Navy

Sweden builds new and larger intelligence vessel

2018-06-19 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The construction of Sweden’s new signals intelligence (SIGINT) ship is well underway in Poland. It is time to replace the 34 year old Orion, and last year the Saab Group won the contract to build a new and larger ship.

The new ship will be 74 meters long and have a displacement of 2,200 tons. That should make for a more robust and stabile platform than Orion which is only 61 meters long and displaces 1,200 tons.

In March 2018, construction began at the Polish shipyard Nauta, where the ship itself will be built. After that, the ship will be moved to Karlskrona in Sweden for installation of the sensitive intelligence equipment. The ship will be ready for service in 2020.

Orion intelligence ship — Sweden will replace Orion in 2020. Photo: Försvarsmakten

It would be wrong to see the new ship as directly related to growing tensions with Russia. The decision to replace Orion was made back in 2010 when nobody in Sweden had noticed a decline in security yet. It is most convenient, though, that the Swedish politicians made this choice. The ship will be very useful in the present security climate.

It is hard to imagine that a SIGINT ship will survive long in an actual war. They are slow and poorly equipped to defend themselves. But they are important tools in times of tensions and during the phases leading up to a war.

Fundamentally, such a ship has three purposes. First, it is a terrific intelligence gathering tool. This is the feature that is most advertised about the ships. It is surrounded with great secrecy what intelligence they are technically capable of collecting, but a good guess is that everything related to radio communications — including mobile phones — is in the standard package. Collection of radar signatures from ships, aircraft, and weapon systems is also a likely feature. To this comes probably a range of other things.

All this helps establish an understanding of the normal pattern of activity in a particular area, and it reveals deviations that can function as early warnings about special activities. It also increases the general situational awareness and improves the understanding of the adversary’s capabilities and doctrines.

A second use for a SIGINT ship is active electronic warfare. Russia has demonstrated that their SIGINT ships can jam both GPS navigation and cellular networks in large areas. I would imagine that the Swedish ship can do the same.

And finally, SIGINT ships are a powerful tool for political signaling (no pun intended). Often they are placed just outside the limits of an adversary’s territorial waters for long periods of time. This sends a clear message that you are watching what the opponent is up to. It also compels the adversary to allocate resources to keep an eye on the intelligence ship. This can lead to an intriguing game of interactive naval signaling along the lines of ‘We know that you know that we know’.

In the Baltic Area, specialized SIGINT ships are operated by Norway, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Russia.

Article recommendation: The Status Quo Killed 17 US Sailors. The Navy Must Change.

2018-06-08 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Jon Paris nails it in this piece for Defense One about the need for the U.S. Navy to change its surface warfare officer education system:

I was too polite in my original study. To be clear: our Surface Warfare Officer community killed those sailors. It is not that we should change – we must! It took 17 deaths to get the admirals’ attention. Was that the price of changing the status quo?

In the aftermath, I stayed quiet. Those of us who go to sea know that this is not a Seventh Fleet issue. It is not a forward-deployed issue. It is not a fluke, nor was it unexpected. These tragedies could have happened on any ship in any fleet at any time. The issue is a community built on a foundation of generalism and mediocracy, whose leadership manifests as an anti-body to change, and whose members’ lives depend too much on luck. There are good people in the community. Their success and competency comes from their own dogged determination and in spite of their community’s misplaced priorities. They are the exception, not the rule. Imagine if this was the case in the Naval Aviation or nuclear communities.

It is an old paradox that the U.S. Navy finds navigation so simple that no-one needs to study it thoroughly but at the same time so difficult that they have invented a labyrinth of superfluous workflows for the practice of navigation.

As I showed in my Critical review of lessons from US warship collisions, this leads to errors. Navigators are simply unable to read the signs around them to correctly decipher what is going on.

I sincerely hope that the U.S. Navy follows the advice of Jon Paris to introduce an educational model based on career tracks and specialties. Paris refers to this as the British model where officers have either an engineering or an operations specialty. I would refer to this as the universal model since it is pretty much the agreed upon standard.¹

It was heartbreaking to read this report from the court-martial of Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, Officer of the deck on USS Fitzgerald. Her actions contributed to the deaths of seven sailors on her ship.

Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock cried during her court-martial at the Washington Navy Yard. […] “Not a day goes by where I haven’t thought about what I could have done differently,” she said. “There is nothing I can do now but take responsibility.”

Coppock said her success as an officer of the Navy was through the support of her sailors. “And then, when it mattered, I failed them,” she said through tears. “I made some tremendously bad decisions and they had to pay the price for them.”

Sarah Coppock did not have the necessary education to bear the responsibility she was given. She was told that she was good enough, and how could she know differently. But why does the professional community not protect its members against this? It is a mystery that the Surface Warfare Officer community as a whole has not stood up and demanded a proper education system.

I struggle to think of any other country that doesn’t have at least two specialized career paths for its naval officers, but there probably is someone out there. ↩

Landing ship Ivan Gren ready for delivery after 14 years in production

2018-06-06 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia’s new landing ship Ivan Gren is ready for service. The government trials have been completed, and the official acceptance documents have been signed by the government representative, captain 1st rank Viktor Ivanov. That writes the Yantar Shipyard in a press release.

