Hi guys.
Its not completly related to Naval aviation, but lets face it: Few of the subjects in this subforum are.
Anyway, I read a little around on the internet about Soviet/Russia ELINT/Surveilance/Command crafts.
It seems like this Titan/KAPUSTA class ship (only one built, SSV-33 ‘Ural’) was used for communcation and command, but is probarly retired from service in the Pacific fleet.
The ship have a nice recognition feature with its large radome on the front, and it is built on the hull of a Orlan/KIROV CGN. The name KAPUSTA actaully means cabbage, and its no suprise why the ship got that reporting name.
I got these two pics of the ‘Ural’ from GlobalSecurity.org:
As you can see, the single large radome is situated on the upper fuselage of the front.
Now, I don’t remember where I got this picture from. It seems to be pretty much a ship related to the KAPUSTA, however this ship features two large and one small radome, and only two masts while the ‘Ural’ features three. The picture is somewhat low quality, but atleast you can see the main recognition features of it.
The funny thing is that wherever I got the pic from, they named it “Titan”.
Was this some kind of upgrade of the existing ‘Ural’, or a whole new class?
Anyone willing to help me out? 🙂
By: slipperysam - 19th June 2006 at 00:02
Jamie Lee Curtis… … Thanks i stand corrected!….(Dunno how i got Julia Roberts in there)…….
By: snake65 - 18th June 2006 at 17:38
This was for real. The largest of Soviet space tracking ships “Kosmonavt Yuri Gagarin” was taken over by Ukraine in 1991 and sold for scrap to India in 1996. Before going to the millers it had it’s last moment of glory in the movie “Virus”. The ship was 231 meters long and displaced 45 kT. There was a hell of a lot of place for bad aliens to hide.
By: Arabella-Cox - 18th June 2006 at 17:15
The film is called Virus and the actress was Jamie Lee Curtis.
By: slipperysam - 18th June 2006 at 13:44
Just some useless parrallel’s. A while ago i saw a movie on TV (The name is lost somewhere in my brain but if you guys know it please tell me) which was one of those…. horror type shows. (Julia Roberts was in it??? )
It basically goes… Large Russian elint ship listening to a satellite transmission suddenly goes missing. Tug boat recovery crew finds itself in a large storm at sea and then finds the Russian ship seemingly abandoned. The ship is not what it seems and the crew finds its secret. The Russian crew have been cut up in pieces and turned into killer robots etc…… infected by an alien transmission from the satellite… blah blah blah.. the usual blood and gore follow….
Anyhow the ship in the movie looks a like its based on the photos above…. at least they did some research i guess….
By: Neptune - 15th June 2006 at 07:38
I don’t think they are stolen. This ship is officially not in service anymore, only used as a power plant. The crew onboard has probably been reduced to a bunch of scientists, hence there is no need for that many lifeboats. As you can see there’s one left, probably that’s there for the remaining crew,the other boats could be used for other ships. Indeed very typical for Russia, but on the other hand, if you don’t have a crew, why bother with maintaining so many lifeboats (and lifeboats take a lot of maintenance really!)
By: TinWing - 15th June 2006 at 00:31
Here is an amazing image of the ship:
It is obvious that the topsides have been painted recently, although the hull looks like it’s been neglected since the Soviet era.
It also appears that most of the lifeboats have been stolen – not a good sign, but typical of Russia.
By: Arabella-Cox - 14th June 2006 at 20:47
Here is an amazing image of the ship:
http://warshiptransit.homestead.com/files/Ural_Moored.jpg
Titan was the project name, Ural was the name of the ship and Kapusta was the NATO designation.
By: snake65 - 23rd May 2006 at 19:26
I think the project name for “Komarov” was Projekt 1917 “Sirius”, although the hull of Projekt 595 merchant vessel was used.
By: Neptune - 23rd May 2006 at 17:16
sorry for that Gauntlet, you got the picture from me (Severodvinsk photobucket) and I have mistakenly designated it Titan a year or two ago… I have since then noticed the mistake already, but haven’t renamed it yet!
This is the project 1914 Nedelin.
The most interesting feature of Kapusta however, is not that dome, but the four phased arrays. She was mostly used for “spying” missile tests and participating in Soviet/Russian missile tests using the phased arrays to track the missiles (including ballistic ones).
As for her ancestry, no one really knows what that was. Her size is indeed larger than a normal Kirov, yet her hull shape is indeed somewhat similar. So probably the answer is somewhere in between, designed on a Kirov hull, but built to different specifications. The carrier was to become much larger, so that isn’t an option I think, neither does her hull shape have anything of a carrier’s.
Now she is laid up in the same bay as Frunze, where her reactor is being used as a power supply to the base (in Vladivostok that is).
By: snake65 - 23rd May 2006 at 08:00
Projekt 1941 was not built using hull of 1144 or 1153, it also has a different (civilian) powerplant, on par with nuclear ice-breakers.
The other ship on Your photo is “Kosmonavt Valdimir Komarov”, built already in 1967 and decommissioned in 1989, so it has no relation to 1941. There is Projekt 1914 “Marshal Nedelin” which was built at approximately the same time as “Ural” and has the same equipment on one third of displacement. “Ural” was so costly, that after one year of service it was put on reserve.
By: Gauntlet - 23rd May 2006 at 07:54
Anyone else that can help me identify the last picture?
By: Gollevainen - 22nd May 2006 at 11:02
The most interesting thing conserning this vessels history is the rumours that the hull was orginally a cancelled project 1153 Aircraft carrier. The hull lenght supports this clame as Titan is 265 meters long and Kirovs are only 252 meters long. Propaply only few know data about the 1153 states that it was to bee 265 meters long too so….who knows?
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May 22, 2006 at 9:19 am
