Russia Invades Ukraine
Russia is set to begin production of floating firing points to guard St. Petersburg from Ukraine’s marine and aerial drones, Leningrad’s regional governor said on August 18.“We expect to identify samples by October that we can subsequently purchase to protect the Leningrad Region's borders,” Aleksandr Drozdenko said in a Telegram post that included diagrams of a floating sentry post called the PLOT-40. Plot means “raft” in Russian.
A diagram of the floating firing point Plot-40 (right) is viewed during a visit to a boatbuilding company in the Leningrad region by local officials in an image released on August 18.
Images of the armed raft first emerged in late July when a prototype was displayed at a port in Vyborg.“After analyzing enemy attacks, it became clear that it was important to strengthen defenses 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 boats and [unmanned aerial vehicles],” the governor said.Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at RAND, a US-based nonprofit research organization, told RFE/RL that the effectiveness of the rafts would depend on several factors, including how quickly and accurately they can identify and strike incoming drones, and “the floating platforms’ own vulnerabilities to attack.”Hatches seen on the prototype version do not appear to be heavily armored.
