As was expected, the first Project 22800 Small Missile Ship (Karakurt-class) was floated out on the eve of traditional Russia's Navy Day celebration (last weekend of every July). It is the first ship, traditionally named after wind calamities, Uragan (Hurricane), of the large series--13 similar boats are in a different state of completion over several Russia's shipyards. First three ships of this class will not have a navalized version of the famed Pantsir AD complex, all following those first three will have it. This will give these 800 ton displacing ships an immense bang for a buck in surface warfare scenarios.
getting ready
Stern view
afloat
Thus Russian tradition of building serious littoral forces, now with a very impressive reach to a strategic depth, once one considers 3M14 capabilities, continues. This is not to speak of pure anti-shipping punch these boats pack. Unlike now globally known Project 21631 Buyan-class missile ships, Karakurts have better sea keeping properties which, most likely, will allow them to venture painlessly into Mediterranean in anti-shipping (and, of course, land-attack) role in support of Russian fleet operating near Syria. This will be serious addition considering the fact that with navalized Pantsir installed Karakurts will provide a superb short-range (up to 20 kilometers) air defense cover.
Operational and strategic implications of this Mosquito fleet actively entering its In Being phase, are immense, way out of proportion with the modest size of these ships. With such ships counting in dozens and packing such a punch one can only guess how this all may play out in the nearest future.
I was about to continue with fairly extensive conclusion on the topic of Mosquitoes when, well, Russian Navy, or, to be more precise, Red Banner Caspian Flotilla simply demonstrated what those small missile ships, granted, accompanied by a larger corvette Dagestan, can do. The file on REAL distributed lethality is, finally, open. 4 ships, with total displacement of about half that of a single destroyer and the price tag even less than that, launched the salvo of 26 Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea. Some time later, those missiles hit 11 targets of terrorists in Syria--about 1500 kilometers away. Strategic ramifications of this are colossal, it was clear already before, but after today it became a reality of an immense power of modern missile weapons and those seemingly "unimpressive" platforms which carry them. After all, the range of Kalibr is up to 2500 kilometers and GLONASS' combat (not civilian) CEP (Circular Error Probable) is rumored to be about 0.4-0.6 meters, that is 1.5-2 feet.
Will Russia put active homing device on Kalibrs? Possible, but 5000 kilometer range cruise missiles are already in line for procurement.
P.S. Now I have to rewrite almost completed article for Proceedings submission. The article about, and you may have guessed it already, what else--Mosquito fleet.
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......
