At Army-2024, they showed a ship that could become the salvation of the Navy's surface forces. We are talking about the ship of Project 22800E "Karakurt-E". The ship has changed from a highly specialized strike ship with missile weapons to a multi-purpose ship capable of fighting submarines, while maintaining all the combat capabilities of the Karakurt missile ship.
Of course, this is only a project.
But it can become a salvation for the surface forces of our fleet. Especially considering the blow that domestic shipbuilding received from sanctions, and the fact that the protracted war in Ukraine requires an increase in spending on the Ground Forces and aviation , and therefore a reduction in spending on the fleet.
But this ship must also be built for the domestic Navy. With a number of changes.
And preferably faster, so that it is not too late.
Anti-submarine warfare and nuclear deterrence, a refresher
The theoretical justification of how the ability of surface forces to fight submarines affects the country's ability to ensure nuclear deterrence was disclosed by the author in the theoretical article "Anti-submarine ships and nuclear deterrence" .
At that time, it was still possible to build ships of the 20380 project and its modifications, and today the recommendations from the article are no longer relevant, but what is relevant is why there is no and cannot be effective nuclear deterrence without surface anti-submarine forces.
Everything is analyzed at the link, here is a quote:
…Russia has a fully-fledged nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), both mobile and silo-based, strategic bombers carrying nuclear weapons, and strategic missile submarines armed with ballistic missiles. At the same time, each branch of the triad has its own, not quite identical, strengths.
Thus, aviation has the advantage over all other forces that are part of the strategic nuclear forces (SNF) that, firstly, it can be retargeted in flight (when working with nuclear bombs), and secondly, its low speed gives politicians time to stop nuclear escalation…
Aviation, with the proper level of combat readiness, makes retaliation flexible and manageable. Aircraft, however, are very vulnerable, and the slightest delay or error in their emergency dispersal will result in their loss...
ICBMs are the basis of both preventive and counter-attack strikes.
ICBMs make it possible to destroy part of the enemy's nuclear forces that were not used in the first attack, and to inflict great damage on the enemy due to the many warheads being thrown.
ICBMs make retaliation devastating in force and fast.
However, contrary to popular belief, ICBMs are not invulnerable and have a certain vulnerability to a sudden disarming nuclear strike.
And here the third component of the triad appears on the scene – SSBNs…
The submarine is mobile and even at the slowest speed – 6-7 knots, is capable of traveling 260-310 kilometers in any direction per day…
The enemy, before preparing to deliver a nuclear strike, will in any case have to deploy large groups of heterogeneous anti-submarine forces to neutralize the SSBNs, and this is an intelligence sign of preparation for aggression, which deprives the enemy of surprise.
If the enemy has succeeded in everything except destroying all SSBNs before they launch missiles, but at least one boat was able to fulfill its combat mission, then this will level out all other successes of the enemy – he may have time to deliver an unpunished disarming strike, neutralize almost all of our strategic nuclear forces, achieve any success on the ground and in the air, but that very last surviving boat will still cause him unacceptable damage.
SSBNs make retaliation inevitable .
But, as is rightly pointed out in the link, in order for submarines to leave their bases and safely move to designated areas, they need to be supported by anti-submarine forces, whose tasks include detecting foreign submarines and either destroying them with their own weapons or targeting them with other forces (for example, anti-submarine aviation).
And here the inevitability of our retaliatory strike gets knocked out - we have nothing to support the combat services of submarines with.
To understand the depth of the bottom where the Russian Navy is now, a few words about anti-submarine warfare.
Much has been written about how submarines are currently being searched for, in particular, in the articles by M. Klimov "Anti-submarine defense: ships against submarines. Hydroacoustics" and "Detect a submarine!" , A. Timokhin and M. Klimov "There is no more secrecy: submarines of the type we are accustomed to are doomed" .
What all these materials have in common is the statement that our submarines are doomed because the enemy has a powerful anti-submarine defense, built, among other things, on the broadest use of surface ships. Ours, not Western ones, because we simply do not have any organized anti-submarine defense (ASD).
It is the enemy who can reveal the underwater situation over many thousands of square kilometers, and not us.
