PapaDragon Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:48 pm
Tingsay wrote:....In hindsight and now with this heavier version, Russia could've saved a lot of time, money and headache had they merged this class with karakurt and the later versions of Buyan into one major class with different variants for patrol ships,corvettes/missile boats. ....
If you merge those classes you get Gorshkov frigate, they already have that
And let's not forget that Bykov is still built according to civilian specifications which is why it is an offshore patrol vessel, it's original role hasn't changed
Now as for this latest flavour we need to remember that the forward AA VLS is not new development, it was there in the original design but Navy asked that accommodation for platoon of marines be installed there instead
What is new are torpedo launchers (Paket-M?) and those extra AA VLS in the middle
I think that there was space reserved for them in the original project but they didn't want to overstuff the unproven platform (Russia didn't operate military vessels based on civilian standard before)
Now after seeing them perform in practice they probably feel more confident about them so they decided they want to add some more features
Idea behind this one seems to be to have a ship that they can send halfway across the planet with orders to be pain in someone's ass for couple of months (in addition to it's original role as patrol ship)
For example standard version could have been ignored by submarines but this one is a different story because it can spot them and report their position back home so ignoring them is no longer an option which adds the workload