More about the problem of the near sea zone corvette
The newspaper "Military Industrial Courier" published another critical article by Maxim Klimov "Common Sense in the Near Zone. The Problems of the Russian Corvette Must Be Solved Immediately", which states that the latest good news about the planned laying of new, badly needed corvettes for the Russian Navy should not be obscured acute problems of both the project 22380 (5) itself and equipping with modern ships in the near zone of the Navy. The main thing is that you need a lot of such ships and they should correspond to the tasks facing them as much as possible.
Deafness is treated
One of the main tasks is anti-submarine defense (ASW). Taking into account the zonal structure of the acoustic field, in the overwhelming majority of cases, to implement a search system in an area, an optimally distributed network of corresponding sensors and their carriers is needed. The most efficient sensor today is the Minotaur towed hydroacoustic station (BUGAS). That is, it is necessary, figuratively speaking, "minotaurization" of the near zone. At the same time, an absurd situation developed when there are two ships with Minotaurs in the Pacific Fleet today, and one in the Northern Fleet (the lead frigate of Project 22350), and all the other new buildings with Minotaurs ended up in Baltiysk, where they can be hit by the enemy in the very first minutes of the conflict by any means, including artillery.
Obviously, this situation needs to be urgently corrected, and here it is necessary not only to order new ships for the Pacific Fleet and Northern Fleet, but also to transfer already built ships from the Baltic. At the same time, everything that has already been built and planned for construction is extremely small. Again, the key parameter here is the ratio of the required control zone, search performance and zones of simultaneous reliable control of anti-submarine forces in a specific theater of operations. What the fleet has and what it plans to receive by 2027, obviously does not allow for the provision of a short range in anti-submarine warfare. There is a solution here - this is a massive small corvette for the protection of the water area (OVR), but their creation has been artificially slowed down for many years, including due to a scam with the so-called peace doves,
Targets of the near zone
The issue of financial constraints is acute, especially since the corvette must be multipurpose, which means it must have effective air defense and be able to solve strike missions.
It is worth starting with air defense, especially since today it has become a key problematic issue of this type of ships.
The constructed corvettes of the project 20380 (type "Guarding") have a number of serious problems with air defense, as a result of which their sinking is not difficult for a group of attack aircraft (and even a single aircraft) or an enemy missile boat. SAM "Redut", which has been brought up for a long time and, according to media reports, has finally started working, has extremely expensive missiles 9M96 and 9M100 with an active radar seeker. The problem is that the corvettes do not have radio correction of missiles, which means that the actively maneuvering target "Redoubt" is unable to hit. Moreover, even a standard salvo of the Harpoon anti-ship missile system the Redut air defense missile system misses with a high probability, since the target distribution of the anti-aircraft missile system against the salvo anti-ship missile system occurs randomly, and in this situation, the target's miss on board your ship is almost inevitable.
Reliability of the ship's short-range air defense can only be ensured with effective and all-weather control of the upper hemisphere and the identification of all air targets with a high probability of their destruction. At the same time, the frequency range of the main means of detection for corvettes - radar "Fourke" (range - 10 cm) is not optimal for work on inconspicuous low-flying targets, the accuracy of target designation for the use of missiles at "Fourke" leaves much to be desired. For this reason, a very good artillery radar "Puma" (3 cm), but with restrictions on the shooting sector and an increase in working hours, turned out to be the salvation for "Redut" on the corvette. The A-190 cannon with the Puma is very good, but the Puma is in fact occupied by the Redoubt,
At the same time, the solution to this complex of problems is quite possible - the Pozitiv-M radar operating in the three-centimeter range provides target designation of the missile defense system with the required accuracy, confidently working on low-flying targets. The only question is in the introduction of radio correction of missiles. In addition, it is highly advisable to replace the 9M100 missiles with the 9M338K with a much lower cost. And the question here is not only in the air defense of the ship - the 9M96 SAM is extremely important on the scale of the air defense of all the Armed Forces. 9M96 is needed in the maximum series (including to increase the transportable and ready-to-fight ammunition load of the S-400 air defense system), and each 9M100 SAM produced by the plant is not the 9M96 SAM, which is many times superior to the 9M100 in terms of "efficiency-cost".
