Project 1164 Atlant: Slava Class cruiser

Maybe PtG wont receive the refit with 80 silos but stick to the 20 he has already, fitted with Mega-Tsirkons.

Sounds good but the only thing you could achieve would be longer flight range with a scramjet powered missile... I rather doubt a 7 ton missile the size of Granit could be made to fly faster than Mach 10 or so, which means rather than flying faster than Zircon it would just fly a lot further.

It wont be any harder to intercept of course, so although the idea of applying new technology to old missiles to massively improve their performance sounds interesting, in practise 80 UKSK launch tubes that can fire a variety of missile types including anti sub and anti ship and land attack missiles just makes more sense than trying to raise the dead.

Vulkan and Granit were very good missiles for their time but essentially the new Zircon is half the weight, double the range and about 5 times faster... what is not to like... loading 20 in the new UKSK launch tubes and you have 60 free tubes for land attack or anti sub missiles, not to mention a range of other new things they are working on like four Redut missiles or Shtil missiles or EW rockets or even Packet-EM anti torpedo rockets....

A NEW hypersonic missile to fit into the large silos.

The whole point of the smaller tubes is so everything can carry some from cruisers down to corvettes and any size of submarine above a few thousand tons... designing and making a very large hypersonic missile that fits in Vulkan or Granit tubes would cost money and take time... and in 5 years when it is ready all the Oscars will have Zircons in tube liners, The two remaining Kirovs will have 80 tubes each already and the Kuznetsovs 12 tubes... well even if they keep the tubes for Kuznetsov and Kirovs that is 20 plus 20 plus 12 tubes... hardly much reason to design a missile to be fired from three vessels in your navy that can carry no other missile type...

But converting the Kirovs adds 120 extra missile tubes just with two ships... I would probably refit the Kuznetsov with UKSK but rather than load Zircon, I would load them up with anti sub missiles and Paket anti torpedo torpedos/ballistic rockets.

In the 1990s the whole problem with the big Russian anti ship missiles was that they were so big only the biggest platforms could carry any and even then could not carry a lot. In comparison Harpoon was a very modest weapon but everything from subs and ships and aircraft could carry it in large numbers.

Now they have missiles even more formidable than their old huge ones and they are now small enough for all of their ships and subs to carry decent numbers of them and they can also carry missiles they never carried before like conventionally armed land attack missiles, as well as anti sub missiles like Ovtet.

The russian missiles were big because they were designed for long range and high speeds + big warheads and not some mediocre performance like Harpoon.

A big (operativ-strategic) hypersonic missile is already in development for the air force. It wouldn´t be to costly to take a Tsirkon and turn it into a 12m long missile with a body diameter of 1m+. At least much cheaper then rebuilding ships and subs to fit smaller, less powerful missiles.

Hole wrote:The russian missiles were big because they were designed for long range and high speeds + big warheads and not some mediocre performance like Harpoon.

A big (operativ-strategic) hypersonic missile is already in development for the air force. It wouldn´t be to costly to take a Tsirkon and turn it into a 12m long missile with a body diameter of 1m+. At least much cheaper then rebuilding ships and subs to fit smaller, less powerful missiles.

and because they targeted mainly US aircraft carriers

The russian missiles were big because they were designed for long range and high speeds + big warheads and not some mediocre performance like Harpoon.

A big (operativ-strategic) hypersonic missile is already in development for the air force. It wouldn´t be to costly to take a Tsirkon and turn it into a 12m long missile with a body diameter of 1m+. At least much cheaper then rebuilding ships and subs to fit smaller, less powerful missiles.

You just countered your own armament... not only does Granit have a huge heavy conventional warhead, it has an armour plated front portion to protect it from Phalanx and to stop it from just shattering on impact with the target so it penetrates inside the ship a few layers deep before exploding.

The big long range new strategic missile, the Gzur II on the other hand will likely be a 5 metre long scramjet powered missile with a nuclear warhead only.

The missile being tested in 2013 was a two stage missile with the first stage being a Kh-22M/32 like booster rocket with a 5 metre scramjet powered missile on the end... I rather suspect the final missile will replace that Kh-32 with a rocket/scramjet first stage that can accelerate the missile to higher altitudes and higher speeds and greater initial distances to start with... and could be made rather more compact without the big wings allowing it to be internally carried on Tu-160 and PAK DA and Tu-22M3M type aircraft.

Besides technically the Zircon is smaller and lighter than the Granit and Vulkan... but it is also much much faster, more agile, and has rather better flight range than either missile. I would also expect its sensors and equipment and electronics have moved on dramatically and are vastly more capable too.

80 Zircons... no.... 20 Zircons for an upgraded Kirov is not a down grade from 20 Granits... even if you leave the other 60 tubes empty.

80 launch tubes for UKSK systems is amazing and a very potent upgrade... and considering new ships and some upgraded ships are going to get UKSK launchers it shouldn't be expensive or complex and will simplify operations with the Kirov now able to carry the same missiles their new corvettes and frigates can carry.

Гвардейский о́рдена Нахи́мова ракетный крейсер "Варя́г"
Russian cruiser Varyag in India...
BPK Admiral Tributs is also there but there are no pictures of that ship, yet..

