Project 23900 "Ivan Rogov" Amphibious assault ship

They need to build more escort class ships they don't have many ships suitable for this role and their surface fleet is stretched thin as it is.

There is an export version of it

An export version of what?

You don't even know what it looks like and are just guessing it looks like Mistral, but that would not prove anything even if they did look similar...most flat deck ships look similar.

There is an export version of it so you know and now you changed the subject to "how can they prove it" which is a different matter, but it seems we reached an understanding.

You have to prove it is a copy first, and saying even if it is a copy they have to prove it is not changing the subject, you can't just say it is a copy without even seeing it, that wont hold up in any court... so how is any court going to determine what constitutes a copy? To see the designs of both vessels. Russia is hardly going to hand over to a European court the schematics of its newest naval vessels... any more than the French would hand over the designs of the Mistrals to Russia if Russia wasn't buying some.

If they really didn't care about their relations and were so cared by kosovo and Libya they would have used their nuks and obliged nato to stay out of there.

Again, you mistake Russia for the west.... Russian nukes are for self defence, not to bully other countries into submission.

If they really cared about EU relations they would have withdrawn their peacekeepers from South Ossetia and let Georgia attack, and of course would have withdrawn peacefully from the Crimea and let Sevastopol become a new major HATO navy base...

Russian actions in those two places seriously upset the EU agenda of surrounding and restricting Russia, but they don't seem sorry...

Yet they are making lot of money with EU, could stop Libyan war but are more happy to support Turkey against Nato, could go in China harms and give them everything they wabt like su-57, ICBM... but they are not.

They are making less and less money with the EU and the EU with its stupid sanctions policy directed from Washington is making less and less money in Russia too... Russia is fighting to provide cheap gas energy to the EU and only Germany seems half interested in helping them... personally I would love to see them redirect that gas pipe to Kaliningrad and they can liquify the gas and ship it from there to Germany...

Russia has interests and respect laws, at least economic laws. Even US respect them. Yes those have some limits and sometimes you need to go over them but when they do that they do it with a plan and analyze the risks. Russian aren't going to risk to pay billions for copying a ship that will cost them billions too when they cab do something on their own.

They are not going to copy the Mistral... it had some features they liked and it was going to be ready very quickly, but then France reneged on the deal.

Their plan B is going to take much longer and it might include Mistral like features but by making it themselves they can remove and change all the things they didn't like and make it much more suitable for them. The cost is that it is going to take a lot longer to get them operational but what choice do they have... France has not given them any alternative.

The Russian project 23900 was designed for a full-time amphibious force of 1,000 people, with 75 armoured vehicles. With a time at sea of 60 days. There are 20 helicopters and 6 landing boats on-board. The crusing range is 6,000 nautical miles.

Cruising range is not important... it can be refuelled enroute... in 60 days it could pretty much land troops anywhere on the planet...

They need to build more escort class ships they don't have many ships suitable for this role and their surface fleet is stretched thin as it is.

They would need Destroyer escorts for this sort of ship, but material supply ships would also be needed to support operations.

60 days at sea for a deployment means excellent reach but initially I suspect these ships will be practising along the coasts of Russia in the arctic and far east initially...

Still fairly unclear but area in-front of the island looks confirmed as a cargo storage area with a crane there.

Cargo storage there does not make any sense either... what do you think is in those crates?

Food... ammo for the landing forces, equipment for the landing forces?

Why put it on the deck?

Clearly the blue is containers. (certainly in good places for various container mounted weapons but also bear in mind that these ships are likely to spend most of their active time delivering supplies to remote bases/outposts/civil emergencies)

It is a stupid place to put containers... to move those containers around you use a crane... look at where the crane is.... The only advantage of having crates there is it is out of the flight line and if there was a crane there they could be loaded on to and up off from a ship that has come alongside... without the crane it makes no sense at all.

Some more tea leaves readouts:

The thing is that if they actually wanted to go for VSTOL fighters a ski jump ramp would be a must to maximise performance from a small deck...

They even tea-leaved in a ski-jump.

I am not seeing that...

Destroyer escort for a landing ship? Russia needs destroyers for the northern and pacific fleets first and then then need missile cruisers aswell.

These helicopter carriers will be based in the northern and pacific fleets...

Frigates will remain largely coastal despite having more fire power than cold war destroyers, they lack the size and endurance for longer missions, but destroyers and cruisers will have even better fire power and enough air defence capacity to not just defend themselves but also other ships in the group... which is what landing ships need.

Then ofcourse we have to consider that the Russian style of shipbuilding that involves equipping ships with far more pieces of far more advanced equipment does not lend itself well to the pindostanski style of popping out dozens of simple rocket barges at once so Russia is unlikely to get 100+ destroyers any time soon.

