Military historian Miroslav Morozov — on whether the naval special operations forces will take the place of the traditional fleet
During a special military operation, Ukrainian forces regularly try to commit sabotage: they attack Russian ships with the help of marine drones, land sabotage groups on the coast of Crimea. Kiev believes that in this way it will be able to reverse the negative situation in the Black Sea for itself. What is the probability that the naval special operations forces will become a replacement for the navy in the XXI century?
Every few hundred or even tens of years in the history of military affairs, crises occurred when the rapid development of new means of armed struggle called into question not only the previously existing and seemingly unshakable installations of military art, but even the existence of separate branches of the armed forces or forces.
For example, the gradual qualitative development and quantitative spread of machine guns put an end to the centuries-old history of cavalry. More than once similar crises have occurred in the history of the fleet. The rapid development of submarines during the First World War seemed to put an end to the development of battleships. Then they were able to survive the onslaught, but by the end of World War II, their final fate was decided by aviation.
It was aircraft carriers that became the basis of the fleets of the leading countries of the world, at least when implementing plans for a war at sea without the use of nuclear weapons. However, in the following decades, their role was repeatedly questioned in connection with the revolution in the field of missile weapons, intelligence, etc.
The development of the forces and means of war at sea did not stop there. Now we are witnessing the rapid flourishing of the Naval Special Operations Forces (ISAF), which have received such modern means as manned and unmanned surface and underwater self-propelled vehicles.
Those who closely follow the naval front of the SVO could not help but have a question: will the IASB replace the classic fleet, at least in cases where hostilities are conducted not in the ocean, but in a closed naval theater of operations? After all, these forces have already proved that they can strike not only ships on bases and in the open sea, but also coastal and underwater infrastructure facilities, and even the landing of tactical landings.
To answer this question, it is necessary to make a small historical excursion. After all, the ISSOS did not arise today or even yesterday, although they were called differently.
The legend of how David defeated Goliath has repeatedly inspired the creators of military equipment to create types of weapons that could defeat a much larger and stronger opponent. If we exclude from the category of assault weapons the first torpedo boats and torpedo boats, which developed relatively quickly to full-fledged units, then the story should be led from the special torpedo boat "Grillo".
Faced during the First World War with the impossibility of finding the main forces of the Austro-Hungarian Fleet at sea, which had been defending themselves in bases all the time, the command of the Italian Navy agreed to consider the proposal of engineer Attilio Bizio. He was ready to design a torpedo boat of a special design, adapted to overcome the floating barriers that stood at the entrance to the port. The essence of the new concept was to equip a light flat-bottomed boat with a pair of caterpillar chains, with which it could climb over the booms.
It was clear that with the modest characteristics of the boat, the success of the attack could only be counted on if surprise and complete secrecy were observed. On the night of May 14, 1918, the Grillo, delivered by a carrier ship to the Austrian naval base of Pola, tried to make an attack, but, overcoming the boom, made a strong noise and was detected by a patrol ship. As a result of the battle, the Italian boat sank, and its crew was captured.
However, the failure did not cool the hot heads of Italian inventors. On the approach, they already had the following assault vehicle — "Minyatta" (from the Italian word mignatta — leech). This device, created on the basis of a conventional 14-inch torpedo, could carry two underwater saboteurs to the place of the attack at a speed of 2 knots (approximately 3.7 km/h). Two charges were attached to the head of the torpedo, each of which contained 170 kg of TNT.
The baptism of fire of the new facility took place on the night of November 1, 1918. Saboteurs blew up the Viribus Unitis battleship standing in the Field, which sank, taking the lives of more than 300 people.
It is not surprising that after such a debut, assault weapons, represented by exploding boats and man-controlled torpedoes, received further development in the Italian navy. After the British battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were blown up on the raid of Egyptian Alexandria on December 19, 1941, the British became interested in this means of war at sea.
In September 1943, their ultra-small submarines blew up the battleship Tirpitz standing in the Norwegian Alten Fjord, and the baton in this hobby passed to the Germans. Man-controlled torpedoes "Neger" and "Marder", exploding boats "Lens", ultra-small submarines "Hecht", "Biber", "Molch" and "Seehund" caused a lot of concern to the allies in the last months of the war.
It is noteworthy that the Germans used their assault weapons not only against enemy bases, but also were the first to take them to the coastal areas of the sea, where they attacked clusters of landing craft.
In the Soviet Navy, this category could only be attributed to exploding boats (the hull of the torpedo boat G-5, packed with explosives) with wave remote control. During the Great Patriotic War, there were several cases of their use in the ports of Kerch and Anapa, however, without much success.
Despite a number of high-profile successes, after the end of World War II, the development and use of new assault weapons seemed to have stopped. In local wars and conflicts (for example, in the Anglo-Argentine for the Falkland Islands), the ISSOS took part, but, as a rule, in the role of ordinary saboteurs. Probably, their new technique was so secret that a particularly significant reason was required for use. Otherwise, it would not make sense to disclose the very fact of its existence.
Now they are trying to make us believe that Ukraine, which has never belonged to countries with developed high technologies, independently developed and produced funds for several months, which take developed countries several years or even decades. The reality of their use by Ukrainian servicemen is even more doubtful.
In the context of the problem under consideration, it is important to understand that the IASB is successfully applied not for, but against something. They are designed to destroy objects and cannot solve tasks unrelated to destruction, and the fleet has many such tasks. For example, the protection of ships and vessels on their communications from the air and underwater enemy, the same means of MSSO, minesweeping, search and destruction of submarines, amphibious landings, support of ground forces from the sea and much more.
From this point of view, statements that the ISAF can fully replace the fleet are approximately equivalent to statements that an anti-tank gun or a missile system can replace a tank. It is obvious to anyone more or less knowledgeable in military affairs that a tank or a ship are much more universal means of war than those specialized types of weapons that were created directly to combat them. Therefore, no matter what high-profile PR successes the ISSOS have achieved in the past or in the future, it is impossible to win the war at sea with them.
The author is a writer, Candidate of Historical Sciences
The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion
