Mine antiques of the Russian fleet
bottom mines should be noted that in 2010-2012.
an international competition was announced to organize
co-production in India.
... The Concern's proposals were rejected ...
... In terms of sea bottom mines, the PRC did not show
interest in the proposals of KMPO "Gidropribor".
Yu.V. Novikov
"VTS SSC JSC" Concern "MPO-Gidropribor" with foreign countries "
In a sense, this article is a critical response to an article previously published on the resource on this topic - "Modern Russian sea bottom mines" Kirill Ryabova, a detailed analysis of which, however, does not make much sense, since its erroneous provisions were taken by the author from the unreliable advertising information of the developers themselves. Accordingly, "in vain at the root", you need to deal with the primary sources - the materials of the developers.
At the same time, the topic is such that all the above facts have open links, on the basis of which the author has made a brief analysis of the crisis situation with our mine weapons.
To begin with, I would like to note that the designation of bottom mines with the MDM code does not apply to the Navy of the USSR and the Russian Federation and is typical only for post-Soviet export deliveries (Russia and Kazakhstan, where the main production of mines in the USSR was located).
Moreover, in an effort to confuse someone who is not clear (if our specialists sometimes themselves get confused in these new designations), we have succeeded so much that it makes a lot of sense to give a clear and logical connection of actual mines developed in the USSR with their "new export names."
The following diagram and table of the development of bottom mines is given from the book by R. Gusev (Deputy Head of the Anti-Submarine Weapons Directorate of the USSR and Russian Navy) "Foundations of the miner craft":
The general situation in the subject, where we did not lag far behind (or were at the level) during the Soviet era, today can and should be described with the words "junk" and "antiques".
In fact, what the head organization (Concern Gidropribor) and the “leader of the Zircon” Concern TRV represent about mine weapons today is shame and disgrace - morally outdated junk half a century ago. And this is to put it mildly ...
For example, the current "queen of the podium" of the TRV corporation and Gidropribor, the MShM mine, first appeared at an arms exhibition back in 1968 in the United States.
Only this was an exhibition of "captured weapons" - military equipment that the United States and its allies were able to steal from the USSR and its allies. RM-2 mines (now MShM) were hijacked by the US Navy in 1967 year from near Vladivostok. As they say, "facts on the face" ...
Problem No. 1. The complete absence of invisible bottom mines (both for ourselves and for export)
We have completely (absolutely) no stealth mines widespread in the navies of foreign countries.
A visual comparison of foreign inconspicuous mines with domestic bottom mines:
Domestic hulls have not only high sonar visibility, their characteristic shape ensures high efficiency of automatic classification algorithms, which, in turn, allows to dramatically accelerate the performance of mine action (i.e., identify and destroy our minefields in the shortest possible time).
And this is not some kind of exclusive, subtle mines have become a mass phenomenon since the end of the 80s, including in the navies of third world countries.
Obviously, we did not and do not have any technical problems to have such samples of mine weapons.
The question is exclusively organizational, in fact - in the dimness of responsible officials. As a matter of fact, mine antiques are a special case of half a century of cooling of all our naval underwater weapons (with a few exceptions, such as anti-torpedoes and a few more samples).
A similar gloomy picture was and still is with self-transporting bottom mines. About the mine SMDM (MDS, ed. 2510) from the site allmines.net:
The photos below compare our (product 2510E, loading on the Chinese submarine of project 877EKM) and the American Mk67.
With formally similar characteristics, the American sample had a significantly smaller diameter, length (and sonar signature), and most importantly, the ability to take two mines in place of a standard torpedo (i.e., have twice the mine ammunition on the carrier from us and, accordingly, twice as large the possibility of setting minefields).
This issue has already been raised in the author's article on the US Navy's broadband mines - "Hammerhead is not a Poseidon killer, he is a host killer.":
For example, the superiority of the MTPK in the depth of setting was "forced" - to somehow use the large dimensions of our mines for good. For 80% of the real tasks of anti-submarine torpedo mines, the depth of the Captor was quite enough. Most importantly, the overall dimensions and weight of our MTPK sharply limited the capabilities of carriers and fleets to install effective minefields, while the Captor had a dimension close to our RM-2G, providing double the ammunition load of mines on submarines (in relation to torpedoes) ...
Speaking of subtle bottom mines, it should be noted that, despite their low visibility, Western mine action forces are able to quite successfully fight them (albeit with a much lower productivity than for conventional mines), which they convincingly demonstrated back in 1991-1992 ... in a mine action in the Persian Gulf.
However, a key factor in this is that the navies of foreign countries are preparing to fight, including with subtle mines (and they have long become a typical target for mine action exercises).
However, this cannot be said about the "valiant navy".
In 1991, we simply refused to participate (in general, it is logical, because, apart from shame, we would have received nothing there).
Now?
Yes, the new ships with ISPUM (Project 12700) "have technical capabilities." It seems to be. For they still need to be able to use. But the shame - how "they can" (in quotes) here, was well shown by the TV channel "Zvezda" in a series of PR films about ISPUM and Project 12700: when a classified "mine-like object" when checked by an underwater vehicle turns out to be ... a sunken ship.
