Project 20380(5): Steregushchy Corvette #2

There is no doubt Russia needs a blue water navy. But they don't need destroyers.

Ships smaller than a destroyer are really only able to defend themselves and cannot really defend other ships except in the sense of mutual defence of defending each other.

Frigates and Corvettes will defend Russian waters and the Buyan is a useful anti piracy ship that can operate almost anywhere with support ships to protect Russian shipping anywhere, but they do need destroyers and cruisers if they want helicopter landing ships and aircraft carriers... which they seem to.

Russian operational costs are much lower than western costs because their MIC does not gouge... a US carrier fleet probably costs more to operate per year than it would cost to buy a Russian carrier fleet.

They also need to sort out the engine issue and last I heard that Zvezda owned the rights to most engines and was being difficult in allowing other facilities to manufacture said engines.

Destroyers and Cruisers will likely be nuclear powered... so just an issue for Frigates and Corvettes.

The ship finishes sea trials and is in Baltic, why has this ship not transferred to BSF through canal?

Can it fit??

Might have to remove some masts to get it through, but they can go the long way round as a test run for the vessel too.

It is good to see Russian Corvettes sailing past the UK making their escort ships look old and weak....

No. Project 20380 ships cannot pass the Volga-Don canal. There are limitations of 3.5m depth in some places.
If it is necessary they can build the ships in the Black Sea at one of the existing shipyards.

Well perhaps taking a dredging machine down there and making it a bit deeper and perhaps modifying bridges and structures over the canal so larger vessels can pass might be a good idea.

I would actually think a special canal boat with its own air defence capacity... say a few hundred TOR missiles, plus room for ground launched cruise missiles could be designed and built in numbers cheaply enough would not be a difficult or expensive exercise.

In fact you could design it to carry standard shipping containers and modify the missile launchers to be contained in standard shipping containers so when tensions are low they could use it to ship cargo to military bases, but if tensions escalate you could fit missile tubes instead...

Garry how could this ship get to the Black Sea by circumnavigation, if the bosphorus is closed to Russian Naval vessels?

My understanding is that the ban on crossing of military ships does not include ships returning to the Black Sea if the Black Sea is their home port, but obviously once in they are not allowed to leave again.

20380 should have a draught of about 4 m

If I am not mistaken in soviet times they tried to guarantee 4 meters of depth in most of the internal russian waterways (now not anymore). Furthermore there are probably some low bridges here and there that do not allow the full height of mast and antennas.


Can those issues be solved?

Of course internal waterways will never allow a destroyer to move from the Baltic to the Azov sea or to the white sea but if they would allow a large corvette with good seagoing capabilities to do that (and maybe in the future even to reach the persian gulf from the Caspian sea via Iran, a lot of new options will be open.

By the way, in the wiki page for the baltic- white sea channel, it says

The canal runs 227 km (141 mi), partially along several canalized rivers and Lake Vygozero. As of 2008, it carries only light traffic of between ten and forty boats per day. Its economic advantages are limited by its minimal depth of 3.5 m (11.5 ft),[citation needed] inadequate for most seagoing vessels.

This depth typically corresponds to river craft with deadweight cargo up to 600 tonnes, while useful seagoing vessels of 2,000–3,000 dwt typically have drafts of 4.5–6 m (15–20 ft).[5][6] The canal was originally proposed to be 5.4 m (17.7 ft) deep; however, the cost and time constraints of Stalin's first five-year plan forced the much shallower draught.

Podlodka77 wrote:Sewernaya Werf should be closed or demolished, or whatever - that shipyard is junk.. ..
Therefore, anyone who writes that it is not only to the shipyard, but also to other subcontractors, is greatly mistaken.
I forgot to add that they also have a project 20386 corvette that has been under construction since October 2016 and we will probably all be dead by the time it reaches active service.

I absolutely do not agree.

There have been a lot of mistakes there (and issues of corruption and criminal negligence), and recently also a lot of delays with the modernisation of the shipyard and the construction of the new boat house and large drydock (or slipway).

Another issue is that it did not make much sense to build there (large) corvettes when it is one of the few shipyards capable of building large frigates and destroyers (and had in the past built both udaloy and sovremenny class destroyers).

