Project 20836 Derzkiy-class modular Corvette

Decent piccie of the Merkury's hull

Transportation of the superstructure of the Mercury

That means they did not just chuck the hull outside to get rid of it!

If they can work out how to make it super stealthy and they learn how to make it faster and more efficiently then this might be how they make their new Destroyers and Cruisers in the future...

Making it in one piece like this eliminates seems and gaps that can increase RCS, but they need to put it on a real ship and test it... what if it cracks and falls to bits, what if it is brilliant and much better than any other materials they currently use...

They wont know till they do full and extensive tests, but it is very interesting...

Word is the cost of this thing is close to that of a Gorshkov class and that's why they won't build a series of them and mercury will remain a test ship/technical demonstrator. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.. To learn and innovate you have to.Build stuff and test it,. But I expect it to be like the zumwalt of the Russian navy.

Mir wrote:That means they did not just chuck the hull outside to get rid of it!  

Yeah, its just fecking unbeliveable that some people suggested that was the case... Some people just have hidden agendas and couldn't care less about truth and reality as they work to spread their BS narratives about "Russian failures"...

Lurk83 wrote:Word is the cost of this thing is close to that of a Gorshkov class and that's why they won't build a series of them and mercury will remain a test ship/technical demonstrator. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.. To learn and innovate you have to.Build stuff and test it,. But I expect it to be like the zumwalt of the Russian navy.

Yes it will be expensive (compared to a typical 203850) - its a friggin R&D project of a fundamentally new type of warship. There will be developmental overheads that will be written up against the cost of the lead unit. Same for every project, ever...

The real question is what benefits the new vessel will bestow, and what the incremental price for serial units will be. No way to know yet, so we just watch this space and ignore the perennial detractors of all things Russian when they try on their spin-doctor BS.

Of course it is expensive... the first computer hard drives were hundreds of thousands of dollars each and they only had a few megabytes of space, but it was superior to its alternative... it is still cheaper than flash memory like USB sticks... you can pay about 50 cents a GB for a USB stick so about 16 dollars for a 32GB stick... if hard drives were that expensive then a 2 TB disk would be $1,000 dollars instead of the $100 they normally cost.

They need to check performance, but also with work and experience with the new materials they can improve production too... wasn't there another boat that used such material and the first one took 30 days to make the superstructure, but the next one took 3 days because they were able to improve the production.

When you are making stuff some things need to be done in order and others do not... when you first build something you follow the instructions, but after you have made one you can identify what takes time and what does not so instead of making something , letting it cure for a day and then making something else and letting it cure for a day and then joining them together and letting it cure for a day, you could make all the pieces at once and let them all cure for the same day and then assemble them all together and let the assembled parts cure for a second day... surprise... that took three days.

The first time through you might not have had the capacity to make 100 pieces at one time or assemble those 100 pieces together all at one time, but as you gain experience and expand your factory design and production floor you can make changes to massively speed up the process which will directly impact the costs and time it takes to make a lot of them...

If you can whack out a complete ship upper structure in 3 days then that is going to compete rather well with doing it all in steel.

Being able to fix entire areas or hole patch repairs and it might be better than other materials like steel and glass reinforced plastic.

I think the ships I was thinking about were those mine countermeasures boats that had composite hulls and structures where the first model took a month but they quickly refined the production technique and soon it only took 3 days to fabricate the structure/shell.

Bigger ships would require bigger facilities, but with larger boats it might be even more efficient and it might make them lighter but just as strong and might end up being cheaper for bigger ships while keeping their RCS low.

They might find it only makes sense in small boats, which is fine, but it could be that they could make submarines with electric motors and new batteries, with hulls made of this stuff that don't show up on MAD systems and are lighter and can have much better performance in a much smaller boat... who knows till they test it.

GarryB wrote:If they can work out how to make it super stealthy and they learn how to make it faster and more efficiently then this might be how they make their new Destroyers and Cruisers in the future...

Making it in one piece like this eliminates seems and gaps that can increase RCS, but they need to put it on a real ship and test it... what if it cracks and falls to bits, what if it is brilliant and much better than any other materials they currently use...

They wont know till they do full and extensive tests, but it is very interesting...

They had to build a whole new mould for this, is a massive part. Even if it cracks its fixable. Its less likely to crack then aluminum. The US Littoral class ships were cracking like crazy.

BenVaserlan https://www.russiadefence.net/t5452p400-project-20836-mercury-class-modular-corvette#301976 wrote:Details in the video I made.

