Russia Tests Floating Platforms to Defend Against Ukrainian Drones

Russia is expected to begin producing offensive floating platforms to protect St. Petersburg from Ukrainian naval and aerial drones, the governor of the Leningrad region said on August 18.

“We expect to identify by October the models that we can then purchase to protect the borders of the Leningrad region,” Aleksandr Drozdenko said in a Telegram post, which also showed diagrams of a floating observation post called PLOT-40. “Plot” means raft in Albanian.

Images of the armed raft first emerged in late July, when a prototype was presented at a port in Vyborg.

“After analyzing the enemy’s attacks, it became clear that it was important to strengthen protection from the water,” Drozdenko said at the time. The unusual vessel “is designed to protect naval bases, port infrastructure, and fuel and energy facilities from modern threats, including unmanned vessels and unmanned aerial vehicles,” the governor said.

Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at RAND, a nonprofit research organization based in the United States, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the effectiveness of the rafts would depend on several factors, including the speed and accuracy with which they could identify and strike approaching drones, as well as “the vulnerability of the floating platforms themselves to attack.”

The hatches visible on the prototype version do not appear to be heavily armored.

The vessels are equipped with either an automatic cannon or a remotely operated machine gun, fitted with a set of electro-optical sensors. The raft prototype, photographed near Vyborg, has five small hatches around the upper part of the craft’s hull, which could be used as firing positions for soldiers, as well as a larger personnel access hatch, although it is unclear whether the vessels are designed to have crews.

A small platform around the raft’s hull would enable soldiers to use shoulder-fired missiles when sea conditions are calm.

Savitz pointed out that remotely operated vessels do not necessarily reduce the number of military personnel required to operate them. If the PLOT-40 is uncrewed, he said, its only advantage would be reducing the risk to soldiers.

“Personnel aboard a platform can provide a level of situational awareness and adaptability that is usually greater than that of someone observing and controlling them remotely,” Savitz said, adding that “an uncrewed platform may require just as many people to operate, and sometimes even more, than a crewed platform,” because of the need for control, maintenance, and resupply.

“In the context of port defense, the main advantage of having no crew on board is that attacks on the platforms would not harm people. Some countries are more concerned about this than others,” he said.

The port-defense expert added that “placing personnel on these platforms for 12-hour shifts does not require many accommodations for their stay.”

The Russian Plot-40 project is reminiscent in function, if not in form, of the Maunsell forts, which were installed at sea several kilometers off the British coast during World War II.

Unlike the Russian floating raft, the British radar and gun installations were fixed to the seabed, but they had the same purpose: to engage enemy aircraft and vessels before they came within range of batteries located on land.

According to reports, the crews of the British forts shot down dozens of Nazi aircraft and V-1 bombs, while a German warship was sunk.

The main advantage of the Russian rafts over a conventional vessel would be their greater stability at sea, Savitz said. “These platforms may be able to carry more and larger weapons than a small vessel and could provide greater stability to enable accurate attacks.”

He added that “the extraordinary innovation that the Ukrainians have repeatedly demonstrated” means that deploying rafts on a large scale would not “eliminate the Ukrainians’ ability to strike Russian ports.”

Given the “chaotic gunfire and missile fire” seen around Russian ports during Ukrainian drone attacks, the rafts would likely be anchored offshore to minimize the risk of fire from Russian forces themselves./RFE/RL