Russian Navy: Status and News #5

Hole wrote:Few years ago there was a documentary on german TV about the new german sub class. The sub hadn´t left the Harbor as the first short-cirucit in one of the switchboards happened and a small fire broke out.

Did they bother to investigate and determine fault? Or was it "sh*t happens, too bad, let's move on"? In the case
of the latter, the authorities are guilty of aiding criminals. I can understand short circuits in ancient, rusted
buckets like Canada got from the British. But there is zero excuse for this on brand new boats.

I was not fully aware of how old Losharik was. It was constructed during the late 1980s and sat rusting during the 1990s and into
the 2000s. Perhaps the "accident" is not that surprising. This begs the question as to the safety of resurrecting decades old
abandoned projects instead of starting from scratch.

Point is that things like that can happen anytime, anywhere as long as electricity is in play. It can be a newly build, perfectly maintained ship/aircraft/vehicle and still some malfunction can occure. No need for a big conspiracy or "all shit made in this or that country is bad!".

The accident location and the type of sub involved make me believe it is related to those nuclear powerplant supposed to work under the water. It was in russian water, so not deep waters and not unfamiliar ones, there is little work for a sciebtific sub there unless it worked on military facilities. And there is this article.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-08/stricken-russian-nuke-sub-crew-prevented-planetary-catastrophe

Isos wrote:The accident location and the type of sub involved make me believe it is related to those nuclear powerplant supposed to work under the water. It was in russian water, so not deep waters and not unfamiliar ones, there is little work for a sciebtific sub there unless it worked on military facilities. And there is this article.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-08/stricken-russian-nuke-sub-crew-prevented-planetary-catastrophe

There isn't enough nuclear material in deep water sub, carrier sub and powerplant combined to cause anything even resembling planetary problem let alone catastrophe

You just posted crap from Bloomberg, that doesn't raise red flags on validity of article?

Content from MSM which makes light fun of white elephant like Kuznetzov is enemy propaganda but nonsense about "planetary catastrophies" is somehow accurate?

Also, water is best possible location to drop any and all nuclear material because it absorbs radiation perfectly and precludes possibility of dust spreading so unless someone activates massive Cobalt salted thermonuclear warhead there is no possibility of anything "planetary" (and even this would be continetal at best)

Hole wrote:Point is that things like that can happen anytime, anywhere as long as electricity is in play. It can be a newly build, perfectly maintained ship/aircraft/vehicle and still some malfunction can occure. No need for a big conspiracy or "all shit made in this or that country is bad!".

I disagree. You are invoking experience based on consumer products. Mass production items have defect rates. Those defects
are not driven by the laws of physics, but my mostly human mistakes. There are the direct kind where Chinese sweatshop workers
are too tired to repeat some task to the level necessary, and the indirect kind where machinery glitches produce defects. The
Detroit car industry of the 1970s was notorious for crap levels of human labour. So defects are not a law of nature and inevitable.
The Japanese car assembly lines in North America but the domestic (Ford, GM, etc.) lines to shame.

Short circuiting electrical panels indicate:

1) Bad design where loads are underestimated. This is a competence test for the designers. If their designs short circuit after
assembly, then they are not competent and their designs are crap. Not "good enoug" but defective crap. One has to start from
scratch.

2) Poor component quality. This can be considered as "sh*t happens". But sourcing low bid Chinese junk is asking for it. So this
is another test of competence.

So why is incompetence to be tolerated? When your hack-assed design and assembly kill dozens of people, that is called
criminal negligence at best.

GarryB wrote:Yeah, there is a myth that accidents only happen with old equipment... does that mean Malaysian aircraft that got lost but were state of the art brand new Boeings prove the myth or disprove it?

Of course Boeings with known faults are ignored till a few planes crash and some people die but lets totally ignore that because it doesn't suit the agenda...

