Dreadnought Heir
If you need a lot of attack missiles, and nowhere to place them, you need a new class of ships
The contradiction between the need to apply massed rocket attacks and limited ammunition can be resolved by creating a qualitatively different type of ship. Its distinctive features will be a radically increased strike potential and powerful structural protection in combination with effective means of self-defense. In other words, we need a dreadnought of the 21st century.
Recently, we have seen a pronounced process of increasing unification of surface ships of the main classes. However, such standardization assumes that the efficiency of solving particular problems under given constraints will be lower, and sometimes significantly, than with specialized ships. This trend suggests that so far a complete understanding by military science of changes in the tasks of the fleets and the methods of their solution has not happened. Behind the promising non-vanishing ships of the main classes, the role of the escorting forces is mechanically left, and shock functions are also assigned to them.
An analysis of the experience of wars and armed conflicts of recent decades, as well as the capabilities of new weapons systems, in particular, ship-based air defense systems and, in particular, multi-channel long-range and medium-range air defense systems, shows that promising universal ships may not be able to fulfill all their expectations. First of all, we are talking about percussion problems.
Floating Arsenal
Consider the task of defeating ground objects in an air offensive operation. The number required for the destruction or incapacitation of air defense facilities to ensure its reliable suppression in an operationally important area, even when waging wars against third world countries, amounts to dozens and even several hundred. If we consider that each of them requires several missiles (2 – 10 and more), then it may be required from 500 – 700 to 1500 and more placed on the missiles. Otherwise, the solution of the first operational task of the air operation - the conquest of superiority in the air is threatened. What, then, is to be said about the conduct of hostilities against highly militarily developed countries?
“The English admiralty made the right conclusion: the low efficiency of large-caliber artillery is not connected with the power of its guns, but with their insufficient number”
The situation is even more acute with the solution of the problem of causing an unacceptable defeat to non-nuclear strategic weapons military potential and the enemy’s economy. Today, the United States is creating a system of rapid global strike, designed specifically for the disarming effect on the nuclear forces of the enemy (Russia), the suppression of its system of state and military leadership and control, the destruction of strategic potential. The task of creating such a system in Russia has already been formulated by our senior management. At the same time, the problem of placing many hundreds and thousands of long-range cruise missiles on carriers (the number of ICBMs with non-nuclear warheads will be incomparably smaller) remains. The carriers of the bulk of this mass of missiles should be military fleets — only they can approach a salvo range. Sufficient strategic aviation The US is unable to replace the Navy. In Russia, the number of strategic aviation which is small, when solving such problems, you can only rely on the fleet.
There is also the problem of defeating groups of surface ships, especially those with powerful multi-channel air defense systems. The capabilities of an anti-aircraft missile system (ZSR) of only one such ship (such as Ticonderoga or Orly Burk) even for low-flying small-sized anti-ship cruise missiles (RCC) are estimated for one firing cycle from three to four to seven to eight missiles, depending on the trajectory and speed. As part of an aircraft carrier group (led by one aircraft carrier) such ships can be from three to five to seven units. Given the participation rate, they will be able to destroy from 12 – 20 to 25 – 30 missiles in a firing cycle, that is, in less than 20 – 30 seconds.
Modern Russian surface ships have no more than 20 PKR on the cruisers of the project 1144. The rest have no more than 16 CRP. It is difficult to ensure such coordination of launching of missiles in order to maintain the time interval of their approach to targets with a range of volley less than 20 – 30 seconds, even when working with ships of the same order.
The situation with submarines is even worse. Having a maximum of 24 missiles onboard (in the 949A submarine of the project), they can only deliver weakly coordinated time-based volleys, since acting alone at large distances from each other in counter conditions of the enemy’s anti-submarine defense forces (PLO) seconds Thus, a powerful missile volley of a heterogeneous strike force will be “smeared” in time. The missiles will approach the target with groups of 15 – 20 units and be “ground” by the air defense system. The probability of success in this case is small.
Not much better results are achieved, even if in one or two installations of vertical launch there are a sufficiently large number of missiles. Their withdrawal from launchers (launchers) is possible at intervals of five to seven seconds. Accordingly, for a shooting cycle, no more than four to six missiles can be fired from one launcher, and from eight (as is happening today on such large ships as Ticonderoga and Orly Burk) - eight to twelve. It is very difficult to solve the problem of creating a volley of sufficient density. There may be objections: they say, before such problems did not exist, there were enough 16 – 20 missiles to “penetrate” the air defense of the enemy aircraft carrier group. Indeed, since previously there was no such saturation of multichannel air defense systems, this was enough. At that time, the air defense system was based on single-channel complexes - Terrier, Tartar, Talos. The total connectivity did not exceed three or four such missiles. Accordingly, a salvo from 12 – 16 and even eight missiles was quite enough for an income to the target of two or three or more missiles, taking into account the resistance of the EW system. Today the situation has changed qualitatively. The capabilities of the air defense system have grown by an order of magnitude and continue to increase, starting to exceed the capacity of the existing ship forces to create a salvo necessary to overcome it. There is a growing contradiction between the need for delivering massed strikes by long-range cruise missiles (CD BD) to ground targets and the existing capacities of their carriers. The resolution of these contradictions is possible by creating a fundamentally new class of ships.
