Russian Naval Shipbuilding Industry: News

Putting aside inefficiencies and problems with supply chains, russian MOD's pretending to pay just for buildings' costs plus a small profit margin is blatantly out of the world.

Nowadays, if a project requires X millions or billions, currency at will, in recapitalization of building's infrastructure, MODs have to pay for it 100% even those new infrastructures will enable yards to compete and get private's contracts in the future.

It works that way in the hole world, and there is no way on Earth russian shipbuilding industry could be an exception.

Again, the political drive to grant contracts to large, almost state-owned enterprises to keep  workforce employed should cease without exceptions: either a yard could deliver to the same standards of a lorean or japanese yard, not even a subsidized west european one, or it should die.

If tens of thousands of workers and technicians would loose their jobs, let be it.

Either they are able to secure a new job with more efficient yards, if necessary moving thousands of miles from their home towns to secure a new job, or they will be fucked up for good and for ever.

Until granting secure jobs to get political consensus will be a priority, big managers will know they have little to fear bar blatantly corruption. And there are infinite ways to line own pockets far before falling in the blatant corruption's schemes, just exploiting the need to maintain an enterprise on business for the sake of the social and political stability.

Take just a look at what a modern, private yard's innards look like, as in the case of Pella, and then compare it with the prehistoric pile of junk that most of the big yards still are: first they needs billions to modernize their infrastructures, and it is the State's balance sheet that has to fully pay for it, whether you like it or not.

Secondly, to assure those money don't get wasted, there should be no way on Earth a yard, an enterprise could grant its workload through political needs and connections.

It has to be a 100%, inhumane capitalistic venture: either you succeed into delivering better than all and any of your competitors, or you are left dying without the slightest lifeline thrown to you.

You are aware it was exactly that, that brought these shipyards to their knees and almost destroyed all of Russia's shipbuilding industry.

I think after Zvezda shipyard, they will ascess the situation and see how well it will work out. If it works great, they may start to redo a lot other key shipyards.

Pella I think is private, and also very effective.

miketheterrible wrote:.....
Pella I think is private, and also very effective.

Effective is an understatement

Someone should​ just email them blueprints for Derzkii-class​ and let them go to town...

Yeah, due to their effectiveness, they should just be given far more contracts. Maybe even sell them some existing, under performing shipyards too.

Peŕrier wrote:Putting aside inefficiencies and problems with supply chains, russian MOD's pretending to pay just for buildings' costs plus a small profit margin is blatantly out of the world.
...

Again, the political drive to grant contracts to large, almost state-owned enterprises to keep  workforce employed should cease without exceptions: either a yard could deliver to the same standards of a lorean or japanese yard, not even a subsidized west european one, or it should die.

If tens of thousands of workers and technicians would loose their jobs, let be it.

Either they are able to secure a new job with more efficient yards, if necessary moving thousands of miles from their home towns to secure a new job, or they will be fucked up for good and for ever.

...

It has to be a 100%, inhumane capitalistic venture: either you succeed into delivering better than all and any of your competitors, or you are left dying without the slightest lifeline thrown to you.

This is utter libertarian nonsense, very definition of throwing the baby with the bathwater. Why would you disband entire shipyards, dismiss thousands of skilled labourers and sell their equipment at liquidation prices when those same shipyards could be put in order by simply purging handful of incompetent, corrupt or seditious managers.

Hi guys.
The problem is, that the Navy receives less money than the Army or Air Force, but there programs are more expensive.
If the Air Force has to relocated it´s Budget, they order a few planes less. Let´s say just 10 - 12 Su-30SM´s instead of 14 or 15. Result: the program slipps a few month. Nothing more. You will barely notice it, because there are a new planes coming all the time. A ship costs more than a few planes and it´s construction is more complicated. A few bucks less and the hole thing will slip a year or even more.

PapaDragon wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:.....
Pella I think is private, and also very effective.

Effective is an understatement

Someone should​ just email them blueprints for Derzkii-class​ and let them go to town...

