Mistral News thread

You'd need more than just one type of helo of course.

The Ka-52 could be used for armed recon, and light naval attack and of course a combat air support role of landed armour, but you would also need transport helos like Mi-17s and perhaps troop carrying helos like the Ka-29 or Ka-60. In fact a modified Ka-27 class helo that can be modified for the sky crane role would probably be the most compact option for transport helo as its 5 ton external payload limit is already similar to the Mi-17s external payload limit.

The design might be foreign, but the work for more than half will be in Russia so it is somewhere to start from.

These vessels would be ideal to send to Tsunami ravaged coastlines, or for disaster relief after an earthquake etc etc.

The command capability, the hospital beds, and of course the large number of helicopters will make these very good for disaster relief missions as well of course as for the military missions already stated.

There are plenty of countries friendly to Russia that would not welcome US aide in the event of a disaster, one example quite recently was Myanmar, where a Russian Mistral would have been very useful for the local population. It would have been a gesture that the country involved appreciates which translates into better trust and increases the value of buying Russian things.

The real point is that the Russian government is buying things... the more money it actually spends the more likely the Russian MIC will realise it is worth while investing and producing all those little things they currently have to import.

Regarding the threat that Russia might use a Mistral vessel against Georgia... well lets face it, if Russia wanted to attack Georgia they could do it more efficently with Mistrals, but they could still do it without them.
If they had bought them in 2007 then South Ossetia and Abkhazia would still be part of Georgia and Saakashvili would never have "had a go", so in a way it would have been better all round if they had bought them some time ago.
But then who could have said with certainty he was going to be that stupid?

Its purpose is to deliver ground forces to the target area.

Any form of transport that can carry helicopters and tanks and APCs and Naval infantry will be a target, so it is no different from any other vessel of its type operational around the world.

The weapon isn't the vessel, the weapon is the forces it carries, much like an aircraft carrier.

Its defence relies on the vessels it operates with because loading it up with too many weapons will detract from its original goal.

A good way of looking at it is the Mi-24 Hind.

A combination of firepower of a gunship and the transport capability of a light transport... a sort of compromise between a Huey and a Cobra.

In practise it was found that it was more efficient using a transport for the transport role unless it was being used for a very small drop of personel, so the replacement is the Mi-28 which does have a small rear cabin to carry 2 maybe 3 people in an emergency but most of the time it is an attack helo while the Hip series delivers the troops.

It is not about travelling thousands of kms and invading africa, it is about delivering a force large enough to be effective and independant and to support their operations for days if not weeks.

The Mistral class vessels will NEVER operate on their own. They will likely have support from what equates to a carrier group and will most likely include an aircraft carrier in support.

Why not just use the aircraft carriers instead?

The main defence of a Russian Aircraft carrier is its fighter aircraft.
That means fighter aircraft, plus the fuel they will use, plus all the weapons and ammo they are likely to use.

There simply isn't enough room to fit tanks and APCs and soldiers let alone the helos needed to support an amphibious operation... that is what the Mistral is for.
The Mistral is designed to carry the armour, the aircraft, the troops, and all the stores and fuel and food needed for the operation, plus it has something like a 100 bed hospital with state of the art medical facilities so as wounded are brought back to the Mistral they can get high quality care as soon as possible a helo flight away.

For disaster relief you can swap the soldiers for aide workers and the armour for 4WDs and trucks to distribute food and supplies and of course the helos will be invaluable for such an operation and the hospital beds will no doubt be used too.

I think they will likely fit KASHTAN-M to it... front and back too I suspect, which should have minimal effect on its operational performance but improve its self defence capability without completely changing the vessel.

You are totally entitled to your opinion, but I suggest to you that countries that have been truely global powers have been global powers because of their navies.

I agree the time of the battleship is over, the airplane has replaced that long ago.

The thing is that an airplane adds range to your sight and your fist that no ship can match, so if you want a Navy you need to have airplanes on your ships.

Rather than have one airplane on each ship it makes sense to have big ships carrying lots of planes... which means you need other big ships that can sail with those aircraft carriers and support them with SAMs and AShMs and anti sub systems too as well as a few subs as well.

Pretty soon you have all these big ships.

The bit about the Falklands war is interesting, the British would have no option but to accept whatever the Argentines wanted if it didn't have a fleet.

A British carrier with 20 Sea Harriers taking on the Argentine land air fleet of 200+ aircraft and not losing an aircraft in air to air combat sounds impressive, but the British fleet was severely constrained because its government had cut their last fixed wing carrier a few years before. With a fixed wing carrier with AEW aircraft that could manage the air war over the islands I rather doubt the Argentines would have gotten a single British ship.

