SSK Kilo Class (Type 636), Russia

The Russian Kilo Class submarine first entered service in the early 1980s. It was designed by the Rubin Central Maritime Design Bureau, St Petersburg. Subsequent developments have led to the current production versions, the Type 877EKM and the Type 636. A successor, the Lada (Project 677) was launched in November 2004.
Rubin is developing an air-independent propulsion (AIP) system which could be available for retrofit to the other versions. The Kilo submarine was originally built at the Komsomolsk shipyard but is now constructed at the Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg. China has two Type 636 submarines, the second of which joined the Chinese fleet in January 1999.
In September 2007, it was announced that Indonesia had placed an order for two Kilo Type 636 submarines, plus options to purchase up to eight more.
In November 2007, Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding for three Type 636 submarines to be delivered from 2012 to 2013.

"The Russian Kilo Class submarine first entered service in the early 1980s."

Type 636 is designed for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface-ship warfare (ASuW) and also for general reconnaissance and patrol missions. The Type 636 submarine is considered to be to be one of the quietest diesel submarines in the world. It is said to be capable of detecting an enemy submarine at a range three to four times greater than it can be detected itself.
Design
The submarine consists of six watertight compartments separated by transverse bulkheads in a pressurised double-hull. This design and the submarine's good reserve buoyancy lead to increased survivability if the submarine is holed, even with one compartment and two adjacent ballast tanks flooded.
The foreplanes are positioned on the upper hull in front of the fin or sail. The design is a development of the 877EKM Kilo class, with extended hull. The power of the diesel generators has been increased and the main propulsion shaft speed has been reduced to provide a substantial reduction in the acoustic signature of the submarine.
Maximum diving depth is 300m. Speed is 11kt when surfaced and 20kt when submerged. Range is 7,500 miles when snorkelling at 7kt and 400 miles when submerged at 3kt.
Command system
The submarine is equipped with a multi-purpose combat and command system which provides information for effective submarine control and torpedo firing.
The system's high-speed computer can process information from the surveillance equipment and display it on the screen; determine submerged and surface target data and calculate firing parameters; provide automatic fire control; and provide information and recommendations on manoeuvres and deployment of weapons.
Missiles
The submarine has a launcher for eight Strela-3 or Igla surface-to-air missiles. These missiles are manufactured by the Fakel Design Bureau, Kaliningrad. Strela-3 (NATO Designation SA-N-8 Gremlin) has a cooled infrared seeker and 2kg warhead. Maximum range is 6km.

"The Kilo Class submarine consists of six watertight compartments."

Igla (NATO designation SA-N-10 Gimlet) is also infrared-guided but heavier, with a maximum range of 5km and speed of Mach 1.65.
The vessels can be fitted with the Novator Club-S (SS-N-27) cruise missile system which fires the 3M-54E1 anti-ship missile. Range is 220km with 450kg high-explosive warhead.
Torpedoes
The submarine is equipped with six 533mm forward torpedo tubes situated in the nose of the submarine and carries 18 torpedoes with six in the torpedo tubes and 12 stored on the racks. Alternatively the torpedo tubes can deploy 24 mines.
Two torpedo tubes are designed for firing remote-controlled torpedoes with a very high accuracy. The computer-controlled torpedo system is provided with a quick-loading device. The first salvo is fired within two minutes and the second within five minutes.
Sensors
Type 636 is fitted with the MGK-400EM digital sonar. This provides: detection of submarine and surface ship targets in sonar listening mode; echo-ranging in a ±30° sector of the target relative bearing; telephone and telegraph communication in both long and short-range modes; detection of underwater sound signals and determination of the signal bearing.
The submarine's radar works in periscope and surface modes and provides information on the underwater and air situation, radar identification and navigational safety.

"Type 636 is designed for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface-ship warfare (ASuW)."

Countermeasures
Kilo Class countermeasures include electronic support measures (ESM), radar warning receiver and direction finder.
Propulsion
The submarine's propulsion system consists of two diesel generators, a main propulsion motor, a fuel-economic motor and a single shaft driving a seven-blade fixed-pitch propeller.
There are two additional stand-by motors for running in shallow waters, at mooring and in cases of emergency. Two 120-cell storage batteries are installed in the first and third compartments of the submarine. The main machinery is equipped with an automatic control system.

Kilo Class Type 636 INS Sindhurakshak.

The submarine is equipped with six 533mm forward torpedo tubes.