I understand this is a joke but honestly seems Pella is booked to capacity as is, and it's facilities are for smaller displacement ships, not really suitable for building frigates and larger. However offering to some of Pella's mangers to take control of under performing shipyards might be beneficial. Although I strongly suspect all those endless delays in other shipyards might have more to do with deliberate obstructionisms and wrecking then just incompetence.

ZoA wrote:

Peŕrier wrote:Putting aside inefficiencies and problems with supply chains, russian MOD's pretending to pay just for buildings' costs plus a small profit margin is blatantly out of the world.
...

Again, the political drive to grant contracts to large, almost state-owned enterprises to keep  workforce employed should cease without exceptions: either a yard could deliver to the same standards of a lorean or japanese yard, not even a subsidized west european one, or it should die.

If tens of thousands of workers and technicians would loose their jobs, let be it.

Either they are able to secure a new job with more efficient yards, if necessary moving thousands of miles from their home towns to secure a new job, or they will be fucked up for good and for ever.

...

It has to be a 100%, inhumane capitalistic venture: either you succeed into delivering better than all and any of your competitors, or you are left dying without the slightest lifeline thrown to you.

This is utter libertarian nonsense, very definition of throwing the baby with the bathwater. Why would you disband entire shipyards, dismiss thousands of skilled labourers and sell their equipment at liquidation prices when those same shipyards could be put in order by simply purging handful of incompetent, corrupt or seditious managers.

Then just keep talking about alleged sabotage any and every single time things don't work out as expected.

Peŕrier wrote:
Then just keep talking about alleged sabotage any and every single time things don't work out as expected.

Yess... and shutting down shipyards will make them produce more ships and do it faster.. perfect logic indeed. Libertarians...

Of course some of the delays and problems could not possibly be because the new ships they are building are a lot more complicated and advanced than any they had ever built before...

Let´s say the Russian Navy had allocated 25 Mio. bucks for that ship in 2018. Now they have only 10 Mio. because they prioritize Coastal Missile Systems. Result: the work will procede slower. And it´s a ship, so you can´t just build something here or there and finish the rest next year. They have to wait, therefore the timeline is getting longer.

Paid before? Are you serious? It´s not a car. The customer pays a few Million to get the construction started, after that there are payments for different stages until the rest ist paid after the completion of the ship.

ZoA wrote:

Peŕrier wrote:
Then just keep talking about alleged sabotage any and every single time things don't work out as expected.

Yess... and shutting down shipyards will make them produce more ships and do it faster.. perfect logic indeed. Libertarians...

Even jailing some top manager here and there won't improve a lot yards performances.

There is a great need for facilities recapitalization: i.e. large investments on modern infrastructures, modern machines, modern tooling, modern design techniques, and of course a workforce trained to work in the new environment.

Here comes problem number one: russian MoD did ot spare money to enable UAC to purchase everything it needed, from CAD to modern CNC multiaxis machines produced in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy and so on. It just takes a look at some pictures of today's workshops os Sukhoi or Yakovlev to get a parade of the most modern tooling machines available in the last ten years in the world's market.

Nothing similar has been performed for the sake of the shipbuilding industry, most of them are more or less technically speaking stuck in the late 80ies, with the added problem of a supply chain that almost stopped to work altogether for a decade or more.

Pretending any kind of performance in such conditions is just that: a groundless pretense.

It is not by chance that the only yards still producing at reasonable pace are those two or three that never stopped to work because filled with export orders in the 90ies.

Any other yard is simply in total disarray, unable both to build at a reasonable speed and unable to modernize its infrastructure.

The new yard under construction will solve many problems, but some questions arise about what utility is left of many other yards kept artificially afloat by some small order here and there.

There is no reason, bar for secure political consensus among local community, to share orders for the very same type of ships between three or more yards, when at best just one of them is able to build them in a reasonable time with a reasonable quality of the end product. Building a ship is always a learning process, providing a robust order to one specific yard, the one best suited, grant a better final result, shorter building times in the long run, and enable the yard's management to make investments in yard's modernization having a solid order book.