The battleship battleships that replaced the battleships (or, as they were called after the reclassification, battleships-dodrednounouts) were named after the first ship of this class, the English Dreadnought. The experience of the Russian-Japanese war 1904 – 1905 showed that the artillery of medium calibres became the main cause of the death of heavy ships - squadron battleships and armored cruisers, although it could not always penetrate armor. The English admiralty made a completely correct conclusion that the low efficiency of large-caliber artillery is not connected with the power of its guns, but with their insufficient number (for four large-caliber accounted for up to 24 – 30 of medium caliber). Given the inevitable increase in booking, the English fleet has relied on a radical increase in the number of main-caliber guns on new battleships. Thus was born the "Dreadnought", which marked the beginning of a new type of battleship, which existed in the fleets until the end of the twentieth century.
We see a similar situation today. There are a lot of attack missiles, and the existing classes do not allow them to be placed in sufficient quantities. Need a new class of ships.
And the drone to boot
The appearance of the new ship is advisable to determine, starting from the tasks assigned to it. The first of them is the defeat of ground-based objects of the Kyrgyz Republic BD according to the plan of possible operations and combat actions: air, sea, Ground forces on coastal directions, and also to destroy the economic and military potential of the enemy with non-nuclear strategic weapons. Experience shows that even in relatively small-scale conflicts, such as NATO aggression against Yugoslavia or against Iraq and Libya, the expenditure of the KR database was huge - from a few hundred to a thousand and a half. In the case of such actions against developed and larger states, missiles will require up to several thousand. And Russia does not have any other carriers, except for surface ships and submarines, and in the near future they will not appear. To accommodate such a large number of KR database on existing classes of ships, even promising, they will need more than a hundred. This is completely unthinkable, primarily for economic reasons. Acceptable number of ships - within a dozen or a half. This means: on each of them the number of hosted CRs should be measured in hundreds. Given the limitations associated with an acceptable displacement, weight and size characteristics of existing and prospective DPS and the KR BD themselves, it can be considered reasonable to have onboard a 192 – 256 missiles deployed in several DPS.
The second task is the defeat of large enemy surface groups with a powerful air defense. Overcoming it implies the need to form a volley from one ship with a density exceeding the fire capabilities of the air defense system no less than one and a half times. Then, taking into account the electronic countermeasures really defeat the main goal. That is, the rate of missile launch should be at least 60 – 70 missiles per minute. This means that the DPS on the ship must be placed in four to five groups, separated so that they can be launched simultaneously.
In fact, this is where the requirements for the shock weapons of such a ship are completed. The situation is really somewhat reminiscent of the one that served as the basis for the appearance of the Dreadnought, a radical increase in spite of the prevailing stereotypes of the main strike weapon.
In addition, the new ship needs an autonomous target designation system that provides long-range missile strikes with its missiles. The best option could be to equip your own system of reconnaissance and surveillance of the surface situation on the basis of the UAV. The ability to patrol at a distance of up to 400 kilometers from the order for three to four hours will allow you to control the sea space in one direction with up to three UAVs. And the corresponding detection range of the onboard radar station of the UAV will provide observation of the main ships of the order beyond the reach of their anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM), that is, at least 200 – 250 kilometers. The UAV, therefore, will be large enough and can become one of the main targets for the air defense system of the enemy’s naval connection. Accordingly, in order to ensure combat stability, it is necessary for it to have a high limiting flight speed for evading fighter attacks and effective radio-electronic means of self-defense.
Constructive protection and self-defense
Other requirements that determine the appearance of the ship necessary today concern the defense system and constructive protection. As part of the anti-submarine defense, it does not make sense to assign the task of detecting and defeating submarines to it. Such a ship will never act alone and as part of the ship group will always be the core of the order, around which the PLO system will begin to be built by other forces. In this regard, he must be able to repel blows from underwater weapons — torpedoes of various types. To do this, it must be equipped with a highly effective set of anti-torpedo protection.
