Russian Navy minesweepers to be equipped with underwater robots

According to Izvestia sources, the Defense Ministry has decided to equip minesweepers with remotely controlled underwater robots Marlin-350. The new equipment will be deployed on mine countermeasures ships of all four fleets.Russian Navy- North, Pacific, Black and Baltic Seas.

The decision to refit the minesweepers follows a successful trip by Baltic Fleet ships to the Gulf of Finland last summer to carry out large-scale mine clearance work.

Marlin-350 remote-controlled underwater vehicle. Photo: AP

The Ministry of Defense earlier said that two Baltic Fleet minesweepers, the Alexandrite-class Project 12700 Alexander Obukhov and the Yakhont-class Project 1265 Leonid Sobolev, with the help of Marlin-350 equipment, detected and destroyed about 20 anchor mines and magnetically-guided bottom mines. These mines were discovered near the island of Hogland. They were rusted by seawater corrosion and were in a dangerous condition for salvage.

During World War II, the Germans laid several dense minefields in the Gulf of Finland to isolate the Baltic Fleet at Kronshtadt and Leningrad. Soviet sailors cut their way through and destroyed these obstacles, but mines remain in the gulf to this day.

According to media reports, the Russian Defense Ministry has signed a contract to purchase 45 Marlin-350 remotely controlled underwater drones for nearly 604 million rubles. Such devices are useful for searching for underwater objects and performing technical work such as underwater inspection and testing at depths of up to 350 m. Using optical systems, they detect targets deep underwater and then place special explosives on them. It is a fairly compact device. Less than a meter long, the underwater vehicle weighs only 50 kg. It can operate in temperatures from minus 20 to plus 50 degrees Celsius. The speed of the device is nearly 5 km/h, equivalent to 2.5 nautical miles per hour./.

Lan Ha