Here is a brief description of the anti-submarine search methods of modern Western fleets, a quote from one of the mentioned articles:
"A single surface ship with a GPBA and a low-frequency emitter (less powerful), as well as a pair of anti-submarine helicopters, is capable of completely "illuminating" a strip many tens of kilometers wide. And if a submarine is in it, it will be immediately detected at any noise level...
But this is with its own GPBA. The "illuminated boat" gives a secondary wave in all directions - and if on the opposite side of the hunter ship there is some tactical unit capable of detecting the reflected wave (a submarine or a helicopter), then the width of the strip in which any underwater target is detected turns from tens of kilometers into hundreds."
If non-acoustic search methods (radar detection of a submarine's surface trace) have found wide application in aviation along with acoustic ones, then for surface ships the main thing is to work with a towed sonar, with or without a GPBA.
Now let's move on to what Russia has. The answer is very simple - nothing.
We have nuclear submarines in the Northern Fleet and Kamchatka, new corvettes of projects 20380 and 20385 - in the Baltic and in Vladivostok. Small anti-submarine ships of projects 1124M have currently lost not only their combat value - it is simply dangerous to go to sea on them. However, most of them do not go to sea.
The frigates of project 22350 and large anti-submarine ships of projects 1155 (including modifications 1155.1 and "Shaposhnikov") remain. There are simply not enough of these ships, in the north we can theoretically concentrate 2 frigates and 3 large anti-submarine ships, and it is not known how they will cooperate.
The problem is that we still need at least some kind of force in the distant sea zone, and large ships are needed there.
The same picture in the Pacific Ocean: a missile cruiser, 3 large anti-submarine ships and 4 corvettes - this is all we have for the DMZ, these forces are not enough for Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk.
And even when another large anti-submarine ship - the Admiral Vinogradov - comes out of repairs with modernization, already as a frigate, there will still not be enough ships.
Now everything is complicated by the fact that the ships are on long voyages, our small forces are scattered all over the planet.
As a result, the Russian Navy does not control the underwater situation near its shores at all. And does not provide for the deployment of strategic submarines. In wartime or immediately before it, they will be easily destroyed. A retaliatory nuclear strike will be impossible.
And the possibility of receiving a massive nuclear strike without a response is real.
And this is not a figure of speech, this is evidenced by the deployment of American SSBNs for a strike in May-June 2023.
Water area protection and ships of the near sea zone
Water area protection (OVR) is an organization within a naval base, designed to provide the main forces of the fleet in its base areas with protection from enemy actions from the sea. The
USSR Navy had more than enough naval bases, and these bases had protection.
What was the main striking force of a potential enemy, the USA, in a naval war? Deck-based aircraft and submarines.
But to oversleep an aircraft carrier group, you have to try hard, this happened only once during the entire Cold War, but American submarines were always nearby.
Nuclear submarines were considered the main striking force of the USSR Navy. The main threat to them near our shores were NATO submarines, which could lay mines on the routes of our submarines or secretly reach the range of a torpedo attack.
It was the OVR forces, brought together in brigades, that, among other things, were charged with preventing such actions by the enemy.
The OVR brigades usually included a division (4-8 units) of small anti-submarine ships (MPK) and a division of minesweepers.
Based on the experience of the Cold War, one or two MPKs were always ready to immediately go to sea to search for a foreign submarine. Anti-submarine search operations were systematically conducted in order to prevent the enemy from tracking our submarines.
The OVR brigades, operating in full force, could ensure the safe exit of nuclear submarines from bases and break away from potential enemy tracking.
As was said above, nothing remained of these forces.
At the same time, the fleet had a chance to update its anti-submarine forces, and more than one.
The first was Project 20380, in the form in which it was originally conceived - all systems are strictly serial, only one experimental design development - the Main Power Plant (the same units with Kolomna diesels 16D49).
However, the project was overcomplicated with a lot of new weapons systems, it became very expensive and difficult to build, and did not become widespread, and now the construction of these ships, apparently, will be impossible due to sanctions (and this will be another incredible surprise for our so-called "decision makers", which everyone except them knew about for many years in advance). The
second program, which could have updated the anti-submarine forces and restored a full-fledged OVR, was the OVR corvette creation program. Unfortunately, it died almost before it began.