This deserves a genuine “finally”. Ivan Gren was ordered back in 2004, so it has taken 14 years to build the ship. I have addressed the ship’s problems before in this post after a helicopter crash during the sea trials. Most recently it attracted attention that there were serious problems with the ship’s ability to sail astern.

Ivan Gren has a displacement of 5,000 tons and a crew of 100 persons. It can carry 13 main tanks or 36 armored personnel carriers, and it can accommodate up to 300 marines. The second ship of the class, Petr Morgunov, has been under construction since 2015, and it will be the last ship in the series. Originally, it was expected that the Russian Navy would order six ships of this project, but they later changed their minds.

Now that the Navy has accepted the results of the sea trials, the ship will probably leave the Baltic soon. It is expected that Ivan Gren will be a part of the Northern Fleet.

Recently, the Russian government has sought to improve the performance of the shipbuilding sector. Controls have been improved to ensure that funding is withheld when the defense industry is unable to deliver on time, and last month Putin personally engaged in a critique of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK) which has a particularly bad track record of delays.

Russia builds six more Borei-A submarines and cancels Borei-B project

2018-05-25 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia has canceled the development of the Borei-B class submarine and will build six more of the Borei-A class instead. The construction of the six new ships will begin in 2023. That reports TASS.

Back in November it received some attention that chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov mentioned the Borei-B project, and it was expected that Russia would build four of these ships as part of the 2027 force development plan. But apparently the expenses outweighed the benefits, so they decided that they would rather have six of the existing class than four of the new class.

The Borei family of strategic nuclear submarines are planned to replace the Kalmar-class, Delfin-class, and Akula-class submarines (NATO names Delta-III, Delta IV, and Typhoon). They carry 16 intercontinental nuclear Bulava missiles. There are three existing submarines of the original Borei-class, and five submarines of the improved Borei-A class are in production. Last month it was revealed that the delivery of the first Borei-A submarine Knyaz Vladimir has been postponed until 2019.

With the six new Borei-A submarines, Russia will eventually have a total of 14 of these modern strategic submarines.

Ukraine adopts warship pennant number system from NATO

2018-05-05 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Ukraine has adopted NATO’s standard system for numbering warships. This is the originally British pennant number system that most NATO countries use. By this system the number is preceded by a letter to identify the kind of ship (A = Auxiliary, F = Frigates or corvettes, P = Patrol vessels, M = Minelayers or mine hunters, L = Landing ships, etc.). That writes the Russian defense blog bmpd.ru with a link to ukrmilitary.com.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine made their own system of numbering warships whereby all numbers were preceded by the letter “U”. However, at a celebration in Odesa on 29 April 2018 it was noticed that some ships have changed numbers. Some patrol boats now show the letter “P”, and some auxiliary vessels have the letter “A”. The numbers themselves are unchanged, so only the letters are new.

This is a possible source of future confusion. The Ukrainian training vessels Chygyryn, Smila, and Nova Kakhovka have received the numbers A540, A541, and A542. Incidentally these are also the pennant numbers of the Danish royal yacht Dannebrog (A540), and the hydrographic surveying ships Birkholm (A541) and Fyrholm (A542).

NATO’s pennant number system was originally invented in the British Royal Navy in 1910. It was revised in 1948, and in 1954 it was adopted as a common system for the European NATO countries. However, it is not really a NATO standard. The United States, Canada, and some countries that became members after 1992 still use national systems.

What to expect for naval parade in Saint Petersburg on 29 July 2018

2018-04-30 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia celebrates Navy Day on the last Sunday of July, and last year a new tradition was established with a grand naval parade in Saint Petersburg. Ships from the Baltic, Northern, Mediterranean, and the Pacific fleets and from the Caspian Flotilla take part in the Grand Naval Parade.

In 2017 the parade got a lot of attention, and Vladimir Putin personally took part in the celebrations. Of particular interest was the participation of the Akula-class (Typhoon) submarine Dmitry Donskoy and the battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. China also sent a few ships for the parade and a subsequent naval exercise in the Baltic.

Putin on Naval Day 2017 — Grand Naval Parade in Saint Petersburg 2017. Photo: Kremlin.ru.

Now details are starting to emerge about the program for the 2018 show. The parade will include 41 ships, 25 aircraft, and more than 4,000 troops. Among the more notable participants are an Antey-class submarine (Oscar II class) and the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov. There will also be a display of the newly commissioned missile corvette Uragan (Karakurt-class) and the frigate Admiral Makarov.

So although we will not see the world’s biggest submarine or battlecruiser this year, there should be plenty of other things to look at when the grand naval parade takes place on 29 July 2018.

Delivery of Russia’s first Borei-A class submarine postponed to 2019

2018-04-26 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The delivery of Russia’s first Borei-A class nuclear submarine Knyaz Vladimir has been postponed to 2019. The construction of the submarine began in 2012, and at first it was expected to enter service in 2017. Then it was postponed to 2018, but now it is clear that it will take even more time before the submarine is ready. That reports FlotProm.