The British were very arrogant and were poorly prepared against a low flying target.
At a time when Soviet vessels were covered in gatling guns and SAMs designed to hit low flying targets the air defence systems on the British vessels were largely weak and untried together. The Sea Dart was compromised because the Argentine Navy had it in service so they knew its range and flight envelope.

Needless to say if the British had AWACS and a fixed wing carrier and decent CIWS things would have gone much more smoothly for them. Cost cutting and narrow mindedness (they claimed that their vulnerability to the sea skimming Exocet was OK because the Soviets didn't have any sea skimming missiles....!!!) made things much harder for them.
On the side of the Argentines air battle management so far off shore was also a problem so the replacement of their Skyhawks with Mig-23s with full BVR capability plus some form of AEW could have made the recapture of the Falklands too expensive for the British.

The problem with the claim that big ships are targets, is that smaller vessels are generally less capable and easier to attack than bigger and better equipped vessels.
The small boats that destroyed that Israeli frigate would be vulnerable to an attack from any medium sized multirole fighter aircraft, or even some helicopters.
A Ka-52 with a Kh-25ML could kill most small boats out to 10kms while most small boats don't have guns or missiles big enough to reach 10kms so the attacking platform is safe.
Most big ships would be safe from attack by helos or medium sized fighters.
A carriergroup can command an enormous area of sea and are good for defence and attack.

Regarding the Falklands war the Argentinians had a carrier but didn't use it because of fear about British nuclear powered attack subs.
Personally I think if they had better aircraft with any BVR capability, especially if it could operate from the islands themselves they would have presented a much more difficult problem for Britain.
A few dozen Mig-23s with R-23 and R-24 as well as R-60 AAMs might have made all the difference.

Of course what ifs are difficult because what was done was based on what was an option and what wasn't and also what they knew and what they didn't.

The problem is that a small vessel means you are vulnerable at sea.

A small vessel can't have lots of large SAMs to defend itself, or large radars to see a long way. Or a flight of aircraft that can see and reach even further.

Carrier based aircraft certainly can take on land based aircraft, but you need to pick and choose your fights. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The US use of carrier aircraft in Vietnam and the Middle East.

A single big ship like a carrier would be easy to overwhelm simply because its air defences are limited because of its need to carry lots of aircraft and fuel and ordinance for those aircraft and of course the thousands of people needed to keep it operational and the food they need etc etc.
Add a couple of ships like the Kirov class vessels and upgrade its missile defences and replace them with newer models and add an airborne early warning aircraft or two and a sneak attack suddenly becomes quite hard, and a mass attack becomes even harder because the more missiles you want to fire at this carrier group the more assets you need to organise and get into position.
With warning any antiship missile can be defeated... it is just a straight flying aircraft afterall.
Without warning a sneak attack will always have the best chance of success, but having large ships with long range radars and long range SAMs and airborne AWACS aircraft such a sneak attack becomes very very hard to impliment.

Unless you are taking on a large country like China it is only a matter of time and Elint satellites for you to find all his communication nodes and his HQs and his military barracks, and his major industry centres and his power generation plants, his airbases and his major SAM sites. Very few countries today have full national radar coverage and even fewer have a military able to repel an attack from a near superpower with a carrier group. Especially by 2025 when the standard carrier fighter for Russia will be based on a navalised T-50 instead of a Mig-29K, but even today the Mig-29K is not an aircraft to be sneezed at. Especially when next gen AAMs developed for the T-50 are added to its weapon suite.
Most of the fixed targets in a conflict against a land based enemy can be hit by conventionally armed cruise missiles. There is lots of talk about new navy vessels being armed with 5,000km range cruise missiles, which suggests to me it is a ship and sub launched version of the Kh-101.

I disagree that the real problem for the Argentines was lack of time on station.
Their main problem was lack of an edge.
It takes skill and discipline to fly low and fast at an armed target like a group of frigates to drop an iron bomb.
The Royal Navy pilots also clearly showed they were well trained and disciplined as well, but they had the edge of better air to air missiles and better tactics.
If the Argentines had BVR missiles they could have used their speed advantage and simply used long range attacks to fire BVR missiles at the Sea Harriers from a standoff distance and then turn and head home.
Not exciting or brave, but it maximises their chances for kills and reduces their chances of losses to near zero.
Obviously if they had taken the time it took the British to get a task force together and sail down to the south atlantic and just extended the runway so they could operate mirages and skyhawks on the islands then they would have had a much easier time, but they still would be dogfighting against a much better model AAM than they had and likely would still have lost many planes.
If they had BVR missiles it is possible they could have eventually wiped out the carrier based aircraft and then run amok amongst the remaining land and sea forces without aerial threat.
Of course mounting air strikes against British shipping could have rendered the task force impotent with more supply vessels hit.
Much of the British air activity was looking for the Argentine subs... without the Sea Harriers as top cover their helicopter screen would need to move closer to the protection of the SAM defences of the ships and attacks by sub might become more of an option... if they weren't hunted down with Sea Skuas.