I´m shocked about that indian heli. Looks like something from the 50´s.

Tough as nails those Alouette III's. Real treat to fly in as well giving you a superb view. I think the Indians call it "Chetak" or something?

Extra large phot of Marshal Ustinov

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJ-aFp9XoAIpWVV?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

They didn't finish them because the Orlan class was successful... and they didn't finish that class because the cold war ended.

Because the missiles are big. But carry a big punch, too. You need a few Harpoons to achieve the same result of one P-500/-1000.

...and already they have double the number of deployed Harpoons on NATO ships...but it would be great if they can give them a nice update with some Oniks and Tsirkon missiles.

lancelot wrote:These ships are severely outdated. For their massive size they don't carry that many missiles.

The missiles are still highly formidable. The collective 'West' are only 'now' developing swarming munition technology in the 2020's, meanwhile these 'outdated' missiles had this ability for the last 50 years (since the early 1970's).

For its size I find Slava more successful.

The plan was 5 kirov and 10 Slava. Both were stoped because of USSR ending. They would have made a fucking powerful fleet if they had all the 15. They would have also upgraded them with oniks by today.

The Kirovs had the more potent missiles (Granit vs Vulcan)  and carried them in larger numbers (20 vs 16) and was simply better defended too.

With two Kuznetsov class ships and a Ulyanovsk class carrier with cats they would certainly have had a rather powerful fleet of ships... if not very large in terms of numbers.

The Slavas were the safe backup in case the Orlans turned out to be Zumwalts.... nuclear propulsion for surface ships was something new for the Soviets and was rather expensive, but considering the size of the ships it was probably cost effective for the bigger sized ships simply because of the amount of normal fuel they would otherwise be using operationally.

The Slavas were not a failure, but were not the first choice. They were and are useful and formidable ships.

These ships are severely outdated. For their massive size they don't carry that many missiles.

The point is what missiles you carry... which was the core of their design. They had SS-N-35 missiles when the Orlans were built... if they wanted to fit 200 Harpoon like missiles on board they certainly could have but there was little point because 200 Harpoons is not enough to defeat a US carrier group... too slow and too easy to shoot down... the AWACS platforms on the carriers would detect them at long range and there would be plenty of time to launch fighters with large numbers of AAMs and to use there cannon to shoot down the incoming missiles.

Granits will also be detected fairly early but are much more difficult targets to engage.

Zircons even more so.

lancelot wrote:These ships are severely outdated. For their massive size they don't carry that many missiles.

For their age 120 missiles (16* P1000, 64* S300F, 40*Osa) is pretty high power.
Its a shame they didn't Calibrate & Pantsirfiy Ustinov when they did the upgrade but even then I doubt any Western captain would happily face the prospect of receiving a salvo from or attempting to defeat the defences of Ustinov.

hoom wrote:

lancelot wrote:These ships are severely outdated. For their massive size they don't carry that many missiles.

For their age 120 missiles (16* P1000, 64* S300F, 40*Osa) is pretty high power.
Its a shame they didn't Calibrate & Pantsirfiy Ustinov when they did the upgrade but even then I doubt any Western captain would happily face the prospect of receiving a salvo from or attempting to defeat the defences of Ustinov.

These ships are too old and with Ukrainian engines, they are just one major issue from the scrapyard. Russia is only doing a few of the Uke powered ships in case they need to canniblize the others for engine parts. I am really interested to see if they can ramp up ship deliveries. I know they have the engines in production, but how many, and what about the gearboxes. The supply chain they have had to replace is really quite a task. Ramping all these up in unison is another incredibly difficult undertaking.

mnztr wrote:These ships are too old and with Ukrainian engines, they are just one major issue from the scrapyard. Russia is only doing a few of the Uke powered ships in case they need to canniblize the others for engine parts. I am really interested to see if they can ramp up ship deliveries. I know they have the engines in production, but how many, and what about the gearboxes. The supply chain they have had to replace is really quite a task. Ramping all these up in unison is another incredibly difficult undertaking.

Every Russian navy ship in service that uses MGTs has Ukrainian engines. Russia has her home-grown industries for making spare parts for Ukro engines/gearboxes and to perform overhauls. These engines are adequately supported and there is zero reason to retire the ships or replace the powertrains.

BTW the all-Russian powertrains going into the 22350 include domestic gearboxes. The creation of a complete domestic MGT powertrain supply chain was always gong to be a 10 year project.

I am sure they can fabricate lots of parts for the engines, but some are much more difficult. Like casings hot section etc. Anything can be done but at some point its not worth it.

An all nuke powered fleet is not sustainable or affordable, but now they are standardising their fleet essentially into a few different corvettes and about two different frigates, one standard and one heavy going forward then they don't need a wide variety of conventional military propulsion systems.

They will retain some older ships right now because heavier ships are not ready for production yet so old models offer endurance and range that is simply not available with the brand new small ships.

That means the old ships are not there for their overwhelming fire power, but their size and capacity and endurance... so the Orlan and Atlant are just fine as long as the communications and command stuff is updated.

Later updates can include experimental new large radar and sonar sets for new build destroyers and cruisers to make the new ships less risky and to improve the performance of existing vessels, but narrowing the fleet down to fewer and fewer different types will make things going forward easier and simpler.