….with, I’d imagine, equally deleterious effects after prolonged exposure! 🙂

Newer doesn’t necessarily mean better. EM versions are partly digitalized in signal processing, otherwise relying the original sonar array.

You must also remember context Witcha. For SSK’s you are unlikely to be expecting detects out in the 2nd CZ anyway, so, absolute performance level isn’t as critical as it would be for a Fleet boat optimised for blue-water ASW.

A sharp SSK operator will use knowledge of local waters currents and flow noise patterns, salinity variances, silting and all sorts of other environmental factors to his advantage. That can easily offset a modest sonar performance disadvantage.

Of course Russian Navy needs to be restored from the very ground.

Still, Kirovs give a unique C4I platform and true global reach: once overhauled and upgraded, they will ensure Russian Navy the capability to deploy wherever they need a command staff broadly the same way an U.S. CVN do.

Waiting for the whole of the fleet to be modernized, would mean to Russia the loose of any serious naval deployment capabilities for a couple of decades.

A global reach is valueless without an ability to exert influence at that reach. The Russian Navy has no real global power projection capability because its never needed to have it. For all its size and apparent power the 1144 cruiser is just a sea denial platform and all it could accomplish by itself, in strategic terms, is a short-term blockade. Perhaps, if P700 was modified into a precision land-attack weapon, then it could have a limited strategic coercion role.

The problem is that any of the missions that are discussed here, for this notional Kirov-mod, are quite easily accomplished by boats significantly cheaper to own than 30k ton nuke-driven cruisers requiring a ships company in excess of 700!.

Regardless the future of the Russian Navy is efficient multirole DDG designs such as that imaged above. The Gorshkov doctrine is now dead and there are no SIOP tasked US CVBG’s waiting to standoff the northern coastline and rain B61’s on Red Banner fleet installations. Simply put the RuN’s resources appear to be to be focussed on frigate and Fleet sub recapitalisation and if true that is emminently sensible. If the Kirov’s draw resources away from those programs it cant be anything other than a bad thing!.

Provide flagship capability and high capacity SAM protection for a defensive fleet. Duh.

A nuclear powered battle cruiser to provide area air defence to a defensive surface group operating in range of its own shore based air cover?. You dont see the problem with that?.

This is an 80m long vessel that displaces 1600 tons right?. So what we are looking at is really a vessel that is at the large end of the corvette scale and bordering on, to some navies, light frigate dimensions.

The aviation capability is obviously key to the vessels operational abilities. The vessels plans indicate an elevator forward of the flight deck connecting to the mission bay below. It would be interesting to see if this was big enough to handle the 4m x 2m footprint of a Schiebel S-100 for example. Certainly if the elevator can strike an S-100 below then the mission bay would seem to offer a nice impression of a hangar deck!. I’ve long been a fan of multiple ‘light’ UAV’s operating radially just inside of the surface radar horizon to provide realtime VISIDENT over suprisingly large chunks of the local seaspace.

In terms of armament the tradeoff is going to be the amount of mission bay space up for sacrifice. The spaces aft are taken up, on the beams, with engines and uptakes and, centrally, with the RHIB dock/garage space. A VLS aft would seem to be possible only at the expense of the small boat capability. Forward of the bridge would appear to be lightly used space, but, hasn’t got a lot of hull depth to accept a ‘proper’ VLS or magazine fed weapons mounts. I’m also unsure of that position for an exposed gun mount if its going to get clobbered in a 50knt seaway with any frequency. I’m not convinced of a gun mount alongside the wheelhouse either because of the obstructed arcs and lack of space aft for a corresponding mount to cover the stern/port arc without fouling the aft landing spot.

For me, for maximum effectiveness in the opposition littoral, I think I’d want an MRR-3D class radar providing TI for 2 A35 modules amidships on either beam, for 16 VL Mica total, encroaching on one of the mission bay pallet spots per beam. Forward of the wheelhouse on the ‘mooring deck’ I’d site 4 9-pot IAI Jumper missile packs and make provision alongside the wheelhouse to mount another 4 packs in a reinforced housing should the operational environment warrant it. I’d also pay a lot of attention to my embarked softkill.

It does. QUestion is, what exactly is generating it? Some have suggested this is indication of a new GTu-based main powerplant. However, IIRC, the Kuznetsov has a total of 15 diesel generator sets on board (in addition to her steam plant of 8 boilers and 2 turbines): where do these vent, and could a number of them combined produce this efflux (< love that word ;-)?

I can certainly understand why that conclusion would have been arrived at. The exhaust looks pretty clear for a diesel…even a new one. Turbines can obviously produce clag depending on what they are burning, but, they generally run cleaner than diesels.

She’s obviously alongside so, you would assume, she’s taking shore power so the only reason to be running on anything would be testing purposes. You could have turbine driven alternator sets for ship power – usually multiple diesels are more efficient for that job though. So really propulsion looks like a favourable bet.

Its a bit late in the build phase for a major propulsion test…you’d certainly be a bit annoyed if you got the boat to this stage of completion then had to go hacking big holes in the side to lift out a prime mover turbine that was only just found to be thoroughly stuffed!. Plenty of reasons to light up, perhaps, a single turbine to check engineering controls, powertrain linkages etc, etc at this stage though.

Chances of finding out the truth at this stage I’d imagine are pretty slim, but, if someone told me she’s now running on a sizeable GT plant that photo would give it superficial credibility.

To be fair it did look like they only missed by a few yards, which if you where firing on frigate or a destroyer would likely still be a hit.

Plus presumably there is some sort of radar based gun director and it’s not going to be much use detecting a small fibreglass boat.

The gun, for direct fire, will take direction from the forward 909 radar or from a manned optical director called the Local Area Sight or LAS. Collimation errors between the LAS and the mount can give you a couple of yards deviation and usually, as described, this is inconsequential as the things you try and hit with the main gun are bigger that a few yards across!.