The Russian Navy of the Future: for a Parade or for a War?
Very strange things are happening in the world today. What is only the recent call of the member states of the nuclear club about the non-destruction of all living things with the help of their arsenals. It looked very ... peculiar. Like rock against drugs, and bees against honey. This is roughly how the statement of the powers that are steadily building up their nuclear arsenals looked like.
Thank God, the world is not yet a theater, and a gun on stage does not have to go off. Till.
These various treaties and agreements, which are supposedly designed to limit the world arms race, look funnier every year. But it's been a hundred years since ...
Okay, almost a hundred years. I have already touched on the articles about the ships of the very Washington agreement. By the way, he will soon be 100 years old. In fact, this is the first attempt to somehow limit the desire to rivet deadly machines with a larger number and a more impressive caliber.
Yes, February 6, 2022 will be exactly 100 years since the UK, USA, France, Italy and Japan decided not to build large numbers of battleships and heavy cruisers. No, the step, of course, was a big one, but ...
But everyone immediately rushed to cheat. And some of them build aircraft carriers, light cruisers and destroyers that are not prohibited by the treaty. And Germany, which did not sign anything, but which had the Versailles Treaty, built such a submarine fleet that everyone hiccuped for a very long time.
Well, in 1936, when the Treaty ceased to be in force, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and rushed to build everything. And then heat everything built. Mostly in the Pacific Ocean.
Pacific Ocean…
During the First World War, it was relatively calm. Rare operations by German cruisers and British fleet... It was hot during the second. Japan vs. USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Holland.
Today, a confrontation is outlined in no way inferior to what it was during the Second World War. But there are more participants, the participants have very impressive forces, and the confrontation region itself has become larger. The Indian Ocean was added to the Pacific Ocean.
Today experts generally say that the Indo-Pacific theater of operations will soon appear on military maps. It is here that the confrontations between India and the PRC, the USA and the PRC, Japan and the PRC, Japan and Russia, and so on, are predicted. There are too many strong players, too many interests.
Plus a heated fear of a possible Chinese expansion, which will begin with the capture of Taiwan.
China is building its fleet today at an unprecedented pace. 12 destroyers are being prepared for commissioning, five of which (project 055) are very comparable to missile cruisers. In the West, they are considered as such. Plus the third aircraft carrier and the fourth on the way.
Japan is in no way inferior to China. The built new Maya-class destroyers (which are also not much inferior to the Arleigh Burke), plus the conversion of the Izumo helicopter carriers into aircraft carriers - looks very promising.
Moreover, the fleets of the PRC and Japan are clearly being built ahead of schedule. To guard / defend borders, this number of ships is more than redundant.
Approximately the same as in the United States.
By the way, the American fleet is also "in the batch". The ships of the US Navy, which are forced to be on duty in all regions, clearly cannot withstand this race. Ships spend a lot of time at sea, which makes it necessary to reduce the time of maintenance and repairs to a minimum.
The demonstration of strength by China forces us to respond, but the fact that the PRC is demonstrating strength is in fact simply a response to the fact that in the United States and among the satellites today, China is portrayed as the Empire of Evil with all the ensuing consequences.
The expansion of China, the aggression against Taiwan with its subsequent annexation - they talked about this very loudly and a lot, but ... It did not work out. Annexation is still a big question, as is the ability of the United States to protect its allies.
But alliances are generally a delicate matter. As the events surrounding the Australian submarine contracts have shown, relations between allies can easily be torpedoed with the help of money. And the sharp turn of Australia from France to Great Britain in general does not threaten the alliance with anything special, but in particular, further events will show.
Of course, the United States does not care who will build the boats, as long as the matter does not stand. It will be necessary to strengthen the grouping in the Pacific Ocean, but here it is clearly visible that the United States alone is not able to do this. Allies are needed.
However, as practice shows, not all allies can in fact turn out to be as executive as Japan. There are those who, first of all, think about their own benefit, rather than about the general one.
Meanwhile, there is also a new player in the region. This is India.
Having built another aircraft carrier, the Vikrant, the Indian command is considering a third ship of this class. Plus India has focused its efforts on creating a large number of submarines, both of its own production and received, for example, from Russia.
The injection is in progress. Great Britain sent its group of ships to the region, led by an aircraft carrier. Even offended France and Germany, which in general has nothing to do with that region, sent their ships.
Demonstration of the flag? Well, of course. It is clear that no one wants a war, does not even plan. But everyone is preparing so hard for the struggle for peace that sometimes it becomes scary.
Yes, a century ago it was possible to calculate the naval forces of states in terms of tonnage, number of ships, caliber of guns. Today everything is leveled.
However, the fate of the world can easily be decided at sea. If only because in a naval battle you can inflict damage on the enemy without destroying cities with a population. This, of course, is written on the water with a pitchfork, but naval battles, whatever one may say, are still taking place. From the Argentine-British showdown for the Falklands to the Indo-Pakistani wars.
Sea space is a unique thing. The entire land is divided between states, jealously defending their sovereignty over the territories. The air over land is also divided by borders, which are guarded no less zealously than the land borders of states. And the sea / ocean is still free.
