Upgraded Kirov class: Project 11442 [Admiral Nakhimov]

Very very very good analysis of kirov battleships by a former US submariner sonar man. I'm really impressed by the sonar which the guy say US subs would stay away from. It has powerfull "jamming" capability and in the same time acts as an active sonar.

This sonar is also used by Udaloys and Kuznetsov carrier.

The sonar bit was interesting to hear a US sub guy not wanting to be anywhere near it, didn't realise K has it too.

But the rest is either nothing new, severely outdated or outright wrong.

hoom wrote:The sonar bit was interesting to hear a US sub guy not wanting to be anywhere near it, didn't realise K has it too.

But the rest is either nothing new, severely outdated or outright wrong.

I found it interesting. He explains very well the weaponery and radars. But the sonar part is the best. Never heard something like that and it's not something you find in open sources.

hoom wrote:
But the rest is either nothing new, severely outdated or outright wrong.

Probably BS in my opinion.

What was news to me from the Combat Approved video is the land attack capability of the Granits.

Not exactly news... but whatever...

Russian Navy’s upgraded nuclear-powered missile cruiser to enter state trials in 2023

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. The Project 1144 2M (Orlan-class) heavy nuclear-powered missile-carrying cruiser Admiral Nakhimov undergoing its repairs and upgrade at the Sevmash Shipyard in Russia’s northwest will enter sea trials in 2023, Deputy CEO of the United Shipbuilding Corporation for Military Shipbuilding Vladimir Korolyov told TASS on Thursday.

"We can say that our work is proceeding on schedule… I believe that the cruiser will enter trials in 2023," the deputy chief executive said in response to a question about the timeframe of completing the work on the Admiral Nakhimov.

In the course of upgrading the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov, the shipbuilders have to deal with a lot of issues related to the warship’s powerplant, its weapons and radio-electronic armament. Specialists are carrying out a large amount of work on the cruiser’s missile systems, he said.

The pace of work on the Admiral Nakhimov vividly demonstrates that the Sevmash shipbuilders can both construct nuclear-powered underwater missile carriers and restore the technical readiness of such unique warships as Project 1144 Orlan-class heavy nuclear-powered cruisers, the deputy chief of the United Shipbuilding Corporation said.

The heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov has been under repairs at the Sevmash Shipyard since 1999. Real work on the warship has been carried out since 2013. It was earlier reported that the heavy missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov would enter trials in 2021.

The upgrade has substantially boosted the cruiser’s strike capabilities. In particular, the warship will carry 10 versatile shipborne launchers for eight Kalibr-NK or Oniks cruise missiles. Eventually, the Admiral Nakhimov will carry Tsirkon hypersonic missiles.

source

Probably BS in my opinion.

What was news to me from the Combat Approved video is the land attack capability of the Granits.

Yes, part of the shift to multirole ships with multi type missile launchers (UKSK etc), they have modified all their large anti ship missiles and small anti ship missiles to multirole weapons able to strike ground targets.

Their ancient SS-N-2 Styx missiles had both radar and IR guidance but the export models were one or the other and the IR version was used on at least one occasion to hit oil storage tanks.

They attacked in the evening... the oil had been heated up all day by the sunlight and was still warm when the ground and surroundings had cooled down making them distinct IR targets...

But the Kh-35 and other missiles like Onyx and Vulcan were all upgraded with land attack capacities... AFAIK the Indians essentially paid for it because they wanted Brahmos to be multirole and able to hit ground targets too... I suspect the system they developed for India was also used on their other missiles which already had the radar and other bits and just needed the software I guess.

The large Kh-22 family of missiles carried by the Backfire always were dual role missiles AFAIK with a missile designed to hit a specific coordinate with a large nuclear warhead for use as a defence suppression missile or to take out a carrier group all at once, while the various anti radar and radar homing models were intended for major Radar bases or ships scanning the airspace around them or major targets like bridges or buildings or ships respectively.

I wish there would be an official statement that contains more details about the upgrade other than the 80* UKSK cells.
We seem to get only that or announcements about obscure stuff like fire detection & management systems

There is another one with the man himself.

This ship is so hot it actually melts the ice!

Those shots were taken back in Feb 2021, so there has been ~11 months of progress since.

Its odd that for such a large and impressive ship there are next to no images on the web.  I'm sure security is tight, but even so...  

The work is being done at Sevmash a facility which builds strategic nuclear submarines. So it is hardly unexpected security is tight.
You can see the ship in Google Earth or Yandex Maps.

Wow 10 years of balls to the wall work. That is crazy. Does anyone wonder if they could have scratch built a Leider class in less time for less money? Yes I know it was not designed then...but going forward. What will cost less. A brand new Leider or updating another Orlan class?

mnztr wrote:Wow 10 years of balls to the wall work. That is crazy. Does anyone wonder if they could have scratch built a Leider class in less time for less money? Yes I know it was not designed then...but going forward. What will cost less. A brand new Leider or updating another Orlan class?

Remember Ivan Gren?

Lider would be even worse

Upgrade both Kirovs and stick with Gorshkovs for now

I think upgrading one of them was a good idea since this was an excuse to digitize all the data on the ship and get the subcontractors on the systems to work again.
The second one should take a lot less time to refurbish since it is repeating the same thing again.

lancelot wrote:I think upgrading one of them was a good idea since this was an excuse to digitize all the data on the ship and get the subcontractors on the systems to work again.
The second one should take a lot less time to refurbish since it is repeating the same thing again.

Peter the Great was much better maintained trough it's service and Admiral Nakhimov was more than 20 years out of service and in reserve. But yes there will be also a lot of work in PTG modernization.

2 kirov is enough with modernized VLS.

