Udaloy and Sovremennyy destroyers

And the Udaloy needs a better modernization than one which will only install 32 UKSK cells. It's not enough. 48 should be the minimum, but really 64.

I disagree, they are not taking on HATO or planning to invade anyone... a good gun and a good load of missiles is plenty... get a bit of operational experience with their data linking and communications upgrades, and perhaps test some new enlarged sensors for their new destroyer sized ships and crank out some Corvettes and Frigates to take care of issues in Russian waters so older ships can be retired, and then start working on a new destroyer design... their modular nature means experience scaling up from Corvette to Frigate to Destroyer and then to Cruiser should become a formula and they should be able to get the best possible combination of fire power but also comfort and endurance and automation and flexibility into their designs.

Expecting to be able to fit enormous numbers of VLS systems in ships that were never designed to carry such systems is being unreasonable and you risk ending up making a ship that is horrible to serve on because missile tube numbers was the priority when it should have been overall performance and ability of the ship.

Walking around with an Assault rifle with a 5,000 round capacity sounds amazing... till you are the one that has to carry it... and during your operational career finding you never fire more than 500 rounds... and that if you tried you would melt the barrel anyway, that carrying less and having some water cooling system so you could fire 1,000 rounds without damaging the weapon makes more sense and would be lighter and handier too.

Well it becomes a torpedo and is very dangerous.

More of a depth charge... the cruise missile fuel requires air to burn so it is quite safe submerged and cannot burn, unlike solid rocket fuel. The warhead on the missile would be about 400kgs but it should not be armed yet so the risk there is pretty low too.

Once they remove the engines there should be just enough space for 32 and if they remove the hangar they should fit 48 no problem

However if they are going for 64 they will have to remove the bridge as well

So no problem there

Exactly... engines are critical but even a helicopter hangar for two helicopters is more valuable most of the time than extra missiles.

The Pacific Fleet will receive a ship with advanced air defense capabilities

MOSCOW, May 21-RIA Novosti. The next large anti-submarine ship of Project 1155, which is being upgraded for the Pacific Fleet, will be the Admiral Vinogradov, the Pacific Fleet commander said. Sergey Avakyants.

"It is proposed to seriously increase and expand the composition of its strike missile armament, and the task is to increase its air defense capabilities," Avakyants said in an interview with the newspaper "Red star".
Currently, work is being completed on a promising image of the project.
Admiral Vinogradov is armed with Kinzhal and Rastrub missile systems, AK-100 and AK-630 artillery systems, and 21-KM cannons. It has been part of the fleet since 1989.
Earlier, a similar ship "Marshal Shaposhnikov" was upgraded for the Pacific Fleet, which was reclassified as a frigate. He received modern complexes of shock missiles and the latest artillery installations. In the future, it may be equipped with hypersonic missiles "Zircon".

https://ria.ru/20210521/korabl-1733226877.html

Solid rocket motors do fail, but most often they fail as they are started rather than a few seconds into the flight, so testing the weapon this way close to the ship is a good way to look at how the missile would behave and also determine if there is any flammable materials landing on the deck of the ship that the fire suppression system can take care of it.

owais.usmani wrote:

While that is technically correct, it should be noted that the alleged "failed" tests on Gorshkov and Shaposhnikov are not strictly throw tests, but are emergency ejection tests designed to eject ordanance in emergency conditions, eg fire in the UKSK bin due to battle damage, malfunctioning missile etc

To be worthwhile and demonstrate the sysemes veracity, the test would need to be performed with live ordnance, not mass simulators.

The_Observer wrote:Admiral Chabanenko will receive launchers for Kalibr cruise missiles and Zircon

Large anti-submarine ship (BOD) "Admiral Chabanenko" of project 1155.1 - the only representative of this series - will return after a long repair with new capabilities. In particular, it will receive launchers for Kalibr cruise missiles and Zircon hypersonic missiles. Sources in the military department told Izvestia that the Defense Ministry has agreed on a plan for the modernization of the Admiral Chabanenko BMD, which is part of the Northern Fleet. According to the interlocutors of the edition, now there is an assessment of the terms that will be required to complete all the work. In 2014, "Chabanenko" was sent for repairs and since that time has been at the plant in the Murmansk region.

https://iz.ru/1188995/2021-07-06/rossiiskii-vmf-poluchit-raketnyi-mini-kreiser

Finally, some confirmation of what was long suspected

Looking back, its been obvious for some time that the scope of works for the Chabanenko was changed mid-program and that progress was frozen until requirments were could be finalised.

