Sea drones... And a fleet driven into bases
Greetings, we will talk about an unpleasant but necessary solution to the problem now and in the future. Everything that has been happening since February 2022 has had a very painful impact on our army and navy. The Northern Military District conducted by Russia has resulted in an indirect military confrontation with the West and directly with the NATO bloc and its sympathizing puppets, the battlefield of which has become Ukraine, and it and its citizens are consumables on this battlefield. About the SVO itself it has been written, is being written, and much more will be written by all and sundry, now we will not talk about it as a whole. And about a new misfortune and problem for the Russian Army and Navy - maritime drones, surface and underwater.
The essence of these extremely dangerous remotely controlled and autonomous watercraft is to launch from a coastal base or an underwater, surface and even air carrier, enter a given target area and covertly enter it with direct physical contact, in order to self-detonate using a large amount of explosives, inflict the maximum damage to the target - be it a surface or underwater ship, coastal and underwater infrastructure, and so on.
If before the start of the SVO few ordinary people knew about such developments, then after that everyone knew. Unfortunately, these sea drones (they are also called unmanned boats - BEC) have shown themselves to be very effective in the World Cup basin, directly operating in its northwestern part right off the coast of the Crimean peninsula. I will not write about the losses and damage received from their actions by the KChF, they have not been officially confirmed. But I think everyone agrees that the damage and danger are high, and something needs to be done about it.
A little bit of what is known - where do these sea drones off the Russian coast and on board Russian ships come from?
You can read everything about this in detail on VO, including article Evgenia Fedorova “Fleet of sea drones: what are Ukrainian Drones "Mikola-3". Everything is detailed and intelligible there.
Let's move on to the main topic of the article - how to deal with them? How to protect warships from BEC kamikazes? Moreover, the enemy’s plans include receiving BECs with weapons installed on them, and not just explosives.
Let me make a reservation right away: I am in no way an engineer or a designer. He served as a radiometrist, foreman of the 2nd article of the warhead-4 on the border patrol ship of project 10410 with a base in Nevelsk, about. Sakhalin. Therefore, I do not pretend to have an instructive tone, I will just express my humble vision of the solution to the problem and am ready for any criticism.
So, in simple terms, any BEC has several control and guidance options. The first is according to a predetermined program, where the route, speed, etc. are designed. The second is remote GPS satellite control, from another ship or coastal station, from a UAV or other aircraft. Or combined control - according to the program and remotely by an online operator.
And, of course, to detect, identify and aim directly at the target, it has these same tools on board - positioning, navigation devices, optical-digital devices, cameras, thermal imagers, etc. Most likely, automatic acquisition and guidance systems detected target.
BECs can act either alone or in a group. The most effective time of day to use them is at night. Their small size, small silhouette above the water, low radiation in the thermal and radar range are the main problem for any fleet. The most effective way to detect them is from the air. The wake is visible from helicopters and UAVs, as well as a more contrasting mark against the background of cold water in the infrared spectrum.
The solution is obvious - to create a whole network of UAVs in the most dangerous sea directions, monitoring the surface of the sea in search of enemy UAVs. Which, in rotating waves, will monitor sectors and suspicious activity 24 hours a day. They can be based on the coast or on mother ships, including civilian ships converted for this purpose. Iran has such experience. You can borrow it.
UAV data, without entering the enemy’s air defense zone, can become an excellent first line of detection of enemy BEC. An expensive decision, but war is an incredibly expensive business, and the loss of your own landing craft or frigate with its crew from enemy naval drones is much more expensive. Of course, the weather factor, fog, low clouds, strong winds, the work of the enemy (and our own electronic warfare) - all this makes serious adjustments. But who said that fighting in the 21st century is easy?
An echelon network that monitors the water surface 24/7, aircraft-type UAVs with various detection systems will make it possible to detect enemy sea drones at a safe distance and give instructions to their carriers weapons – boats, planes and helicopters, attack drones for their destruction.
Of course, this will not solve the problem of enemy naval drones that have already broken through to our ships at sea. But for this we need a parallel solution - several high-speed boats with large-caliber rapid-fire machine guns, always (!) accompanying warships. They should become an integral part of every ship from MRK, corvette and larger.
On board they must have a high mast equipped with detection systems, weapons with a good set of power supply units for it - machine guns, rapid-fire machine guns and cannons with manual and automatic guidance, with good angles of attack. Primarily along the sides and in the stern. To fire at the BEC, moving away from it or walking on a parallel course. And, of course, they must have powerful engines to achieve high speed.
Their task is to patrol around the warship they are guarding in the dangerous zone of enemy naval drones, timely detection, warning of the ship’s command staff and destruction of the BEC. Ideally, each of them will be equipped with its own UAV to improve awareness in the sector of responsibility.
And of course, the protected warship itself must have its own UAVs to monitor the sea surface in the area around itself and along its course. Of course, retrofitting all warships in a dangerous zone of military conflict with on-board rapid-fire weapons, on the sides and in the stern, with at least sufficient firepower to destroy the BEC at a safe distance. It goes without saying that there should be floodlights.
You can argue as much as you like about the cost of all this, but how much are the lives of the crew destroyed by a drone of a large ship worth and what is the value of the fleet itself, huddling close to its bases, away from the range of enemy naval drones?
Few would argue that in that limited sea basin of the Black Sea, all the specifics of using the ships of the Red Black Sea Fleet were reduced to the defense of naval bases practically at the roadstead or at the wall and themselves. Despite the fact that most of the large ships of the fleet are forced to leave for the port of Novorossiysk and beyond. Everyone has long forgotten about the brave and beautiful landings of amphibious assault forces from large landing ships during exercises, proudly approaching the enemy’s shore.
Too many conditions did not work out for this. Finding yourself sunk by an enemy cruise missile, sea or aerial kamikaze drone and other dirty tricks has become very real at a great distance from the enemy’s shore, let alone next to it. And as a result, some ships became either surface launchers for the Kyrgyz Republic, or surface air defense-missile defense in bases, to the best of their capabilities. Cargo transportation by landing ships is a dangerous lottery marked “very”!
The result - in my opinion, in order to preserve the military fleet that finds itself in the situation in which the KChF is located - we need: a buffer from a line of UAVs for detecting sea drones and targeting weapon carriers at them in the sea zone. Also, every more or less large and significant ship needs escort and protection by specially equipped high-speed boats. As well as short-range UAVs.
The ships themselves must be retrofitted with rapid-fire weapons to destroy naval drones around the perimeter of the ship. And all this should work in maximum information-channel connection.
And lastly, ships should not sail the same course all the time from one point to another. And the crew and all those informed are prohibited from disclosing anywhere about the date and time of the ship’s departure to sea, and especially its purpose for the voyage.
Of course, in the current SVO it is hardly possible to have time to create what I wrote about for protection against sea drones. But for the future, we need to come up with something, create it, and implement it.
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