The second problem comes with the role of political consensus maker that comes with such random orders to any yard needing to build whatever to stay afloat: management know perfectly what is their real, political role, and will always find ways to pursue their own, personal interests (as individuals, not as management boards) as long as doing so is securing that political consensus.

There is little hope that investing big money in such an environment would return the expected results: management boards should have the threat of loosing everything if they fail, and the whole workforce and the local community as well, if they mismanage funds granted to them.

If the 30 years experience team leader should suffer the humiliation to be replaced and even supervised by some new guy just 30 years old that know everything about the most modern naval technology, let him be humiliated: nothing on Earth, not even being befriended with the whole Navy HQ, should allow him to conserve its position and its power, nor any tolerance should there be for any kind of resistance against the new guy.

And the same should be applied at any level, from the top manager down to the last worker.

The most skilled should get the position requiring those specific skills, whoever is no longer able to perform as required has three options: improve its skills, accept to be downgraded, or leave the yard altogether.

And if the yard as a whole is unable to conform to such rules, it has to be killed and the local community has to pay the price for it: modern day boyars should be seen by the local community as public enemies, not like some untouchable little godfather providing you with salaries and community's welfare.

It is not jailing someone time to time the answer, it is reverting 180 degrees the power relation between local community on one side and local politicians, managers and all levels of the workforce on the other side: if the latter are not up the job, the local community first should have the freedom and the protection of the law and of the higher authorities, to ban them.

They really need to take the management staff and shoot them in a public setting send a message to the others, because at this point this is just criminal. Once heads start rolling things would improve somewhat.

Funny... you call me a fanboi, yet your solutions make you sound like Joseph Stalin...

Do not make excuses for the shipyard.

Don't waste your breath Hole... this guy is a western person with a set method of attack... make stupid claims based on ignorance and as each part of the accusation is proven wrong end up with the "Well they were better off after we invaded their country and killed off half the population of young men in their country because their leader were bad".

It doesn't matter if there are valid reasons why Saddam gassed his own people (they weren't his own people , they were kurds that wanted their own country... at the same time Saddam was gassing them the Turkish were bombing them with aircraft too, but that is OK... no invasion of Turkey.)

The point is that action has to be swift and without thought... ask SS or shall we just call you Stalin... the situation has left the Russian Navy in a poor position, but the Russian Navy wont be important for another 10-20 years when exports and trade by sea become more important for Russia, but his solution to fixing the problem is to break everything and start again... and Russia can't afford that... it would be far too expensive... and quite frankly fucking stupid.

Paid before? Are you serious? It´s not a car. The customer pays a few Million to get the construction started, after that there are payments for different stages until the rest ist paid after the completion of the ship.

Exactly right... quite often when a ship or sub is laid down there is not enough money to complete them anyway... sometimes some of her final components are not even ready to be fitted to the ship.

The Udaloy class was at sea for several years before the radar antenna for the naval TOR system was operational... the Kuznetsov didn't have a working radar array for quite some time either... not the last vessel in the Kiev class...

I wouldn´t say the Russian Navy is in a poor state. The composition of there force differed always from the western one. Rememper, there capital ship is the submarine.

In the 80´s it was like this:
1. Submarines
2. Bombers
3. Surface ships

Today (estimate):
1. Submarines
2. Multi-purpose fighters (Su-30SM)
3. Small Surface ships (Karakurt)
4. Coastal Defence Systems (Bastion and Bal)
5. Large Surface ships

Peŕrier wrote:**bunch of nonsense**

Those are bunch of stupid excuses made by someone that has no clue how shipyards, or general engineering, work. Shipyards do not need CAD software to operate, an that same software can be obtained for trivial sums anyway. Shipyards do not need CNC machines either. What shipyards really need is a dock, sheet metal storage and prep, metal cutters, cranes, presses, bunch of welders, more welders, and then some more welders, bunch of electricians, painters, pipe workers and similar ship equipment furnishers, and so on. I don't know where people get this retarded idea manufacturing can't be done without CNC machines and CAD software, especially that they are important in shipyards.  Ships were built long before any CAD and CNC existed.

