Those who are interested in Russian naval strategic thought may find this further development and elaboration on my publications in US Naval Institute Proceeding and Blog to be of some value.
As I wrote some time ago about Russian Navy's newest Karakurt-class small missile ships, these ships will have a very potent air defense system, navalized Pantsyr, installed on them. This was confirmed today by Deputy Defense Minister of Russian Federation Yuri Borisov at the ceremony of laying down latest project 22800 (Karakurt) MRK "Shkval" (Squall) at Pella shipyard, not far from St. Petersburg. Unlike other, now very famous, Byan-class (project 21631) MRKs, armed only with rudimentary Gibka air-defense complex, navalized Pantsyr gives 800-ton Karakurts ability to not only effectively defend themselves against a variety of air threats but even perform AD functions while operating as escorts.
It is too early to speculate on what this navalized Pantsyr will be, but it is clear that its naval version will retain both missiles and guns in complex. It is an extremely intelligent system and it brings a completely new capability to a small ships which already pack a tremendous punch both in anti-ship and land-strike configurations and are capable to operate up to 3,000 miles from the base.
It was a dream of Admiral Aube, known for his fanatical support of Jeune Ecole, to see such a fleet operating on the high seas. Well, looks like his dreams, as well as validation of Jeune Ecole concepts, have finally been fulfilled....150 years later. Talk about maturity of technology. Mosquito fleet is coming out, missiles and guns blazing, to change naval warfare forever. We are, as incomparable Captain Wayne Hughes wrote, in missile age and there is no escaping it. Complex networks of MRKs, SSKs, land based aviation, integrated vertically and horizontally, capable to absorb a blow and then strike back with immense force--we are at the cusp of a revolution in Sea Denial and A2/AD.
The existence of the missile boats as a class of ships, in Soviet/Russian case, was predetermined not just by their relatively low costs but because of the operational concept, which later became known as Gorshkov's Line. Or, in other words, the farthest edge (kromka) of the area from which the enemy attack on Soviet coast could be launched. The idea was to deny the enemy operational freedom on this line. Surely, capital ships of the Russian Navy theoretically could deal with this threat but, the thinking went, they were far more effective in meeting the enemy beyond the limits of 800-1000 mile ranges, on the high seas, way beyond the ranges of enemy's weapon systems.
In 1992 US Navy produced its famous operational concept From The Sea, which later, in 1994, was updated to Forward From The Sea. Forward From The Sea In this document US Navy clearly stated its purpose, which since then changed very little. The United States would attack anyone who has access to sea if it thinks it is necessary:
How the Navy Operates
Forward...From the Sea provides the basis for a simple, yet
powerful, operational concept of how we will operate to carry out
expeditionary operations. We conduct forward naval operations both to
ensure unimpeded use of the seas and to project American influence and
power into the littoral
areas of the world. Expeditionary operations achieve U.S. objectives
across the spectrum of the National Military Strategy. They are a
potent and cost-effective alternative to power projection from the
continental United States and are suited ideally for the many
contingencies that can be deterred or quickly handled by
forward-deployed forces. Expeditionary operations complement, enable and
dramatically enhance the effectiveness of continental power-projection
forces when a larger military response is needed.