A 636 Kilo class submarine submerging.

Kilo Class Type 636 under construction.

A bulkhead in the Kilo Class.

Kilo Class Type 636 is only 1.2m longer in length than Kilo Class Type 877EKM.

Kilo Class Type 636.

Machinery controls.

The yard model of the 636 Kilo class submarine.

Egypt to Buy Mistrals; French Removing Russian Equipment with Russia’s Assistance

September 24/15: Egyptian and French leaders have negotiated a deal for the two Mistral LHDs owned by the French state following a deal with Moscow in August. The Egyptians are also reported to be in talks over acquiring two more Gowind corvettes, to supplement the four ordered in 2014. However, reports [French] indicated that there was a brief sticking point over the price of the two... {click to expand +}

Keep reading for the whole story with recent events put in context

RFS Vladivostok,
DCNS concept
(click to view full)

In August 2009, Russian media reported that their country was planning to take a radical step, and buy a French BPC-210 Mistral Class amphibious assault ship (BPC/LHD) by the end of 2009. The outlet quoted the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, who said that: “We are negotiating the purchase of one ship at present, and later planning to acquire 3-4 ships [of the same class] to be jointly built in Russia.” That plan eventually came true, with a contract for 2 ships, and a possible follow-on for 2 more.
France currently operates 3 Mistral Class LHDs, after buying a 3rd using economic stimulus funds. Unlike other LHD designs, the Mistral Class can’t operate fixed wing aircraft, and some observers in Russia and elsewhere classify at as an LHA. Regardless, it’s an important tool of power projection. Mistral Class ships can carry and deploy up to 16 helicopters, including attack helicopters like France’s Tiger or Russia’s Ka-50/52. Their main punch revolves around 4 landing barges or 2 medium hovercraft, however, which deliver armored vehicles, tanks, and soldiers to shore. Vessels of this class are equipped with a 69-bed hospital, and could be used as amphibious command ships.
Russia wants that kind of versatility – even as her neighbors fear it. After Russia’s annexation of Ukraine and the continued covert war in Eastern Ukraine, this contract became a major point of contention between Russia and NATO members.

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Mistral’s Meaning: A Method to their Madness?

Mistral LHD

The Russian order represented an extension of some larger trends, but it was still a sea change on several fronts: strategic, tactical, and industrial.
Strategic: For one thing, it’s the first major arms import deal since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. That, in itself, is a huge shift. The second big change is that Russia’s current defense procurement program through 2015 didn’t even envision the construction or purchase of large combat ships.
Clearly, Russian thinking is changing. The Pacific is becoming a critical strategic theater, and Russia has placed extra strategic emphasis on its influence networks in the Eastern Mediterranean. Mistral Class LHDs, designed for both a large helicopter aviation role as well as amphibious landing and support of troops, would go a long way toward improving Russia’s capabilities in these areas.
February 2011 reports had suggested that the first 2 ships would be deployed to the Pacific Fleet near Vladivostok, but it’s certainly possible to shift the ships to other theaters given enough time, infrastructure, and planning.
By 2014, with Crimea annexed, a civil war in the Ukraine, and the Middle East facing a modern production of the 30 Years’ War, Moscow was talking about basing the ships in their namesake home ports: RFS Vladivostok on the Pacific at Uliss Bay, near Vladivostok; and RFS Sevastopol in newly-annexed Crimea’s port of Sevastopol.

Ka-29K
(click to view full)

Tactical: Control of littoral regions, which includes large stretches of Russia’s coasts, zones like the Baltic Sea and much of the Black Sea, and influence along Middle Eastern coasts, depends heavily on helicopters and UAVs. Russian naval capabilities are limited in these areas, and during the recent war with Georgia, Russia failed to control the Georgian coast.
Russia’s Mistral Class ships will carry Ka-29K utility helicopters, and navalized Ka-52K Alligator coaxial scout/attack helicopters. Other possibilities include anti-submarine helicopters, radar-carrying airborne early warning helicopters, and UAVs.
When this potent aviation punch is combined with the ships’ troop landing capabilities, the new class offers Russia a whole new dimension of offensive and influence operations.
Industrial: The other aspect of the government’s changing thinking may well be industrial. Russia’s shipbuilding industry is clearly experiencing difficulties. Major shipbuilders have defaulted on commercial contracts, and fiascos like the Admiral Gorshkov refit for India have blackened the global reputation of Russian defense products. Any Mistral Class ship built in Russia would represent a naval project whose scale Russia hadn’t seen in well over a decade – which is why initial construction will take place in France. The fact that Russia was even discussing a Mistral buy indicated a certain lack of confidence in Russian shipbuilding.
On the other hand, this Mistral order may be an opportunity for Russian shipbuilding. If construction in Russia is preceded by training in France, as the first ships are built. If engineering and project management expertise are brought back to those shipyards from France to supervise the Russian portion. If infrastructure investments are made within Russia. If all of those things are done, the Mistral order could represent a key step forward in revitalizing Russia’s naval defense sector, following its decimation in the wake of the Cold War.

