Helicopters for the Russian Navy
It is well known that a helicopter is an extremely formidable combat vehicle. It is distinguished from classic aircraft by the ability to take off and land vertically, as well as the ability to "hover" in the air in immobility relative to the earth's surface. These "highlights" give the helicopter special features, thanks to which it is, in fact, so valuable on the battlefield. But at the same time, they impose a number of significant restrictions on rotorcraft.
And these limitations should never be forgotten by anyone who undertakes to think about the use of helicopters in naval warfare.
On the advantages and disadvantages of "rotary wings" on the example of PLO helicopters
Without a doubt, an anti-submarine helicopter is archival and archaic. Its usefulness and necessity for fleet hardly needs proof. But, unfortunately, due to "innate" limitations, the helicopter is in principle unable to solve the entire range of tasks in combating enemy submarines that are assigned to aircraft. There are many reasons for this, and the first of them is a limited combat radius.
Alas, this is the Achilles' heel of any helicopter, which cannot be fixed, neither today nor in the foreseeable future. Let's take, for example, the modernized Ka-27M - it claims a flight time of 3,5 hours at a cruising speed of 250 km / h, a flight range in various sources of 800-900 km (ferry - 1 km) and at the same time a combat radius of 000 km. Which is not at all surprising, because it is obvious that at a distance of 200 km from the warship from which the rotorcraft took off, this helicopter can patrol for less than 200 hours.
Let's compare these figures with the data of the E-3A Viking carrier-based anti-submarine aircraft, which has long since been decommissioned. The latter had a cruising speed of about 650 km / h and a practical range of 5 km. Here, of course, there are big questions about what load this ferry range was considered in, but, according to the most conservative estimates, the aircraft is quite capable, having moved 121 kilometers from its carrier, to patrol there for four hours or more.
Well, for the Il-38N, the combat radius is usually indicated at all as 2 - 200 km.
The second problem of the anti-submarine helicopter is the limited search performance. Two hours of patrolling the Ka-27M is not at all equivalent to two hours of patrolling the same S-3A Viking. Simply because in 2 hours a helicopter at a speed of 250 km/h will overcome 500 km of water area, and a Viking at a speed of 650 km - 1 km, that is, 300 times more. In fact, of course, the controlled water area should be measured in square kilometers. But there are many nuances here, and we need not absolute, but relative figures that allow us to compare the performance of a helicopter and an aircraft performing anti-submarine searches, for which such a simple calculation is quite acceptable.
If we send a Ka-200M helicopter to 27 km, then it will survey 500 km of water area, and if we send a PLO aircraft to the same distance at a speed of 650 km / h and the ability to stay in the air for 4 hours at a distance of the same 200 km ( extremely moderate against the background of the old Viking), then it examines 2 km of water area, or 200 times more.
And finally, the third problem is the limited combat load. A helicopter is a relatively light aircraft. The mass of the same Ka-27M is almost half that of the Viking. Therefore, helicopters must work in pairs - one searches for a submarine, and the second - its defeat. At the same time, the Viking's standard load - 4 torpedoes and 60 drop buoys - allows it to work independently.
Thus, we see that the PLO helicopter is literally inferior to the specialized anti-submarine aircraft in everything. Nevertheless, the rotorcraft also has advantages, and here is the most important of them: the helicopter does not require a specialized carrier and can be based on almost any warship. This plus outweighs all the minuses taken together, making the PLO helicopter indispensable for any fleet whose tasks include combating submarines. Because even a single PLO helicopter, although it loses to an aircraft of the same specialization in everything, is capable of qualitatively enhancing the anti-submarine capabilities of a corvette, frigate or destroyer-class warship. A missile cruiser, of course, too, but still, hunting for submarines is usually not part of its task.
A PLO carrier-based helicopter is able to quickly find itself where the best sonar system (SAC) of a surface carrier ship cannot reach. No matter how perfect the 800-ton Polynom SJSC was for its time, its range, at which it could confidently “hold” enemy submarines, was measured in tens of kilometers. Accordingly, even for a specialized large anti-submarine ship of project 1155 with its Polynomial, a pair of helicopters on board provided a lot of additional opportunities.
They were the "long arm" of the BOD, which could be quickly "stretched" to the right place, say, in support of another ship that discovered the submarine. The helicopter's speed allows it to get to where the BOD is late. Also, helicopters could, albeit for a short time, dramatically increase the search performance of the BOD, which was useful, say, when the BOD entered the area where an enemy submarine had been discovered shortly before. At the same time, the presence of long-range anti-submarine missiles made it possible for a large anti-submarine ship to support helicopters at a considerable distance: Rastrub B was capable of hitting a target 90 km from the BOD.
