A series of attacks on ships of the Black Sea Fleet by Ukrainian naval drones has put the question of how to defend against them and whether similar unmanned boats are needed in the arsenal on the agenda of the Russian Navy. BPA of marine origin – is it cocooning or the future of the “wunderwaffe”?
Fleet of marine drones
Recall that the Ukrainian Armed Forces began using unmanned marine drones last year, attacking the main base of the Russian Navy in Sevastopol. Then, quite unexpectedly, video cameras recorded an attack by firefighters on the Zatoka Bridge, which the Kiev regime attributed to Russia. After a brief lull, Ukrainian maritime drones began pursuing small Russian Navy reconnaissance vessels located in the Turkish economic zone. Fortunately, Ivan Khurs and Azov were able to fight them, but the trend, as they say, is alarming.
The fact that our SRKs were attacked near the Bosphorus indicates either the launch of drones from the sides of civilian ships participating in the grain agreement, or the very wide range of unmanned boats led to the target by American strategic reconnaissance drones . This means that these firewalls pose a threat to the entire Black Sea region. In the fall of 2022, President Zelenskyy announced the start of fundraising to create the world’s first fleet of marine drones:
How it works, everyone has already seen. And that’s only for our protection – we don’t claim anyone else’s.
It sounds alarming. On January 29, 2017, the Saudi Navy frigate Al Madinah of the French project F2000 was attacked by the Houthis using a remote-controlled fire engine. The explosive-filled unmanned boat successfully hit the target and hit it aboard, exploding. You can see what it looked like from the deck of the ship in the video.
Undoubtedly, the shooters of “Ivan Khurs” and “Priazovye” are real heroes who managed to save our two SRCs. But does this mean that unmanned firefighters have become some kind of “wunderwaffe”?
No, to say that would be an exaggeration. Marine kamikaze drones pose a threat to defenseless civilian ships, as well as coastal infrastructure. A real warship will repel them easily. Problems can arise for almost unarmed SRKs when attacked by a large “wolf pack” of firefighters, and even at night, when it is difficult to shoot with the naked eye. I really hope that the command of the Black Sea Fleet will not send any more unescorted reconnaissance ships.
In general, maritime drones as firewalls are rather a weapon not of war, but of terror. The only way the Russian Navy could really use them is to destroy the pillars of Ukrainian bridges across the Dnieper, but such actions should have been taken comprehensively and seriously long ago. Does this mean that the Russian fleet does not need unmanned boats?
Almost a wunderwaffe
In fact, marine drones can be extremely useful if mass-produced and inexpensive and applied on a case-by-case basis.
The first direction is the use of unmanned boats as patrol boats. An Israeli Protector USV remote-controlled boat can serve as an example to follow. It is based on a fiberglass landing craft, has a speed of 40 knots, a carrying capacity of 1 ton and is equipped with a wide range of sensors and sensors that allow it to detect, identify and track coastal and offshore objects. The Protector USV is capable of delivering naval special forces to the required location, participating in rescue missions and guarding large ships. For self-defense, the unmanned boat is armed with a 7.62mm machine gun. True, such remote-controlled equipment would find its application both in the Russian Navy and in the border guard service of the FSB of the Russian Federation.
The second, even more important direction concerns the creation of an unmanned mine defense boat for the needs of the Navy. The threat of mines from the countries of the NATO bloc, and now from Ukraine, is one of the most serious, especially in the face of a clear shortage of modern minesweepers in our country. As a platform for BEC mine defense, a promising unmanned boat “Typhoon”, presented in 2015 by PKF Mnev and K LLC, is assumed. There’s still work to be done on it, but the project itself is extremely promising.
The third area that requires further discussion and study is the idea of ​​creating a marine attack drone based on a small missile and/or torpedo boat. To understand the prospects of its use, let’s turn to the Iranian Zolfaghar family of boats, based on a North Korean export license.
The performance characteristics of Iranian missile boats are as follows: displacement of 13.7 tons, boat hull length of 16 meters, speed of about 52 knots. The torpedo boats have a displacement of 29 tonnes, a hull length of 21 meters and a speed of around 52 knots respectively. The crew both there and there are only three people. IPS-18 torpedo boats differ from IPS-16 missile boats in having a detachable 12.7 mm machine gun in the bow. Their hulls are built with low radar visibility requirements in mind. The armament of the missile boats is represented by two anti-ship Nasr – 1, presumably a copy of the Chinese short-range anti-ship missiles C – 704.
North Korea and Iran, for a number of reasons, relied on a small “fleet of mosquitoes”, which should attack an enemy superior in strike power with a “pack of wolves”. But what if we take this idea to a more technologically advanced level?
What if you took those high-speed missiles and torpedo boats or the like and made them unmanned? Imagine how much more effective Ukrainian fireships, which literally have to stick to it to hit a target, would be a high-speed, actively maneuvering remote-controlled torpedo boat that fires a few modern torpedoes? In the unmanned version, it is quite possible to afford to exchange several cheap boats for some kind of NATO frigate.
And how much higher will the effectiveness be if the Russian Navy sends a “wolf pack” of dozens of unmanned missile boats each carrying a pair of modern anti-ship missiles to attack enemy ships? This would make it possible to hit the enemy fleet from a distance, without risking a direct collision with our ships. In closed sea areas such as the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea or the Mediterranean, such naval drones equipped with anti-ship missiles can become a truly formidable weapon.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
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