The question now is will they fit a pair of UKSK bins like the Shaposhnikov, or will they go with slanted launchers to replace the original twin 4-tube Moskit launchers. I expect they will go with UKSK (why introduce a one-off solution like slant tubes) but can it be accomodated without massive rework?

edit:  the linked article refers to "torpedo missiles" - IMHO thats a clear reference to 91RE1 and I'd say that seals the deal for UKSK.

The remaining question therefore is will they stick with navalised Tor/Khinzal point-defense or upgrade to a longer range area-defense system like Redut?

Put it into perspective guys, the British Type 45 destroyer is a 8,500 ton ship with two quad Harpoon launchers (ie the equivalent of two quad Uran launchers) and 48 launch tubes for 30km range SAMs or 120km range SAMs only plus a 113mm gun and 2 x 30mm deck guns and 2 Phalanx 20mm gatlings and small arms.

Before the upgrade the Udaloy is about 7,500 ton ship with two quad Metel launchers... which are anti sub weapons but they do have a back up anti ship function with IR guidance which makes them rather potent in the anti ship role but the lack of range would be its core problem just like the lack of range is the reason the US is replacing Harpoon with Tomahawk.

The air defence missiles are focused on close range with 64 naval TOR missiles providing excellent close in defence capacity from enemy aircraft and weapons, and four 30mm gatling based CIWS plus torpedoes and depth charge launchers. and two 100mm guns.

Replacing the two quad Metel launchers (SS-N-14) with two UKSK launchers that will probably also replace one of the 100mm gun mounts is an enormous step up in performance and capability and vastly more versatile and useful than 8 Harpoons or Urans their Russian equivalent.

UKSK launchers allow any combination of land attack cruise missile to supersonic anti ship missile to anti sub ballistic rockets carrying torpedos to be carried... and because of their location it could still carry 8 Uran launchers as well, so in effect it could carry the equal strike capacity of the British destroyer and have 16 tubes for a variety of vastly more potent missiles to also be carried including Onyx and the soon to be introduced Zircon, as well as existing 3,000km range land attack Calibre and new 5,000km range improved version of land attack calibre.

The new 100mm gun is a light weight model that is a fraction of the weight of the old guns and a much higher rate of fire so despite the reduction to one gun the fire power is retained, and it is a flexible system with a wide range of ammo types developed for it.

Regarding other potential upgrades, they could replace the TOR with an improved fixed cell system... it would be worth developing in my opinion because a fixed cell version would be vastly more compact and take up a lot less under deck space than the Redut which has the capacity for much bigger missiles which therefore needs to extend down quite a lot more decks. In comparison the new TOR system uses missiles half the size of the old system which also used a rotary mechanism to move the missiles to the launch hatch to launch so obviously such a system is very inefficient in terms of space... the empty space inside the circle of launch tubes for a start is wasted empty space. Replacing it all with a fixed grid cell would double the number of missile cells, and as I mentioned the newer missiles are smaller... the first TOR land vehicle had 8 missiles ready to fire but that was soon upgraded with a smaller missile with better range and performance with 16 missiles in the same vehicle space ready to launch. Fixed bin cells means the only moving part is roof hatches which greatly simplifies the design and massively reduces costs with fewer moving parts.

The old 64 missile rotary launchers could be replaced with 128 tube fixed cells that would be smaller and more compact and lighter than the old rotary mechanism.

The obvious problem is that it is a self defence missile system only with a max range of about 15km in horizontal range and vertical range.

What they could do therefore, because it is so shallow, could be to have two lots of 32 launch tubes near the sides of the ship because they are only one deck in height, so 64 ready to fire short range missiles... same as the old system... but that old system only has 8 launch hatches that each 8 round rotary mount had to revolve to move its missiles to for launch, whereas this system would have 64 hatches and all missiles ready to fire in any order...

Down the middle of the ship in the same location they could fit a Redut launcher system with 24 tubes, which means it could carry 150km and 60km and 15km range missiles in any combination... so maybe 6 x 150km range missiles and another 6 x 60km range missiles each taking one tube each and the remaining 12 tubes could be 12 x 4 x 15km range CIWS self defence missiles, which would be 48 x 15km range CIWS missiles.

There is complaints in the British naval thread that the Type 45 does not carry ABM missiles like the US Standard SM-6 missiles to defend their carriers from ballistic Chinese and potentially North Korean anti ship missiles

The 150km and 60km 9M96 missiles both have capabilities against ballistic weapons.

