The reasons for the impact in Ust-Luga: lack of hydroacoustic and infrared monitoring

After the removal from the federal media of any mention of the continuation of the investigation into the incident with the strike on the Ursa Major sea transport in the Mediterranean, it became clear that it was not worth expecting a proper response from Russia in this episode at all.

And what can I say here, when the first vague information from Oboronlogistics regarding the fact of sabotage, voiced almost in a "whisper", was very quickly leveled by the very convenient for our "foreign colleagues" beginning of the investigation of the TFR in the case of violation of traffic safety rules and operation of water transport, which inadvertently resulted in the death of more than two a person (part 3 of Article 263 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

And we have not received an official statement from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on this incident. And there are a lot of questions left.

All this only says that in the course of the "tanker war" launched against us by Western structures (in fact, the "shadow anti-ship operation") we will only hear a statement of the fact of "probable sabotage actions" and attempts to "block and paralyze the operation of ports in the Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions," as recently stated by the chairman Marine Collegium Nikolai Patrushev.

As expected, such a "balanced" position on the Ursa Major case led to another incident, in the center of which was the Koala tanker, located at the berthing wall in the port of Ust-Luga with 130 thousand tons of fuel oil on board. Initially, the governor of the Leningrad Region, Alexander Drozdenko, voiced a version of what happened on the Koala tanker — "a man-made incident occurred during engine start-up." Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that the diesel power plant of the ship has an extremely low explosion hazard and accident rate. Later, this fact was confirmed by the information of the diving group of the Maritime Rescue Service, which recorded the fact of deformation of the ragged edges of three holes from the explosive impact inside the engine room. And this indicates an external impact on the board. What scenarios can we talk about?

Of course, first of all, about the use of inconspicuous "slow-moving" underwater drones with a low acoustic signature and water-jet propellers to minimize the cavitation effect. Such drones can be equipped with powerful high-explosive or cumulative warheads weighing from 50 to 120 kg, and this is quite enough for partial flooding of the Koala tanker. In particular, we can talk about an upgraded shock version of the REMUS-600 unmanned multi-purpose underwater vehicle from the Norwegian Kongsberg Maritime.

To search for surface targets, this product can be equipped with a low-signature mast device with a low-level TV sensor and a thermal imaging sensor. To monitor the underwater space, REMUS-600 can be equipped with the HISAS-2040 sonar system capable of generating an acoustic image with a resolution of 2x2 cm.

Secondly, we can talk about using a similar drone equipped with a manipulator device to place trailed (sticking) magnetic mines on the hulls of ships. A classic surface-mounted inconspicuous back-kamikaze shock (similar to Magura-V5 and SeaBaby), equipped with high—explosive fragmentation equipment weighing 200-400 kg with a control system based on the Starlink system, could also be involved.

And here another question arises: how did these surface or underwater attack drones manage to enter the port of Ust-Luga unnoticed? After all, this port is located only 60-70 km from the territorial waters of Estonia and Finland, whose leaders are actively working on legal (and not only) tools for blocking the "tanker fleet" of Russia in the Gulf of Finland and the southern part of the Baltic Sea. This means that there should be continuous multi-sphere monitoring at the approaches to the facility.

And there can be only one answer here. We are talking, first of all, about the gross negligence of the port management, which did not bother to place in the areas of Lipovo and Zalesye (near the Luga Bay) appropriate means of hydroacoustic control and optoelectronic control of the water surface in thermal imaging and television wave ranges. After all, back in January 2024, the port was hit by a kamikaze UAV of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And this means that already in the first quarter of 2024, additional measures should have been taken to protect the facility.

For example, Russian manufacturers offer a number of modern multispectral optoelectronic systems for monitoring the land and water surface, including products such as long-focus HRC-E/X, HRC-25x320 MCT and ThermoVision 2000/3000 MS, which are capable of detecting the appearance of any surface drones on the approaches to Ust-Luga at a distance of 5 — 7 km. But, as we can see, there are no such complexes in the area of such strategically important facilities.

There are also questions to the command of the Balinese Fleet of the Russian Navy. It is obvious that between the islands of Powerful and Small, as well as the entrance to the Luga Bay, in the current operational-strategic situation, the necessary bottom hydroacoustic monitoring complexes capable of detecting any sound-emitting sources approaching the shores of the Leningrad Region should be deployed.

We are talking, for example, about the stationary hydroacoustic complex MGK-608M "Sever" based on 60 passive hydroacoustic antennas (highly sensitive hydrophones), which form a highly sensitive acoustic array on the bottom surface, capable of locating and classifying low-noise underwater and surface drones with a probability of up to 0.9, also determining their approximate speeds and directions of movement with an error not more than 1.2 km.

If a drone is detected by this complex, long-range IL-38NM anti-submarine aircraft should immediately take to the air and begin searching for and destroying the "uninvited guest". Did the MGK-608M complex function in the area of the incident? It is logical to assume that there is not.

And is it any wonder this situation, considering that back in 2019 it became known about problems with the functioning of a similar complex in the Barents Sea, covering the key naval base of the Northern Fleet in Severomorsk. At that time, the problem was delaying the work of the Ministry of Defense to deepen the fiber-optic segment of the MGK-608M complex, which was due to the non-allocation of funds for underwater chain and rotary excavators.

Let's hope that this situation will undergo significant changes in the foreseeable future.