I have seen photos of Al Ghardabia, the other Koni class corvette, which was hit by air attacks – but apparently not sunk, but only damaged.

You mean the 2 that look like off-shore supply ships?

Yes, I was wondering, if these are off-shore supply ships – or built for the navy.

Here some photos – not showing the ex Varyag, but PLAN destroyers and frigates:

http://club.6park.com/military/messages/3021.html

Wasn’t the 1164 called Krasina or something by NATO initially?

Yes, before the name of the first ship was known.

If you are referring to TR1’s launch images, Leon, the missile isn’t P-20M it is a P-500 variant. The ship is one of the 1164’s. Even if the size and arrangement of the weapon doesn’t give this away the fast check is the number of boosters – P-20M has a single ventral booster.

Ah, I thought that this was a BrahMos, because it was mentioned in the postings above repeatedly. Rajput has two of it’s P-20 launchers replaced by twin launchers for BrahMos.

But you are right, this is a Project 1164 (Slava class) cruiser. The combination of AK-130, two AK-630 superfiring and the RBU-6000 (?) is unique.

The first Chinese warships for the PLAN were built decades ago, but the first ships with modern, western derived equipment were the type 052 destroyers and the late Type 053 frigates (053H3). They should have been the turning point. Exported ships are certainly something different, because they are usually not built and equipped to the same standards.

The problem is that destroyers and frigates have got so big and so expensive that only very few can be afforded.

The most expensive part of the ship is certainly not their hull, but their combat systems, weapons electronics, the automation etc. The price for the quality of the ships is very high – and this reduces quantity. No navy could afford today the numbers they had e.g. 100 or 50 years ago.

I guess that the next captain of HMS Astute will loose his job.

I would considered it very problematic that an armed employee of the state behave that way – but it is even more problematic that this happened on submarine with an very dangerous and risky propulsion.