Project 22350: Admiral Sergei Gorshkov #2

I must admit that the Chinese ship building industry is second to none and I am in awe of how they managed to turn their Navy from basically junk into a formidable Blue Water Navy in double quick time!

The transformation has indeed been dramatic, but mostly because they really had no history of being a significant naval power, so the recent mass production has been transformational, but as you allude they didn't do it all on their own... they would have paid for some advice and assistance but where that was not forthcoming they would have just observed and "borrowed" some ideas too... just like most other navies did.

Of course money alone does not provide military skills and tactics to be a useful force... Saudi Arabia proves that rule too...

But then I think China just wants to defend its interests and will not be invading Africa or central or south america any time soon.

I doubt Zvezda will be used for military orders any time soon. It has a huge civilian order backlog.

Zvezda would only be essential for CVNs... I suspect they might go with a split run of destroyers with half being larger and nuke powered and perhaps the other half being cheaper and conventional propulsion, but who knows... improvements in electric drive systems and nuclear propulsion systems might make fossil fuels obsolete by 2035.

Indeed a CO2 and CO scrubber that separates the carbon in solid form might result in clean burning fossil fuel systems that can continue in use as long as they want.

Could they not use some of the shipyards they use for corvettes? The frigate is not particularly large.

I rather suspect most of the shipyards that make Corvettes could handle Frigates but I don't think they will make enormous numbers of Frigates because of the capabilities of the corvettes and reduced operating costs.

A Frigate might be good for stationing somewhere for longer periods with support ships for things like piracy or anti smuggling duties that don't require hypersonic anti ship missiles and 5,000km range land attack cruise missiles.

The northern fleet is where they operate the Kuznetsov and likely one of the two Kirovs and some Slavas, while the Pacific fleet might have the other Kirov they are going to keep and probably when they have four 40K ton helicopter carriers they will have two in the northern fleet and two in the pacific fleet.

The civilian ships will be important but ships to protect them around the world will be important too.

Other than that there are the sites which previously used to build the Krivak frigates. Those should have dry docks large enough for frigates.
I cannot see the destroyers being built anywhere other than St. Petersburg to be honest.

The shipyard for the northern fleet has been expanded to allow much bigger ships to be built there... they wont be building destroyers in just one yard.

The problem to me at this moment does not seem to be shipyards or shipyard capacity but the component manufacturing rate.
Production of the engines and reduction gear are well known issues, but there might be other bottlenecks in manufacturing as well.

They will need engines for corvettes and a few frigates and perhaps some of the destroyers but most of their engines will also be going into civilian ships and support ships the military also wants. I would expect at least half their destroyers and all their new build cruisers will be nuclear powered.

Shouldve taken Nikolaev while they had the chance. They'd have had 7 years to rebuild it already. Cest La vie

Even 7 years ago it was broken and would have taken billions of dollars just to get it up to scratch to build corvettes... spending rather less than that amount upgrading all of the shipyards in Russia makes rather more sense... even the ones that can't make military ships can take some of the civilian work off the hands of the yards that can handle it.

I took a bit of time this afternoon to have a look at all the Russian naval shipyards and the type of ships they built and are currently building.

Coming back to Svernaya where the Gorshkovs are being built: I see that a huge 270m boathouse with 2 slipways are currently being constructed, and should be completed next year.

That added to the existing 4+4 170m slipways would in theory make way for some serious ship building capacity!

Over the years there have been lots of people pining over the loss of the shipyards in the Ukraine thinking this is the only way for Russia to boost ship production, but all this time if you pay attention shipyards all over the country have been upgraded and repaired to get them to the point where they can start producing new products and the point is that the first models are always the test jobs... where unexpected problems come up and are solved or dealt with... by the time you are building the third of fourth ship in a series then there should be no surprises or problems and you should be cranking them out.

Surprises like... whoops... Ukrainians are dicks and we now have no propulsion systems for the ships we are half way through producing are over because they are all Russian these days... so that crap should be largely behind them now... just a case of big production orders that will keep shipyards busy for years and crank out a few ships every year to boost numbers so old ships can be retired and scrapped or sold.... and new facilities to have new ships can be created...

Russia has spent a lot of time and money and planning to get their ship building industry to where it is, and the cooperation of the government and new laws and regulations to support the civilian ship operators is going to be critical to their success in the near future.

It would be stupid and short sighted to spend billions on the Zvezda shipyards paid to South Korea to get a large and fully modern shipyard able to produce all sorts of products and vessels and then just abandon the whole sector to market forces.

This new growth in military is no surprise and it is not accidental... a lot of ground work had to be done and a lot of technologies had to be mastered and still do... in many ways it was like the rebuilding of the Russian Army... a lot of it seemed to be standing still and doing nothing, but a lot of planning and preparation went into what happened... from creating a whole new new generation C4IR network, through to building training bases to learn to use the new hardware and systems... they started with a German system that was state of the art HATO that most HATO countries could not afford and the obvious and inevitable sanctions meant they completed several other training facilities on their own in their four new military regions.