Our attention and efforts will continue to be focused on
operating in and from the littorals. The landward side of the littoral
can be supported and defended directly from the sea. It encompasses
areas of strategic importance to the United States. Seventy-five percent
of the Earth's population and a
similar proportion of national capitals and major commercial centers lie
in the littorals. These are the places where American influence and
power have the greatest impact and are needed most
often. For forward-deployed naval forces, the littorals are a starting
point as well as a destination. Tactically, the distance we reach inland
from the sea depends on terrain and weather, the contributions of joint
and coalition forces, the potential adversary's capabilities, and the
nature of our mission. The
mission may require us to exercise our considerable reach and operate
far inland.(C)
For any, even removed from naval realities, observer the language and the spirit of this concept is obvious. It is global, it is aggressive and it is, well, good only against the third rate navies. The collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, disappearance of US Navy's only rival on the high seas played a very bad trick with US naval doctrinal thinking. Conventionally US Navy could easily defeat the remnants of the Soviet, now Russian, Navy but there was a slight "problem"--Russian Navy didn't want to fight on the high seas. In fact, in 1990s, it could barely deploy there. But things changed since. The change was in electronics and computers and, well, in the way Russia was governed. While the army of US "analysts" and "Russia experts" was busy compiling, yet again (what's new), a picture of rusty, drunk, incompetent Russia, Russian Navy was thinking in the framework which was diametrically opposite to From The Sea concept--it can only be described as From The Shore. Indeed, Russia has no business of "Force Projection" globally. In fact, even if Russia wanted to get herself into this business of blowing shit up on the remote shores, where would she "project" it, against whom? As of today, Russian naval assets either have or are on the way to the full blown conventional stand-off capability against any shore, including against targets in North America, and even these capabilities are deployed in purely defensive posture. Thus, the defense of the nation's shores from the sea, which is known today as fancy abbreviation A2/AD (anti-access/access-denial) becomes the foundation of Russia's naval thinking as it should and for a very simple reason--Russia does not want to fight with the US near its coast line, the United States, on the other hand, sleeps and dreams about dominating coast lines of the states it considers hostile to the US national interests (whatever those may be between Monday and Friday of the same week) and Russia fits the bill here perfectly. President Obama, after all, compared Russia to E-bola and ISIS. Recent developments in the Black Sea (Sea Breeze, anyone) obviously have a flavor of good ole' Cold War and the statements coming from high positioned US military people testify to the fact that many in Pentagon and its neocon political handlers are barely fighting urges to get Russia into some sort of the confrontation with the "West". Russia does not want to fight, so, as the old saying goes, if the mountain doesn't walk to Mohamed, Mohamed walks to the mountain. USS Donald Cook was playing Mohamed, together with other NATO ships, for quite some time.
USS Donald Cook and Ukrainian ship Hetman Sagaydachnyi maneuver near Crimean shores.
Unlike demonstration of flag in the littorals of Arab countries, operations near Russia's littoral can, but hopefully will not, present any NATO's navy, or combination of those, with the number of problems they never encountered before. Unlike previous encounters with, mostly Arab, navies and greatly talked up (a favorite term of media pundits is "integrated", e.g. "Saddam has integrated air defense") military capabilities or, rather, lack thereof, the encounter, as an example, in the Black Sea, in case of the hypothetical hostilities "from the sea" will have a very different profile, because Russia, unlike previously crushed "military powers", DOES posses genuinely integrated defenses. Every single element of Russia's A2/AD is truly integrated into the very complex system of national Command and Control which:
1. Is already partially capable of providing what Admiral Cebrowski (or Garstka, or Alberts) would call a GIG (Global Informational Grid) aka Virtual Battle Space. Yes, Russian littoral defenses start at the bottom of the sea and go up, way up, in fact to the places Russians opened the door to others--space. Including this very important targeting system known today as Liana. Last rumors I heard is that it is already on-line, but what do I know. This is the system which provides targeting data to anti-ship missiles. For those who do not know what targeting data is I would say that it is a pretty simple thing: it is either bearing (azimuth) and distance (range) to the surface target or add here the elevation (or angle of elevation) for aerial ones. This data could also be, which is just fine for ASMs, such as Yakhont, geographic coordinates, aka lambda and phi, known as geographic altitude and longitude. That's targeting in the real time.
2. Apart from space means, including the only other global positioning system--GLONASS, Russia has, on every theater, what NO other nation crushed by NATO ever had--Russia has actual, combat-capable Air Force. Including the planes which are known as AWACS and we are talking about arguably the best airborne radar in the world. We are talking A-50 Airborne Early Warning System.
Inside A-50
3. Russia's Black Sea Fleet, quite urgently, recreated the separate brigade of SSKs, with first hull arriving to Novorossiisk (via Sevastopol, I am sure) shortly, if not already. NATO DID NOT encounter a competent and state of the art submarine force...ever.
4. And then, of course, came Mosquitoes, which I predicted were inevitable on the Black Sea Fleet even before return of Crimea home. Russia needs salvo on the Black Sea--that is, the number of the missiles which will reach and overcome saturation threshold of the NATO's naval missile defenses, that is, as we all understand, SPY-1D and Aegis. What is saturation threshold, that it is the number of missiles at which AD system implodes and allows the "leaker" through, remains the matter of speculations. However, judging by the late 1990s scandal with US Navy trying to obtain Russian target drones based on AS-17 Kryptons remade into SSST (Supersonic Sea Skimming Target) for training--the issue is really serious. Since then M=3 ASMs with the active radar homing (Yakhont, for example, sees targets from 70 kilometers) and EECM package became mainstay of Russian Navy and not only that. Suddenly, fairly indefensible from the air, unless external air defense cover is used, project 21631 Buyan (you see, no Osas or Komars anymore) missile ships began to appear on the Black Sea.