3m22 on half of the 80 cells, and kalibr with different modifications including anti sub and anti shipping variants make it deadly.

Then theres over 100 cells of redut.

This ship is a beast, and can fight 2 or 3 CBG on it's own with Zircon crippling world navy.

Its like the return of the cruiser with hypersonics

If he maintains distance,  it is basically unkillable

Then if he is carrying ASW helps and recon drones. 

This ship is a fleet killer

Arkanghelsk wrote:2 kirov is enough with modernized VLS.

3m22 on half of the 80 cells, and kalibr with different modifications including anti sub and anti shipping variants make it deadly.

Then theres over 100 cells of redut.

This ship is a beast, and can fight 2 or 3 CBG on it's own with Zircon crippling world navy.

Its like the return of the battleship with hypersonics

One sub can destroy it if it is manned very well.

The super hardware that fight ab entire army by itself doesn't exist.

You need numbers. 1 ships will never be enough.

Putting all their eggs on the Kirov is stupid. They need Gorshkovs in great numbers and upgrade other ships too. And that's what they are doing actually. They upgrade their oscar and udaloy and build a decent number of Gorshkov.

Kirov will be central ships of task forces.

With a Varan carrier it would be perfect.

Exactly, Russia introduces on the so-called distributed lethality concept.

The Kirov, is exposed to submarines, with an helo carrier anti submarine ship like 23900, or carrier is very good, of course you can never fully defend from submarines but commander of kirov will never be stupid enough to sit still in middle of atlantic or Pacific simply disclosing his location to enemy groups.

More likely Kirov can conduct missions when enemy fleet is detected to move to a position where conducting a zircon salvo launch is possible at maximum range.

From an anti shipping perspective, the kirov with zircon alters the naval balance of power.

Submarines still dominate, but if Kirov were to stay on the move, harbored within the safety of russian waters, and in early detection of an enemy fleet move to launch position it is raining unstoppable hypersonic salvo on the entire CBG.

The areas where kirov will be sailing to conduct said launch should be reconnoitered and the ship itself presents a juicy target to enemy submarines.

But with a cunning command, the ship will present sea denial and supremacy of up to 1500km.

Zircon is not stoppable by battle order of any western navy, that's a fact. A salvo of 8 to 12 it is impossible to do a thing , with aster, sm3, sylver sm6, phalanx, goalkeeper. It is absolutely not going to detect a fully powered maneuvering cruise missile coming mach 12 at sea level.

And no zircon is not aero ballistic missile, quasiballistic missile, semi powered gliding, or maneuvering gliding missile.

It is FULLY powered missile with characteristics not fielded by any navy in the world, who can even replicate such a target. No kinzhal and even avangard do not replicate the firing solution of zircon.

So again, Kirov with 194 VLS and about 40 zircons on board is enough to level several CBGs of enemy naval forces.

This fact does not change that russia is implementing distributed lethality. But is a force multiplier of epic proportions.

Also I would like to add, a submarine does not patrol randomly with its sonar flashing detecting everything in the ocean.

A kirov cruiser represents a datum point across thousands and thousands of km2 of endless waters.

The kirov has no business in litoral waters near coastal aviation , or for lurking subs to detect.

The kirov with its nuclear powerplant is built to be in the open sea, representing a tiny speck of a datum point that is unknown to the enemy and not possible to find conducting a search by airplane, because in open waters zircon will sink opposing carrier carrying said ASW and AWACS airplanes and then they will have nowhere to land, roughly 1000 to 1500 km from the datum point that zircon is launched.

For AWACS the situation is straight forward before even the first E2 Hawkeye is even deployed from his carrier, zircon has already been fired at lumbering CBG from 1500km away, so E2 is not detecting Kirov in open waters with such ease.

As for p8, and e3 they would have to first know where Kirov is sailing in large oceanic data plot, representing a datum speck and they covering a space for e3 of roughly 600km in radius.

Regarding satellite detection of Kirov , this is quite possible and again kirov will not be gallabanding in open water with no purpose for satellite to relay position to a submarine and come get him within weeks.

Rather kirov will conduct a mission set explicitly set out before even kirov goes underway.

By the time satellite sees kirov there has to be the marginal chance that a submarine is even nearby or along to kirovs mission route for interception by torpedo.

So it is not so simple in the world of ASW to simply go and kill kirov who represents tiny datum point in the endless ocean.

Russians are building a "defensive" fleet with a lot of offensive capabilities. There is Kalibr land attack missile on almost every class of ships currently built in Russia and anti ships missiles as 3M54 Kalibr are also included. Onyx is included also and the anti submarine Otvet missile-torpedo has come. 3M 22 Cirkon is at the very top of that story. But if thay can restart the production of Tu-160 Beliy Lebed bombers , because those bombers are not cheap at all, than there is no question that Russia will (in the near future) start with the construction of ships that will be a true replacement for their Orlan and Atlant class of cruisers.i don't use NATO designations for Russian made weapons, because it's irrelevant. It's not GOD DAMN KIROV, it's 1144 Orlan.

Isos wrote:
One sub can destroy it if it is manned very well.
The super hardware that fight ab entire army by itself doesn't exist.  

Most principle ships are very well equipped to defend against a submarine attack. Any missile or torpedo launch will instantly be detected by the ship's sonars as well as other ships and subs in the area. That will give the ship time to respond. The Nakhimov is very well equipped to defend against any kind of missile attack. Any torpedo attack could also be fended off easily with the Paket-NK. Anti-torpedo decoys are also widely employed on most Russian Navy ships that can replicate the ships signature or disrupt the acoustic systems of the attacking torpedo or submarine.

Once the attacking submarine is detected it will game over.