Today, ships (including military ones) of any country can still freely approach and even pass through the territorial waters of other states. Plus, any country that has a navy can easily project power into the area that is washed by the seas, regardless of where this area is located.
Photo: mil.ru
All seas and oceans are somehow connected to each other.
So the Falklands and the Gulf War showed very well what tasks a good navy can accomplish. Up to the destruction of the statehood of a single country.
Today, the confrontation at sea is very different from the race of dreadnoughts from the beginning of the last century or the aircraft carriers and battleships of the middle. The possibility of using nuclear weapons (which we do not consider, preferring to talk about waging wars within the framework of conventions) leaves an imprint on how confrontation can proceed.
Like the hot phase of the Cold War.
And here the number of warships is an important element. But just as important are things like having an auxiliary fleet. China, for example, can easily display about a thousand of its fishing ships as anti-submarine. Sorry Sonar, it doesn't matter who to work out, a shoal of cod or a submarine.
The presence of such power behind your back can greatly facilitate the life of your fleet and complicate the actions of enemy ships.
Port infrastructure. The very presence of a large number of ports capable of refueling ships, loading food and ammunition is a very significant component.
And in the very near future, the trips of the retrofitted fishing seiners will be just as important as the AUG raids. And the port infrastructure, properly adjusted, will be able to constantly maintain the presence in the sea of a large number of ships that will control the waters of a given region.
Well, if you also remember how individual countries from a deserted reef yesterday today create an island with an airfield ...
Naturally, everything must be considered as a whole. On the water, under water, on the banks and in the air above ships. It is more difficult, more specific, since, unlike land confrontations, there is another dimension under water here.
So the capabilities of the naval forces of any country are a very important detail in political and military confrontations.
Photo: mil.ru
And if you look at the results of the past year, our Navy is very, very far from ideal. Especially in the Pacific Ocean.
When in 2020 a new virus began its march across the planet, it even seemed for a second that here it is, that threat in the face of which all humanity can forget about the possibility of destroying the world, because this time the world will be destroyed without human help. Well, almost no help. On the one hand, yes, the virus threatened everyone equally: both Chinese rice growers and businessmen from Soho.
But no, on the contrary, the virus became a reason for worsening with some, and warm friendship against others.
It is quite natural that now every large (and not large either) country seeks to create a kind of cocoon of security around itself. In which it is relatively safe to wait out newfangled phenomena such as viruses, refugees from impoverished countries, and so on.
Everyone has already heard, including from the lips of Russian politicians, such a term as "zone of influence." In fact, it is a perimeter “only for insiders”. And many active players are developing such schemes.
China is implementing the "Asian Mediterranean" concept. Turkey - Blue Homeland project. India - SAGAR project. Australia, Argentina, Brazil. Brazilian warships in general very often began to be seen off the African coast in the South Atlantic, where the Brazilians seem to be engaged in the fight against pirates.
In general, almost every country with a decent military fleet, you can find similar projects. The exceptions, perhaps, are the United States and Russia. For the former, the zone of interests is the whole world, Russia ... Perhaps it is even strange that we do not have such a concept in the development of such a concept.
Meanwhile, the right to control key areas of the seas is very serious. In this respect, we are very far behind the key maritime players, China, Japan, and the United States. Meanwhile, our fleet looks from year to year more and more frivolous against the background of what is happening in the PRC and Japan.
We have really sunk to the point that we are trying to solve our problems in the seas by modernizing forty-year-old Soviet-built ships. And we give out (fortunately, the patriotic part of the public welcomes this with applause) for the achievement of such modernization.
Russian fleets, not only that they are disunited and scattered across the seas, do not look today as a force capable of controlling at least something. Maximum - yes, to demonstrate somewhere a flag, nothing more.
For some reason, in our country, not only at the level of the layman, it is generally accepted that the fleet is a kind of expensive toy for admirals, providing them with career growth. And nothing more.
Soon we will not have a decent military fleet at such a pace. And the second minus of our time is the real absence of a maritime policy.
And here an unpleasant conclusion arises: if the navy is a luxury, then the naval policy is an unacceptable luxury, since it implies a strong navy.
Meanwhile, it is the fleet, a strong, powerful and modern fleet that is capable of pushing the threat away from the country's borders. Not a military alliance between Belarus and Russia, which, in my opinion, is more than dubious, but the fleet. The fact that, for example, missiles or interceptor missiles can be deployed on the territory of Belarus, is a laugh. All this is leveled by the same missiles and anti-missiles on the territories of Moldova, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
Two dozen submarine cruisers stuffed with cruise missiles with nuclear warheads - this is what will much more effectively make the same United States think that the real threat is located directly at their borders. Yes, marine. But what is more valuable a rocket launched from land than one that is launched from under water?
Russia cannot afford not to have such an important strategic component as the fleet. Not eligible for the absence of a maritime concept and an active maritime policy. We have no right to be helpless.
Those who have no strength are doomed to defeat.
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