Here they are at Novorossiisk Naval Base getting ready to be included in the Fleet's order of battle
The thing with these ships is that with the displacement of about one ninth of Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and the price tag of about the same proportions, that is about nine times less expensive, they can provide the coverage for the whole Black Sea. One, of course, has to consider three points above that. The brigade of such ships can also provide a salvo to the strategic depth of land theater of operations or, speaking plain language, such ships can strike any city in Europe or, can strike land targets in the Persian Gulf while themselves being in the Caspian Sea.
Suddenly getting small is becoming fashionable, after all, 1-2 Klubs will take out any large surface combatant. And single Yakhont, certainly, will have no problem destroying the target of LCS-1 or LCS-2 caliber, which, as we all remember, were designed to fight in littorals. Russia has it for small missile ships, the new project 22800 Karakurt, which will carry a navalized version of famous Pantsyr Air Defense Complex.
Project 22800 Karakurt
And all that is just the start of what many already are calling a silent revolution in the naval warfare. 19th Century proponents of Jeune E'Cole would have been ecstatic today should they have lived to see the coming age of missile as a main striking weapon of the fleet. This and, well, this electronic mambo-jumbo with all those beyond horizon radar, multi static sonar, massive jamming capabilities (I should have put point 5 for that, I will), Net Centric Warfare and other things which moved navies away from pure platform-centric posture towards networks and integration with other forces. After all, it takes, under some conditions, 8 missile salvo by150-million dollar ship to destroy about 5-6 billion dollars of the hardware. And the numbers matter, as legendary Arleigh Burke told Elmo Zumwalt:"We need numbers"(c).
The idea of a small ship capable of carrying out large tasks is, certainly, not new. After all, already mentioned, Jeune Ecole imagined naval combat being conducted by the swarms of small torpedo and cannon-boats, which would be controlled by the telegraph. One of the main factors which influenced Jeune Ecole was the invention of the shell and Canon-obusier (or shell-firing cannon) by Henri-Joseph Paixhans, which changed drastically, including an improvement in accuracy, the main striking weapon of the fleets--naval gun. Russians demonstrated the effectiveness of Canon-obusier in the Battle Of Sinop in 1853, when Russian Squadron defeated Turkish Fleet. The shell-firing cannon came of age in this battle. It also made it onto the small ships.
We know the rest of the story, that is until new weapon emerged.
This weapon sent shock waves through naval world, when on 21 October 1967, Israeli Navy's INS Eilat was sunk by a two-missile salvo of Soviet-made Anti-Shipping Missiles (ASM) P-15 Termit (Styx), launched from Egyptian Soviet-made Komar-class (Project 183) small missile boat. The fact that the boat with 61 ton of displacement could sink a 1700 ton destroyer not by a torpedo seemed obscene at the time. Well, it is not obscene anymore. As Operation Trident by Indian Navy in 1971 demonstrated to a devastating effect--few Osa-class (project 205) boats armed with Styx ASMs were capable to achieve a strategic result despite a minuscule displacement of combatants. And then, of course, came Falkland War which was an eye-opening experience for many in Anglo-Saxon naval community. Royal Navy did its duty well and won the war but paid a steep price. ASM not only has arrived as a viable naval strike weapon, it has arrived as THE weapon of the naval warfare, which was a really bad news for the US Navy's carrier trade union.
Sure, one may say (and many do) that mosquito ASM capabilities are really not that great. Sure they are not by the very fact that this kind of fleet is called Mosquito for an engineering (and Russian convention of naming its missile boats classes after mosquitoes) reasons and is not capable to carry an immensely important component of ship's defense--a capable Air Defense Complex. Left to its own devices, any missile boat ends like the Libyan Fleet in the action in the Gulf Of Sidra in March of 1986 against....US Navy. The chances of these few Libyan boats, armed only with Osa Air Defense Missile Complexes against overwhelming fire-power of the US Fleet were, frankly, approaching zero. But in this operation, as well as in Falkland War, both US and Royal Navies fought what was essentially Sea Control Battles against the opponents who would attempt to challenge them in what today could be termed as A2/AD (Anti-Access/ Area Denial) framework. Argentinians, although defeated, fared incomparably better than Libyans. It took Royal Navy's HMS Conqueror and outstanding performance of RN's pilots from British carriers to break Argentina's attempts to deny Royal Navy access to the occupied islands.
