense system operator was in the toilet and no one took any measures to pull it out or replace it with someone missile attack itself.
With medium discipline and at least somewhat performing their duties, the aircraft would have been shot down long before missiles were launched on the ship.
The Stark attack does not in any way testify to his weakness as a warship; it was not in vain that the frigate commander wanted to be brought to justice for everything that happened.
But the combat survivability of "Perry" incident characterizes very well. About five years earlier, the Exocet missile, for the same reason (egregious disorder of personnel), hit the English destroyer Sheffield. As you know, this ship was lost. "Stark" was restored and returned to duty.
True, a reservation must be made here - the Americans were infinitely better than the British in terms of the struggle for vitality. Partly less damage to the Stark is due to this. But only in part.
More interesting from the point of view of Perry’s ability to “hold the blow” was another incident in the Persian Gulf - the bombing of the frigate Samuel Roberts on the Iranian mine on 14 on April 1988. The ship ran into an anchor mine, which exploded under the keel. The results of the blast were: partial separation of the keel from the hull, rupture of the welds of the hull and slow-going destruction of the ship’s set, failure from the foundations of the main power plant, its failure, flooding of the engine room, shutdown of diesel generators and blackout of the ship.
For the vast majority of ships in the world, this would be the end. But not in this case. The destruction of the hull turned out to be slow enough for the Americans to pull the diverging elements from the inside with cables and prevent the complete destruction of the ship. In five minutes, the emergency parties restored power supply. After that, the ship on auxiliary propeller columns left the minefield. Subsequently, the ship was restored and continued to serve.
Roberts exported after blasting
The U.S. Navy traditionally pays great attention to the fight for survivability, as most American sailors are both skilled firefighters, training to fight for survivability takes place simply in a sweatshop, and very strict requirements are imposed on the design of ships in this regard. So, for 1988-1991 years, three American ships were blown up by mines and not one was lost.
“Perry”, with all its cheapness and using less expensive steel grades than is commonly used on warships, was also created in compliance with all standards in terms of combat survivability. Like all American ships, frigates of this class passed shock trials - tests with a powerful underwater explosion near the hull, which was not supposed to cause the ship any malfunctions.
Shock trials
A very interesting example of the survivability of frigates of the Perry type is given by their use as floating targets. The video below shows the results of many hours of air strikes inflicted on the empty hull of a ship, on which, of course, no one is fighting for any survivability. During the SINKEX-2016 ship sinking exercises, this frigate was subsequently attacked by a submarine of the South Korean Navy that drove the Harpoon into it, then the Australian frigate hit Perry with another Harpoon, and the helicopter from it hit ATGM Hellfire, then Orion sequentially hit the frigate "Harpoon" and UR "Maverick", then the "Harpoon" flew into it from the Ticonderoga class cruiser, then the American helicopters hit it with several more Hellfires, after which it fired the F-18 unguided bomb, then controlled by a heavy bomb B-52, inally, the curtain of the American submarines torpedo struck him Mk.48.
After that, the 12 watch remained afloat after that.
As you can see, "design at a given cost" does not mean low survivability of the ship.
Building.
"Perry" were to become a mass series of ships of the US Navy and they became her. In many respects, this was due to the fact that even during the design of the ship, it was possible to build it on as many shipyards as possible. In addition, the design of the ship was created taking into account the need to save money on its construction. Even outwardly, the “Perry” looks like a ship formed by simple forms, the superstructure has a shape close to rectangular and is formed by flat panels, which in a significant number of cases intersect at right angles.
This was due to the need to simplify the production of hull structures and reduce metal consumption, and this goal was achieved.
However, something else was interesting - the design of the ship provided for its block assembly, but it also made it possible for the shipbuilding company to form these blocks in different ways. According to its decision, the shipyard could enlarge the blocks or vice versa, divide each block during assembly into smaller blocks and merge them in the right order. This made it possible to build the Perry anywhere.
Section of the frigate hull.
During the construction of the ship, there was only one major structural change, when the hull of the ships was extended to provide the base for longer SH-70 helicopters. PF except for this, the Perry was built in a long standard series, which again led to savings.
It is not surprising that these ships were also built in Australia, Spain and Taiwan.
"Perry" has been used repeatedly in hostilities. During Operation Mantis in the Persian Gulf, a Perry-class frigate destroyed an oil production platform, which the Iranians used as bases for attacks on shipping, and another ship of this class participated in a naval battle against the Iranian destroyer. During the Gulf War in 1991, the frigate was used as a carrier for helicopters operating against Iraqi platforms, landed airborne assault forces, and destroyed Iraqi targets on oil platforms with artillery fire. In fact, the “Perry” had to fight clearly in accordance with what it was originally intended for, even when it was invented in the Navy led by Elmo Zumwalt.
Currently, these ships are still in service with the Navy of Turkey, Poland, Taiwan, Egypt, Pakistan and Bahrain. Their military career continues.
Lessons for Russia
What conclusions for the domestic fleet and shipbuilding can be drawn from the program of these frigates? Of course, the Russian Navy does not need such ships, our tasks are significantly different from the US. But it would be nice to borrow approaches.
Firstly, it is the "Design at a given cost." When, relatively speaking, a power plant can be any, but not more expensive than a certain price, and with a limited cost of operation. And also weapons, hull and all other subsystems. This is often not applicable to ships that perform strike missions “at the forefront”, in which case they have to sacrifice economies for efficiency, but for ships that perform various less complex tasks, “Designing for a Given Cost” is what allows you to have “more fleet for those same money ”, which is often critical, and for Russia with its specific problems it will always be critical.