Being a ship of the nucleus, he should not solve the tasks of collective air defense for the same reasons that have been expressed with regard to the system of air defense. For this reason, the composition of its air defense weapons may reasonably be limited to those necessary for self-defense. However, they should be sufficient to repel the most powerful missile strike, even in the conditions of weakening the collective air defense system. Taking into account the above considerations on the possible density of a volley, it is advisable to put forward to his self-defense system the requirement to have at least 20 – 24 target channels on board. That is, at least five or six multi-channel short-range air defense missile systems and two to four anti-aircraft artillery systems (ZAK) or anti-aircraft missile and artillery systems (ZRAK) on board. Not so exaggerated requirements, given that the aircraft-carrying cruiser of the 1143.5 project, designed in the 70-ies, has two short-range multi-channel air defense missile systems and four air defense systems each.
Special attention deserves constructive protection. The ship must have sufficiently powerful reservations and other effective elements of constructive protection and durability struggles to withstand at least four to five anti-ship missiles with kilograms of 350 – 500 without loss of combat capability, and also to be able to return to base with 10 – 12 such rockets. In this case, when confronted with an equivalent compound, after the preemptive strike of the enemy, he will retain the ability to strike back. These are quite achievable indicators - the Second World War battleships withstood a greater number of hits of 500-kilogram aerial bombs and 700 – 1200-kilogram shells. Today, the possibility of creating a more durable and easy structural protection is much broader. The reference to the probability of the destruction of a ship by a nuclear strike is not fully justified. It’s fundamentally impossible to create a high-density volley with missiles in nuclear equipment, since undermining the warhead of such anti-ship missiles, brought down by the air defense system, will destroy all others within a radius of several kilometers, the electromagnetic pulse will destroy the electronics at long distances, and the remaining ionized cloud for a long time time will impede the work of the homing missiles.
Autonomy, speed and seaworthiness should correspond to similar characteristics of ships of other classes of the ocean zone, so that the “new dreadnought” could operate as part of the operational squadrons of the Russian Navy. It can be assigned the function of a command ship on which the group commander and his headquarters will be located. It must have a developed airborne communications complex and a sufficiently powerful combat information and control system, allowing to ensure the control of operational connection forces. The displacement of such a ship, according to rough estimates, can range from 35 to 45 thousand tons.
Such is the image of a qualitatively new type of ship, the distinctive features of which are radically increased strike potential and powerful structural protection combined with effective means of self-defense.
The contradiction between the need to apply massed rocket attacks and limited ammunition can be resolved by creating a qualitatively different type of ship. Its distinctive features will be a radically increased strike potential and powerful structural protection in combination with effective means of self-defense. In other words, we need a dreadnought of the 21st century.
Recently, we have seen a pronounced process of increasing unification of surface ships of the main classes. However, such standardization assumes that the efficiency of solving particular problems under given constraints will be lower, and sometimes significantly, than with specialized ships. This trend suggests that so far a complete understanding by military science of changes in the tasks of the fleets and the methods of their solution has not happened. Behind the promising non-vanishing ships of the main classes, the role of the escorting forces is mechanically left, and shock functions are also assigned to them.
An analysis of the experience of wars and armed conflicts of recent decades, as well as the capabilities of new weapons systems, in particular, ship-based air defense systems and, in particular, multi-channel long-range and medium-range air defense systems, shows that promising universal ships may not be able to fulfill all their expectations. First of all, we are talking about percussion problems.
Floating Arsenal
Consider the task of defeating ground objects in an air offensive operation. The number required for the destruction or incapacitation of air defense facilities to ensure its reliable suppression in an operationally important area, even when waging wars against third world countries, amounts to dozens and even several hundred. If we consider that each of them requires several missiles (2 – 10 and more), then it may be required from 500 – 700 to 1500 and more placed on the missiles. Otherwise, the solution of the first operational task of the air operation - the conquest of superiority in the air is threatened. What, then, is to be said about the conduct of hostilities against highly militarily developed countries?
“The English admiralty made the right conclusion: the low efficiency of large-caliber artillery is not connected with the power of its guns, but with their insufficient number”
The situation is even more acute with the solution of the problem of causing an unacceptable defeat to non-nuclear strategic weapons military potential and the enemy’s economy. Today, the United States is creating a system of rapid global strike, designed specifically for the disarming effect on the nuclear forces of the enemy (Russia), the suppression of its system of state and military leadership and control, the destruction of strategic potential. The task of creating such a system in Russia has already been formulated by our senior management. At the same time, the problem of placing many hundreds and thousands of long-range cruise missiles on carriers (the number of ICBMs with non-nuclear warheads will be incomparably smaller) remains. The carriers of the bulk of this mass of missiles should be military fleets — only they can approach a salvo range. Sufficient strategic aviation The US is unable to replace the Navy. In Russia, the number of strategic aviation which is small, when solving such problems, you can only rely on the fleet.
