Robot offensive on the Black Sea - how to fight in a new way
On September 29, 2017, the Saudi frigate Al Madinah of the French F2000 project was attacked by three remote-controlled exploding boats of the Yemeni Houthis, one of which reached the target and seriously damaged the frigate.
This case can be considered the first successful use of a new type weapons – unmanned boats (UEC) as fire ships.
Small fireships have been used for hundreds of years to burn or blow up enemy ships when they come close to them. They were used, for example, by the British against the Spanish Great Armada and by Russian sailors in the Battle of Chesme, where a fire (and explosion) caused by one of the four fire ships used became key in the defeat of the Turkish squadron.
Human-controlled exploding boats have become a new level of this type of weapon. The Italians were the first to successfully use them on March 26, 1941, damaging the British heavy cruiser York and sinking the tanker Pericles. Such boats were used en masse by the Japanese during the final stage of the Pacific War in 1945. For example, on February 15, 1945, Japanese boats defeated the light forces of the American fleet, sinking four 250-ton gunboats supporting the landings in the Philippines.
The main defense against this kind of attack was the massive equipping of American ships with 12,7-mm Browning machine guns, installed directly on the sides of the ships and without dead zones.
However, in this case, the best defense is an attack, and most of the boats (and the Japanese made about 9 of them!) were destroyed at their bases or during transportation by sea, even before participating in their first and only suicidal attack. Total losses of the American fleet from Japanese exploding kamikaze boats: 000 ships sunk and 6 damaged.
The main target of Japanese kamikaze boats is American military transports, landing ships ensuring the landing of ground forces, the attack time is night. In general, little has changed since then; if we look at the statistics of losses of the Black Sea Fleet from Ukrainian boats, we will see exactly the same picture - mainly night attacks on large landing ships and large landing ships.
True, boats have now changed significantly. Yes, the warhead remained the same - two to three hundred kilograms of explosives, but now they are controlled not by a suicide pilot sitting on a boat, but by an operator via a satellite channel using thermal imaging optics, now this is a BEC - an unmanned boat.
This is what a hangar with Ukrainian kamikaze boats “Magura” looks like - small, unnoticeable on radar drones with high range.
Several dozen such boats have already been used in the Black Sea, and even though most of the boats were shot down by the Russian aviation, naval artillery and machine guns, unfortunately, were those who found their target.
What can be opposed to the new generation of disposable but cheap BEC kamikazes?
If there are less than a dozen of them, the boats are not bad; they are shot with machine guns “the old fashioned way.” But remember, Japan was able to produce tens of thousands of such boats... What will help repel such a threat?
First of all, of course, machine guns. But we don’t have human-controlled ones, thousands of machine gunners sitting on the sides of all Russian ships. But remotely controlled modules with 12,7 mm “Kord” from Uralvagonzavod – “Okhotnik”, the marine version of which is called “Narwhal”, are successfully produced, including for export, and used in the air defense system.
A module with a stabilized machine gun, good optics and a thermal imager increases the range of effective fire, and therefore much fewer such machine guns will be needed to hit targets.
Robots must fight robots!
Next, we need to increase the detection distance by equipping all ships with modern optical-electronic stations with a thermal imaging channel. Have you noticed that attacks by Ukrainian boats are much more successful on old Soviet ships that do not have modern optical stations?
But it is best to go to sea with a loitering UAV of an airplane or tiltrotor type “above the mast.” Such drones fly for dozens of hours and will be able to provide continuous visibility around the ship for many kilometers.
“But where should we base them?” – perhaps you ask.
The UAV can take off from a catapult installed on the ship, and land on land; it can use ships with a runway for landing, for example, Project 22160 patrol ships or Project 22460 border ships, which can accompany ships and convoy vessels that do not have runways. Aircraft-type UAVs of the "Orlan" type landed quite well on frigates and patrol ships using the "grid" method; tiltrotors can land on runways normally.
Well, we found a boat at sea - how to destroy it at a long distance? Don't launch an anti-ship missile! Raise a helicopter? No, drones come to the rescue again!
The new generation of Lancet loitering ammunition can be launched even without a catapult - from quadruple launch containers. Such an installation can be installed on any ship – up to the small “Rook”, thus obtaining a means of destroying BEC with a radius of tens of kilometers.
It turns out that by intelligently using remote-controlled weapons against enemy kamikazes, the threat of unmanned exploding boats can be reduced to a minimum.
All you need to do is understand that the world has changed, the old methods of war no longer work, and new ones are needed. We hope the Navy leadership can understand this.
С robots Robots fight more effectively!
Information