France, Russia, and the “Competition”

HNLMS Rotterdam
(click to view full)

The foundations for Franco-Russian cooperation on a program of this size have been laid on several fronts over the last few years. France’s Thales already provides components for Russia’s front line military equipment, from tank gunnery sights to avionics and targeting pods for Russian-built fighters. Recent memoranda of understanding for cooperation in naval R&D (Thales) and defense R&D more generally (EADS) build on the 2006 MoU between DCN and the Russian government to develop technical, industrial and commercial co-operations between the Mistral’s builder and Russia’s naval defense industry.
Persistent reports from Russia indicated that the Mistral was not the only option Russia was investigating. Reports consistently cited Spain, where Navantia makes the BPE and related Canberra Class LHDs. These ships have a “ski ramp” up front that the Mistral lacks, and have the ability to operate STOL/STOVL fighters in addition to helicopters. The other country cited was the Netherlands. Royal Schelde’s Rotterdam Class is a more conventional LPD design with good helicopter capacity, but without a flattop deck.
In the end, it appears that these reports of interest served mostly as bargaining chips, in order to get better terms from the French for the ships that Russia had always wanted.

Analyst: Russian Industry Faces Challenges Unique to 'Putin's Russia'

By Matthew Bodner 10:25 a.m. EDT August 9, 2015

An Interview With Ruslan Pukhov, Director of CAST

(Photo: CAST)