So it makes absolutely sense to stop building 20380 corvettes there if now Amur shipyard (which probably cannot build ships of the size of a Udaloy destroyer) has finally mastered their production.

Let's hope that in the near future all the issues with naval supply chain (from engines (diesel and gas turbines), reduction gears, radars, various equipment, special paints, etc) will have been solved. Only after that it will be possible to evaluate what is a problem of the shipyard and what is not.

From what I understand those ships should be built when the new boathouse and slipway are finished.

Furthermore possibly they want to see how the new reduction gear from Zvezda (the same company doing diesel engines in Saint Petersburg) behave.

That is also one of the issues (more than the Gas turbines from Saturn).

Anyway, Russia does not need the same navy size as China and with the current situation Russia cannot afford to concentrate too much money and effort on the rapid production of naval ships.

Other things have the priority (including, but not only, artillery ammunitions and missiles)

Podlodka77, why do you always compare Russian navy production with China?

Modern ships are fully multirole and are complex... even just testing them takes a long time to make sure everything works properly, and of course when you find a ship design that works can't be built now because 15% of components were imported and there is no Russian alternative... or perhaps there is but that Russian alternative can't produce the products needed in the volume needed just yet and needs to build new factories to expand production then of course there will be delays and issues.

Navy management and development and production is a long term thing... if you think new engines can be made now... ooh they made some for testing... why can't they just put them into mass production and make 20 of them so 6 new ships that use them can be laid down right now... well things don't work that way.

Building an engine for a ship is not a trivial thing and nor is testing it properly.

It is not just a question of building new engines... they also have to make repair kits and spare parts kits to keep the already bought and paid for and delivered engines working... those parts have to be made as well... and the companies developing these new engines also make other engines... how many new engines do you think their entire fleet of helicopters requires?

Not big engines but they do have a lot of them and new helicopters on the way.

Plus, as I keep asking... why build dozens of Gorshkovs when the improved Gorshkov has not hit the water yet and we don't know how it will go... it might be amazing... in which case internet trolls like yourself will be asking why did they waste time and money and slipway space making more of the original Gorshkovs when the new one is better in every way... they don't have an unlimited budget.

An analogy would be with a Playstation... if you have a lot of kids in a big school... say 5,000 kids, who are bored and want a gaming system they can use to entertain themselves and also play movies etc, so you get the choice... playstation 5 is almost ready but not in production and needs to be tested... do you blow the entertainment budget on Playstation 4s because that is the best available now and you can buy lots of games for those consoles because they are not new consoles... but in one years time the Playstation 5 will come out and everyone with a 3 or 4 will complain and hate you for not waiting to get 5s for everyone... you had playstation2s already... they could have upgraded some of those and bought lots of games because the games were backwards compatible so the new playstation 5s could use the games and as you got the playstation 5s you could retire the playstation 2s as you bought the new PS5s.

Of course there will always be some that think the laptops the kids already have is good enough, or that Xbox is a better option...

GarryB wrote:
Plus, as I keep asking... why build dozens of Gorshkovs when the improved Gorshkov has not hit the water yet and we don't know how it will go... it might be amazing... in which case internet trolls like yourself will be asking why did they waste time and money and slipway space making more of the original Gorshkovs when the new one is better in every way... they don't have an unlimited budget.

I believe that they are ships in slightly different class (I mean 22350 and 22350M).

The first is a very good frigate, but it cannot compare with a ship of the size of Udaloy class destroyer for range and endurance, not considering the amount of launcher modules it can carry (length and displacement if 22350M should be similar or greater than Projekt 1155 Fregat Udaloy class).

I believe both of them 22350 and 22350M are useful and can be used in different roles (e.g the larger ship for the oceanic fleets while the smaller version for the Baltic and Med to support the smaller 20380.

Of course, this unless Russia then decides to do a sort of gorshkov light as well, on.a smaller hull of the size of a 11356 class (krivak 5- grigorovic), but it would increase even more the amount of different ship class in production, so I am not sure it would be sensible.

By the way, Amur shipyard is going to build more 20380 and also 22350.
Is it possible to build there also ships the size of a Udaloy class? If not problem solved, Russia will for sure build at the same time 22350 (in Amur) and 22350M (severnaya vert, possibly also yantar)

Podlodka77 wrote:If Russia was a country that had a clear PLAN, then Russia would not find itself in a situation without gas turbines after 2014. And what now, who is the Russians to blame for that but themselves ?