From my video description: The hull of Stealth Corvette Project 20386 has not been lengthened. Instead, the superstructure has been shortened and the Redut VLS SAM system moved slightly forward towards the bow.  Information is also given on the project as a whole.

I pretty much zoned out of this thread for a while having written the concept off due to complaints I've previously posted.
Missed this video at the time but it got recently posted to Balancer 20386 thread & I see its here in this thread.

You make good points there in terms of shortening the superstructure & it does look rather like the rear section got reduced too in the updated model.
The delivered superstructure appears to match the updated model.

If they've actually made those changes that removes my main complaint (& at least partially explains the delay as there would need to be a bunch of interior redesign done)

At 3600 ton with 16* UKSK, 16* Redut, Chopper, other stuff via the bays, sharing GT with 22350 it should be a good candidate for a big Frigate build  

Personally I'd go with 8* UKSK, put in an extra 8 or 16 Redut cells and/or a Pantsir-M but

Edit: minor critique -the bit you suggest to be large torpedo tubes is the gangplank, 11356 has one in similar area & the 20380s have them similar area but at deck level.

latest pic of the hull of Merkury, Oct 2021 (20380 Stroigy is behind)

They may be renaming it back to Derzky.

https://flotprom.ru/2021/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F%D0%92%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%84%D1%8C24/

The main command of the Russian Navy decided to rename two corvettes under construction of projects 20380 and 20386 - "Zealous" and "Mercury". This was reported to TASS by several sources in the shipbuilding industry.

According to them, the corvette of the project 20380 "Zealous" was renamed to "Mercury", and the stealth corvette of the project 20386 "Mercury" was returned to the name given to it when it was booked - "Daring". The purpose of such renaming is not known to the agency's interlocutors.

Bit weird but I do like Derzky as a name.

Reminds me of the shit-fest with name of PTK-NP, after having months long public voting (where they were disqualifying several popular options on the fly) they opted for Federation but later for no intelligent reason it was renamed to Orlan

At least this time it was done by faceless government organization instead of being the result of some fat moron's personal whims

Boatski mc Boatfaceivich

Interesting suggestion on this at Balancer: apparently naming a ship Mercury is pandering to the Tsarists who are pretty strong in Crimea/southern Russia -> 20386 was renamed for them.
But because its building very slowly -> grumbles from the Tsarists so someone decided to switch the name to the next 20380 which should be actually in service fairly soon (& apparently will be going to BSF).

Fact that Russia still unironically has shit like Tsarists and Commies would be hilarious if it weren't pathetic

It's 2021 and both those things became history in previous century, they really need reality check

Best part is that their enemies would love nothing more than to have either of those back in the mix...

Yes, yes, you must follow official party policy or you will be sent to the gulag for reeducation or death...

PD, you often sound more communist than liberal western freedom fighter...

hoom wrote:Boatski mc Boatfaceivich

Interesting suggestion on this at Balancer: apparently naming a ship Mercury is pandering to the Tsarists who are pretty strong in Crimea/southern Russia -> 20386 was renamed for them.
But because its building very slowly -> grumbles from the Tsarists so someone decided to switch the name to the next 20380 which should be actually in service fairly soon (& apparently will be going to BSF).

Then those Tsarists don't know their own history

I'm pretty sure there was a vessel called Derzkiy in Tsarist Russia's Navy

Thats a good point

hoom wrote:Thats a good point

I'm pretty sure that it's more to do with the fact that the Mercury (in fact there were several line ships with that name over the course of history) were expressly in the Black Sea Fleet and active in famous naval engagements with the Ottomans.

flamming_python wrote:I'm pretty sure there was a vessel called Derzkiy in Tsarist Russia's Navy

Yup, the Derzky-class destroyer, Piccie from wiki...

Ha, so not just one ship but the whole class of 9 ships

Brilliant

I was going to say the bit where the DDs defected to Wrangels fleet & later scrapped at Oran would probably be why they aren't very keen on Derzky.
But that was the original name for 20386 & what they would be putting it back to so can't be that. (also I think Wrangels fleet had a significant Royalist aspect)

Anyway: currently still just a rumor & doesn't seem to have been any follow ups since.

Big_Gazza wrote:latest pic of the hull of Merkury, Oct 2021  (20380 Stroigy is behind)

An entire slipway was wasted on a worthless hulk...
This proves that composite construction is worthless because it takes 8+ years to build a single frigate. Might as well build a nuclear cruiser without zany composites because at least it's hull wint be indefinitely rusting in the water while it's superstructure is being delayed.

Its probably not the actual building thats slow, just either not enough workers available/not many assigned to it due to funding/most likely assigned to other stuff while they wait for redesign.