The OVR corvette project was sacrificed in its time for the Project 22160 patrol ships, the most useless ships in the history of the Navy. Their price was fully demonstrated by the war in Ukraine, when in order to simply go out to sea, an army Tor SAM system had to be rolled onto the deck of a patrol ship.
There is no point in asking why it was impossible to build something useful for the same money, everything turned out the way it did.
But the Navy built quite a few low-seaworthiness small missile ships (MRK) of Project 21631 Buyan-M. It would seem that they are still building units that can only operate near the coast, why not make them multi-purpose?
But this idea simply did not occur to anyone - the Navy doctrine and at the same time the idee fixe of the General Staff were strikes on the coast with Kalibr missiles, in the 2000s it seemed that they could bring entire countries to their knees. Ukraine has shown that it is impossible, and this, by the way, was predicted by the author.
After the Buyan-M faced sanctions on the supply of imported components, which led to the need to revise the project, the most successful post-Soviet ship from a technical point of view appeared - the Project 22800 Karakurt small missile ship.
The ship had the same number of cruise missiles as the Buyan-M, but was much faster, more seaworthy, and, unlike the Buyan-M, could independently attack surface targets with anti-ship cruise missiles.
At the same time, the ship did not have any irreplaceable or unique foreign components, had domestic engines and was cheaper than the Buyan-M, and in the version with the Pantsir-M anti-aircraft missile and artillery system, it could also shoot down even stealthy Western cruise missiles or "harpoon-shaped" anti-ship missiles. In the Navy, this is the only type of ship guaranteed to be capable of intercepting such targets with a trained crew; for all the others, either the luck factor is too important, or they are not technically capable of doing this at all, or their capabilities have not been tested in exercises.
Alas, the Karakurt was ordered by the Navy as a purely strike missile ship, in accordance with the views of the General Staff and some naval theorists of the recent past, although technically, the Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau could have made the ship multi-purpose right away - if the customer so desired. This ship cannot fight underwater targets or even detect them.
However, the mass construction of two small missile ships and a series of patrol ships created the illusion among a number of leaders that the naval composition of the forces operating in the near sea zone (NSZ) has been updated.
These people do not understand what these NSZ ships should be like, what they should do and where, and what the main threat to the NSZ is (hint: foreign submarines), their worldview is very simple. There are small ships, they operate "offshore", we have built them, we need to think about large ships. It is funny - but the intellectual level of some people responsible for the development of the fleet today is exactly like that.
The final touches to the drama of the surface forces must be recognized as the sanctions and the reduction of funding for the fleet. Even components for the supposedly Russian Kolomna diesel engines fell under the sanctions, not to mention electronics. The construction of all ship projects, except for the small missile ships and minesweepers of Project 12700, is currently in question.
Add to this the reduction in funding in favor of the SVO, plus the problems with the development of radar and anti-aircraft missile systems that existed before the SVO, and we get a situation that the Americans call a "perfect storm" - all the factors that exist have converged against the Navy, and it is impossible to eliminate the failures in shipbuilding policy without new ideas.
However, as it turns out, these ideas exist in the country.
Rescue Corvette
The main contradiction of the current moment is that it is necessary to quickly set up many ships capable of performing, among other things, the tasks of the OVR (including at the cost of economically justified costs) in the conditions of chronically ill shipbuilding, while they must also perform other tasks of surface ships, but they must be cheap, and at the same time they must be independent of sanctions and so that they can be built even at those factories that are located on inland waterways, for example, in Zelendolsk, that is, they must be small ships, but powerful.
A difficult task, but it received a simple and budget solution.
At the "Army-2024" the United Shipbuilding Corporation exhibited a model of a ship with the code 22800E "Karakurt-E".
The similarities with the Karakurt are obvious, the differences are also visible
It is immediately obvious that the ship is a relative of the Karakurt, it has a similar superstructure and the same electronic weapons as the small missile ship. The same 76-mm gun. But the differences are immediately visible. On the sides, closer to the stern, the ship has launchers for the Paket-NK complex.
This means that the ship is capable of fighting off a torpedo attack by intercepting the torpedo heading for the ship with an M15 anti-torpedo.
