I know that, but as you might have noticed, the European ships have also exchanged their two helicopter capacity for a single helicopter. Another weakening factor…
Medvedka has a range of 22km, still ok as submarines will most likely not fire at their maximum range. RBU series are indeed credited with anti-torpedo skills. I also think a barrage of these things can create a terrible noise and hence give a screen.

Helicopters are always the best option as a submarine for now cannot hit them back. Weak point as a “weapon” is of course that they need fuel, crew and take a lot of space on a ship.

Sfer could you post some info on DDX and keep me updated. I thought Brez meant any class of DD against any class of CG with the (x) with x standing for G or N etc. I have knowledge of the current US ships, but not of their future plans. So I’d really appreciate any information on them that is posted here. I’m currently in a mooring frenzie en don’t have time to do research. I just hop in here, look around, answer if I can from the mind and then jump back to the work. THanks in advance for any info you post about US future plans! (not in this thread though) 😉

Yakhont or Klub will be carried in Stereguchiy, but will be mounted in VLS instead of the Kashtan. This means that it’ll have to sacrifice the Kashtans. The AK-630 guns and the Uran launchers will be exchanged for 16 VLS Tor-M1. That is the scheduled Tigr Export Variant. I guess this will be the configuration for the next Stereguchiys too (I think it will rather get Klub instead of Yakhont).
The bigger Gorshkov will retain that CIWS and add the SSMs to that.
So practically it’s a lot different from Sterguchiy in the way that it will have a lot more AAW while Stereguchiy retains just one limited range system and that Gorshkov will have Medvedka which Stereguchiy also lacks.

It’s unlikely for Nakhimov to receive Palma. It already has Kashtan and I doubt they would make such a substantial change which is less necessary than the S-300F and Granit change.

Gorshkov is totally different breed of ship. It’s not built as a European ship and to be honest I’m happy it isn’t. The European ships just carry Harpoon, practically they have no real weapons except for AAW. Gorshkov still retains a decent anti-ship capability and fleet defence capability. (the European fleet is making exactly the same mistake as US made 10 years ago, it will be defenceless against ANY Submarine threat)
That fits in a lot better to protect the few merchant ships that will travel North than any other ship.
Energy security is what they want, that is what they are building up now too.
And no matter how you turn it, the submarine is the most lethal weapon at sea. I’m pretty happy that Russia is still putting some focus on that and that it doesn’t follow the AAW trend in Europe.

No I don’t think you’re that stupid, but I was talking that theoretically any govt could call a Tarantul a cruiser.

As I have mentioned before, there has never been an official statement about those 4500t… No one really knows what the displacement of this ship will be. It does however seem to be a very Russian ship in the way that it seems to have all the weapons in front. I think they do that because it gives you an optimal trim after firing, but I’m not sure of that because it gives quite some hazards too.

It depends on what you call “destroyer sized in our times”. The Dutch and Germans seem to call their vessels frigates. But does that mean the term frigate has become bigger? Or does that simply mean that they have abused the name Frigate due to their peaceful mind?
Bigger version of Stereguchiy? I’m sure you’d call any stealth vessel from Russia an enlarged version of stereguchiy. Given that it has different SAM and CIWS, different sensors and different SSMs, I’d call it something different… Practically you could call Stereguchiy a descendant from Lafayette, Type 54 etc too then. It’s not because it looks alike that it’s the same thing.
Palma has been tested (guns only for now). So she’s on track for 22350.

Yes you could block them in Khronstadt and St-Petersburg, but they only have to move a couple of ships to the entrance to the Baltic and ask the Germans to block the Kiel Canal (or just put some ships of the Northern fleet in the Baltic) and then you’re finished…

Yes I think her name was Poti. The picture I had was a side shot so I haven’t seen any Umkhonto. Is that SAM officially in service now? Or was that a guess from your side? Are the others already under refit for Umkhonto?

Any idea which Mineclearance system the hunters will have? Are they combined Minehunter/sweeper? The Tripartites can be equiped with sweeping gear instead of hunting gear too. Don’t really know whether they keep their hunting gear onboard too then…
The Thing underwater looks a lot like a Double Eagle towed sonar array that drops an explosive charge next to a mine. The only difficulty I have with it is that the Double Eagle doesn’t do that… It’s just a sonar!
On the upper drawing it looks like the regular PAP installation.
Tripartites can retract their keel mounted sonar to have a shallower draft too. Don’t know if this one can do the same?

I agree Golle, here in the West we are not that warmongering and nationalistic. Why would you want to kill so many people again to gain some stupid land? It’s not like a seperatist movement in Karelya would get you any further. I think we all know what happens to such movements in Russia (Did I just hear Grozny)

Nice thread here Golle! I actually got news and a picture about the fourth Hamina that was built about half a year ago, but the Hamina thread had dissappeared then and so I didn’t find the right place to put it. But anyway now you guys are notified that there is a fourth unit in that class!
As for minesweepers and hunters, it’s the people that make the difference, not the ships in that case. It’s just the experience of the crew to recognise a real mine from a fake contact. All together most minehunting sonars nowadays are good enough to show the hand of a diver if there is one around. Should tell you enough about the resolution and capabilities of such devices. The difficulty is to identify the things you see. That hand isn’t all that clear, but if you think, you find out it is a hand…

Brezhnev,
The Caspian is connected to the sea via channels and rivers, so they transfer it that way. She is painted like this because she is heading for the Caspian. The dark scheme is for the Northern Fleet. Caspiysk, the second one is also under construction, along with the third one. They seem to have planned 5 now, although in the beginning they only planned two of this class. They are not really corvettes in the true sense though. They are rather artillery ships.

