MIRAZH PATROL CRAFT: FIRE POWER, SPEED AND EFFECTIVENESS

This article has been prepared by the Marketing and Advertising Division of the Vympel Open Joint Stock Shipbuilding Company.
 

Mirazh features powerful armament, high speed and seagoing ability provided by a system of automatically controlled interceptors which increase the boat’s speed, reduce rolling and damp pitching motions.

It is designed to guard territorial waters and coastal economic zones against pirate surface craft, illegal drug traffic and trespassers in a sea tropical climate. Patrol missions can be performed while the boat is running or anchored. Mirazh is capable of accomplishing coast guard, maritime police, customs service and fishery inspection missions. For customs service, the craft is supplied unarmed. The craft’s armament suite can be customer-specified.

Mirazh features powerful armament (compared to other patrol craft), high speed and seagoing ability provided by a system of automatically controlled interceptors which increase the boat’s speed by 8 to 10 knots, reduce rolling motions twice or thrice, or even more, and damp pitching motions 1.2 to 1.5 times.

Experimental and theoretical research indicated that, when extended, bow and stern interceptors produce high pressure pockets in front of them. Moreover, a cavern filled with atmospheric air is formed behind the bow interceptors. This is accompanied by the re-distribution and alteration of forces and moments acting upon the craft’s bottom, causing the running trim to vary and the craft to plane up. As a result, the craft’s wetted surface becomes considerably less, the drag decreases by 5 to 30 percent and the lift-drag ratio increases. As the forces and moments acting upon the bottom depend not only on the craft’s speed but also on the degree of extension of interceptors and their position relative to the position of the craft’s center of mass, it becomes possible to attain an optimum trim within the entire speed range, ensure the craft’s stabilization on the rough seas and significantly improve its seaworthiness by appropriately selecting the bow and stern interceptors on each side and controlling the degree of their extension.

Armament:

— AK-306 cal. 30 mm air-cooled automatic gun designed for use against aerial and small surface targets. The gun’s characteristics are: rate of fire - 600 to 1,000 rnd/min; firing range - 5,200 m; unit of fire - 500 belted rounds in the gun magazine;

— two cal. 14,5 mm pedestal-mounted machine guns. Each MG has a rate of fire of 550 to 600 rnd/min, firing range up to 1,500 m against aerial targets and 2,000 m against surface targets and a unit of fire of 1,000 belted rounds stowed in ammunition boxes. The unit of fire can be increased twofold.

Sighting range, m:

— aerial targets up to 1,500

— surface targets up to 2,000

Types of ammunition:

armor-piercing incendiary; armor-piercing incendiary tracer; incendiary; blank. To engage surface and shore-based targets, the patrol craft is armed with the Shturm missile system which incorporates two container-launchers with three tubes each to fire the Ataka missiles. The maximum firing range of the missile controlled over a radio link is up to 5,800 m and the rate of fire is 2 or 3 shots per minute.

In addition, to engage aerial targets, Mirazh is armed with the Igla portable shoulder-launched SAM system with a gunner’s station located in the craft’s centerplane.

On customer request, the craft can be armed with the DP-64 portable grenade launcher to kill frogmen at a range of up to 600 m and a depth of up to 40 m. The weapon’s underwater kill radius is up to 14 m.

The Igla SAM system (maximum firing range: 5,200 m; maximum target altitude: 3,500 m) can be employed at sea state up to 4 and at the craft’s speed of up to 20 knots. Other armaments can be used at sea state 4 or 5.

Movement of the patrol craft at the maximum engine rating is permitted at sea state up to 4, inclusive. At sea state 5, the speed is limited to 24 knots. Sailing at lower speeds will be safe up to sea state 7. At economical speed and at sea state 2, the fully fuelled craft has a cruising range of up to 1,000 miles. With the maximum fuel load and at economical speed, the craft has a cruising range of up to 1,500 miles. Navigation equipment:

— GKU-2 gyro course indicator;

— KM69-M2 magnetic compass (back-up course indicator);

— LE-01 Briz logging sonar (designed to measure speed within six to 60 knots with a sea depth from 0.4 to 200 m);

— Navy Bridge 2000 integrated navigation system including the Bridge Master C181/4 AT radar, MK53G indicator and Navy Master 2006 video plotter designed to store and display electronic maps with all requisite navigation data, as well as input, process and display the craft’s present position data obtained from the satellite global positioning system (GPS), DECCA navigation system coastal stations, onboard radar, gyro course indicator and log, and also plot the course and provide for automatic solution of other navigational problems.

The Mirazh coastal patrol craft (Project 14310) has been developed following an analysis of the best craft in this class. Mirazh has become one of the best patrol boats with a displacement of 110 to 150 tons.

Currently, the Vympel shipbuilding company builds advanced missile and patrol craft, new-generation firefighting boats and fish seiners. Work has been launched on the first in Russia small fish/prawn freezer trawler which will not yield in performance to its foreign counterparts. Besides, we build survey ships, estuary tugs, passenger/freight boats, as well as specialized small tugs.