I believe this topic was discussed many times.

Off topic on

In Soviet time there has never been production of naval gas turbines outside of Nikolaev ( I believe that there were at a certain point in time some plans to build a second site somewhere in the Russian far east (Pacific coast) but it was never realised.

And of course after 1991 there was no money.

They started to develop a new generation of naval gas turbine at the beginning of the new millennium. This was a sort of joint venture between Saturn (Rybinsk, Russia) and Zorya Mashproekt (Nikolaev, Ukraine). From my understanding the development was jointly carries but the production was to be done initially only in Nikolaev and later transferred (I do not know if fully or partially) to Russia.

There was no plan to transfer production of the older generation gas turbines, since it would cost not much differently that setting production of brand new models.

The other issue was that Zorya was also accomplished in the production of the naval reduction gears.

Furthermore, many of the countless other companies belonging to the supply chain of naval production were located in the Ukraine.

What plan are you talking about?

Russia also could not burn all the ties with Ukraine before 2014 because it was extremely (co)dependent. So they had to manage everything with little money and a lot of other constraints.

Back on the engines. Many of the largest naval gas turbine built in the west (e.g for large frigates or destroyers) are aeroderivatives from the widebody engines (like the naval Trent that derives from the Boeing 777 engine. Russia did not have any aeroengine with the desired characteristics. (Possibly the NK-32, but I doubt in the 90s they had money to spare for this.

So, were there mistakes done?

Yes. What could have prevented all of it? Nothing, it was too late to do anything.

The last possibility was to have shushkevich, Kravchuk and Eltsin executed by a firing squad after their stunt on the 8 December 1991, but Gorbachev was too much of an idiot and also one of causes of the problems.

Back on topic

If what you say about 20380 production in Amur is true, would it be possible for Russia to organise their production in a refurbished shipyard in Novorossia?

E.g. in Mariupol, or eventually even in Nikolaev once the western part of Novorossia is liberated?

I know the situation in Nikolaev.
We are not talking about one shipyard, but about several of them.

I posted in another thread also a map of the 3 main shipyards there.

1)
The oldest shipyard (Communara 61, Nikolaev shipyard) founded in1788, is in the north of the city and it was the one that built in imperial time even the battleship Potiomkin and more recently the Kara and Slava class cruisers. Unfortunately it is also in terrible condition.

In order to do anything there it would have to be completely rebuilt.

2) then there is the black sea shipyard, in the southern part of the center of the city, founded at the end of the 19th century and which was modernised before the fall of Soviet Union in order to build the new class of aircraft carriers.

It build all of the helicopter and aircraft carrying cruiser's of Soviet Union and had a very large drydock.

After Maidan, the grain company nibulon built a grain terminal next to the largest drydock (the one used for the never finished Ulyanovsk carrier). The drydock was basically ruined in order to do this.

The owner of Nibulon, and one of the main responsible for ruining one of the most important shipyards of the soviet union was killed in Summer 2023 by a russian strike on the grain terminal

Furthermore Nibulon grain company "built" a small shipyard next to the grain terminal, basically in the territory of the former black sea shipyard. It was the more active shipyard of modern Ukraine and in 2019 it built a 10000 tons ship for the export of grain (the largest tonnage ship built in independent Ukraine).

I do not know its status now.

3) Finally the Okean shipyard. located about 15-20 km south of the black sea shipyard.
Built in the 1950s, it was never used for navy vessels, but it built massive civilian ships, including oil carrier with a max tonnage well above 100000 tons.
Among the 3 it was probably the least damaged, but it went also bankrupt recently.


Basically in the beginning of 2022 only 2 shipyards in the Ukraine could actually build new ships. Nibulon shipyard and the shipyard in Kiev (which used to belong to chocolate king poroshenko).

Now noone of them is probably able to build anything now. They would have to be rebuilt.
They are anyway in very good locations and used to have a great history. It would be nice to see something built there (even a 20380 corvette, plus of course civilian ships) before the end of the decade.

Back to one of your critics

By the way, so that a few things are clear. It is not just the hull and the engine that determine how fast a ship is being built.