Under the keel, you can see the fairing of a small hydroacoustic station (GAS), this is the Paket-NK complex GAS. Now our ship is invulnerable to a surprise attack from under the water. Of course, we would like to see conventional reloadable torpedo tubes, but they are not in production, how long to wait if R&D is ordered is unclear, so the production products are standing.
Launchers of "Paketa-NK" on the sides
Can such a ship not only repel a torpedo attack, but also hit a submarine?
Yes, the universal vertical launchers 3S14, which are part of the universal ship firing complex (USFC), can also be used to launch anti-submarine missiles (ASM) "Otvet" 91RT. These missiles are guaranteed to hit a submarine at a long range, many tens of kilometers.
This is a fundamental difference between the new ship and the old small anti-submarine ships - the MPC had to approach the submarine at the range of the torpedoes. The proposed corvette will hit the submarine without approaching it.
But how to detect it at a long distance?
Let's look at the stern port.
Stern port for the sonar. Also noteworthy are the water jets instead of propellers.
This port can definitely be designed only for a sonar system, either lowered or towed. In the latter case, when using such ships in a group, the fleet will have the opportunity to fight in the same way as NATO, due to the large number of units with towed sonar systems, capable of operating in active mode, creating acoustic illumination zones tens or hundreds of kilometers across, within which even the quietest submarine will have no chance of evading detection. And any target that ends up in such a zone can immediately be hit by an anti-submarine missile from the ship.
With such a tactical model of use, the requirements for the ship's speed are reduced, the main thing for it is to tow the sonar, and the missile will catch up with the fastest submarine.
The general composition of the weapons and equipment shown in the model, according to independent experts, looks like this:
- radar complex (radio reconnaissance and detection of surface targets) KRS-27M "Mineral-M";
– radar system (air target detection station) RLK-S-1RS1-2F of the Pantsir-M anti-aircraft missile and artillery system;
– radar fire control system MR-123-02/3 Bagira;
– 2× unified observation and target designation visors UV-450-01;
– radio-technical reconnaissance and suppression system MP-405-1 (four antennas);
– passive jamming system PK-10 with 4× KT-216 launchers (a total of 40 jamming shells);
– navigation radar station MR-231-3 Pal-N-4;
– satellite communications station Centaur-NM;
– 3M87-1F combat module with an underdeck storage and delivery system for transport and launch containers with anti-aircraft guided missiles of the Pantsir-M anti-aircraft missile and artillery system (a total of 32 TPKs with 57E6 SAMs and 2,000 x 30 mm rounds for two AO-18KD anti-aircraft guns);
– 3S-14 universal shipborne firing system (one module, 8 cells for 3M-14T medium-range cruise missiles and 3M-54T anti-ship missiles, and, when additional shipborne automated control systems are installed, 3M-55 and 3M-22 supersonic and hypersonic anti-ship missiles and 91RT anti-submarine guided missiles);
– AK-176MA-01 naval artillery mount (a total of 152 x 76 mm rounds in the automatic loader, ready to fire, plus stored additional ammunition);
– 2× SM-588 launchers of the Paket-NK anti-torpedo defense system (a total of 8× 324 mm M-15 Lasta anti-torpedoes or 324 mm MTT torpedoes or a combination of both);
– 2× pedestal mounts with a 12.7 mm 6P59 Kord large-caliber machine gun (a total of 100 x 12.7 mm rounds in boxes, plus stored ammunition);
– Palfinger PK 15500 Performance crane-manipulator with a lifting capacity of 6,100 kg or equivalent;
– onboard motorboat;
– Paket-A target designation hydroacoustic station of the Paket-NK anti-torpedo defense system.
Presumably, there is: MG-757.1 Anapa-M anti-sabotage hydroacoustic station. The remaining hydroacoustic means are still in question, their composition is not obvious and may change as the project develops.
The deck container can accommodate any replaceable load, for example, mine-resistant unmanned underwater vehicles, and the rails on the deck can not only facilitate the movement of the container, but also be used as mine gangways.
It is important that all of the above are serial systems that do not need to be developed. The ship may well repeat the success of the Karakurt, which turned out to be possible to build at a rate that was ahead of the Soviet ones on the first hull.
As you can see, the exhaust is directed outboard, not into the water, so as not to interfere with the operation of the hydroacoustic stations.
