Well some mistakes are there, Murmansk is not always ice free and they do not rely on that port either, since it’s way too far from the “rest” of the country, the area where food and other supplies may be needed. Some people that live in there have neighbours 500km from their house… And almost everyone who lives there is engaged in military activities.
As for being the most powerful fleet, yes it is, but why? I think this will change remarkably in the future and of course the fact that it remains the strongest fleet, is more a case of infrastructure. Kaliningrad and Kronstadt can’t support too many big ships, the Northern bases were built to accomodate those vessels, nothing new is needed to keep them like that. The Northern Fleet is also the largest because it harbours the SSBNs, which have to be protected by submarines and surface vessels (in their case).
For the independence of Baltic states, I would think the Baltic fleet would become more important yes?
Don’t see what Ukraine or Georgia have to do with the Northern and Baltic fleet though…
The fact that they have stripped most Sovremennys in the Northern fleet, together with some other vessels, and the fact that they have put Neustrashimiy with two Sovremennys and an upgraded Krivak in the Baltic Fleet means something. Also, the Yantar yards in Kaliningrad and the yards in St-Petersburg build very good merchant vessels, very large tankers which are placed on number five of the “best commodities of Russia” list.

Now that I’m thinking about it, Warships International Fleet Review had a nice article on the Polish subs too. The Baltic is quite infested by submarine countries. Only the Baltic states and Finland don’t have any.

yeps, that’s her. Now that’s one hell of an ugly missile… Never seen such a strange design. Look at the tailfin, it’s not even centered. I really wonder how maneuverable and effective this thing could be against any ship defense…

I’m a realist, I don’t vote for things that don’t exist. All we have about Stereguchiy and Soobraztelniy is a picture of a hull in a very early stage of construction, of which we can’t even be sure it’s one of these two…
Neither do we know what weapons it will have, I’ve already seen her carrying two Kashtans, two AK-630s with one Kashtan, Shtil, etc. I’m not even sure they’ll be called corvettes, since I suppose they’ll replace the older Krivaks in the first place.
And I’m not that pro-Russian that I’ll directly say it’s good because it’s Russian, it could as well come out as junk (which happened more than once)
Another of my favorites is the Stockholm class, I like the interchangeability of weapons on those ships. Same counts of Fleyvisken although these are rather small and could be called FACs.

So? If it’s called a corvette, then it is one! My favorite frigate is Zeven Provincien in case you’d ask :p (just kidding), but we should get on with our time anyway, otherwise those little corvettes of yours would still be called destroyers… I think it’s normal that things get bigger in comparison to their name.
Otherwise I very much like the Qahir class.

South-African Meko-200 class. Have a whole bunch of nice pictures of her, although not fully finished, she’s already very good looking! There are some pictures of SAN Amatola with her VLS spots and Gunpost (although both aren’t fitted yet) in the Warships International Fleet Review magazine.

Well yes, the Gotheborgs were Cold War ships, but they weren’t the step you think they are. They were just going to larger better equiped ships in general, which is a normal trend. The smaller vessels they had before were just not practical anymore in taking the weapons and electronics of the new age. It’s always an evolution like that, till something new comes up… They were reducing the number of ships because the new radars and capabilities covered a much larger area and of course reducing the number of ships by getting slightly larger and more capable ships allowed them to reduce manning costs (which is the largest burden upon a Navy’s budget).
Haven’t seen a Visby carry a helicopter and practically I don’t think it’s going to be handy either. Telescopic hangars have proven difficult in the past and most navies opt for fixed ones. The Swedes don’t have the experience with those hangars yet and might step back once it proves a faulty decision. Taking no hangar at all wouldn’t be practically either. And yes, the Burkes didn’t have a hangar either, yet nowadays they did decide it was better to have a hangar. So probably those helicopters are going to be land stationed and only used on the ships in exercises/extended patrols.
I’m still quite puzzled about Visby’s weapons though. Any news on that? Did she do any weapons test? Umkhonto VLS?

The Gotherborg and Stockholm classes aren’t capable of carrying heloes… Visby is up till now not proven for that task either…
The reason why they are going towards larger vessels is more a political choise than a capabilities decision. It’s not because they have those truck-mounted missiles that they have abandonned the FAC (M)s. Visby is to be capable of participating with NATO exercises around the globe, that is also the reason why their subs are now being adapted for tropical waters with airconditioning too. With those FACs it was just impossible to participate in any international “open-ocean” exercise far from the Swedish mainland.

the question in this thread is “What is a Modern Warfare scenario”? Who would be your enemy in that scenario and of course most importantly, where is it fought? I suppose you are talking about littoral warfare here, so it would be fought in the coastal waters of the Small craft operating Navy…

Perry doesn’t even have the simplest ARPA installed for plotting ships on the radar… Wouldn’t even want it when they’d give it to me…