Of course, the BOD has radio communication and can call the ASW aircraft. But if the ship is located at a considerable distance from the airfields based on PLO aircraft, then the helicopter, despite all its shortcomings, can be in the right place faster than the aircraft, and there is no need to break the radio silence mode.
In other words, the PLO helicopter is extremely useful and in demand even on a large anti-submarine ship, specially sharpened to counter enemy diesel and nuclear submarines. What can we say about frigates, patrol ships, corvettes, whose sonar systems were much weaker!
The PLO helicopter also has one more plus - it can carry a lowered GAS, which, for obvious reasons, the aircraft cannot use. Of course, a PLO aircraft can drop a buoy, and even a lot, but this buoy is a very expensive thing, and it’s just undesirable to scatter them around.
The conclusion from the above is very simple: in terms of combat effectiveness, an anti-submarine helicopter is definitely inferior to an aircraft and will never be able to replace it. But the usefulness of the PLO helicopter is unconditional and lies in the fact that it is able to significantly strengthen the PLO of ships that are either unable to take aircraft on board, or operate at a considerable distance from the airfields where PLO aircraft are based.
About attack helicopters
It is obvious that an attack helicopter is inferior both in speed, in combat radius, and in payload to the same multifunctional fighter, not to mention specialized attack aircraft like the Su-34. But his shortcomings do not end there.
A significant problem of the attack helicopter is its inability to conduct air combat against enemy aircraft. Yes, at one time a helicopter was a difficult target for a fighter: the old radars did not distinguish at all, or they distinguished, but with great difficulty, low-flying targets against the background of the underlying surface, so targeting the air-to-air missile with the help of radar was extremely difficult. Yes, and air combat missiles were not then intended to intercept targets at "ultra-low" altitudes. But now certain progress has been made in this regard, and the helicopter is no longer so invulnerable in air combat.
In addition, unfortunately, many still confuse invulnerability in the air and the ability to conduct air combat, and this should not be done in any case. In naval warfare, a multifunctional fighter solves many problems. This is a struggle for information space, by destroying enemy AWACS aircraft and patrol aviationthan blinding the enemy is achieved, his ability to detect and control the movement of our surface, underwater and air forces is weakened. This is the struggle for air supremacy by destroying enemy fighter aircraft, and covering warships from enemy attack aircraft raids. This, finally, is the destruction of enemy ships in an indirect (covering one's own attack aircraft) or direct (when a fighter performs a strike function) form.
Obviously, the first two tasks are not up to the attack helicopter - the fact that it is a difficult target in air combat does not allow it to perform the functions of an interceptor. To do this, he has neither the flight range nor the speed. And the same applies to covering its carrier from air attacks by enemy aircraft - a helicopter cannot prevent them from reaching the line of attack. Of course, theoretically speaking, it is possible to hang medium-range air-to-air missiles on a helicopter and, having raised the rotorcraft above the order, try to use them. In fact, the chances that the helicopter will have time to do all this in the event of an air raid are very small, and it will not be too difficult to shoot it down when it is at high altitude.
It is possible that such tactics will increase the air defense potential of the formation (by a few percent), but it is impossible to speak seriously about air defense built on the basis of attack helicopters. That is why no one has ever assigned air defense tasks to land-based helicopters - this is not a task characteristic of helicopters, and they cannot solve it somewhat satisfactorily. Yes, helicopters are sometimes equipped with air-to-air missiles - for self-defense and in some situations - to counter their own kind. Yes, with luck, a helicopter can shoot down a plane. But all this does not and cannot make the helicopter any effective means of air defense.
Let us now consider purely impact problems. For starters, attacks on enemy ships. As the practice of military operations shows, helicopters very successfully cope with the destruction of enemy light forces. But - subject to certain conditions.
So, for example, Israeli helicopters were a very effective means of combating Arab missile boats, but only when the latter did not have air cover. Or, for example, the destruction of the Iraqi Navy, which was trying to escape by leaving the combat area during the well-known Operation Desert Storm. The helicopters, again, did an excellent job: however, one should not forget that they worked in the absence of any opposition in the air and despite the fact that the control of the movement of groups of Iraqi ships was carried out by other means, including Orion patrol aircraft.
