Little Guys For Low Budgets

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...



Russia has become the go-to provider of short range, low cost, warships. Currently, Russian shipyards are building nearly $6 billion worth of warships for foreign customers (India, China, Algeria, Vietnam and Indonesia). A typical ship in this building is the Stereguschyy class corvette (one in service, with three more building.) These are small ships (2,100 tons displacement), costing about $125 million each. These "Project 20380" ships have impressive armament (two 30mm anti-missile cannon, one 100mm cannon, eight anti-ship missiles, six anti-submarine missiles, two eight cell anti-missile missile launchers).

There is a helicopter platform, but the ship is not designed to carry one regularly. Crew size, of one hundred officers and sailors, is achieved by a large degree of automation. The ship also carries air search and navigation radars. It can cruise 6,500 kilometers on one load of fuel. Normally, the ship would stay out 7-10 days at a time, unless it received replenishment at sea. Like the American LCS, the Russian ship is meant for coastal operations. The navy wants at least fifty of them.

But there other Russian shipbuilding projects that don't fit the overall pattern. The main one here is the conversion of a retired Russian carrier, the 44,000 ton Gorshkov, into the INS Vikramaditya for India. This ship was supposed to enter Indian service this year, but has been delayed until 2012. The Russians admitted that this project suffered from shoddy workmanship, poor management and the loss of blueprints for the ship. These have to be reconstructed.

The new deal will cost $2.5 billion. This includes the purchase of the Gorshkov, and Russian shipyards performing repairs, modifications and upgrades. Another $800 million is to be spent on aircraft, weapons and equipment. Building a Gorshkov type carrier today would cost about $4 billion, and take several years more.

The Admiral Gorshkov entered service in 1987, but was inactivated in 1996 (too expensive to operate on a post Cold War budget). The Indian deal was made in 2004, and the carrier was to be ready by 2008. But a year ago reports began coming out of Russia that the shipyard doing the work, Sevmash, had seriously miscalculated the cost of the project. The revised costs were more like $1.1 billion for the $700 million refurb. The situation proceeded to get worse, with Sevmash reporting ever increasing costs to refurbish the carrier.

The Indians were not happy, and at first insisted that the Russian government (which owns many of the entities involved) make good on the original deal. India sent its own team of technical experts to Russia, and their report apparently confirmed what the Russians reported, about shipyard officials low-balling the cost of the work needed. This is a common tactic for firms building weapons for their own country. It gets more complicated when you try to pull that sort of thing on a foreign customer. The Russian government will cover some of the overrun cost. The Sevmash managers who negotiated the low bid are being prosecuted.

Most Russian shipbuilding projects work out. The Russian ships are simpler than their Western counterparts, and for coastal work are adequate. You get what you pay for, unless you are refurbishing a major ship that the Russians never quite got the hang of.

Russian Nary Gets Time Off For Good Behaviour

12 hours ago: Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko sails into Havana's bay December 19, 2008. The Russian warship arrived on Friday for the first time since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, as Russia flexed its muscles close to the United States and showed off its warming relations with former Cold War ally Cuba.Thank Goodness. "Are there pirates in the Caribbean?" "Not like in the Indian Ocean."

"We have no bananas."; "No eggs left and no money to buy any."; "Have you no decency?";"You made it..was it 1991?"; "Did it with no help.";"I don't know about this Cuba."; "Is Home any better?"; "I'll get you there in no time."; "3 more months of this!";" Oh! Boy."; "You signed on for 6 months."; "The Water is good no?"

Brand New Internal NAV systems for Canadian Navy

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...

Canadian Destroyer undergoes first trials with Northrop Grumman inertial-navigation and data-distribution system

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., 28 Oct. 2008. A Canadian Navy destroyer just completed the first sea trials with a new-generation inertial-navigation system (INS) and data-distribution network supplied by Northrop Grumman Corp.

The Iroquois-class destroyer, HMCS Athabaskan, is the first naval ship to go to sea with the MK49 ring-laser gyro navigator (RLGN) INS and Navigation Data Distribution System (NavDDS). The systems were developed by Northrop Grumman's Sperry Marine business unit.

The Sperry Marine MK49 RLGN provides precise real-time 3D position, heading, speed, and attitude reference data for the ship's navigation and combat systems. The NavDDS is designed to provide a network backbone integrating INS data seamlessly with other sensors and systems throughout the ship, says a representative.

"The RLGN-NavDDS combination represents a major advancement in the state-of-the art integrated navigation technology on modern warships," says J. Nolasco DaCunha, vice president of Sperry Marine. "The successful sea trials aboard HMCS Athabaskan provided a clear demonstration of the mission-enhancing capabilities of the MK49 and NavDDS systems for the Canadian Navy.