As an example, in 2015 in the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch (Crimea) the construction started for two ocean going cable ships. The construction was stalled for many years with the ships (150 m long) occupying a large part of the massive drydock there, as necessary imported equipment was not available anymore due to sanctions.

I believe the problems with that equipment have been solved now and the two ships have been launched and will be completed within 1 year, however until that there was nothing that the shipyard could have done.

Turkey can close down the Bosporus to military ships in case of conflict. Which is what they did.

...

Implications for the Current Conflict and Beyond

It remains unclear whether Turkey invoked Article 19 or Article 21 of the Montreux Convention when it closed the Straits to all military vessels last year. The Montreux Convention has provisions limiting Turkish Straits access for vessels of war belonging to belligerent powers (Ukraine and Russia) when Turkey is not at war (Article 19). Article 19 states that “in time of war, Turkey not being belligerent, warships shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation through the Straits” consistent with earlier conditions.   When Turkey “considers herself to be threatened with imminent danger of war” (Article 21), Turkey has discretion to regulate the passage of all warships from belligerent and non-belligerent powers (Article 21).  The upshot:  Turkey appears to be applying Article 21’s more capacious restrictions without invoking Article 21 publicly.

Indeed, Turkey’s current closure goes well beyond Article 19. In February 2022, the Turkish Foreign Minister stated that “the situation in Ukraine has transformed into a war” and Turkey “will implement all articles of Montreux transparently.” Further, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu warned that no states should transit their warships through the Straits. Turkey’s invocation of Montreux’s wartime provisions has played a de-escalatory role, prohibiting Russian warships from the Baltics or elsewhere from entering the Black Sea.

But has Turkey been fully transparent in its Montreux interpretation? Article 19 only prevents Ukrainian and Russian vessels from outside the Black Sea from entering the Black Sea (unless they are returning to their home base). This interpretive disconnect was highlighted by the U.S. Naval War College’s Professor Pete Pedrozo earlier this year.   Since Turkey’s closure of the straits, no NATO vessels have transited the Black Sea, but Russian civilian merchant vessels carrying logistics and supplies to the Russian military have purportedly been allowed to transit the Straits. Analyst Yörük Işık of the Middle East Institute reported that Russia, during its military campaign in Syria, actually bought Turkish civilian vessels, reflagged them, and used them to resupply its war effort there.

Discussion on a US biased website...

So the article they are implementing is critical to whether they can or they can't.

The whole webpage is here: https://www.justsecurity.org/85181/assessing-military-operations-in-the-black-sea-a-year-into-russias-full-scale-invasion-of-ukraine/

I believe that they are ships in slightly different class (I mean 22350 and 22350M).

Well all the models and computer designs in the world mean nothing till you get the full sized ship in the water and test it properly to do all the things you want to use it for.

They designed a brand new ship (Project 22350) and after testing it and having a play they decided on some changes to the design... Project 22350M... now in that case you have to ask whether the original was good enough or in fact ideal for some roles, or if changes were needed to make it a good ship.

You could argue that the original ship might be fine for the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, but lack missiles and systems for the Pacific and Northern Fleets so perhaps making a dozen of the original ship and if the upgrades and modifications are successful (ie are tested and found to be good) then the upgraded improved model can be produced in series... perhaps three dozen ships, so 6 original ships go to the Baltic Sea fleet and another 6 to the Black Sea, and maybe 6 more go to the Black Sea that are actually based in Syria for operations in the Med, while one and a half dozen go to the Pacific and Northern fleets each... but if they are going to be making destroyers and eventually cruisers... the latter essentially air defence ships to protect aircraft carriers and landing ships and carrier groups, then you probably only want three dozen in total... 36 ships, and 6 of those will be the original type frigate and the other 30 ships the enlarged vessels, with maybe four originals in the Baltic Fleet and two originals in the Black Sea fleet and maybe another 6 new frigates in Tartus and maybe another 2 in Sudan and that leaves about 11 ships in the Pacific fleet and 11 ships in the Northern fleet... keep in mind that they wont be active all the time... some will be in maintenance or on trips, others will be training or exercises, some will head away for goodwill visits etc etc.

Of course, this unless Russia then decides to do a sort of gorshkov light as well, on.a smaller hull of the size of a 11356 class (krivak 5- grigorovic), but it would increase even more the amount of different ship class in production, so I am not sure it would be sensible.