Also ridiculous apologia for incompetent managers and owners is exactly what can be expected form ignorant know nothing libertarians, it is always either state's fault, or worker's fault, managers and owners are infallible, only victims of circumstances forced on them. But when one actually looks at the data obstructionism and sabotage by that same management becomes perfectly obvious. How is it that it takes Yantar shipyard average of 2,5 to 3 years from laying down the keel to launch when it builds 11356s for India but it takes them  3-4 years to do the same for 11356s built for Russian navy? It is the same fucking shipyard building the same basic fucking ship but it takes them 50% longer to do same work when they do it for Russian navy!! And ridiculous naive people like you claim those hopples managers simply can't do with obsolete shipyards they have. Utter nonsense, completely contradicted by basic facts. The is pure and simple deliberate sabotage, obstructionism by 5th column working to undermine Russian defence capability. There is no other explanation why same work in same shipyard takes 50% longer when it is done for Russian navy then it takes when it is done for export.  


Also you don't need separate paragraph for each sentence.

Easy to explain, ZoA.
Price for India: 770 Mio. Bucks.
Price for Russia: 206 Mio. Bucks.

ZoA wrote:

Peŕrier wrote:**bunch of nonsense**

Those are bunch of stupid excuses made by someone that has no clue how shipyards, or general engineering, work. Shipyards do not need CAD software to operate, an that same software can be obtained for trivial sums anyway. Shipyards do not need CNC machines either. What shipyards really need is a dock, sheet metal storage and prep, metal cutters, cranes, presses, bunch of welders, more welders, and then some more welders, bunch of electricians, painters, pipe workers and similar ship equipment furnishers, and so on. I don't know where people get this retarded idea manufacturing can't be done without CNC machines and CAD software, especially that they are important in shipyards.  Ships were built long before any CAD and CNC existed.

Also ridiculous apologia for incompetent managers and owners is exactly what can be expected form ignorant know nothing libertarians, it is always either state's fault, or worker's fault, managers and owners are infallible, only victims of circumstances forced on them. But when one actually looks at the data obstructionism and sabotage by that same management becomes perfectly obvious. How is it that it takes Yantar shipyard average of 2,5 to 3 years from laying down the keel to launch when it builds 11356s for India but it takes them  3-4 years to do the same for 11356s built for Russian navy? It is the same fucking shipyard building the same basic fucking ship but it takes them 50% longer to do same work when they do it for Russian navy!! And ridiculous naive people like you claim those hopples managers simply can't do with obsolete shipyards they have. Utter nonsense, completely contradicted by basic facts. The is pure and simple deliberate sabotage, obstructionism by 5th column working to undermine Russian defence capability. There is no other explanation why same work in same shipyard takes 50% longer when it is done for Russian navy then it takes when it is done for export.  


Also you don't need separate paragraph for each sentence.

CNC is absolutely essential, not for the hull but for trivial parts, shapes and assemblies. CNC has been around since before computer control, using punch cards and implementing G-code.

I agree with the rest though, Russian shipyards are pretty useless for any combat, surface vessel over ca. 2,000 tons. The Russian surface fleet at this point is a brown water collection of glorified coast guard vessels, 3? new frigates and some hints of quarter century-old Soviet relics with numbers probably counted using two hands.

KiloGolf wrote:
CNC is absolutely essential, not for the hull but for trivial parts, shapes and assemblies. CNC has been around since before computer control, using punch cards and implementing G-code.

CNC is not essential, anything done on CNC can be done without it. Greatest advantage of CNC is that you can employ idiots to operate it, all they need to do is to place the work peace in the vice, set zero, let the machine do the work, and take the part out, repeat. To do the same on classical machine, depending on complexity of the items, might require very experienced and skilful machinist, and for some especially complex pieces might require specialised old school machines and tools. I have worked both in shops with classical machines , and with CNC work stations, and form my experience I can say for simpler single item, or small series of few items, skilful operator on classical machine can do it faster then it would take to set up CNC machine for the same work. Of course for larger series CNC machine would be faster, so for same work you need to pay less workers less money because they don't need to be skilful.