The other option could be to simply replace the TOR system completely with Redut missile tubes... perhaps 48 or more... the problem being the size of the missile tubes if you want to also carry the S-400 250km and 400km range missiles that can go with it.

But then this is classed as a frigate, so its primary role wont be protecting an aircraft carrier like the British Destroyers.

Regarding CIWS they will either have improved TOR or 9M100 depending on what SAM load out they choose... with Redut on Corvettes and Frigates I would think it will be as standard on upgrades as new builds.

Traditionally for their bigger ships they used both TOR and Pantsir as being complimentary rather than one or the other... the Kuznetsov had both Kashtan and TOR and I for Kirov cruisers they went with TOR and Kashtan and Rif-M for close in, close in, and area SAMs respectively.

Redut with 60km range SAMs and 15km range CIWS missiles is the equivalent of TOR and BUK together but with the potential to add the 150km range missile if you want it because it is compatible in the form of the bigger 9M96 missile.

With talk of the 250km and 400km range missiles for bigger ships suggests they could be very flexible and capable indeed, though the bigger missiles may effect capacity which for smaller ships would be more important than max range.

I think the opposite.

There is no value in getting it back into service quickly and finding it has a weaker air defence capacity than the corvettes it operates with because its missiles are TOR missiles with a range of 15km... a corvette fitted with a standard Redut system even only using the two smallest missiles it can carry would be the 15km range 9M100 and the 60km range 9M96.

Most of their new ships will have Redut, and their bigger ships will likely retain TOR missiles as well.

The land based TOR system has packs of four missiles in a single row of four missiles that are lowered into the turret of the TOR vehicle... it used to carry two single rows of four missiles for a total of 8 missiles but the current vehicles have four rows of four missiles with no rotary missile magazine or any such nonsense.

They have shown externally positioned deck mounted fixed launch tubes for improve naval TOR... how hard would it be to take out the enormous under deck rotary launchers and just recess some fixed launchers that are loaded by crane four missiles at a time the same way the land system is reloaded.

It is not inventing the wheel or curing cancer... in fact once it is installed it should be cheaper and simpler than the original system that needed a rotary missile handler holding 8 missiles and moving each to a position under a single hatch for launch. A fixed array of cells each with a hatch would be simpler and cheaper and as I said fixed to the size of the missile which means it does not need to extend more than one deck down so it can be located near the sides of the ship, unlike the much bigger launch tubes of the UKSK that would reach down 4-5 decks and could therefore only be placed near the centreline of the hull and require built up deck areas to accommodate their length.

Such recessed designs would be ideal for replacing existing systems of TOR... the above deck models I rather suspect are for small ships that don't have any existing system or even a civilian vessel... effectively the equivalent of parking a TOR vehicle on the deck but using ship power and ship search radar.

It has no air defence capability at all now as it sits in port

Well they want to use it as a frigate, so long range SAMs are probably not a high priority, but if they are putting UKSK launchers on board then it becomes a threat to HATO because it gives it rather potent anti ship and anti sub and significant land attack capacity, so keeping 64 TOR missiles would be useful.

What I am saying is that for a little bit more money they could have a ship that could actually properly defend itself and be even more useful because a ship this size could be redesigned with a smaller crew and more space for food and comfort and could be used on longer ranged trips with bigger ships instead of the smaller more cramped newer ships that would be better suited to operations in Russian home waters.

If it doesn't need long range SAMs or even medium range SAMs then UKSK launchers was a bit of overkill in my view and just removing one 100mm gun mount they could have fitted another 6 quad Uran launchers, and with a total of 8 Uran launchers with 64 anti ship and land attack missiles been a rather interesting but also rather cheap frigate much quicker and much cheaper.

I would think putting in UKSK launchers was rather more expensive than changing the TOR launchers or just adding Redut instead... upgraded fixed element TOR launchers would actually make them cheaper to operate and maintain because the only moving parts will be the hatches.

Having below deck fixed TOR array missiles would be a useful thing because just as an example the Kuznetsov has four of these in each corner, so developing a simpler cheaper vertical launch system for larger ships would be very useful to apply to other ships and could be designed to drop in like a module... offering simple and quick upgrades to a range of existing ships.

Keep in mind they have quite a few Udaloy ships they could upgrade this way which means getting it right and creating useful ships is worth it... as opposed to a one off ship where spending less money makes sense.