And yet - in all of the above cases, the opponents of the helicopters did not have adequate air defense - for example, the Iraqi fleet had a maximum of 76-mm artillery and MANPADS missiles ("Strela" and "Igla"). Thus, the role of helicopters that performed the strike function was reduced to the delivery of missile weapons from point "A", which is understood as the deck of the native ship to point "B", i.e., to the line of attack. It is not surprising that universal helicopters coped with this task quite normally without the involvement of specialized attack machines.
Of course, the helicopter is capable of attacking enemy ships. But - at a small distance from the carrier. Provided that the enemy either does not have aviation at all, or air supremacy in the area of operation is established and maintained by other means. And, of course, in the first place - against small ships, whose air defense does not allow you to "get" a helicopter at the line of attack.
But what if we are confronted by a more serious enemy? Say, a ship strike group (KUG) consisting of two or three destroyers? If we take American developments, then an attack by carrier-based aircraft of such a KUG will look like this.
First, an AWACS aircraft will hover 200-250 kilometers from the KUG, which will control the enemy and coordinate the attack. When everything is ready, the KUG will attack the demonstration group, forcing the enemy ships to turn on the fire control radar. And right there, as soon as they turn on, an electronic warfare group will enter the battle, crushing these radars with interference and using anti-radar missiles on them. And at the moment when the air defense of the KUG is loaded with interference and missiles, the strike groups, sneaking up and hiding behind the radio horizon, attack the formation from different sides with the same "Harpoons". It was believed that such an attack would not necessarily lead to the death of warships, but would reduce their air defense to almost zero, after which they could be finished off with simpler ammunition: the same guided bombs.
In the USSR, this issue was resolved differently - naval missile-carrying aviation had to reach the line of attack and launch such a number of anti-ship missiles that would overload the air defense of an enemy formation - part of the anti-ship missiles would be shot down or taken away by interference, but the rest would break through and cause unacceptable damage. To do this, it was necessary to provide a large number of missiles in a salvo, for which, in fact, divisions of naval missile-carrying aviation were created. In addition, both aircraft and missiles were made supersonic: this reduced the operation time of enemy air defense to a minimum.
Which of these concepts fits into a relatively slow attack helicopter with a pair of light missiles under the wing? Obviously, none. And there is another important aspect. The fact is that the Russian Navy, following the Soviet Navy, relies on long-range anti-ship missiles. The range of modern Russian anti-ship missiles is a secret, but one can hardly doubt that the missiles in service are capable of striking ships at least 500 kilometers away. In such a situation, it is much easier, if the enemy is already detected, to launch a missile attack on him, and not try to organize an attack with combat helicopters: unless this enemy is so small that it does not deserve the expense of "Caliber" or "Zircon".
Things are somewhat better with regard to the possible realization by a sea helicopter of its strike potential against ground targets. A helicopter can really do a lot here. In real battles, he often helped to disable enemy air defense elements. Helicopter is a terrible enemy tank, this is well known and, I believe, does not need proof. In addition, the helicopter is a huge threat to the infantry and other ground equipment. As a means of fire support for the landing, an attack helicopter is invaluable, but ... Unfortunately, this “but” appears every time.
With all its undoubted advantages, in sea operations against the coast, the helicopter is categorically not self-sufficient. Take, for example, a landing operation.
The landing of troops on the enemy's shore is an extremely dangerous action. You can use landing ships with ramps or landing ships-docks, you can land tanks and infantry directly on the shore or practice over-the-horizon landings. But at the time of the landing, both the landing itself and the ships landing it are in an extremely vulnerable position. During this period, our forces are concentrated on board landing ships and boats, or have just come ashore and cannot yet fully fight, but they themselves are an extremely tasty target. At this moment, even a single aircraft that has broken through to the landing order, even one enemy artillery battery, can do terrible things.
And therefore, the alpha and omega of any landing force is unconditional air supremacy and the processing of the future landing zone to a state of complete incompatibility with the life of any hostile equipment, including a machine gun.
When all this is done, attack helicopters are able to work out their bread for all 200%. They will hover over the landing zone, threatening immediate death to everything that miraculously managed to survive and risk opening fire on the landing troops. They will help eliminate enemy tanks and combat vehicles, hastily pulling up to the landing site. They will support the Marines with fire even when they are pretty far away from the coastline, if this is provided for by the plan of the landing operation. After all, a helicopter airfield, even a jump, even a permanent base, is easy to organize in almost any area (we don’t take the Himalayas into account - usually amphibious assault forces do not land there).