The exhaust is visible on the side
If we assume that the ship has not only a towed but also a lowerable sonar, then it can search for submarines while at rest, without moving. This is important, since the ship does not have a keel sonar capable of detecting submarines on the move. But work while at rest and competent tactics within a detachment of ships easily reduce the significance of this drawback to zero.
The most interesting thing is the propeller.
Unlike the Karakurt, which had a three-shaft propulsion plant with propellers, water jets are used here - four in a row, one diesel for each.
Why was such a scheme made?
It is worth citing the author's article dedicated to such a propulsion scheme and its use on a multipurpose corvette, written back in 2022, "The Near Sea Zone and Nuclear Deterrence" :
"First of all, it is necessary to find an import-substituting propulsion plant, inexpensive and mass-produced.
At the moment, the only manufacturer of diesel engines, on the one hand, independent of sanctions, and on the other, capable of producing a diesel engine suitable specifically for a combat ship, is PAO Zvezda from St. Petersburg. Small missile ships (MRK) of Project 22800 Karakurt are designed for the engines of this plant.
Unfortunately, the production rate of M507D diesel engines for Karakurts at Zvezda is very low. The enterprise has not overcome the crisis in which it is still. Today, Zvezda is capable of producing a propulsion plant for two Karakurts per year at most.
However, experts know that the 112-cylinder M507D is a "twin" of two 56-cylinder M504s working on a common gearbox. Thus, 5-6 M507 (the Karakurt has three) are transformed into 10-12 M504. Moreover, the capabilities of Zvezda, in principle, allow for the production of some more “halves” of M504.
Their production is possible and should be accelerated…
However, a “half” of an engine is also half of its power, which is critically important for the ship’s performance.
The solution is suggested by foreign experience. For many years, foreign high-speed vessels, sometimes quite large ones, have been using multi-shaft water jet installations. This is a “battery” of water jets from side to side, which is powered by “its own” engine. And here lies the solution: a “battery” of affordable and completely domestic M504s powered by water jets is capable of providing the speed of a ship approximately the same as the Karakurt in terms of weight and size characteristics, but with a smaller number of diesel engines.”
The solution was obvious, they worked on it, and here is the result - the "diesel issue" is losing its urgency, now, if we start working on these ships now, then by 2032 we can get at least 12 such corvettes, and for very reasonable money. And this is the solution to the BMZ problem: 12 ships are two brigades of surface ships capable of fighting submarines, one per fleet.
Competent use of the Project 20380 corvettes (in the European part of Russia, these ships need to be urgently transferred from the Baltic Fleet to the Northern Fleet) will allow the Northern and Pacific Fleets to have the necessary minimum of multi-purpose ships just in time for the next world war, if it cannot be avoided.
This is the salvation of both the fleet and the country, and the design of this ship, judging by the number, is export, it must be urgently adapted to the needs of the Russian fleet.
We have wasted the time that history has given us to prepare for the next global slaughter. They admired the nuclear torpedoes and the launches of the "Strike Force". But time is up, and now they need to do something for their survival. And, as was shown above, ships capable of fighting submarines are critically important for this survival.
But the fleet does not survive only on anti-submarine defense.
If we assume that 12 such ships will be built in this decade, this means, for example, a total missile salvo of 96 cruise missiles of all types, including hypersonic ones.
For example, in the current war in the Black Sea, these ships would be the most useful - having the same air defense as the Karakurt (and this is a proven interception of two Storm Shadow cruise missiles at low altitude - an unprecedented result for our Navy), these ships would be able to operate even near the Ukrainian coast, and attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to attack them with Harpoons or Neptunes would end the same way as firing from Karakurts at RM-24 during tests, or cruise missiles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
And if the Ukrainians tried to use underwater weapons against these ships, the Paket-NK complex would come into play.
To combat unmanned boats, there are serial machine-gun modules and FPV-UAVs.
True, these corvettes will not make it to Ukraine. But they will make it in time for the next war, if they are concerned with their construction now.
I would like to hope that the Navy command will not miss this chance. Because this is the fleet's last chance. And the country's as a whole.
https://topwar-ru.translate.goog/248944-poslednjaja-nadezhda-vmf-novyj-korvet-spaset-nadvodnye-sily-i-stranu.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en
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