This "myth" is factual and informed. Accidents, aka failures, happen with quality old equipment since aging degrades it. Failures with
new equipment happen because it is literal sh*t. Trying to equate sh*t equipment with quality equipment and insinuate that they both have
similar failure rates is simply not valid. Boeing subcontracted the programming of the 737 Max to a low bid clown outfit. I will repeat:
do not equate sh*t to quality. Newness is not a magic process that makes sh*t into gold.

My brand new car became unusable because the assembly line monkeys could not properly plug two of the electronic connectors together.
I am not going to excuse these clowns as being some sort of "accident". They didn't do their freaking jobs right and put my life in
danger. The same goes for the Losharik. I bet the clowns who authorized this project did not ensure that rotted wiring and other parts
were totally removed and changed. A visual inspection is not going to inform anyone of the actual state of wiring.

Russia has come a long way from the 1980s rot. But it still needs decades of cultural progress to get out of the hack and wing it
mentality.

kvs wrote:

Hole wrote:Point is that things like that can happen anytime, anywhere as long as electricity is in play. It can be a newly build, perfectly maintained ship/aircraft/vehicle and still some malfunction can occure. No need for a big conspiracy or "all shit made in this or that country is bad!".

I disagree. You are invoking experience based on consumer products. Mass production items have defect rates. Those defects
are not driven by the laws of physics, but my mostly human mistakes. There are the direct kind where Chinese sweatshop workers
are too tired to repeat some task to the level necessary, and the indirect kind where machinery glitches produce defects. The
Detroit car industry of the 1970s was notorious for crap levels of human labour. So defects are not a law of nature and inevitable.
The Japanese car assembly lines in North America but the domestic (Ford, GM, etc.) lines to shame.

Short circuiting electrical panels indicate:

1) Bad design where loads are underestimated. This is a competence test for the designers. If their designs short circuit after
assembly, then they are not competent and their designs are crap. Not "good enoug" but defective crap. One has to start from
scratch.

2) Poor component quality. This can be considered as "sh*t happens". But sourcing low bid Chinese junk is asking for it. So this
is another test of competence.

So why is incompetence to be tolerated? When your hack-assed design and assembly kill dozens of people, that is called
criminal negligence at best.

It IS due to the very basic law of physics: entropy.

The final product quality depending on the entropy level of organisation.

The untrained worker who make a mistake is only the symptom.

Easy way to fight against of it is to have a mismatch between the product quality and price ( have more workforce than needed to compensate for organisation issues )

In the Krylov Research Center told about the submarines of the future

Submarines will be unmanned and may be similar to flying saucers , said center head Valery Polovinkin

SAINT-PETERSBURG, July 10th. / Tass /. The appearance of future submarines will be completely different from the look of modern submarines. TASS was informed on Wednesday at the International Naval Salon by Valery Polovinkin, Scientific Director of the Krylov State Research Center.

“Submarines of the future will have contours that are fundamentally different from modern submarines. They may even look like flying saucers. And, of course, they will be crewless,” he said, answering the question whether the center is leading the work on concept projects promising submarines.

According to Polovinkin, they held one of the meetings of the academic council, which opened the doors to fantasy. "There, specialists from one of our departments offered options for fundamentally new hull lines," the scientist said.

"Today, the possibility of further reducing noise, securing secrecy has reached a certain threshold, when traditional forms from the point of view of any further research will not lead to any decent results. Therefore, of course, we are considering somewhat different lines, they can be completely different,"

More

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/6648666

Regarding te Losharik fire, according to this article an experimental lithium battery caused the fire. Apparently the Losharik has both nuclear and electric propulsion...it's a longish piece with some speculation on what happened

https://vk.com/milinfolive?w=wall-123538639_1153109

Some pics from IMDS, interesting size comparison between the ships there

High Flight Sniper: Tu-142 will destroy targets under water and on the ground
"Submarine killer" equipped with high-precision guidance system

China has sent an 052C to participate in Navy Day in St Petersburg
https://rg.ru/2019/07/24/reg-szfo/kitajskij-esminec-sian-pribyl-v-peterburg-dlia-uchastiia-v-parade.html
Was an 054A frigate last year.
Next year 054D, 055 in 2021?