There is also the problem of defeating groups of surface ships, especially those with powerful multi-channel air defense systems. The capabilities of an anti-aircraft missile system (ZSR) of only one such ship (such as Ticonderoga or Orly Burk) even for low-flying small-sized anti-ship cruise missiles (RCC) are estimated for one firing cycle from three to four to seven to eight missiles, depending on the trajectory and speed. As part of an aircraft carrier group (led by one aircraft carrier) such ships can be from three to five to seven units. Given the participation rate, they will be able to destroy from 12 – 20 to 25 – 30 missiles in a firing cycle, that is, in less than 20 – 30 seconds.
Modern Russian surface ships have no more than 20 PKR on the cruisers of the project 1144. The rest have no more than 16 CRP. It is difficult to ensure such coordination of launching of missiles in order to maintain the time interval of their approach to targets with a range of volley less than 20 – 30 seconds, even when working with ships of the same order.
The situation with submarines is even worse. Having a maximum of 24 missiles onboard (in the 949A submarine of the project), they can only deliver weakly coordinated time-based volleys, since acting alone at large distances from each other in counter conditions of the enemy’s anti-submarine defense forces (PLO) seconds Thus, a powerful missile volley of a heterogeneous strike force will be “smeared” in time. The missiles will approach the target with groups of 15 – 20 units and be “ground” by the air defense system. The probability of success in this case is small.
Not much better results are achieved, even if in one or two installations of vertical launch there are a sufficiently large number of missiles. Their withdrawal from launchers (launchers) is possible at intervals of five to seven seconds. Accordingly, for a shooting cycle, no more than four to six missiles can be fired from one launcher, and from eight (as is happening today on such large ships as Ticonderoga and Orly Burk) - eight to twelve. It is very difficult to solve the problem of creating a volley of sufficient density. There may be objections: they say, before such problems did not exist, there were enough 16 – 20 missiles to “penetrate” the air defense of the enemy aircraft carrier group. Indeed, since previously there was no such saturation of multichannel air defense systems, this was enough. At that time, the air defense system was based on single-channel complexes - Terrier, Tartar, Talos. The total connectivity did not exceed three or four such missiles. Accordingly, a salvo from 12 – 16 and even eight missiles was quite enough for an income to the target of two or three or more missiles, taking into account the resistance of the EW system. Today the situation has changed qualitatively. The capabilities of the air defense system have grown by an order of magnitude and continue to increase, starting to exceed the capacity of the existing ship forces to create a salvo necessary to overcome it. There is a growing contradiction between the need for delivering massed strikes by long-range cruise missiles (CD BD) to ground targets and the existing capacities of their carriers. The resolution of these contradictions is possible by creating a fundamentally new class of ships.
The battleship battleships that replaced the battleships (or, as they were called after the reclassification, battleships-dodrednounouts) were named after the first ship of this class, the English Dreadnought. The experience of the Russian-Japanese war 1904 – 1905 showed that the artillery of medium calibres became the main cause of the death of heavy ships - squadron battleships and armored cruisers, although it could not always penetrate armor. The English admiralty made a completely correct conclusion that the low efficiency of large-caliber artillery is not connected with the power of its guns, but with their insufficient number (for four large-caliber accounted for up to 24 – 30 of medium caliber). Given the inevitable increase in booking, the English fleet has relied on a radical increase in the number of main-caliber guns on new battleships. Thus was born the "Dreadnought", which marked the beginning of a new type of battleship, which existed in the fleets until the end of the twentieth century.
We see a similar situation today. There are a lot of attack missiles, and the existing classes do not allow them to be placed in sufficient quantities. Need a new class of ships.
And the drone to boot
The appearance of the new ship is advisable to determine, starting from the tasks assigned to it. The first of them is the defeat of ground-based objects of the Kyrgyz Republic BD according to the plan of possible operations and combat actions: air, sea, Ground forces on coastal directions, and also to destroy the economic and military potential of the enemy with non-nuclear strategic weapons. Experience shows that even in relatively small-scale conflicts, such as NATO aggression against Yugoslavia or against Iraq and Libya, the expenditure of the KR database was huge - from a few hundred to a thousand and a half. In the case of such actions against developed and larger states, missiles will require up to several thousand. And Russia does not have any other carriers, except for surface ships and submarines, and in the near future they will not appear. To accommodate such a large number of KR database on existing classes of ships, even promising, they will need more than a hundred. This is completely unthinkable, primarily for economic reasons. Acceptable number of ships - within a dozen or a half. This means: on each of them the number of hosted CRs should be measured in hundreds. Given the limitations associated with an acceptable displacement, weight and size characteristics of existing and prospective DPS and the KR BD themselves, it can be considered reasonable to have onboard a 192 – 256 missiles deployed in several DPS.
