Soviet Muna Class trawlers - a strange case

MwRYum said:

If the sea was rough enough, in theory you'd see what's underneath when this type of trawler got to the crest of those big waves...

There's little risk that a pirate to have one of these because they aim is always simply to board and hijack a vessel, not to sink it to the bottom as they'd then unable to make profit from the loot and ransom from the ship's owner.

For a rogue nation, this is also a tricky weapon to use if they got it, because it'd be hard to conceal the transfer and loading of torpedo, and any sheds / drydocks that has a roof over it are might as well neon signs that says "look here!" to everybody.

Terrorists typically don't like things that require specific care and maintenance, as well as crews of specialized skill sets to operate them.

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However, they can post serious threat against smaller frigates trying to stop or chase them away the ships they are trying to hijack. Imagine, a could of four to five of these trawlers heading toward a ship, a nearby escort frigate came up to try to intercept and chase away the pirates. Two or all of them turned and fire their torpedoes at the frigates. Might cause heavy damage or even sink the frigates when 10 (if five trawlers fired all of their torpedoes) torpedoes hit the frigate.

rhino123 said:

However, they can post serious threat against smaller frigates trying to stop or chase them away the ships they are trying to hijack.Two or all of them turned and fire their torpedoes at the frigates. Might cause heavy damage or even sink the frigates when 10 (if five trawlers fired all of their torpedoes) torpedoes hit the frigate.

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Most frigates would be sunk be a single heavy weight torpedo...certainly by two.

If pirates ever obtained and used these vessels, pretty soon the navies of the world would hunt every last one of them that they owned down and send them to Davey Jones locker.

But they might cause some damage in the initial surprise attacks.

Jeff Head said:

Most frigates would be sunk be a single heavy weight torpedo...certainly by two.

If pirates ever obtained and used these vessels, pretty soon the navies of the world would hunt every last one of them that they owned down and send them to Davey Jones locker.

But they might cause some damage in the initial surprise attacks.

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Indeed. First of all a significant shipment of torpedoes have to be smuggled into the region, because otherwise it won't worth the risk and investments in obtaining such capacity; plus the stronghold will need to upgrade its defences. All in all will generate lots of human + vehicular + ELINT + SIGINT traffics that will inevitably catch the major intelligence bureaux attentions; if things get more busy then normal, it'd only mean something is up and need to be pre-empted. Since pirates usually operate from failed state along major shipping routes, sending in a few LACMs to blast the whole lot into scrap isn't that hard.

To be anywhere effective, that requires 3 to 4 such boats, even if 2 fish per boat that'd be 6-8 fish to be deployed at least; unless this is going to be a one-time-only show, try the inventory needs to be about 20 at least to make the smuggling worthwhile. Now, even if these are straight-run WW2 torpedoes, that's still a lot of hardware missing at some navy's warehouse. And torpedoes ain't RPG rounds that requires little to no professional care or handling...something those fishermen-turned-pirates won't be trained to undertake. They'd be lucky if they didn't ended up blew up the stash simply because one of them chew a bit too much khat that night, got a bit too "high" and did something utterly stupid.

And even if the military wait and not to strike first, the response will always mean certain doom to the pirates - it'd force the major powers to "deal decisively" to sedate domestic outcry.

To simply put, what seems to be a step-up is utterly bad for business.

Torpedo tubes and sensors on fishing boats sounds like the original streetfighter concept of the US Navy. Under Mao something similar was envisioned for the Chinese navy, to have a kind of militia without expensive assets (such as aircraft carriers). It does have merits in littoral waters close to friendly shores or under protection of carrier fleets.

The following links provide a brief overview of all the buzz with this concept:




Today's pirates might rather use cheap home-produced (non-self-propelled) spar torpedoes on speedboats to attack the supply structure of military forces.
Such a device will be most handy if anti-boarding measures achieve sufficient effectiveness to endanger the business, because it enables to enforce compliance prior to setting feet on the decks.

I thought I was the only person to find the MUNA class interesting! A useful listing here: . But they are not trawler-type ships, rather coasters.

The most fascinating is probably Pr. 1858 OS-213 ANDREY LEZHIN, which is still in service in the Russian Navy, on Lake Issyk-Kul (Kirgizistan). The principal torpedo development base of the Soviet/Russian Navy is located in these discrete surroundings where notably the Shkval rocket torpedoes were tested.

The Chinese Navy and Army use two types of trawlers for intelligence purposes, attached to the Navy’s (Survey and) Reconnaissance Squadrons (16 ships) and the Army’s Reconnaissance and Ship Transport Squadrons (14 ships).

On, that explains why a month old thread was suddenly locked out of the blue.

Going to the Muna trawlers, you could try to modernize one by putting on some Klub missiles (though that begs the question of how you're going to get the fire control solutions without setting off enemy SIGINT and ELINT collectors).

Skywatcher said:

On, that explains why a month old thread was suddenly locked out of the blue.

Going to the Muna trawlers, you could try to modernize one by putting on some Klub missiles (though that begs the question of how you're going to get the fire control solutions without setting off enemy SIGINT and ELINT collectors).

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The month-old thread was closed because of inactivity, and because the idea was unrealistic and impossible to implement.

As to the Muna Class, they are posted here largely because of their historical meaning for the four vessels that operated as torpedo test vessels. The posts about the Muna that got started on the other thread (and were off topic there) were moved here to this thread. There was good intrest and a good discussion regarding them there.

I think it very highly unlikely that any capable maritime power would ever try to arm such trawlers like this in the modern era, either with torpedo tubes or SSMs. They might arm themselves with self defense AAMs and light guns.

A nation with very little capability, or a piracy or terrorism oriented culture might place such offensive weapons. But as soon as they made a surprise attack with them, their entire naval/military power would be destroyed.

As a test platform or Intelligence platform a Trawler is fine.
IT allowed the Russians to try there torpedos out in a less expensive platform.
To conduct and Gather intell a Trawler is a good option as no one would question it.
but as a attack platform. it raises to many legal issues, and has huge tactical gaps. Sure you can take down a ship but every air to surface missile is now pointed your way along with every flying platform with guns.