How was the main naval parade in St. Petersburg? What did it show? https://regnum.ru/news/polit/2674811.html

India slao sent the FFG Tarkash. On the way home, they won't be sailing too far apart. "If u can't beat them, join them!"

Ruptly Naval Day coverage

Starts off with arabic translation, then none for a while but eventually gets english.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/6747493/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Oscar class submarine "Omsk" returns to service in Pacific fleet.

Tsavo Lion wrote:Russian Navy recognized as "non fully deployable"

“And here even 180 ships that the fleet should receive by the indicated date should not mislead us - the vast majority of them are small warships and auxiliary vessels,” the specialist explained.

And his solution to most new ships being small:

The specialist believes that the way out of this situation is the creation of corvettes and frigates (patrol ships) with a displacement of up to 4.5 thousand tons, as well as diesel-electric submarines, which Russia has been engaged in for many years.
The Navy will retain its military-political significance only in nuclear deterrence and near Russian borders, the expert said.

Do what they're already doing

Anyway, it sounds a bit too critical, especially now that they have modern powerplants, sensors and weapon system for a proper destroyer.

The long trip of the gorshkov frigate showed that they moved in the proper direction.

22350 are excellent ships, and probably the best frigates in the world, but they lack range and endurance for long trips, unless accompanied by tankers and support/ replenishment ships.


They just need a ship with double the endurance of the 22350 and with the size of a Udaloy class destroyer, and that is the 22350M. Of course it will take time before they are ready, hoping that they start soon with their production.



In the meanwhile long range expedition by surface fleet will be done by the remaining Udaloys (some of which are being modernised), by the 2 operational Slava class cruisers ("Moskva" fate is still to be decided) and by the available battlecruiser (Peter the Great/ Nakhimov).

It is not a large long range fleet, but it is okayish for the next few years, if keeping the same level of long range expeditions as in the last 10 years

Navy does not have ships capable of providing effective fire support to the coastal flank of the army or landing force, as well as to escort the latter in the operational depth.

Actually the lack of proper naval gunfire support is a problem shared also by the US Navy and pointed out many times by the US marine corp.

The Russians have big guns also in the small corvettes (100mm gun in the buyan M), and while they lack blue sea capabilities, they could for sure be used in black sea operations.

They had 4 (2x2) large (130mm) guns in their sovremenny class destroyers and they still have some of them in operation and in reserve, if needed.

Assault and attack helicopters in the new amphibious ships will also help, but such ships are not ready yet, and anyway helicopters cannot fully substitute naval artillery.

Some of the "crazy" Garry's ideas could be quite interesting also, like finding a naval platform for the 152 mm Koalitia artillery gun!

The shopping list to get a full-scale navy it's not so large.
Essentially they lack in power projection not in defrnce capabilities.

For politics reasons they should have 4 battle groups.
Northern, Pacific, Mediterranean and a last one to support far away operations.
These battlegroups should be each composed of few advancdd and big units, all nuclear powered.
1 carrier, 1 battlestar (stupid to dismantle first 2 kirovs, better keep them afloat now and radically refurbish them, even nuclear propulsion, in future) 1 destroyer 1 ssgn and 1 ssn.

With this "CBG" model they're fully potent all over the world with 20 high-level ships. It's not too much effort considering that they have to build from scratch only the 4 carriers and the 4 destroyers and some ssn and ssgn.

Can't afford such a dream-team? Again, keep all the Kirovs, even if of them could be saved only the hulls it's so much time and money saved than starting from white sheet. A hull is hull and modern reactor and turbines are not so radically different from Kirovs internal layout. With modern reactors they could even free the space taken buy boilers and overheaters. I'll never understand why to waste the opportunity of getting 4 battlestars instead of 2 in a matter of 10 years.