TL:DR CNC are not essential, all they do is reduce you labour costs.

In shipyard only really useful CNC machine would be plasma cutter. Ships are built from cut up sheet steel / steel plates /  steel profiles that need to be cut to measure before welding or shaping on the rollers and presses. But that can be done by other methods too, but you will need greater number of more skilful workers to do it the old way.

All other work in shipyards are crazy amount of welding, much of it done manually by very expensive and skilful welders, then large amount of painting, electrical, work, hydraulic and other piping, installation of large amount of equipment received from subcontractors, testing, lots of testing, furnishing, and so on. CNC machines will help you with non of those in any way.

ZoA wrote:

KiloGolf wrote:
CNC is absolutely essential, not for the hull but for trivial parts, shapes and assemblies. CNC has been around since before computer control, using punch cards and implementing G-code.

CNC is not essential, anything done on CNC can be done without it. Greatest advantage of CNC is that you can employ idiots to operate it, all they need to do is to place the work peace in the vice, set zero, let the machine do the work, and take the part out, repeat. To do the same on classical machine, depending on complexity of the items, might require very experienced and skilful machinist, and for some especially complex pieces might require specialised old school machines and tools. I have worked both in shops with classical machines , and with CNC work stations, and form my experience I can say for simpler single item, or small series of few items, skilful operator on classical machine can do it faster then it would take to set up CNC machine for the same work. Of course for larger series CNC machine would be faster, so for same work you need to pay less workers less money because they don't need to be skilful.

TL:DR CNC are not essential, all they do is reduce you labour costs.

In shipyard only really useful CNC machine would be plasma cutter. Ships are built from cut up sheet steel / steel plates /  steel profiles that need to be cut to measure before welding or shaping on the rollers and presses. But that can be done by other methods too, but you will need greater number of more skilful workers to do it the old way.

All other work in shipyards are crazy amount of welding, much of it done manually by very expensive and skilful welders, then large amount of painting, electrical, work, hydraulic and other piping, installation of large amount of equipment received from subcontractors, testing, lots of testing, furnishing, and so on. CNC machines will help you with non of those in any way.

I'm not talking about ''shipyard work'' though. I'm talking about building and delivering a combat vessel.
Hence you need as much CNC as you can get.

I wouldn´t say the Russian Navy is in a poor state.

It has plenty of ships, but most of the larger ships are obsolete soviet vessels that could do with replacement.

The priority of the Russian federation means the navy is no where near top, yet the costs of a navy are high... and that combination means limits on what can be produced and when.

They are moving in the right direction, but the speed is not fast, but as I said the navy is not a high priority at the moment because Russian trade is not mostly sea based at the moment.

As Russia moves away from the west... or should I say as the west pushes Russia away, Russia needs to look for other markets and other trading partners, and will rely more and more on its shipping to do so.

If the EU decides against nord 2 then Russia might end up with south stream and shipped liquified gas... and no gas going through the ukraine.

It is going to cost the EU rather more money, and they might decide to buy US gas for even more on political grounds, but china is growing and so are many other countries around the world they can ship LNG to... and for a better price than what they were getting from Europe.

Russia has had problems with their new ships... which is understandable... as I keep saying... they could pump out enormous numbers of ships if they kept making 1980s cold war era boats, but they are developing new multirole vessels and that is complicated and time consuming... but once they get them right they can produce them rapidly because they are modular and standardised.

Shipyards do not need CAD software to operate, an that same software can be obtained for trivial sums anyway.

All the new designs for ships will be digital... if the shipyard is not equipped with the right support equipment it is going to have problems... equally having experienced ship builders is one thing... they can work from paper plans, but can they use digital systems too?