"Sperry Marine is under contract with the Canadian Navy to supply RLGN and NavDDS systems for 12 Halifax-class frigates, three Iroquois-class destroyers and four Victoria-class submarines," continues DaCunha. "The recently completed ship trials are an important milestone in this program, opening the door to rapid deployment of this breakthrough technology across the remaining Canadian Navy surface and submarine platforms."

The 129.9-meter (426-foot) helicopter-equipped ship is a multi-mission platform with advanced anti-submarine, area air defence and command and control capabilities.

European Union: Time To Stand Behind Safe Marine Trade

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- European Union governments say they will deploy additional warships off the coast of Somalia to fight piracy.

Germany will send a frigate, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said. France has already dispatched a frigate and Spain has sent an observation plane. The goal is to have an EU fleet of three warships, a supply ship and three naval surveillance planes, Jung said.

``We have to take effective action against pirates,'' Jung told reporters today at an EU meeting in Deauville, France. ``We have to first push back the pirates, restore security on the high seas and make free maritime trade possible again.''

Attacks by pirates have surged this year off Somalia, and are running at close to one a day. Commercial shippers have warned they may start routing cargo around Africa, passing the added fuel and time costs on to clients. They've asked for help from Western navies, noting that joint patrols by the Malaysian, Indonesian and Singapore navies have almost eradicated piracy in the Straits of Malacca, the world's previous piracy hotspot.

The EU force, the bloc's first naval crisis-management mission, would go into action by the end of the year, French officials said. France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for greater international effort to fight piracy.

Anti-Terror Mission

Several EU countries, including France, Britain, and Denmark, already have warships in the Indian Ocean as part of Task Force 150, an anti-terrorist mission with the U.S, Canadian, and Pakistani navies. In the past 10 years off the coast of Yemen, skiff-borne suicide bombers have attacked a U.S. warship, the USS Cole, and a French oil tanker.

Around 60 boats have been attacked by pirates this year in waters off Somalia, the International Maritime Bureau says, and at last 200 sailors are being held hostage.

Warships from Task Force 150 do intervene to prevent pirate attacks on commercial vessels, though piracy isn't the fleet's main mandate.

``If they stumble upon something, they will chase them away, but won't engage in hot pursuit,'' said Sam Dawson, press officer for the London-based International Transport Workers Federation, which along with five shipping associations signed a joint statement this week asking for more protection.

U.S. warships are also shadowing a Ukrainian ship that was hijacked last week with its cargo of T-72 battle tanks, and a Russian warship is en route to the area.

Use of Force

Foreign powers may ``use force'' to free the ship as long as they coordinate with Somalia, Mohamed Jama Ali, the Somali foreign ministry's acting permanent director, told the Associated Press today.

Each country has its own set of rules. French naval commanders have captured 12 Somali pirates in two operations since April and sent them to mainland France to be prosecuted. The Danish navy has disarmed pirates, and later set them free on the Somali coast. The British navy has rules of engagement that prevent them from arresting pirates.

German-owned ships suffered the most attacks last year, registering 43 of 263 global incidents, according to the IMB. Germany has the world's largest container fleet and the third- largest merchant fleet.

``We would welcome strongly a joint European initiative and hope it falls into place very soon,'' said Max Johns, a spokesman in Hamburg for the German ship-owners associations. ``We are currently in talks with all parties of the German Parliament because we have a peculiar problem in Germany with the fact that the German navy has very tight legal restrictions on how they can help against pirates.''

William The Conqueror on Peter The Great

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...


Predictable Scenarios are a Rats Tail of Charm


One of the predictable outcomes of the mess in Georgia is that the Russians, peeved by what they saw as US involvement in their bowl of chili, would proceed to mess with our bowl of chili. They decided that Hugo Chavez was the right man for the job, being easily impressed by small numbers of airplanes and possessed of enough oil money to make for a reasonable arms buyer.

God knows Hugo loves it. This latest news must have made him utterly speechless with self-important joy, the news that the Russians were sending a flotilla of four warships on a "goodwill cruise" that would just by happenstance include a visit to Venezuela. One imagines Hugo putting on his skipper's hat and begging the Russians to let him take the helm of the Peter the Great.

I detect a minor ripple of consternation out there in Fear-Land. Back in the 1970s someone (I think it was William F. Buckley) started the "Pearl Harbor Association for Keeping Our Eyes on the Soviet Fleet." The fear factor isn't as high today, but this Russian flotilla is causing altogether too much underwear-bunching, in my opinion.

Only two of the ships have been named in news reports. One is the Peter the Great, a hulking nuclear-powered Kirov-class battle cruiser. Another is the Admiral Chabanenko, one of the Udaloy class of anti-submarine ships. The other two are not named, which suggests that they are fairly minor in nature. I like to think they're a couple of old, worn-out ships from that bizarre K-named jungle of Soviet warships from the 1960s and 1970s - Kynda, Kresta, Krivak, Kara, Kanin, Kashin... But since they aren't named, I don't know.