The Germans assumed Russia couldn't complete it and so they would never get any functioning training facilities, just like the US and EU assumed that without the Ukrainian gearboxes and engine parts they could not have a navy.

They were of course wrong and the resulting systems they have developed were all done with state of the art design and improved on the old Soviet Era hardware the Ukrainians were producing.

Built with modern materials and made to much finer tolerances they found their new Russian made motors and gearboxes had better performance and were more reliable.

So now they can offer to sell such products to other countries knowing they can make it all without permission...

So eventually it will be good for Russia to take control of the 3 delapidated large yards in Nikolaev and the one in Kherson (plus the othe repair yards in cities like Mariupol, Ismail, etc), but the investment to be done to bring them to a modern and efficient state will be massive (probably comparable to building the Zvezda shipyard)

By the time Russia gets anywhere near those places the whole country will be timeshares and cafes...

Russia can let that stuff go and plan to fix its own infrastructure and those of actual allies who would appreciate it.

Better in the meanwhile to concentrate on bringing to a modern standard the available ones and stopping ordering ships from abroad (I believe that a large part of civilian ships used from Russian firms are still made in foreign countries).

Producing them in Russia will be alot cheaper anyway, though the fact that the price of oil might start to climb again could mean that the Ruble is going to become more valuable compared with the Euro and Greenback... if I was into money speculating I would be transferring money into Rubles right now as global travel starts to create demand for fossil fuels.

I appreciate what you are saying, the ports and shipyards in the Ukraine are part of Russian history but developments and the current situation means they are lost to the Russians and not only beyond repair but continue to be further degraded.

It is a terrible shame, but as you point out some historically critical aircraft manufacturers inside current Russian borders have been ruined and had malls and shopping centres built in them for a fast buck.

If you asked me 10-15 years ago about the chances of Russia getting the Crimea back or even just the naval base ownership instead of a lease to the Kiev government I would be just as pessimistic, and clearly wrong, but the real difference is that Russia gains a huge amount by integrating the Crimea back into the Russian Federation and the population almost fully supports that... even now a significant percentage of the population of the areas you are talking about blames Russia and Putin for all their problems and no amount of investment or trade is going to change that... and the fundamental problem is that any money spent there is wasted and will not be appreciated and it would just take one bribed government or one US funded coup and it all goes back to hostile territory.

If the EU and US and the Ukrainians themselves want to make nice with Russia they are going to have to do a lot of things and I don't think the will do any of them.

First of all apologies and lots of current people in power going to jail... including in the US and EU for murder and all sorts of other lessor charges.

Second after lots of court cases and lots of changes to their laws they need to work to fix their country up before Russia will start trading with them again as an equal... but that is the key... Russia will trade with them as an equal... but only when they get their shit together and get that chip off their shoulder and start telling the truth about history.

That is not an offer they will get from the EU or US... ironically the best relations they can hope for with the west sounds a lot like the names of those two regions... there is Ewww (Ukraine) and US (the west) and their distain for this second world country will not change for a very long time.

You can lead a horse to water...

The fact is that Russia has been working to a plan and that plan has been in effect for quite a few decades... the UKSK launcher system and the Redut launch system didn't just fall from the sky by accident.

There have been problems of course... many of which created by the Ukraine, but overall it has made Russia stronger because they did it in stages instead of all at once, but lets not give them any credit for being stupid... this was all meant to damage Russia and in the short term it did.

In the long term it has made Russia independent of the Ukrainian market, just like EU sanctions and US sanctions are doing the same.

To suggest that somehow Russia should pine for the day to open and pay for the renovation and upgrade of old shipyards to give work to Orcs that murdered fellow Ukrainians just because those Ukrainians wanted to continue to speak Russian... I think not.

Give work to the victims, but it makes no sense to build a giant shipyard in the Black Sea when they have already built one in the Pacific and are expanding shipyards around their own country to make and maintain larger vessels.

Invest in production and technology in the rebel regions when they become autonomous so they can work and will have something to trade with Russia and any other countries that will trade with them.... I suspect the west will not trade with them in the same way they will not trade with the Crimea either, but there is an entire world out there of countries they could trade with.

These places wont become and should not become part of Russia for at least 20 years... let them be autonomous and trade with Russia and any other countries that will trade with them and in a good amount of time they can decide if they want to join the Russian federation.

Don't make them do it out of fear, don't make them think Russia is going to fix all their problems, and don't make it like a divorce where both parents shower the kid in presents and bad food to win their love... something the EU and US have clearly not done with Kiev... but did do with West Germany and Japan and South Korea... though of course the cost was total political subservience to the US effectively. The irony is that countries like Australia and the UK are just as led around by the nose but without the cash funding....

It is essentially a Udaloy layout basically, but...

In my previous counts I've assumed those are Kinzhal/naval Tor but now we can see them properly even I've been deceived about the true scale of this thing Shocked
Those are indeed S-300 groupings as seen on the Slava class

But that is not what they are.... those are 24 x 8 tube launchers for the naval TOR missile system... essentially 192 TOR missiles ready for self defence... as you point out the scale is wrong for them to be S-300F Rif launchers.

Would just say it needs a bigger gun...