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MOSCOW — The fall of the Soviet Union rocked Russia’s inherited defense industry to the core. With a government no longer able to bankroll massive procurements, defense industry enterprises were forced to transform into export-oriented businesses or die. This pivot has over the last two decades turned post-Soviet Russia into the world’s second largest arms exporter, only steps behind the United States. In 2014, Russian exports hit new highs at $13.2 billion according to state arms export agency Rosobornexport. Meanwhile, the government since 2011 has been investing an unprecedented 20 trillion rubles (about US $350 billion at recent exchange rates) into defense procurements and industry modernization. The program is set to wrap up in 2020.
Ruslan Pukhov's privately owned think tank, the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, has become a leading source of analysis on the Russian defense industry and military issues. As CAST's director, he is a prominent Russian observer of the evolution of the country's defense industry over the past 20 years. Pukhov  is a member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Advisory Board.
Q. What do you think Russia's industry has to offer that others don't? Why buy Russian weapons?
A. The Russian defense industry is very close morally, physically and spiritually  to the Russian way of waging war. The Russian armed forces, beginning with those founded by the first duke of Russia, Ivan  III — grandfather to Ivan the Terrible — adhere to one basic observation attributed to German Chancellor Bismarck: Russia is never as strong as it looks, and Russia is never as weak as it looks.
Russia is strong but not almighty, and there are recent events that show this — such as the downing of nine aircraft since the beginning of June and the collapse of a barracks that killed over 20 soldiers. In some things, Russia does quite well and is quite developed, and the same goes for Russian technology. I used to joke with a professor I studied with at Case Western University, Stanton Court, that US fighter aircraft look like Swiss watches, but Russian fighters look like tanks. Would you prefer to fight with a tank or a Swiss watch? This is a joke, but there is some rationale to it. Russian equipment, be it indigenous or adopted form the West, is made in a way that less sophisticated machines could build them and less skilled and educated people could operate them.
We always joked that certain Western equipment is great, but you should graduate from Harvard to operate it. Today, most people recruited into armies across the world come from relatively modest backgrounds, and from this point of view Russian equipment is very user-friendly.
Q. What are  the biggest challenges facing the Russian defense industry?
A. There are a whole series of challenges. Some are common to all defense industries, some unique to Russia, and I would say even unique for Putin's Russia. The common challenge is affordability, and what you outsource.
Russia's biggest unique challenge is planning procurement for its security environment. The environment has drastically changed for the worse in the last 18 months. We were not allies of the West before the Ukraine crisis, but we weren't enemies. Four years ago there was no major Russian conventional force in the European part of Russia; we were reinforcing our South against potential Islamic insurgency or an explosion of the frozen Karabakh conflict, or even a potential second war with Georgia. At the same time we were very cautious about China. We have very close dialogue with China and are very close politically, but deep down there is a big, big fear of China. It is a giant with lots of potential and a mighty army, which has made a very tremendous technological and military jump in the last two decades.
Today, on top of all this, we have an open military conflict on our Western border in Ukraine. We now have hostile relations with NATO and we should take that into account,  plus there is a Russian perception that there is potential for a future war in the Arctic.
I think that if you are the current chief of staff, you should be having nightmares. You can hardly sleep at night when you see your resources have shrunk, that your defense industrial base is not as good as it was at the end of the Soviet Union — the USSR collapsed at the peak of its technological might — and then you have threats all around your borders.It's not an easy task to prepare a defense for this, and now that we are under a technological embargo from the West it will not be easy to fulfill the 2020 rearmament program.
Q. You are a civilian who specializes in defense industrial matters. Why did you focus on the Russian arms industry in the 1990s, when the system was falling apart?
A. Like the majority of Soviet children, I was raised as a romantic militarist. I even entered one of the [Soviet-era] Suvorov Military Academies — a type of school for boys in the last two years of high school aspiring to become military officers. That was in 1988, so it was the time of perestroika and there was a lot of bad publicity about the military, and after spending a few days at this school I took my papers back and returned home to my high school.
However, this romantic militarism hadn't vanished completely, and I thought to myself, 'what is the first line of defense? It is diplomacy.' So I applied to the Moscow State Institute for International Relations [MGIMO]. After four years there, Russia was changing quickly. When I was in the second year, the USSR collapsed and young Russia was opening up to the world. At that time we started to adopt the Anglo-Saxon system of four years of bachelors degree and two in a master program. MGIMO was the first Russian school to launch a master program, and I joined a special program run by MGIMO and the French Institute of Political Studies in Paris. The last year of the program involved an internship, and I volunteered for the Russian embassy in Paris.
Meanwhile, another student, my future business partner Konstantin Makienko, was interning at a French research center called CREST. He worked largely on issues of the defense industry and arms trade. Me and my partner were largely inspired by their model, and after four months at the embassy in Paris I was slightly disappointed by the foreign service. Then the Russian Foreign Ministry, at least in practice, was still very much the Soviet Foreign Ministry, and international relations, politics and economics were no longer going through the embassy, there were many other possible avenues, and so when Makienko and I returned to Russia we started working on creating our own research center similar to the French CREST.
Q. How did you start CAST? What were the major challenges to launching an open source defense think tank in the wake of the Soviet collapse?
A. We wanted to create this think tank, but since we were still young Soviets we didn't know how the economy worked. We saw only how the French center functioned, but we didn't know where the money came from. Eventually we understood that they got over two-thirds of their money via direct or indirect contributions from the French government or state-run defense companies like Thales or Dassault, and that only 20 to 25 percent of that money was earned by selling expensive bulletins on a weekly basis. We understood that we couldn't do that, but we could do a monthly publication about the defense industry and arms trade — mainly about the Russian one, but also a partially about the foreign ones — so we launched it and were relatively successful at the beginning.