The Udaloy ASW destroyer is pretty fair as ASW destroyers go, but it's not the sort of thing that's liable to upset the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere. It's probably a little better than a basic Spruance, but not in the league as any of the Arleigh Burkes. Its main defects on a worldwide cruise of that sort would probably be relatively short range and no particular area AAW or ASuW capability.

The Kirov doesn't suffer from those weaknesses. By any standard, the Kirovs are powerful surface combatants with an excellent mix of long-range anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and anti-ship missiles. They're huge by modern standards, the size of smallish battleships, and unlike the majority of Soviet warships that were suited only for the "Battle of the First Salvo", they possess a degree of durability and staying power that no other Russian warship can touch. Let's put it this way: Peter the Great could single-handedly defeat the combined navies of all of South America, and probably in a single afternoon, and without having to reload.

Does payload indicate a lengthy struggle at only 36mph break speed?

This isn't hyperbole. The ship is huge for a modern warship - 25,000 tons - and large size (really, large displacement) means that the ship can carry multiple weapons systems that provide overlapping capability. The ship is extremely well-armed, to say the least - I won't recite the numbers because they're meaningless to most people, but suffice it to say that the Peter the Great can attack aircraft, surface ships and submarines alike at long range.

So why doesn't it bother me more than it does? All of a sudden there's this heavily-armed Russian behemoth cruising around in our hemisphere, and it doesn't bother me?? No, not a bit. And I'll tell you why (you were wondering if I would, weren't you?). Because, like every other surface warship built since about 1920, this mighty nuclear battle cruiser can't protect itself indefinitely against air attack. The list of mighty warships that have gone to Davy Jones's Locker courtesy of air attack is long and distinguished: Ostfriesland, Arizona, Nevada, Hornet, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Yamato, Musashi, Tirpitz, Sheffield, Ardent, Arrow, Coventry... And a US carrier task force would quickly add the Peter the Great to the list.

Mind you, it would be an interesting tactical problem. What is the best way through the ship's interleaved and overlapping air defense systems? Would a program of steady but low-count standoff ASM (e.g. Tomahawks) attacks eventually expend its missile ammunition? Or would a much more intense attack with weapons like Harpoons overload its fire control systems and lead to quicker neutralization? Or would a regime of jamming and anti-radiation missiles eventually blind it and leave it vulnerable to close-in attack? I imagine this is the sort of problem that would keep a group of US naval officers amused for an hour or two, discussing various ways into and out of the tactical problem, but at the root of the matter is the basic fact that given halfway competent leadership of the carrier, the Russian ship is doomed unless the battle starts with the carrier already within range of the Kirov's missiles. But that's why we stipulate "halfway competent leadership".

No trains or automobiles, except in the case of lost loved ones


So it doesn't worry me. It might even be an interesting tactical problem for the US Air Force, which I don't think has had much opportunity to bomb boats since the glory days of the Fifth Air Force in World War Two.

Why, I ask, would the Soviets have bothered building a ship as large and expensive as the Kirov if they were that vulnerable to air attack? I think there were three reasons for them.

First, the Soviets wanted prestige. They wanted to match the US Navy's impression of power, but lacking aircraft carriers of their own, they concluded that maybe a novel nuclear battle cruiser would be good for prestige. Lousy for the budget, but good for brochures.

Second, the Soviets wanted a ship that could survive the Battle of the First Salvo. It was easy to imagine, in the 1970s, the entire deployed Soviet fleet either being wiped out or missile-expended in a single afternoon, leaving them with basically nothing but submarines. These big new battle cruisers would give Soviet surface action groups a measure of stamina and durability they didn't have up until then.

Third, I believe that the Soviets intended for the Kirovs to serve as dedicated escorts for the proposed Soviet aircraft carriers, but when the carriers were never finished, the doctrinal purpose of the Kirovs went away too.

So here we are. The Cold War is over, most of the Kirovs aren't in commission any more, and the best of the lot, the Peter the Great, is propping up the macho pretensions of Hugo Chavez. One imagines that Admiral Gorshkov is spinning in his grave.

Afterword: Why Kirov? Why that name? There is a city of Kirov, but it's an inland transportation hub and I can attest to the fact that it's pretty grey and bleak and doesn't in any way call the ocean to mind. I think the ship was actually named after Sergei M. Kirov, the party boss of 1920s Leningrad who proved to be too charismatic and popular for Stalin's taste. Stalin reportedly had him assassinated, then marched as the chief mourner in his funeral - a touch that would have made Trotsky wince if in fact Stalin hadn't had him.

Sources: Jane's World International - Fighting Ships