Secondly, standardization. Identical ships, modernization by "blocks", the impossibility of revising the performance characteristics of each order, as is the case with us. In principle, this has already been said more than once, but it will not be superfluous.
Thirdly, designing ships in such a way that it can be built on the maximum number of shipyards. If an aircraft carrier in the United States can only be assembled on one slipway, then small ships can be built in many places. As a result, it becomes possible to receive large series of ships in a short time. A large series is a reduction in prices, with a serious decrease.
In our country, it’s possible to build only RTOs at any plant (in the form in which the rest of the ships were designed), the same 20380 corvette in Zelenodolsk cannot be built, on the other hand, even when it was possible to lay ships at different shipyards, they are mainly gave the "Northern shipyard".
But the most important thing - “Perry” was the result of a vision of the future of the US Navy for the next minimum of a decade, and the vision was justified. This project was part of a large and completely unrealized High-Low Navy concept, the purpose of which was to find a way out of the contradiction between the required number of ships and the budget for them. And the Americans eventually found this way out. We, with our incomparably smaller money, with our gigantic gaps in the combat strength (the same minesweepers or ships capable of fighting submarines), with our neighbors from Turkey to Japan and the absence of allies, do not even see a problem.
What would happen if Russia was guided by "American" approaches in the construction of a surface fleet? How would a similar approach to shipbuilding programs look in the domestic version? Would he be successful?
We can easily answer this question. In the chaos of military programs, we have one positive example, a very successful one, the success of which is due to approaches to work similar to American ones. They developed in many ways by chance, but even in this form led to success.
“Varshavyanka” as a domestic “analogue”
Among the stupidity and chaos of our naval shipbuilding, there is an example of a directly opposite phenomenon. Long typical series of ships modernization by “blocks” from series to series, and not on every ship is crazy, the quiet evolution was initially not an ideal, but generally quite successful project and as one of the results - quick construction if necessary, at a very reasonable price. And serious combat effectiveness.
We are talking about submarines of the 636 series of Varshavyanka. Initially, they were not intended for the Navy, but were an export project, which is probably why no one from the Main Directorate or the Ministry of Defense climbed into the dark 2000 and later into the evolution of the project, and foreign customers calmly and measuredly paid for the construction of ships, unlike regularly falling into different fornication like "Poseidon" or racing with wildly changing each other projects of the Ministry of Defense ships, which in many respects because of this always lacked money to fulfill contractual obligations.
Varshavyanka is an example of the right approach to shipbuilding in Russia, an approach similar to the American
Since 1997, 20 of such boats have been built for foreign customers. Of course, their equipment was different from Customer to Customer, but not so much that, as a result, all “foreign” boats belong to the three 636, 636М and 636.1 projects. When the 677 Lada submarine project for the Russian Navy stalled, someone very clever organized the purchase of these submarines for the Navy. The first six went to the Black Sea Fleet, and on Monday, November 25, another such boat joined the ranks of the Pacific Fleet.
“Varshavyanka” with all their shortcomings still retain combat potential. They carry the Caliber KR on board, and even today they have good stealth. Their hypothetical modernization is able to leave them valuable warships for another decades. They, of course, are already outdated, but they will still serve with rearmament.
Compare the approaches to their design with Perry. As well as the Perry, the 636 project boats have design features that have emerged as a means to reduce the cost and simplify their design - for example, the absence of a hatch for loading torpedoes.
As in the case of Perry, Varshavyanka has more or less developed subsystems. Like the Perry, they are being built in a large series. Like the Perry, they are not super-efficient warships and are not oversaturated with the latest technology.
Total?
And the result is this. The first "Warsaw" for the Navy was laid in the 2010 year. Today there are already seven units in the ranks, the eighth is preparing to launch. The boat is to be built in 3 years. The price is quite affordable for our military budget. And if all of a sudden right now you start equipping them with anti-torpedoes, which they really need, new, more efficient batteries, modern torpedoes with modern telecontrol, improved computer systems that can increase the efficiency of the SAC, they will still be built in three years.
To date, 1997 of such boats have been built since 27, one is almost ready and two are under construction. At one shipyard. In the 2020 year, when the Admiralty Shipyards surrendered the Volkhov to the Pacific Fleet, the statistics of this series will look like this - 28 boats for the 23 year.
Varshavyanka is the domestic Perry, just underwater and mainly exported.
This is direct evidence that when we start working as Americans, we get the same results as Americans. Absolutely the same, no worse. This is a gag that should be silenced by anyone who doubts out loud that Russia can, if she wants, moreover, calmly and measuredly, without tears and super-efforts. Can't we work like them? We are already working like them, just at the separate Admiralty Shipyards and at their related plants. And the ships turn out to be quite valuable, never a missile gunboats or some kind of "patrol" squalor.
Of course, the Perry frigates were built in a much larger series than our submarines, and faster. But the similarity of the success of “Perry” in them and “Varshavyanka” surprises us.
When Russia finally ends with a madhouse with naval construction, when the orders of the ships and their quantity will be derived from the sane and realistic concept of the development of the Navy, and not as it is now, then we will be able to learn from the American experience a lot of useful things for ourselves, too. Not by grasping and by chance, but systematically and consciously. And some of this, albeit not in surface shipbuilding, we have already successfully tested in practice.
- Alexander Timokhin
- Wikipedia commons, US Navy, seaforces.org, TheDrive.com, Alexey Danichev / RIA Novosti
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