Q. Why do you think you were successful at the start?
A. I think the main reason was that there were no rivals on [the Russian] market at the time. There were some glossy publications that were publishing essentially advertisements, or worse — the old Soviet magazines that were oriented toward either a very technical or absolutely non-Western type of information consumption. The model of information consumption under capitalism and socialism was different, and by that time we had learned from our French professors how you are supposed to present your pieces — they should be relatively short, condensed and logical. As they say, Cartesian.
We decided we would create a trade publication for people who were either producing and selling arms legally, like state-run trade, or those who wanted to learn more about it — such as a foreign defense attaché in Moscow, or the owner of a transportation company, or bank interested in giving a loan to a Russian enterprise and get the investment back once the contract is fulfilled. So we thought about what was interesting for our clients, not interesting for us, and we published our fist issue of Eksport Vooruzheniy [Weapons Exports] in April 1996 and sent out something like 300 copies that we made on printers. I remember that I killed several cartridges in my friends' offices, but we only had two subscribers at first — the Czech Air Force attaché and the South Korean Air Force attaché.
Q. How did you expand from writing a monthly Russian defense industry bulletin to doing think-tank style research reports and commissioned research projects?
A. After reading our magazine, some of our subscribers started coming to us and saying, 'We like this article. Can you write for us a mini-research piece, a kind of analytical paper, but exclusively for us and not for others?' So it was derived from our publishing program. Sometimes it could be just like an article for the magazine that we only give to one client. They never asked for technical reports, it was always kind of interdisciplinary.
Our first order was from the MiG aircraft corporation. They wanted us to analyze the Nigerian arms market, and I told them they could ask people in military intelligence, but MiG insisted those guys would give them 'War and Peace' — two volumes that no one has time to read. They needed a thin and lean snapshot of what Nigeria really wanted, and what they would actually buy.
Another reason that I think people started coming to us was because from the beginning, we worked actively with the media. The expert community in Russia at that time wasn't very big and could be broken down into retired military and intelligence people, who weren't eager to talk to journalists; people at the Russian Academy of Science who knew about international relations but not the arms trade or defense industry; and journalists who were quite proficient in defense industry affairs, but journalists don't like to cite other journalists. We were young experts ready to work with the media, and we always avoided the temptation to comment on other issues. Sometimes journalists would ask us to comment on nuclear non-proliferation or about the war in Chechnya, but those weren't our fields of expertise so we refused. It was hard to say no, or that I don't know, but at that time journalists valued those responses and saw them as mature and professional.
Q. You also publish an English magazine, Moscow Defense Brief.
A. It is different from Export Vooruzheniy, which is kind of a trade publication for arms producers and arms traders in Russian. With Moscow Defense Brief we quickly understood that we should go broader than the arms trade, but since we were not famous experts in issues that weren't our own, we started looking for experts to write in this magazine, and we developed a cadre of “Sunday defense analysts” — people who are very knowledgeable but not necessarily part of the establishment, but know their subject very well. Moscow Defense Brief has smaller articles, and sometimes they can just be things like a table of combat crashes in Chechnya, or accidents with submarines in the 1990s, and so we gather open-source information for people to use in their work. Moscow Defense Brief is in a sense raw material that people can use as a primary source, and that's why some of the subscribers are academics, like Georgetown University or the people at Rand.
But now we are facing a severe challenge for Moscow Defense Brief. Apart from the devaluation of the ruble, the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West has created a situation where the majority of publications out of Russia written in English are considered to be propaganda if they are not openly critical of the Putin administration. Our approach was always that we are experts, not actors. We are writing about concrete things that you can use to either criticize or praise Putin; it's entirely up to you. But we are considering closing Moscow Defense Brief and starting an English-language blog. Moscow Defense Brief has become very difficult to sell, and anyway we do an annual book in English — such as our most famous one, which we published last year, "Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine."
Q. How is CAST allowed to publish all this information in English for a foreign audience and maintain such active contact with the foreign press while working on research projects for the Defense Ministry?
A. We confess to using an old strategy based on the motto of Russia's most famous general, Alexander Suvorov from the 18th century — "I am not asking to serve, but I will not refuse service." We have never been proactive in courting the Russian government agencies, but since we are out there, they contacted us after a certain time. For example, at a public seminar we met with the now late Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, who used to be first deputy head of the Defense Ministry for procurement before going to head up Roscosmos, and he wanted to hire us for some jobs.
Now we are in our third year of a research contract with the Ministry of Defense. This is not a direct contract since we aren't cleared for classified information, but we are subcontractors through the 46th Central Research Institute, which focuses on the Russian defense industry. For example, one of our tasks is looking at how to substitute imported components cut off by international sanctions by outsourcing their development to developed countries that are not technically part of the western world — such as Israel, Singapore, China and South Korea, maybe Mexico.
Email: mbodner@defensenews.com

GCZ111 Amphibious Engineer Vehicle

GCZ111 AEV entered service in 2013, it is organic to both Army and Marine engineering units at regimental level.  Engineers pave the way!

Posted by Coatepeque at 6:27 PM

Photos of the day: Z-19 at Third China Helicopter Expo

Posted by Coatepeque at 9:27 PM

J20 prototype 2016 rolled out.at Chengdu

Making it the 7th prototype overall.  Also noted is the new DSI-bump.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

J20 prototype 2015 conducts its maiden flight

Other J-20 prototypes that are still flying