Very simply National Rus, big boats are needed if you want to be a global power.
Small boats can become quite capable but will be severely restricted in range and the amount of equipment and weapons it can carry.
It would be much easier to deal with 1,000 OSA class vessels than 10 AEGIS class vessels.
Small attack vessels certainly have a role, but there are jobs a large vessel can do that small vessels simply cannot.
With all small vessels then you can't have air cover. With big vessels you get the vision and reach of the aircraft with the persistence and firepower of a ship.
Small vessels with UAVs are just not the same.

I agree stealth cruise missiles are a real threat.
They are also very expensive and very few countries can afford dozens of them let alone hundreds.
The main problem with launching hundreds of stealth cruise missiles is that you need hundreds of stealth launch platforms to launch these missiles from.
What country has that right now?
Russia and the US... and those stealthy launch platforms are called submarines.
The thing is that the best way to defend against air attack in any form including in a mass attack is with layers of defences.
The earlier you see the attack coming and the earlier you can start engaging components of that attack the better.
This makes aircraft vital to the defence of the surface group, so aircraft carriers are not just an option.
Long range SAMs are not much use on a small stealthy boat because to use a long range SAM you need long range eyes and small boats don't have that without aircraft.
I am talking about a complete layered defence that can sail anywhere in international waters. Small boats simply lack the range to do that.
Big boats become targets, but on paper everything is a target. It is by having a full set of pieces that compliment each other and can be used together to defend each other in a conflict that you give your force the best chance of success.
Are they invincible?
No. Nothing is.
The point is that the argument that the big boat is dead and all future boats should be small and stealthy is short sighted.
Russia doesn't need 30,000 MBTs right now, but equally she can't get by without any. Despite all the missiles and weapons and platforms designed to defeat a MBT it seems they are still around and still doing the job they were designed for... a mobile gun platform designed to break through enemy positions with heavy cannon fire and to support infantry.

Technology is always measure and countermeasure... and to be honest you can fit more countermeasures on a big ship than on a small one.

It is like the game of golf. You could probably play with only one club but if you want to do well you need to carry preferably a wood, a couple of irons, a pitching wedge is useful, as is a sand wedge, and a putter to get a decent score.
Each club is designed for a specific situation and to do a specific job.
Small boats would have to be VERY specialised simply because they lack the space to be anything else. This is the opposite of what the Russian Navy is talking about with their new Destroyers.

Regarding performance of CIWS the Kashtan-M seems to be pretty efficient against all sorts of target types.
The US has replaced its Phalanx with Sea RAM and they seem quite happy with that.

I agree an Argentine victory in sinking the Hermes might have forced a British retreat, even just a temporary one.
The problem is that the Argentines had no way of finding the Hermes let alone getting enough ordinance into it to sink it.
Most of the UK ships lost to bomb damage were near land and were either having problems detecting incoming aircraft because of the land or because of problems with interference from other ships radars.
The Sheffield was sunk because she turned off her sea wolf missile system to send a satellite message to Britain.
Only a few British vessels actually had Seawolf missiles on board, and these were really the only effective CIWS to be deployed and actually used in combat.
Soviet and Russian designed large vessels are rather better protected because they probably have a better appreciation of the effectiveness of anti ship missiles than anyone else, which means they often also have the best defended ships to such a threat.

I am sorry but suggesting that anti ship missiles makes big ships obsolete is like saying SAM systems make aircraft obsolete and anti tank missiles and RPGs make armour obsolete. The reality is that a force well equipped with anti armour weapons mounted on Jeeps and lots of MANPADs can certainly restrict the options of the attacker, but such a force can only be effective as a guerilla force, or in the case of ships a very limited coastal force.

If the British only had small vessels and no air power there would be no such thing as the Falkland Islands right now. For the British that would be a bad thing, so for the users of big ships they still have relevance today. If you want to move forces, or support operations world wide you need big ships.

BTW you can make big ships stealthy too, stealth has never been an issue of size.

It seems however you will not accept what I am saying, perhaps we can agree to disagree on this.
Can I just say that the threat of US carrier groups actually created the need for such giants as the OSCAR II class vessels and the Kirovs and Slava class vessels all of which needed to be bigger than similar western vessels because of the size and number of missiles they were designed to carry.
A radar stealthy anti ship missile sounds nice on paper, but most ships don't sail around with their radars on all the time because it gives away their position.
IR and IIR systems and ESM systems looking for launch platforms can just as easily spot a stealthy incoming missile, but the best way to spot on is with an AWACS aircraft.
Such an aircraft can spot a threat at long range so radars can be turned on and SAMs and guns can be prepared and the aircraft already in the air can be vectored to ID and take the first shots at the threats and perhaps even the launch platforms that fired all these incoming missiles.
Not perfect, but for a small vessel the first hint it is under attack is most likely to be an explosion.