Yes, the President was cheerfully informed about how the lead ship of Project 12700 Obukhov “heroically destroyed German mines” near our dead submarine (which the President was diving to). The problem is that this work could be done not only by any western minesweeper-seeker of the 70s of the last century, but also by the basic minesweepers of the Soviet project 1265 with ancient hydroacoustics (MG-89) and underwater vehicle "Luch-1" (complex KIU- one).
Actually, the picture of a German minefield in the area of the death of one of our submarines from the advertising brochure of JSC "NIIP im. Tikhomirov ”, received not by a specialized search complex, but by a commercial 100 GKts side-scan sonar.
This is a clear example of the extremely low secrecy of old types of mines against modern search engines.
In order to be able to deal with inconspicuous mines, you need not read about them in magazines, but actually fight them. Such mines should be a typical target and be actively used during testing and combat training.
In fact, for today, our "valiant Navy" is simply afraid of subtle mines. And "pose" fleet in this matter should be exhaustively characterized by the word - "cowardice".
Problem No. 2. Catastrophic lag of proximity fuses for bottom mines of the Navy
Even the newest (2021) advertising brochures of the Gidropribor Concern and the "Zircon" leader of the TRV Concern in terms of proximity fuses of mines actually demonstrate the level of the 50-60s of the twentieth century (on the "modern element base"): 3-channel (acoustic, magnetic and hydrodynamic channels) proximity fuse with the most primitive analog processing:
At the same time, in foreign countries, from the end of the 80s, the mass introduction of digital processing means and "portrait features" of targets into the non-contact equipment of mines began.
An example is a page from the 1988 Australian Mine Book:
Already in the late 90s - early 2000s, bottom mines with "smart" digital fuses (or modernization of old mines with new fuses) began to be massively adopted not only in developed countries, but also in such "mighty naval powers" , for example, Pakistan (scan from the KGNC digest based on materials from the foreign press):
How did the parent organization look and react to this by type of activity (Gidropribor)?
And like this (written in the mid-2000s, but still relevant):
At the same time, insufficient attention is paid to this issue in the domestic electronics industry ... so one of the most modern signal processor in the domestic industry ... although it has a performance comparable to the best foreign samples, it has a significantly higher power consumption .. This circumstance leads to the limited use of domestic components of digital processing in the onboard equipment of marine underwater weapons ... The equipment designed on the basis of a foreign processor will ensure operability within a year, and the equipment designed on the basis of a domestic processor will not work even for one month.
As a matter of fact, the whole setting of fuses for "modern" (in quotes) mines of "Gidropribor" is reduced to the choice of specific channels and settings of the device of urgency and multiplicity, that is, this is what was already in the 50s of the last century:
Well, yes, a "special remote control" has appeared - after all, the XNUMXst century is in the yard.
The most amazing thing is that inappropriate bosses are not ashamed to advertise such rubbish at exhibitions!
For details on the same junk for the Russian Navy, I refer those interested to the cached pages of the government procurement website. Now there is not much on the site itself, but foreign intelligence services undoubtedly managed to remove the relevant detailed information on the mine "relics" (infirmities) of the Russian Navy.
Is it really bad?
Not quite.
Quoted from the article "Prospects for the development of non-contact explosive devices for marine ammunition" (YR Shkolnikov, IP Buslaev JSC "Plant named after Petrovsky"):
In its composition, the NV has a three-component magnetic sensor on thin ferrite films, a miniature solid-state silicon pressure sensor, as well as a seismic-acoustic sensor, on which the duty and main seismic channels are implemented, and an onboard microprocessor.
By means of a pressure sensor and a microprocessor, the NV sensitivity is automatically set, and together with the magnetic and seismic sensors, ... the parameters are corrected ...
The pressure sensor also measures the bottom pressure of the ship's hydrodynamic field.
The microprocessor program memory allows reprogramming in accordance with improved algorithms based on new knowledge and data on the physical fields of the object and signal processing methods.
Things are good?
Alas, not either.
Firstly, this sample took place only because it was not created at all by the "main organization by type of activity" (that is, not in "Gidropribor") - it is the result of the work of the head engineering research institute (Balashikha) and the plant named after Petrovsky (Nizhny Novgorod).
Secondly, the year in the photo of the fuse clearly shows when this work was carried out (and one of the authors of the article, Yu.R. Shkolnikov, has long been dead).
Thirdly, until very recently, carrying the ancient analogue "Gidropribrovskaya" APM equipment around exhibitions hints at the current situation (and the state procurement website - at what junk is in service with the Navy).
PS
Recently, there have been some positive changes in the topic.
However, the problem is that for the real cutting of this Gordian knot, large-scale comprehensive studies of promising issues, both mine weapons and anti-mine weapons, are required.
Let me emphasize that they are complex.
And with this, for a number of organizational reasons, there are serious problems.
As for the technical groundwork, it is, and it is very good, and in a short time can be implemented in the already serial samples of new mine weapons for the fleet.
But - the problem is in the organization of such work ...
Information