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But they won't replace all of the K boilers with new ones. And it's a capital ship with no replacement.
The Kuznetsov is a big ship and big ships can last half a century if there is a need... hell when the US wanted shore bombardment capability they took their Iowa class battleships out of mothballs and used them... air support is more important that fire support.
Sov can be replaced by Gorshkovs and are not capital ships as other ships can do their job like Grigorovitch or even Steregoushchy corvettes.
Not really, Sovs are destroyers... blue water ships with more endurance than a frigate like the gorshkov.
The Sovs don't need to be upgraded to the point where they are Liders, all they need is a reasonable improvement that allows them to use new SAMs and new main armament missiles... they had over 500 shell ammo racks for each gun... I think they had 1,000 shells per gun but it was a while ago when I read about it... either way the western experts were impressed with its armament, if less impressed with the reliability of its propulsion.
It is not REPLACING new ships, but it is a size that will give it an advantage over current new ships for a few years... plus it is a chance to put new AESA radars and sensors on board that would also be going on board new larger ships so they can get that into production and service earlier and work out any bugs and have it more mature when new larger boats hit the water.
The truth is that they will never upgrade them. Old design, old engines, old weaponery (no VLS, single launcher for shtill ...)
Are the army doing the same with the T-72s?
It will be 5-10 years before any brand new destroyer or larger ship is in service with the Russian Navy... 5-10 years with Frigates and Corvettes?
The companies that do the upgrades are ship yards... this is good work and good experience. the companies making the parts for the upgrades are also making parts for the new bigger ships, so you can have them working on upgraded ships now or twiddling their thumbs with prototypes for the next 5-10 years wondering if they will actually work in a real ship.
By the time the new ships are in the water is a long time to start beta testing their equipment... especially if they upgrade now and have had 5 years of operational experience with the systems... it might even lead to improvements in the new designed ships to install them better... and save costly mistakes...
In terms of life condition for the crew it is also older standards, same for weapons systems. Not as connected as a Gorshkov.
It might not be as ergonomic or automated as a brand new design, but newer systems could use real world operational experience before they are put in brand new larger vessels in 5-10 years time... I say again... an upgraded Sov does not need to be a Lider substitute... there are a lot of jobs it will be more suited to do than a smaller newer frigate... even just a ship that chases around any Kirov classes when they get back in the water or the K when it is available again in 3-4 years time... it will look silly with the Kuznetsov sailing with four Gorshkovs and a single Orlan class vessel... having some Sovs and Udaloys makes sense.
Too many things to do to upgrade it at not even the level of Gorshkov which is only 135m long but has 120km redut system, stealth design, 16 uksk cells, integreted battle management systems, newest radars, less crew ...
A bigger ship with more space is much better for longer trips... and part of the upgrade would be the integrated BMS and new sensors and systems... hell they could even replace one of the 130mm guns with a 152mm gun for testing...
Keep one as museum and sell the other to vietnam, pakistan or Angola or even algeria for 100 million each. Iran would be interested too, they could pay tge chinese for a quick upgrade.
A bit short sighted isn't it?
They don't have many large ships and they have in production Frigates and Corvettes and wont be starting making bigger ships for a few years yet, but you think they should sell off the larger ships they do have for a little bit of money... what use is a little bit of extra money?
It wont speed up production of bigger ships... what is the point?
Ships are tools and destroyer sized vessels... even if poorly armed are still destroyers. A simple and fairly quick upgrade and they can be much more useful and offer better compatibility with other in service systems and systems coming on line shortly...
The saying is "Don't throw out the Baby with the bath water."
Russia does not need to match production with either the US or China or anyone else for that matter... the country with the most ships is not the winner.
In fact the country that builds up its fleet the fastest needs to finance that fleet and keep it painted and supported, which will be expensive just for upkeep.... why spend a fortune to get a lot of ships and then just keep the ships at their piers... manning them and keeping them operational would be even more expensive.
Russia would never need thousands of ships and subs... it does need more frigates and more corvettes but it could also do with Destroyers and for the next 5-10 years their only option in that regard is the ones they inherited from the Soviet Union.
The Sovremmeny is not a bad vessel. It had some propulsion issues but they can be solved. Its Moskit missiles are still very potent weapons... there are not many other mach 2.2 low flying anti ship missiles around, and replacing them with angled UKSK tubes for Onyx means about 12-16 Onyx mach 5 800km range missiles which is very impressive actually. The single armed launchers for Shtil could be removed and its under deck rotary reloading system taken out and replaced with vertical Shtil systems front and back and new radar and controls systems. Replace the front 130mm gun with a 152mm gun and the rear gun system with 3-4 UKSK launcher for even more missiles... that is a pretty powerfully armed ship.
Even if the Moskits can't be replaced with angled UKSK launch tubes you could take them out and put two quad launchers for Kh-35s on each side for a total of 16 anti ship missiles that also can have land attack capability too, plus 3-4 UKSK launchers in place of the rear gun and its ammo magazine.
Modern electronics and communications systems, and it already has a helo... the UKSK launchers can carry land attack, anti ship, and anti sub weapons.