I have read that instead of landing barges it can carry two hovercraft, I wonder if they will deploy or develop hovercraft with these vessels... it is the best way to deploy armour because it can fly over any beach defences or minefields and deploy armour right up on land and of course it is rather faster than most landing craft.

The upgraded Ka-32s sound interesting too, my guess at least new engines and new rotor blades.
I wonder how many troop transport Kamovs they will have (Ka-29s) as opposed to the other modifications.

Interesting.
The question is, are they going to buy the French landing cats or develop their own landing craft.
The dimensions given for the Cat above was 30m by 12m and there seem from the animation to be height issues regarding getting in and out of the Mistral mothership.

From memory the Russian Navy used the Murena hovercraft which was about 35 metres long and something like 15 metres across and it could only carry one tank so its payload is rather less than this French landing craft.
Its huge advantage over this French CAT is that it is a hovercraft and it can fly over coral reefs and sand banks and is less effected by beach gradient above and below the waterline.
It also floats over the beach area and can deploy vehicles and troops behind the sand which could be mined.

The other issue is that the French CATs are not armed, most landing vehicles the Russian navy uses at least have 30mm gun turrets to hose down the area, and often have 140mm rocket launchers to suppress enemy fire too.

I would think if the Russian Navy will use its own helos and its own weapons in the Mistral and they will also use their own armour, that they might also use their own landing craft as well. There is a new landing vessel called SERNA they have had developed and I would imagine a new hovercraft might be going to be developed to if there is not one already they can adapt for use.
Hovercraft are expensive to buy and to operate but they allow access to a much wider range of coastal places... I read somewhere that normal boats can land on something like 20% of the worlds coastlines and hovercraft on 70%.
There would have to be a good reason to have them in the past because as I said they are expensive.

Animation looks like a generic concept, the actual L-CAT fits just fine into the Mistral or any NATO standard well-dock.

On the animation everything on the top of the L-CAT seemed to fold down to fit into the bay. In the video animation at 1 minute 40 seconds it shows all the top projections folding down as the central platform is lowered.
Again at 2.20 when it comes out of the Mistral everything is lowered as it comes out...

Of course if it does fold down like that then that would be the most sensible reason for it to do so.

To be brutally honest it is just a catamaran hull with a central platform that can be raised and lowered and not much else, I would think such a vessel could easily and quickly be designed in Russia.

Murena payload was only 24t, hard to fit an MBT on it.

Are you sure? I thought the Murena or Tsaplya was an enlarged Lebed, and the Lebed could carry 40 tons.

I have an entry in a book (from 2004) that states that the Project 1206.1 Murena can carry one T-72M or T-80 tank or two BTR-70 APCs or two PT-76s or 130 Assault troops at 55 knots. A Hovercraft is noisy, but at such speeds surprise should still be possible.

Of course from what I can tell the only in service hovercraft seems to be the Czilim class hovercraft which is just a light patrol vessel with a full displacement weight of less than 10 tons.

The LCATs are backed by Tigre gunships and also designed with stealth in mind. With its great range LCATs can stand-off and unload an entire battalion in one night.

I guess that makes them simpler and lighter vessels when there is no requirement for armament. The crew is only 4 (according to their video) so I guess it can't be expected to defend itself.

The Serna was cancelled almost 20 years ago.

I have seen an advertisement for a Serna landing craft that includes a colour photo of the vessel in question, which is unusual as most of the other vessels described had drawings, or at best models.
If it is ready then it would make sense to use the tank landing vessels to land tanks and some hovercraft to land other items further up the beach.
Specifications given for the Project 11770 SERNA fast landing boat are displacement 105 tons, speed 30 knots, range up to 600 miles, carrying capacity 45 tons, compliment 4.
The description says: Designed to transport and land wheeled and tracked vehicles, personnel with weapons, and other cargoes to unorganized coasts.

Certainly a simpler cheaper new design of hovercraft would be better, there are far more places a hovercraft can land forces and equipment than a rigid hulled vessel... even if it is a cat. There were plenty of occasions during WWII in the Pacific war where the Americans lost men and their tanks simply sank because they had to be dropped off at a sand bar too far from shore and sank in the deep water between the sand bar and the beach.

Of course the other problem is how many Russian companies make Hovercraft that don't use components made in other Former Soviet states.
From memory the Zubr had Ukrainian parts.
The Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau in St Petersberg makes the Murena, while the Alekseev Central hydrofoil design bureau JSC in Nizhni Novgorod makes the Serna.