The outlook for the Mosquito fleet, however, changes drastically when it is deployed and used properly. And, as both successful (sinking of Eilat) and disastrous (Battle Of Latakia) for Arabs use of the missile boats demonstrates, they can be used from the naval base location, without any deployment even within nations' littorals. The problem with Arabs, though, was in the fact that....well, to put it mildly, they had neither means nor abilities to use their boats effectively. In fact, in this funny business of Sea Denial, A2/AD, what have you, the main thing is, as Admiral Sergei Gorshkov pointed out in his The Sea Power Of The State (not the Sea Power AND The State as it is known in the West), interaction. In other words--you want to deny the enemy access, say, to your littoral, be ready to do it with the use of heterogeneous forces which will be able to interact--that is act in concert towards achieving the same A2/AD goal. For the green water fleets, and it is there where the bulk of the "mosquitoes" to be found, which are run by even mildly competent leaders--the main task will remain to provide conditions for the missile boats to launch their main weapon. To do so, they will need to avoid the fate of Libyan missile boats in the Gulf Of Sidra. That means two major conditions to be fulfilled against the navies which count Force Projection as their main doctrinal goal and that leaves us with very few navies in the world, headed, of course, by the US Navy and its whole structure honed for blowing shit up anywhere in the world where alleged US national interests are "threatened"--these conditions are viable Air Defense and ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare). Today, there is only one navy in the world, which can provide, however barely, the existence and survival of its mosquito component against any adversary--Russian Navy. Russians always had pretty good understanding (and experience) of the shortcomings and advantages of the missile boats and that is why today, Russia develops not one but two different types of the missile boats, which will be able to fill the niche inside the heterogeneous forces package, capable to deliver needed amount of high explosives to the pre-determined location at the pre-determined time. In fact, Russian navy deploys today the only boats in the world capable of purely naval combat (that is against surface targets) and for the strikes to a strategic depth on such theaters as Europe or launch missiles from Caspian Sea to Persian Gulf.
I propose, that the development of these kinds of ships (boats) and of the missile complexes they carry is completely new, paradigm-shifting, development but before I continue, hopefully during the Labor Day weekend, I want to make some important points.
Disclaimer: I know, there are armies of internet "warriors" who browse world-wide-web constantly in search of the virtual fights and who do not understand that behind all this fancy military lingo is the reality of the combat with blood, suffering, torn limbs, horrible burns, torturous deaths. I am terrified by the possibility of Russia and US going to war, but I am also terrified by the blood-thirst of all kinds of patriots who are ready to fight somebody, while sitting in the chairs as I am doing now.
I have a profound respect to US Navy, its glorious history and many people, who served and still serve there, some of those people are my closest and dearest friends and they are not war mongers. However, the continuation of the posts on mosquito fleet, inevitably, will lead to a description of the scenario which is in the air, but, hopefully is not becoming a reality, in which US Navy will try to test Russia's littoral defenses and this scenario will, certainly, involve participation on a massive scale of Russian Navy's mosquito capabilities, which, as some already guessed, will be covered in the air and from beneath by necessary means which, in Russian language, are called Naryad Sil (Required Force--what is Naryad and why it is called as such, in English it means dressed, is a separate discussion;-) Meanwhile, I leave you with the question of why late Admiral Cebrowsky's (hell, try Zumwalt and his Project 60) ideas of Street Fighter will not work in US.
When incomparable Captain Wayne Hughes published his seminal Fleet Tactics And Coastal Combat, I guess, Mahan worshipers and Carrier Trade Union (c) went apoplectic.
To write about "missile era", "coastal combat" and describe small, missiles' armed US Navy's fictional Cushings to demonstrate an example of real naval combat--that is a heresy in the US Navy, which, as none other than Elmo Zumwalt put it, got used to "travel first class". Yet, Hughes' book gained a cult status among both naval aficionados and professionals, some of whom, such as Admiral Blair (at a time, C'n'C of Pacific Command) or Vice Admiral Lauthenbacher Jr. (at a time, Deputy CNO), gave the book and the author absolutely rave reviews. I can only join in my deepest admiration for Captain Hughes and his brilliant mind.
