Vympel if you compare the Akulas you’ll find out what I mean, even just visually they are plenty more than Akula, Akula Improved and Akula II…
There are versions with 8 torpedotubes, versions with 14 torpedo tubes, versions with 14 torpedo tubes and SOKS, versions with lengtened sail and Gepard with a lot of differences from the rest. And that was not a long production run. The same counts for Victor IIIs. And that’s just external differences, internally they all differ.

Borei with 12 weapons would be good enough. If you look at any other navy with SSBNs you’ll figure out that they have either only two to four real armed missiles, just using one warhead instead of the total MIRV, or for US, are looking at different use for these submarines (arming them with conventional warheads is being considered several times now), so making a larger SSBN with more missiles would be rather stupid for Russia, no need for that and keeps the costs lower too. (and all in all carrying 12 missiles instead of 24 is making no real difference anyway).

Wanshan, do you call Udaloy a frigate? (yes I know, in Russian the type is called Fregat), indeed they use the combination, but if you have to choose for your only major combattant for the future, would you rather opt for a short range defense along with a medium range one, or would you opt for two short range systems that actually do the same (and have NO option of defending any other ship in the vicinity)??? For me the choice would be made rather fast.

Austin, maybe he’s talking about ANOTHER 5 Borei, which would make the total of 8 (reasonable to replace the Delta III).
Isn’t that the Poliment SAM you’re talking about Garry?

Well practically there are two media streams in this one. The general story goes like this: armed with A-190 gun, Uragan-M SAM (Shtil-1), Onyx SSM (Yakhont), two Palma-M (although one of the streams doesn’t mention this one), Medvedka 2 and a helicopter.
Where they got this info, no one really knows, personally I even think it could be just wishful thinking, taking every weapon in development for Russia and throwing it together.

But, if that armament is really based on something that was released, you can still go two directions, and that is what the media did. One suggests it’s a modified Talwar, hence says a displacement of around 3,500t-maybe 4,000t. The other suggests it’s a Sovremenny replacement and hence says it’s going to be 7,000-8,500t. (Sovremenny/Udaloy, with this, they’d actually think there would double the SAM armament, but as no numbers are given, this is open for suggestion…)

But as I have said now, judging/guessing myself, from this beam it looks more than 16m… Or can anyone make a better guess? It is on the other hand the broadest part of the ship, and I suppose the size behind it will house the stern and helo deck of the ship, any guessing on the size?

And indeed that Warfare.ru drawing is what I meant, it was already shown for Stereguchiy too, you can guess the age of that design…

yeah, it’s the new project 22350 called Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, of which they are talking for a while already. They “want” 20 of them, along with 40 Project 20380 corvettes (Stereguchiy). Well, that’s they need they have expressed, they are smart enough to know that they will not get these numbers.

AFAIK they had one upgraded with a Bofors 57mm Mk2 “stealth” gun. I thought at least they would keep that one in sevice… There’s a picture of that upgraded one in the Jane’s Recognition guide (that is why it actually got my attention), the Bofors was placed in the B position in front of the bridge. Any idea what happened with it?

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!)

That’s a Sovremenny next to the Kapusta ship, you can actually see the vertically directed Phased Array radar on the Kapusta! Nice find! (I mean the one you asked for two posts ago)

Pesho, they all relate to each other, Granit was an improvement over Bazalt and Vulkan was an improvement over Granit. if the Vulkan system worked, they would have used it to replace Granit too. Indeed Vulkan was a lot more similar in appearance to Bazalt than it was to Granit, I suppose that was due to some differing ideas. They used 5 Echo II’s with this system and the system actually reached operational service. Nowadays it is still installed in the Varyag (Slava class) cruiser in the Pacific Fleet.
Meteorit was a totally different kind of beast. Meteorit was a 3000+ km supersonic land-attack weapon, far from Granit!