Rick, indeed USN is an open book, but if you think that is a good thing, then you thought wrong…
USN is also very overfunded. The Russian Navy has been neglected for over 10 years. Of course they have scavange certain ships to get the others running. Of course their extremely poor manning has to steal for food and money.
If you do the same thing with USN, I promise you that they can hardly field any carrier, even after one year in this situation. Some Navies, including mine, produce their own stuff. Something breaks, they look around in the workshop onboard and start creating a solution. In USN the funding is that excessive that they cannot do this. They just ask for a brand new very suited part and they get it from ashore. If you neglect those ships, they’ll be in an even worse situation. Russian ruggedness and lesser dependence on electronics gives them at least some extra survivability in such situations. US ships would soon find themselves lacking any combat readiness.
If their crews weren’t paid for over three years, given an apartment with hardly any heating and then some very poor payments, they would do the same as the Russian sailors. It’s stupid to think they would be too civilised for that. Look what happened when the electricity dropped out for some hours in NY two or three years ago…
Would like to hear those issues of IN and PLAN too…

I was thinking about Stereguchiy and what a waste she is. I wonder why they outfitted her like this and not in the Improved Tiger configuration… Is Kashtan that reliable? And if you have the possibility to incorporate Club, then why do they incorporate Uran instead? To give it more export potential?

This civilian vs military standards thing keeps cropping up, & is rather misleading. Civilian ships are built to independently verified standards: naval ships traditionally have not been, but navies have established their own, internal, standards. In some respects, e.g. manning levels & damage control, some classes of naval ship (mostly warships) have been built to much higher standards than civilian ships. In other respects, naval ships (particularly auxiliaries) have sometimes been built to lower standards than civilian ships, as they’re exempt from a lot of regulations. For example, many naval tankers do not meet legal minimum civilian safety standards.

One common difference is naval standards require high manning levels, & doing things manually that civilian ships have long done with machinery.

There has recently been a trend to establish independently verified standards for naval ship construction. So far, they’re sort of hybrids, as far as I know, & have only been applied to amphibious ships, transports, & auxiliaries. Ocean was one of the first such ships built, which means that unlike many other naval ships, she should meet or exceed civilian standards in all respects, though she doesn’t meet traditional naval standards in some areas. It’s likely that in a few years all Western naval surface ships, except nuclear-powered ones, will be built to standards independently verified by civilian bodies, i.e. “civilian standards”. But that doesn’t mean either that they’ll all be built to the same standard, or that they’ll be built to standards used by, e.g, ferries.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. For example, auxiliary naval tankers are way above merchant manning levels. That is indeed partly due to the slower automatisation in that field, I do think that this higher manning is necessary in some cases as it allows for more flexibility in operations.
There is also the thing that merchant ships are constantly surveyed. I’ve seen quite a few warships which would be retained after a normal civilian survey. Merchant ships tend to be kept on a shorter leash when it comes to some standard maintenance.

Lloyd’s has an own Military Ship classification standard nowadays. Most Classification societies actually have. Cavour, the new Italian carrier has been built following the rules and guidance of the RINA classification society. It is of course hard to still call it civilian standards… They are made by a civilian organisation, but are made specifically to military standards. It does however, allow other navies to follow a certain procedure and have less effort in determining their own standards.

It’s logical that they are now going to civilian methods and standards. Crewing is a huge cost and most navies try to save on it now. Civilian standards are created because of the bad safety on the low manned merchant ships. On merchant ships there is no real plausible fire fighting possible (hope the automatic system works as it should), same with damage control. Now that most navies try to get rid of a lot of people, they will have to keep their ships safe. And the greatest experience in that matter can only be found in the Classification Societies.

Wouldn’t count on Boyevoy.

Burniy was the only real active Pac fleet Sovremenny left. Indeed in last Parade, they also got Bystry to sea, although I doubt in what status.

The Udaloy, they don’t produce turbines yet. Only recently it was decided to make a Naval gas turbine plant near St-petersburg. This is mainly due to the worsening tension between Ukraine and Russia. The first real Russian gas turbine is scheduled for 2008 or 2009. Probably they’ll try to run the Udaloys as good or bad as it goes till then.

Kara’s, Kerch is active and has received an overhaul. Her air search radar was removed and later put back up. So that means they probably did some maintenance on it. Ochakov has been planned for overhaul for many years, not sure if it will ever happen though. One of the two also received new crew accomodations sponsored by another city. It will probably in the future receive the name of that other city (which slips my mind for the moment). It will also receive armaments and electronics update, but nothing was yet specified as to what that would include.

The Udaloys are by far the most popular for now, with some seven or eight in real active service and loved by their crew as the cabin carriers. I’m not sure as to which ships will actually be replaced by the Stereguchiys, but my guess is that the Krivaks might actually go first.
The Sovremennies offer some anti-ship capability and now that money has become available, it is possible to refurbish them.
The second batch of Stereguchiys could be of the Klub modification with Kinzhal as air defence, those might replace the Sovremennies. Lastly the Udaloys will be replaced.
Unless of course they can’t find the right turbines and so the Udaloys could go earlier too.