The ongoing disaster with LCSs and huge issues with AD/A2 for US Navy only underscored the problems which develop with the fundamental premise of the Sea Control (that is, largely, US Navy) fleet, as Hughes puts it, is "Saying that navies don't "purchase and possess real estate" as armies do is to emphasize the navy as a means toward the end of controlling an enemy on the ground. Rarely is the center of gravity of a conflict on the sea or in the air." The international consensus, at least for the last two decades, is that the US Navy is doing just fine when providing the freedom of the seas and keeping Shipping Lanes Of Communications (SLOC) open. The set of the problems emerges within littorals, the coastal combat and US Navy's function of Force Projection when it is against, and you may have guessed it already, peer or near-peer power. Of course, the US Navy thinks that it can fight and win the battle on the high seas, or open ocean, against any enemy and here US Navy has ample reasons to think so--it is, presently, undeniably the most powerful navy in the world with a superb naval tradition and combat history. But magnificent naval battles Americans won against Japan on the WW II teach only limited lessons on the modern combat. Why it is so is quite obvious--nuclear weapons and anti-shipping missiles.
US Navy, at least its Carrier Trade Union, doesn't like anti-shipping missiles. So much so, that I will simply post here the scan from Admiral Zumwalt's marvelous memoirs On Watch:
You can easily make your own conclusions on what can only be described as the sabotage of anti-shipping missiles (ASM) development in the US Navy. No surprise then, that even today US Navy cannot deploy any true supersonic, let alone hyper-sonic, ASM. But here is the issue--some other power, of which we speak not as of yet--does have those and, apart from understanding their utility for fighting on the high seas, it developed this absolutely atrocious idea that those Mach 2-3, long range ASMs, with the development of miniature solid state electronics and improvement in propulsion could be very valuable in the littoral. Moreover, one doesn't have to spent 12 billion dollars to attain the saturation threshold of ANY air defense system to solve this one and only, most important, contemporary problem of any navy--the problem of a "leaker". In fact, this could be done for a relatively small price and can (and it did) solve the issue of the safety of own littoral. After all, the final target the fleet is on the land. It is there, where hostile government has a seat.
For decades, during the Cold War, naval staffs of both US and USSR were calculating the probabilities of success, respectively, in attacking and defending the Soviet/Russia coast. And it was then that Russians invoked the spirits of Jeune Ecole and its radical, for its time, ideas that, as Theodore Ropp summarized it about Jeune Ecole:
1. The weaker fleet would stay at its bases and refuse combat.
2. The stronger would be forced to do the same, for fear of the torpedo.
3.The only significant naval activity would be commercial warfare.
4. Warfare would be absolutely merciless, disregarding the laws of war.
You can read Eric Dahl's brilliant expose on Jeune Ecole in Naval War College Review here:
We do not concern ourselves here with pps.3 and 4, since they require additional, and extensive, elaborations, but pps.1 and 2 capture the essence of the Coastal (or Littoral) Combat superbly, when pp.1 is corrected with addition of a single caveat:
The weaker fleet would stay at its bases and refuse combat on the high seas.
In the littoral, however, under the defensive umbrella of own coastal aviation, screens of SSKs, which are honed for operations in this type of waters, the weaker fleet, armed with modern ASMs and well networked, becomes a true deadly menace for any navy. What used to be called a mosquito fleet becomes capable of sinking any enemy ship thus rendering enemy's capital ships useless when trying to "project force" and that may have truly strategic, and even global, ramifications. Just like that. This reality is beginning to dawn on US Navy. Hence, however disastrous, program of LCS, which was based on Admiral Cebrowsky's "Street Fighter" concept (correct one, I may add). In the end, FERs (Fractional Exchange Rates) do define the outcome and there is no better exchange rate (including financially), then to provide conditions for 1 billion dollars worth of assets do the job on the force whose monetary value runs into tens of billions, while its mission could be killed by about 10 to 15 million dollars worth of leakers. This is an excellent exchange rate from any point of view. Thus is A2/AD issue which torments US Navy today--at least it is an indicator that the Navy with so much combat history is trying to stay realistic, despite a horrendous news of the production for the sequel for Top Gun ;-) That is scary......