Russia has no need for 100s of destroyers, why piss away money building and operating those when if they need an arsenal ship they can hire a cargo ship and just load suitable containers on it...

mnztr wrote:

SeigSoloyvov wrote:They need to build more escort class ships they don't have many ships suitable for this role and their surface fleet is stretched thin as it is.

I think as long as this ship has very good anti-aircraft protection, it can be escorted by one or two corvettes, but the real escort will be a nuclear sub lurking around. Recon can be done via sattelite and drones. Anyone causes probs and the Yassen class will send them to meet Davy Jones.

Corvettes aren't a suitable escort for these ships at all, these ships are built and designed for long-range voyage and operations far from russia.

You will need 10k Destroyers for proper escort duty.

mnztr wrote:

SeigSoloyvov wrote:

Corvettes aren't a suitable escort for these ships at all, these ships are built and designed for long-range voyage and operations far from russia.

You will need 10k Destroyers for proper escort duty.

Some of the enlarged versions of the corvette are being rejigged to be able to handle open ocean voyages. The real escort will the nuclear subs. They can shadow from a distance and their reach will allow them to destroy any surface threats.

The ships you speak of are still to short-range for a task like this.

Nuclear subs aren't much of an escort only against other submarines. They cannot do jack against fighters etc,

GarryB wrote:

It is a stupid place to put containers... to move those containers around you use a crane... look at where the crane is.... The only advantage of having crates there is it is out of the flight line and if there was a crane there they could be loaded on to and up off from a ship that has come alongside... without the crane it makes no sense at all.

I would have thought that it is more likely that they will use the skeleton truck based container lift vehicles rather than cranes to move containers around the ship.

Yellow lined

It is the wrong shape to be effective...

The image looks to me like they have taken two line drawings and super imposed them over another drawing, with little care for reality...

Even if they revealed a VSTOL fighter programme right now there is no way it would be in service in time to operate from one of these ships...

I think as long as this ship has very good anti-aircraft protection, it can be escorted by one or two corvettes, but the real escort will be a nuclear sub lurking around. Recon can be done via sattelite and drones. Anyone causes probs and the Yassen class will send them to meet Davy Jones.

The problem is that those shipping crates replaced with Redut launchers is enough to protect the ship but you need rather more well protected ships to also defend the airspace over the landing area... you need a fixed wing aircraft carrier (Kuznetsov) and also a few destroyers and cruisers if you have them to have a solid attack and defence capacity.

Used in the Kuriles they could use land based fighters, but further afield they need to bulk up their navy with bigger ships... upgraded and new.

This will be an incentive to build 36 Destroyers and perhaps 8-16 cruisers in the 20K ton weight range.

Some of the enlarged versions of the corvette are being rejigged to be able to handle open ocean voyages. The real escort will the nuclear subs. They can shadow from a distance and their reach will allow them to destroy any surface threats.

Corvettes don't have the endurance or the available number of air defence missiles to protect anything other than themselves.

In the 6-10 years it will take to get these carriers into the water they will have had time to build Frigates and get Destroyers into production too.

The whole purpose with the modular design and standardisation and multirole design is so that production can be standardised and ramped up to reasonable speed in a number of shipyards at once.

I would have thought that it is more likely that they will use the skeleton truck based container lift vehicles rather than cranes to move containers around the ship.

Not much value in moving the around the ship... unless they are there for ballast.

Bringing on material from ships along side might make some sense but it is a landing ship... surely bringing stuff in on landing ships on a trailer and then collecting the material in the well and driving it to where it is needed makes more sense... the only deck lifts I can see are narrow and are designed for helicopters and likely would be totally unsuitable for shipping crates moved from the deck to the hangar and landing vehicle well inside the ship...

If they are shipping crates they are not even 1/3rd the height of the Helix helicopters shown on deck...

mnztr wrote:Does this ship risk being classified an aircraft carrier and banned from the black sea by the Montreaux convention? After all it has a flat deck and is largly designed as a platform to operate Helos to support amphibious troop landings and maritime power projection. Its weapons are mostly on aircraft. I just read that carriers greater then 15K tons cannot pass through the Turkish straits.

Helicopters are a type of Aircraft and the Montreaux convention does not define AC's are jet purpose-built carriers.

So yes under the current wording of the convention these ships are considered aircraft carriers, the Russians could ask the Turks not consider it an "Aircraft Carrier" but rather under the designation "amphibious assault ships" Which aren't banned by the convention.

Keep in mind the Russians tried this tactic with the Kuzen class which the turks denied.