Borei-A is an improved development of the Borei-class. The first Borei-class submarine, Yuriy Dolgorukiy, entered service in 2013, but the construction started already in 1996. There are now three operational Borei-class submarines in the Russian navy, and five Borei-A class ships are under construction.

The Borei class is a nuclear powered submarine which carries 16 Bulava intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They are the cornerstone in Russia’s future submarine based nuclear deterrent, replacing the Kalmar-class, Delfin-class, and Akula-class submarines (NATO-names Delta-III, Delta IV, and Typhoon).

Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has earlier announced that Russia is also working on a Borei-B class, but that is still in early development.

Delays are a common phenomenon in Russian warship construction. Current examples include the landing ship Ivan Gren and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov. Ivan Gren will be commissioned on 9 May 2018 after being under construction since 2004. Admiral Gorshkov has been under construction since 2006. It was originally expected to enter service in 2011, but the frigate is still not ready for duty. The latest prognosis is that the navy can take over Admiral Gorshkov in August.

Who cheated whom in Russian-British submarine duel?

2018-04-24 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

After the missile attack in Syria on 13 April, The Times reported that Russian naval forces successfully managed to suppress a British nuclear submarine which prevented it from launching its Tomahawk missiles. Supposedly, one or two Kilo-class submarines, two frigates, and an anti-submarine aircraft made it too difficult and dangerous for the British Astute-class nuclear submarine to move within firing distance from its targets in Syria. Allegedly the British submarine got support from American P-8 Orion maritime patrol aircraft which were tasked to track Russian surface and subsurface naval units.

Unsurprisingly, Russian media picked up the story. However, they cited the British story and did not provide more details from Russian sources.

Astute submarine — Astute class submarine. Photo: Royal Navy.

The whole story is a bit strange, and Michael Peck asked the apt question in The National Interest, Did Russia’s Diesel Submarines Really Hunt Down a British Nuclear Sub? Peck’s analysis focuses mostly on the technical feasibility of such an endeavor. Traditional military calculation would argue that the nuclear submarine has the best odds in a duel, even though the Kilo-class is a worthy competitor. Peck concludes that we just don’t know whether the Russian ships actually tracked down the British submarine, and that we also don’t know whether this prevented the British submarine from launching its weapons.

My take on this is that I don’t think the point of the submarine was to fire any missiles in the first place. Often a submarine is deployed not to deliver weapons but to keep the adversary busy. The mere knowledge that there is a submarine in the area forces the opponent to commit resources to finding it.

I guess that the United Kingdom sent the Astute submarine to keep track of the Russian ships in the area. A well placed news leak made sure that everyone knew about the presence of the submarine. Russian threats to shoot down both missiles and launch sites in case of an attack on Syria didn’t matter much because the submarine wouldn’t be a launch site.

That would have made it the job of the submarine commander to draw as many resources as possible from the Russian pursuers. In other words to be challenging yet achievable.

I don’t know whether this is what happened. But it does seem more plausible than the notion that the Royal Navy hit a streak of bad luck and had their mission blown by an unfortunate news leak and a masterfully executed Russian ASW-operation.

Ships from Russian Baltic Fleet rotate on deployment

2018-04-20 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The Russian Baltic Fleet rotates some ships on deployment to the Mediterranean.

The frigate Yaroslav Mudry and the tanker Lena have left the Baltic and will join the Russian maritime forces in the Mediterranean. Yaroslav Mudry is a Neustrashimyy-class frigate, which has been in service since 2009. The last long deployment of Yaroslav Mudry was in 2016.

At the same time, the landing ship Minsk is returning from deployment. Minsk is a Ropucha-class ship from 1984, and it left Kaliningrad on 4 October 2017. During its deployment the ship has participated in the unofficially termed operation “Syrian Express” which brings logistical supplies to the Russian forces on the Khmeimim Air Base and to the Syrian government forces.

Minsk conducted a port stay in Lisbon in Portugal before setting course for home on Wednesday 18 April.

Helicopter crashes on Russian problem ship Ivan Gren

2018-04-13 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

A Russian Ka-29 helicopter has crashed in the Baltic Sea on Thursday 12 April. The incident occurred while practicing deck landings at night on the Navy’s new landing ship Ivan Gren. That reports flot.com. Both pilots died in the crash.

Ivan Gren is still undergoing sea trials. Official commissioning by the navy is planned for next month, and the Yantar shipyard does not expect the accident to delay the process. The ship did not receive damages from the crash.

It would be fair to call Ivan Gren a troubled project. Works on the ship started in 2004, and delivery has been delayed many times. The ship was launched in 2012, and sea trials began in 2016.

A problem with the ship’s astern propulsion has proven particularly difficult to remedy. Apparently it is challenging to control the ship’s movements while going astern. On the next ship in the series, Petr Morgunov, the shipyard will change the direction of rotation on the propellers to see if that helps. If the reversed rotation gives better manageability, it will be changed on Ivan Gren as well.

The Russian Navy has decided not to order more ships of the Ivan Gren class than the two already under construction.