In general, it is impossible to deny the importance of an attack helicopter as a means of fire support for an assault force. But it will work effectively only when someone else covers the landing group at the crossing by sea from the air and ensures air supremacy in the landing area, and when someone else smashes everything to smithereens and in half on hostile shores. Both of these tasks, alas, are beyond the power of a helicopter. Air defense has already been mentioned earlier, and he will not be able to plow the coast due to the small payload. The attack helicopter does an excellent job of pinpoint strikes, with the destruction of compact targets. In general, the scalpel is certainly very useful for many needs - but not where a sledgehammer is needed to solve the problem.
From here - simple conclusions. For air defense of naval formations, an attack helicopter, if not completely useless, is very close to that. The anti-ship strike function of a helicopter, in principle, is in demand by the fleet, but against a deliberately weak enemy and in the conditions of our air supremacy. In amphibious operations, an attack helicopter is archival and essential, but these operations themselves are possible only in the zone of air supremacy or at least within the combat radius of a fairly large group of our aircraft.
About AWACS helicopters
What tasks does the AWACS aircraft solve? Firstly, it is the control of the air and surface situation. Secondly, targeting attack aircraft and fighters at air / surface / ground targets and acting as a flying command post for aviation. To do this, AWACS aircraft, as a rule, have in the crew not only pilots and navigators responsible for controlling the aircraft, but also other crew members, radar operators, whose functions include air combat control.
Can a helicopter perform AWACS functionality? Those who are ready to answer this question in the affirmative usually appeal to foreign and domestic experience. The British really created and operate AWACS helicopters, and in our country there is an analogue - Ka-31. But you need to understand that the capabilities of a helicopter to play such a role are extremely limited, and many tactical capabilities are not available at all.
The AWACS aircraft is valuable for its flight range. It can hang in the air for hours many hundreds of kilometers from the order it covers, and even when it unmasks itself, including its powerful radar, it does not unmask the connection. The AWACS helicopter does not have the required range and, in order to provide at least some acceptable patrol time, it must be in close proximity to the formation it protects. But in this case, the inclusion of the AWACS helicopter radar will inevitably tell the enemy's electronic intelligence the location of the ship group covered by him. This is the first, but a very big minus of the AWACS helicopter.
The second disadvantage is the limited capabilities of the radar. It is interesting that the task of controlling air combat was not set in principle for domestic AWACS helicopters. If, for example, look at the advertising poster of the Ka-31
Then there is no question of any control of the airspace and guidance of the same fighters. In fact, story The Ka-31 developed like this. In the distant, distant past, anti-ship missiles with a range of up to 250 km were invented in the USSR. Obviously, it was absolutely impossible to give target designation from a ship at such a distance in those years. There were no aircraft carriers, it was possible to rely on data transmission from land-based reconnaissance aircraft only on big holidays, and the idea of a helicopter capable of being based on a missile cruiser and equipped with a sufficiently powerful radar capable of illuminating the enemy for 200–250 kilometers lay, as they say, on surfaces.
This is exactly how, in fact, the Ka-25Ts appeared - an excellent machine for its time. He could, having taken off above the deck of the same Grozny missile cruiser, turn on the radar, being under the protection of the ship’s air defense systems, detect a surface target, automatically transmit its coordinates and parameters of the anti-ship missile launched from the cruiser. The helicopter itself could not correct the flight of the anti-ship missiles, but the ship was able to do this, which, based on the data automatically received from the helicopter, calculated the necessary corrections.
They tried to reproduce a successful helicopter at a new technical level, at the same time trying to expand its functionality. Alas, the capabilities of his radar were only enough to detect low-flying targets. Ka-31, covering the ship's order, could give information about cruise missiles or attack aircraft flying over the water. According to the creators, this information could increase the effectiveness of shipborne air defense systems by 20-30%. Not bad, of course, but nothing more.
What about air combat? The Ka-1995, which was put into service in 31, had a detection range of fighters that did not exceed 100–150 km. One cannot even dream of confronting an air group with a full-fledged AWACS aircraft, like the Hawkeye - the potential of the latter is many times higher, respectively, the enemy has the opportunity to build a battle according to his own rules.
But what about the experience of the British, who not only equipped their Invincibles with AWACS helicopters, three each, but also set about creating a modern model of such a helicopter for the latest aircraft carriers of the Queen Elizabeth type? Yes, the British went down this path, but this does not mean at all that British recipes will suit the Russian Navy. The thing is that the British used AWACS helicopters only and exclusively as part of the air group of an aircraft carrier armed with multifunctional fighters.