The second task is the defeat of large enemy surface groups with a powerful air defense. Overcoming it implies the need to form a volley from one ship with a density exceeding the fire capabilities of the air defense system no less than one and a half times. Then, taking into account the electronic countermeasures really defeat the main goal. That is, the rate of missile launch should be at least 60 – 70 missiles per minute. This means that the DPS on the ship must be placed in four to five groups, separated so that they can be launched simultaneously.
In fact, this is where the requirements for the shock weapons of such a ship are completed. The situation is really somewhat reminiscent of the one that served as the basis for the appearance of the Dreadnought, a radical increase in spite of the prevailing stereotypes of the main strike weapon.
In addition, the new ship needs an autonomous target designation system that provides long-range missile strikes with its missiles. The best option could be to equip your own system of reconnaissance and surveillance of the surface situation on the basis of the UAV. The ability to patrol at a distance of up to 400 kilometers from the order for three to four hours will allow you to control the sea space in one direction with up to three UAVs. And the corresponding detection range of the onboard radar station of the UAV will provide observation of the main ships of the order beyond the reach of their anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM), that is, at least 200 – 250 kilometers. The UAV, therefore, will be large enough and can become one of the main targets for the air defense system of the enemy’s naval connection. Accordingly, in order to ensure combat stability, it is necessary for it to have a high limiting flight speed for evading fighter attacks and effective radio-electronic means of self-defense.
Constructive protection and self-defense
Other requirements that determine the appearance of the ship necessary today concern the defense system and constructive protection. As part of the anti-submarine defense, it does not make sense to assign the task of detecting and defeating submarines to it. Such a ship will never act alone and as part of the ship group will always be the core of the order, around which the PLO system will begin to be built by other forces. In this regard, he must be able to repel blows from underwater weapons — torpedoes of various types. To do this, it must be equipped with a highly effective set of anti-torpedo protection.
Being a ship of the nucleus, he should not solve the tasks of collective air defense for the same reasons that have been expressed with regard to the system of air defense. For this reason, the composition of its air defense weapons may reasonably be limited to those necessary for self-defense. However, they should be sufficient to repel the most powerful missile strike, even in the conditions of weakening the collective air defense system. Taking into account the above considerations on the possible density of a volley, it is advisable to put forward to his self-defense system the requirement to have at least 20 – 24 target channels on board. That is, at least five or six multi-channel short-range air defense missile systems and two to four anti-aircraft artillery systems (ZAK) or anti-aircraft missile and artillery systems (ZRAK) on board. Not so exaggerated requirements, given that the aircraft-carrying cruiser of the 1143.5 project, designed in the 70-ies, has two short-range multi-channel air defense missile systems and four air defense systems each.
Special attention deserves constructive protection. The ship must have sufficiently powerful reservations and other effective elements of constructive protection and durability struggles to withstand at least four to five anti-ship missiles with kilograms of 350 – 500 without loss of combat capability, and also to be able to return to base with 10 – 12 such rockets. In this case, when confronted with an equivalent compound, after the preemptive strike of the enemy, he will retain the ability to strike back. These are quite achievable indicators - the Second World War battleships withstood a greater number of hits of 500-kilogram aerial bombs and 700 – 1200-kilogram shells. Today, the possibility of creating a more durable and easy structural protection is much broader. The reference to the probability of the destruction of a ship by a nuclear strike is not fully justified. It’s fundamentally impossible to create a high-density volley with missiles in nuclear equipment, since undermining the warhead of such anti-ship missiles, brought down by the air defense system, will destroy all others within a radius of several kilometers, the electromagnetic pulse will destroy the electronics at long distances, and the remaining ionized cloud for a long time time will impede the work of the homing missiles.
Autonomy, speed and seaworthiness should correspond to similar characteristics of ships of other classes of the ocean zone, so that the “new dreadnought” could operate as part of the operational squadrons of the Russian Navy. It can be assigned the function of a command ship on which the group commander and his headquarters will be located. It must have a developed airborne communications complex and a sufficiently powerful combat information and control system, allowing to ensure the control of operational connection forces. The displacement of such a ship, according to rough estimates, can range from 35 to 45 thousand tons.
Such is the image of a qualitatively new type of ship, the distinctive features of which are radically increased strike potential and powerful structural protection combined with effective means of self-defense.
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