Shipyards do not need CNC machines either. What shipyards really need is a dock, sheet metal storage and prep, metal cutters, cranes, presses, bunch of welders, more welders, and then some more welders, bunch of electricians, painters, pipe workers and similar ship equipment furnishers, and so on. I don't know where people get this retarded idea manufacturing can't be done without CNC machines and CAD software, especially that they are important in shipyards.  Ships were built long before any CAD and CNC existed.

A CNC machine produces parts, and does it to very fine tollerances... and it can work 24 hours a day if you want... humans can generally make the same stuff but not as quickly or as easily and often not to the same degree of accuracy... especially when making thousands of components.

How is it that it takes Yantar shipyard average of 2,5 to 3 years from laying down the keel to launch when it builds 11356s for India but it takes them  3-4 years to do the same for 11356s built for Russian navy? It is the same fucking shipyard building the same basic fucking ship but it takes them 50% longer to do same work when they do it for Russian navy!!

Do you think there is a difference between assembling foreign components and putting them into a Russian designed ship and waiting for Russian suppliers of components that are generally new and untested like vertical launch Shtil missiles and sensors and then fitting them to a ship might take a little longer to do that different job?

Also you don't need separate paragraph for each sentence.

Separate paragraphs for separate ideas or subjects makes text easier to read.

Having everything in a big wall of text makes it harder to read and easier to lose your place.

It is the same with text... typing in all caps makes it harder for an adult to read as most adults read by word shape rather than looking at each letter.

There are examples of this on the internet... where there is a big piece of text but a lot of letters are moved around but the text can still be read because the word shape is the same.

3? new frigates and some hints of quarter century-old Soviet relics with numbers probably counted using two hands.

To be fair, three state of the art frigates that in the next couple of years will be able to carry hypersonic Zircon missiles and be rather potent vessels, plus a lot of old cold war ships that are no where near state of the art but sufficient for the job the Russian Navy has at the moment.

Lots of problems to solve but will not be solved by shooting managers or other stalin shit.

Didn't I say I was done with you or do you want me to say that in a language you understand please tell me what languages you know so I can say it in that one then.

I clearly understand you are done talking to me, but I will not ignore your bullshit and say nothing when you say stupid things.

Russia could take 20 years to build a frigate and you would find no fault with it. so be quiet.

The Russian navy is not important right now... they can't fix everything at once... nobody can.

They could start building carriers and cruisers and all sorts of shit... in fact if you were right and I was a fanboi that is what I would be demanding and I would be bleating like a little bitch like many here are that this is not happening.

But I am not a fanboi... I don't wish Russia had a navy able to take on all of NATO including the US because that would bankrupt her over night... and what would it even achieve?

For the record, I consider removing Saddam to be a huge mistake and I was against it.

You are not suggesting the west is not perfect are you?

Next you might even admit that Russia isn't perfect either and that not having a huge binge building frigates and destroyers like sausages isn't the end of the world either... or is that too much common sense?

But none of that changes the incompetence of Russian shipbuilding industry and thats why you are a fanboy you refuse to admit what is openly there and instead defend guys whom are harming Russia's defense ability.

If they were building cold war boats then I would agree... the Russian shipbuilding industry would be pretty bad if it could not knock off a few hundred ships... but even the corvettes they are building are more powerful than most NATO frigates... how many NATO frigates can carry 2,500km range land attack cruise missiles?

How many can carry mach 3 Onyx anti ship missiles?

How many in perhaps 5 years time will have mach 8 Zircon hypersonic anti ship missiles?

They are having problems with engines, they are having problems with new SAMs... the redut Poliment is not going well but then the land based system is not actually in service right now either... perhaps it is very complicated and still needs further development work... or it just needs field testing...

Likely having problems with new large array AESA radar too...

For a while they had problems with their new guns... they do have a 100mm gun lighter than their old 76mm guns... that is the sort of improvement they are going for... but no they are all failures and should be taken out and shot as an example for people not to aspire to manage shipyards because of judgemental pricks on the internet will not tolerate failure!

So shush it, I don't want to hear from you again, I had enough of your fanboyism

I listen but I don't agree... with this comment and most of the others you make.

I am sure you will get over it.