What did the British face using their aircraft carriers in the Falklands conflict? With a complete inability to control the airspace. The Sea Harriers could not be in the air for a long time, and the quality of the radar on them was such that the pilots mainly relied on their own vision, and not on the radar. As a result, the British missed many attacks on their ships - their planes were simply not where they needed to be, and did not have time to intercept the enemy.
It was physically impossible to land AWACS aircraft on the Invincible and Hermes aircraft carriers, and there were no bases from which they could cover the fleet near the conflict zone. Under such conditions, six AWACS helicopters (three per aircraft carrier) would have been invaluable to the British. With so many helicopters, it was quite possible to provide a round-the-clock air watch, which would allow the British commander to use his aircraft carriers much more decisively and effectively than in reality. Simply put, having AWACS helicopters, the British received enough information to successfully counter the sporadic Argentine air raids and had an excellent chance of detecting Argentine warships before they reached the missile attack line.
Of course, if the Argentines had an air wing prepared according to the standards of American naval aviation, consisting of fighter-bombers, electronic warfare aircraft and Hokaevs, then no AWACS helicopters would have helped the British. But against the weakest enemy, they would have been quite appropriate and could seriously change the balance of losses in favor of the British fleet. And Royal Navy is precisely such military operations that are coming - the “big good guys” in the person of American aircraft carriers will deal with something serious, but against the armed forces of third countries it will do.
But why do we need AWACS helicopters? Well, yes, on the deck of the TAVKR "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" several of these machines might have looked appropriate, although this is a rather controversial issue. And outside this deck? Fighter control? But if a fleet formation operates where it can be covered by land-based fighters, then air control over it should be entrusted to an AWACS aircraft of the same land-based. And if the fleet operates in an area where fighters cannot reach from land, then there will be no one to control the AWACS helicopter there.
Control of the airspace, including low-flying targets, in the immediate vicinity of the warrant? Sounds good, but frigate, destroyer, and even missile cruiser warships are incapable of providing helicopter flights around the clock - as a rule, such ships have fuel for only a few full refueling of a rotorcraft. And you can’t put a specialized helicopter carrier for each frigate. Nevertheless, and this is indisputable, a helicopter with a powerful radar can be extremely useful in a number of combat situations.
But why use a specialized AWACS helicopter for this purpose? At present, a powerful radar is an essential attribute of a modern anti-submarine helicopter, which is why the upgraded Ka-27M is equipped with radar with AFAR. Such a radar should be able to detect a raised periscope, detect a person in trouble at sea, which means it is quite suitable for monitoring low-flying targets. By the way, the Ka-27M can also be used for search and target designation of surface targets - its radar sees it at 250 km with a resolution of 10 meters.
It is clear that a specialized helicopter will solve these tasks more efficiently, but it is almost useless for anti-submarine warfare.
Conclusions
They are pretty simple. In my personal opinion, which I do not impose on anyone, the fleet today needs, first, second and third, modern PLO helicopters. This is the most important function of a helicopter at sea. At the same time, it is quite possible to make PLO rotorcraft universal, capable of using light anti-ship missiles, as well as conducting reconnaissance, including for issuing target designation of PRK. A small modification, similar to what was done with the Ka-27, will provide our fleet with search and rescue helicopters.
Our fleet does not need AWACS helicopters at all. But the Marine Corps would not even interfere with its own attack helicopter, capable of operating from landing ships as well. In my opinion, we should consider introducing attack helicopter formations into the Russian Marine Corps. Of course, we can only talk about adapting ground models of attack helicopters, and not about creating a fundamentally new machine: one should strive for a minimum of differences. Although Marine helicopters will be transported by sea, which means they must be able to land and take off from the deck, they are designed for operations over land, and not for naval battles.
And, of course, no one canceled the need to have relatively heavy transport helicopters in the fleet. Both the fleet and the marines need them - by the way, it is possible to create a specialized minesweeper helicopter on the basis of a cargo helicopter, if there is a need for it and if such a machine today will be an effective tool in combating the mine threat.
Thus, in my opinion, the whole variety of tasks of the Russian Navy can be solved by the presence of three basic versions of helicopters (PLO, attack, transport), of which only one PLO helicopter is a specialized development, and the other two are adaptations of existing Russian Air Force vehicles.
Well, now, having decided on helicopters, it's time to think about the need for the Russian Navy to have specialized helicopter carriers in its composition. But more on that in the next article.
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