I am hoping the Buyan would be the light frigate type for anti piracy roles and long operations away from Russia... presumably with a support ship, as it would be more effective and more affordable than using a destroyer for such a role.

Imbeciles...
So let's summarize; Russia is still completely incapable of building a fleet of surface warships. Due to the lack of money, the speed of building nuclear submarines also dropped DRASTICALLY.
Complete incompetence was also shown in the modernization of surface warships and submarines.

You are so quick to judgement without having any or all of the facts.

The Russian Navy is conservative, but having said that... they take risks and put their money where their mouth is... this isn't a game... they can't afford to waste billions of dollars like the US Navy can and just shrug it off as a good try.

They could be making plenty of Frigates... if they just kept making Krivak class frigates like the Talwars, which are not bad ships, but they wanted something better and when they got it and tested it they added new features and changed the design to improve it and are waiting for that to get completed so they can test it in the water so they can decide what to do... whether to produce the new one, go back to the old one, produce them both or try a brand new design.

And what are you dreaming about on the forum about project 22350M frigates ?
Most forum members will sooner die of natural causes than live to see a 22350M frigate in action.
Its not a joke its reality...!

It is a cynical joke from a guy who hates surface ships.

* The SSGN submarine fleet will continue to shrink..I am of the opinion that the number of submarines will decrease by a third from the current number of 24 submarines and that in the future Russia will have as many SSGN submarines as France and the UK combined - no more.

So. MiG-31Ks are vastly more effective at protecting the waters around Russia and if you don't want a surface fleet why would you care about the oceans around the rest of the planet... subs caught out there will be hunted down and massacred because there will be no air power or air defences and ships to protect them.

If what you say about 20380 production in Amur is true, would it be possible for Russia to organise their production in a refurbished shipyard in Novorossia?

E.g. in Mariupol, or eventually even in Nikolaev once the western part of Novorossia is liberated?

Right now Russia needs ships lots of ships, but what they need are civilian ships and their production will boost the economy rather more than a massive military navy build up.

Having new ports in the Black Sea with new shipyards is a good thing but let them build civilian ships rather than military and keep the former Ukraine demilitarised.

The demand for civilian shipping in Russia is greater than for military shipping and more civilian shipping means Russian companies wont have to have ships made in the west with all the risks that entails.

It means the locals can get lots of work almost straight away and less worries about sabotage or other security issues...

All I am writing is that after the collapse of the USSR, Russia should have worked on designing its own gas turbines.
They had and still have one of the most powerful intelligence services, and they were able to find out what challenges the Russian military-industrial complex would face in the future. One example is those fucking gas turbines.

They could have done that, but at what cost... what did they fund that you would defund... and more importantly if Russia was openly developing their own production capacity for propulsion systems for shipping Kiev would probably have realised they were about to be abandoned and likely have stabbed Russia in the back much earlier than they did, which would have meant a lot less resistance to the divorce they had and even more resentment and hatred from more Ukrainians, which just would make what is currently happening harder.

And for what... so they could be mass producing Corvettes and Frigates?

Their new destroyers and larger ships likely will be nukes, so these propulsion systems only make sense for a narrow range of shipping in the military...

But don't let me take that stick out of your arse.

Well, my friend, of all the bad decisions, the decision to build the project 11711 landing ships in Yantar is the worst.

Landing ships of that type take a long time to make and get ready for service so the sooner you start the sooner it will be ready.

It also means you need destroyers and cruisers and aircraft carriers to make them useful... SSGNs would be useless to support a helicopter landing ship.

At the end of the day the waters we are talking about are Turkish and they have final say and if Russia were to transfer an enormous number of ships to the Black Sea Fleet then they might just say no... the convention itself seriously favours Black Sea navies of which Russia is one, and in Russias view the convention restricts navies like the British Navy and the US navy and the French navy regarding operations inside the Black Sea, and restrict what they can have there and for how long.

It would really not benefit Russia to screw this up.

Ending up with shit loads of ships in the Black Sea fleet might be more problems than it is worth because you could get them in but you can't get them out again and the Black Sea is an inland lake that makes some ships rather vulnerable to attack by all sorts of things.