It is necessary to emphasize the danger of betting on the use of a millimeter-wave radar (shooting radar of the Pantsir-M complex), with which the effectiveness of air defense ends when bad weather sets in. Aviation has learned to use such conditions long ago, it will fly in and sink our ships at a convenient moment. For "Pantsir-M" today, it is extremely important to switch from the meteorological millimeter range to at least a two-centimeter range of a firing radar.
Instead of all this, our Navy makes “a mistake worse than a crime” by equipping corvettes with the extremely expensive and “fashionable” integrated tower-mast complex (IBMK) “Zaslon”. At the moment, the cost of such an IBMK is close to the cost of the entire lead corvette of Project 20380, which is obviously beyond common sense. In addition, despite the repeated failure of the established deadlines, the head corvette with the IBMK Zaslon - Thundering "has not been able to shoot down a single air target until now. With a high probability, this will nevertheless happen, perhaps before the end of the year, because the huge funds spent need to somehow be reported, but already now we can confidently assert that the shooting from the IBMK will be conducted under extremely simplified conditions that have nothing to do with combat. And there is a justification for this, since our Navy simply does not have targets,
It turns out that today we are actually building ships that, in a real battle, will be easily drowned by enemy air attacks. The only exception is the Project 22350 frigate.
Based on the budget
Speaking about the strike capabilities of the near-zone ships, it should be noted that the Uran anti-ship missile system is quite enough for the corvette, but we do not have a light launcher for the highly needed Otvet anti-submarine missiles (ASM). Their use is possible today only from vertical launchers UKSK (universal shipborne firing complex) for Kalibr missiles. This solution has already been implemented in the modification of project 20380 - project 20385. Accordingly, only corvettes of project 20385 should be considered for further serial construction.
The thesis about the uselessness of the PLR due to the presence of an PLO helicopter on the corvette does not stand up to criticism. Our Ka-27M is an example of a quarter of a century outdated, extremely ineffective anti-submarine helicopter. It got to the point that in the process of the next modernization, the PLO helicopter lost its anti-submarine search and sighting system, which is simply not on the new Ka-27M. In this situation, only the PLR "Answer" enables our corvettes to be hunters in relation to enemy submarines, and not game.
Let's summarize briefly.
The massive construction of corvettes with the extremely expensive and still not providing the use of air defense weapons IBMK "Zaslon" will lead to the expenditure of huge budget funds on ineffective systems that do not meet the air defense requirements of corvettes, but for financial reasons exclude their mass construction.
It is necessary to modernize the project 22380 (5) in terms of the installation of the serial radar "Positive-M" and means of radio correction of missiles. Taking into account the need for anti-submarine missiles "Answer" and the extreme expediency of ensuring the possibility of using "Calibers" for a series of new corvettes, project 20385 with UKSK is needed (with its modification for "Positive-M" and radio correction of missiles).
The laying of new corvettes of project 20380 (5) does not solve the problem of the near zone; a mass series of small corvette for the protection of the water area is needed. And something needs to be done with our naval aviation. First of all, a full and modern modernization of the Ka-27M helicopter is needed, and not what we received today. However, this is a topic for a separate conversation.
https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4144220.html
) be destroyed by a salvo of Harpoons also seems to rely on quite a bit of speculation, mainly derived from the at best rather exaggerated assertion that the Furke is useless and seemingly some ideas about the Harpoon being capable of swarming attacks...now, again, I'm just a newb but it was my understanding that the Harpoons typically in use with most NATO ships can't actually do that; some other missiles, like the RBS-15 can (at least in newer versions) but those are not often used AFAIK. And this is just a 2k ton corvette, not an air defense frigate or destroyer...as to the Zaslon: IMO this is added mostly to allow more reliable shoot-downs of stealth targets, future (better) AShM and to enable targeting further out to make full use of the capabilities of Redut.
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