If the night is against us
In general, I planned this article as a calm addition to “Don’t be torn to pieces by a pack”, because in the process of discussing it a couple of ideas appeared, but on February 14 I made my own changes.
No move
Two weeks have passed since the death of the RK “Ivanovets” and several days have passed since I wrote the article “Do not be torn to pieces by the pack,” and what do we see? Again a massive, and at the same time sudden, night attack under the cover of an air raid, again the ship was unable to move, and again repeated attacks on the hole. There are, of course, differences, important, but not fundamental. How can one be calm here? It's difficult, but you have to.
Once again, the enemy posted video clips from the cameras of the attacking fireships, but there were noticeably fewer angles and cameras involved than there were during the attack on the missile boat. I assume that this is due to the enemy’s desire to deploy Magura BECs capable of sinking a fairly large ship with a very small number, and thereby exerting maximum psychological pressure. I am sure that this is a trick, and the attacking fireships were significantly more than the declared five.
However, numbers are numbers, but from the video it is clear that the first BECs approached at low speed from the shore without the slightest resistance, that at the beginning of the attack the ship had no speed and that the fire ships were targeted and without interference, not counting the shelling from small arms weapons, the bursts from which flashed only once in the frames, exploded at least three times in the same place closer to the stern of the ship. And this is a direct consequence of conclusions that were not drawn at all from previous attacks...
It is clear that Alupka, off the coast of which the BDK was attacked, is much east of the mouth of Donuzlav, where the Ivanovets died, but it is also clear that the western (and southern) part of the Black Sea is weakly (if at all) controlled by the Black Sea fleet Russia. And this means that neither ships nor ships throughout the entire World Cup waters are insured against attacks by unmanned enemy boats (and this enemy is by no means the Navy) with a cruising range of 800 km. Therefore, it is absolutely unclear why the BDK stood at night, without movement and without protection, within obvious reach of the fireships, and even under the supervision of the Global Hawk, which, in our minds, should have been shot down a long time ago. The Houthis for example.
It may seem strange to persistently mention the lack of speed for a large and not very fast ship, with a full speed of only 17,5 knots / 32 km/h, since it’s not difficult to catch up with it, and it will take a very long time to accelerate, but if you think about it, nothing strange.
The fact is that really stealthy in all ranges, with a low silhouette (this is not the same as semi-submersible) BECs, forced to attack a moving target, sharply lose their stealth as they gain speed, thanks to the bow breaker, diverging waves and wake! This means that it will be possible to detect and start shelling fire ships earlier. In addition, re-targeting a moving ship into an already damaged hole will be at least difficult, and this will dramatically increase survivability. What can we say about faster ships?
From here follows an elementary solution - outside points covered by boomnet barriers, overnight mooring of ships should be prohibited!
And even more so, such parking should be prohibited during an air raid warning. If it is impossible to hide behind nets, the proposed course of action may be as follows: following a broken zigzag (but not a regular zigzag!) course along or away from the shore in an arbitrary direction or along a closed route of irregular shape. Maintain combat speed (cruising speed). Of course, the sea must be closely monitored by all available means.
And all this has been known and used since the time of the Great Patriotic War!
Well, that's it, now we can return to what was planned.
How to resist?
Let me remind you that in the article “Don’t be torn to pieces by a flock,” I tried to collect the fastest and most feasible methods and means to counter remote-controlled, stealthy, high-speed unmanned kamikaze boats, in the absence of modern means of detection at night and the lack/ineffectiveness of weapons.
One of the methods is maintaining the speed with the ability to quickly reach the maximum speed, and the means are LED spotlights for the effective use at night of a sighting column that controls the fire of 30-mm machine guns, and FPV-drones for an additional channel of destruction. Also mentioned was the unused possibility of reversible impact on the satellites of the Starlink system, without which the BECs simply would not be able to operate in any way effectively.
And when discussing with jdiver and a little later with Last centurion First, balloons that jammed Starlink subscriber terminals were mentioned, and then tethered multicopters were mentioned as being much more convenient to use. In Russia, civilian models of tethered multicopters have been created and produced, capable of lifting several kilograms of load, from high-definition video cameras to radio signal repeaters, to a height of up to 150 meters and staying there for a significant time, in some cases unlimited.
Not being an expert not only in jamming, but also simply in radio business, I will nevertheless take the liberty of asserting that jamming to prevent the normal operation of the Starlink subscriber terminal from a height of 150 m to an overlap radius of several hundred meters is simply possible due to the interference power and short distance. But this is a costly business and, if there are no ready-made jammers, then it takes some time to implement.
But the second idea is exactly what is needed, can be implemented extremely quickly and from what is available! Namely: shooting radar jamming shells (dipole reflectors) from the standard launchers of shipborne electronic warfare systems, which are on all (I’m sure, without exception) ships, and if suddenly not, then in the bases - of course.
Depending on the vertical pointing angle, clouds of dipoles can be placed either practically above the ship or at a distance, depending on the type, up to 1,5 km, and the duration of action is 5–10 minutes, depending on the weather.
But these clouds will not interfere with the radar, but will interrupt the connection between the satellite and the BEC. The density and dimensions can be adjusted by installing the fuse and the frequency of firing the shells.
It is unknown what algorithm is included in the control system of Ukrainian fireships when the signal is lost, maybe a complete stop, which would be ideal, or maybe continuation of movement in the direction specified before the connection was lost, but even in the worst case, if there is a homing system for the ship via the thermal imaging channel, the task of defending the ship will become much easier!
After all, evasive maneuvers will be inaccessible to the fireship, and it is not a fact that with the characteristic bumpiness there will be no homing failures.
It may be possible to get by by firing shells towards the attacking fireships, but, more likely, you will have to set up interference all around at the first sign of a massive night attack.
Optical and thermal interference is visually denser and placed closer to the ship, but in the absence of photo radar interference, let it be there.
At the same time, due to the low radar signature of boats, the use of artillery radars against them is still ineffective, and clouds of dipoles are unlikely to interfere with the guidance of guns and machine guns through optical channels. Controlling FPV drones in the cloud will likely be impossible.
I wrote this article not for the sake of anything, but solely in the hope that some of the sailors will catch the eye of this text and at least bring some benefit.
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