Project 22350: Admiral Sergei Gorshkov #3

Isos wrote:I would rather compare it with the last 20385/6 light frigates.

Even against it in 1 vs 1 I would put my money on the russian ship. UKSK allows zirkon on it and can carry a ka-31 awacs helicopter.

Yeah and 20380, which has a similar armament, has also a complement of 90 men.

It is true that the Mogami is larger and has probably double the range and the endurance of 20380, but it is very lightly armed.

Furthermore having such a reduced crew in war operations can be dangerous. If there are accidents, or if a part of the crew is injured they do not have many people to spare in order to intervene.

Hole wrote:Most of the Japanese "Destroyers" are Frigates.

Yes, vast majority of them have not long range AD missiles, so they are akin to Spruance and Udaloj.

I hope they continue 22350 production even after starting with 22350M.

The 22350 is not a bad design and in many ways is good enough for a range of roles and tasks. The 22350M is an upgrade or improvement that might be better suited for some more demanding roles.

They essentially have four fleets and one flotilla... the Caspian Sea flotilla is not exactly demanding but perhaps one or two frigates wouldn't hurt once the other fleets are sorted in terms of numbers.

I would say frigates are about as much as the Baltic Fleet would require because they are largely stuck in a bottleneck anyway and Russia has little need to project power in that direction anyway except to ensure their shipping does not get interfered with.

The Black Sea could probably do with more frigates, but I think the Pacific Fleet and the Northern Fleet would get the bulk of the frigates of both types... if we say 6 of the  smaller variety in the Baltic Fleet and say 8 of the smaller type 22350 in the Black Sea Fleet plus perhaps 6 of the larger 22350M in the Black Sea Fleet too, and then maybe 6 of the smaller 22350s in each of the two major fleets and perhaps 8 of the larger 22350Ms in each of the fleets of the north and east.

That would work out at 6 BF and 8 BSF and 6 NF and 6 PF which would make 26 ships in total for the 22350 and  6 BSF and 8 NF and 8 PF which would make 22 project 22350M.

By the time they have made those they will have had some experience with the enlarged project 22350M and should be able to get a destroyer design ready for production, which will probably be a further enlarged Project 22350M with nuclear power and increased armament and endurance of course.

Ideally they should be laying down their first destroyer design after a few years experience with the 22350M so they can use that experience to perfect the design.

Why? After the current order of 22350s they will have enough to defend their territorial waters. They should then focus on larger vessels like the Super Gorshkov and Lider in order to protect their interests in the open ocean and on other continents.

They are both just Frigates and while they could sail to other countries they wouldn't last long against most opponents because of a serious lack of armament persistence.

Super Gorshkov will be a useful ship in an around Russian waters, but not really something that will dominate the waves anywhere else.

Probably would be rather interesting to evolving and developing countries around the world who want a modern navy with capable ships that are not nuclear powered.

Japan is a set of islands, with economy extremely dependant on sea routes.
It is surrounded by nations having territorial disputes for multiple territories.
Russia is a giant landmass, with bulk of it's export carried by land corridors, or seas that can be considered their own.
We are comparing apples to oranges here. Russia won't have the same imperatives Japan has.

To be fair Russia has relied on Europe for its exports to the rest of the world, a situation that has clearly changed and Russia now needs to deal with its exports on its own and not rely on middle men to earn good money getting Russian products to their international customers.

This means they need to work on their trade routes and expand their capacity to get their products to customers around the world without risking western interference because they will continue to interfere with Russias economy every way they can.

But this does show that at least in terms of crew automation the Admiral Gorshkov design is starting to fall behind.

One of the problems of the LCS ships for the US navy was that the ships normal compliment of crew was too small to maintain the ship at sea. They didn't keep up with maintenance because there were not enough crew available to do it... things like painting the exterior of the ship before entering a harbour on a visit etc etc.

Most ship hit by a missile will be unserviceable anyway. It's not a disadvantage to have smaller crew.

In a modern war it is possible that a small drone might damage the ship only...

Most of the Japanese "Destroyers" are Frigates.

The Japanese Navy has been seriously under estimated mostly because they decided to take on the US Navy during WWII... earlier conflicts against Imperial Russia, or just their paper potential before they took on the Americans in the Pacific and you would say they are a world class force. Things like poor code use that allowed the enemy to know what they were doing before the troops on the ground even got their orders can limit the performance of any force.

Their navy planes were world class, the much vaunted British Navy could not have defeated the Japanese Navy on their own during WWII... or now.

Designing and building ships takes time and planning... I suspect their new destroyers and cruisers will be nuclear powered and possibly all electric drive too which makes it a steep learning curve but also potentially a very capable and powerful fleet too.

They have shown they have compact powerful nuclear power modules that would be ideal for use on shipping...

Arrow wrote:This means that the Japanese have overtaken the US in terms of radars. Does Russia intend to develop GaN-based radars?

This is hardly surprising. The Japanese had the first fighter aircraft GaA AESA radar in the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter as well. It preceded the use of GaA radar by the US in the F-22. The Japanese have been ahead of the US in basic radar technology for at least two decades.

Russia has developed GaN radar elements, but AFAIK no radars using it have entered service yet. New factories for producing GaN semiconductors have also entered production in Russia recently.

I would say that in terms of GaN radar the leaders are probably Japan, and next China, and the US is third at best.

You can tell the Chinese have such radars because you can even find them on Alibaba. The technology used in AESA radar isn't that different from that used in cellphone towers anyway, and you know who leads the world in 5G deployments which also work in the microwave frequency.

GarryB wrote:Super Gorshkov will be a useful ship in an around Russian waters, but not really something that will dominate the waves anywhere else.

Probably would be rather interesting to evolving and developing countries around the world who want a modern navy with capable ships that are not nuclear powered

22350M should have similar  endurance and range as Udaloy class and a total as 96 VLS cells (64 UKSK +32 redut) basically the same as the america Burke class destroyer.

That should be enough also in blue waters operations.

Of course admiral Nakhimov is something else entirely...

This means that Russia is still far behind. They would make a big leap forward in the competition if they perfected ROFAR. This is probably a long way in the future. Although Russia was successful, they were the first to have a PESA phase scanning radar on the MiG-31 aircraft.

Not far behind at all... it is more to do with production capacity than technology... in terms of technology Russia is in the lead with the use of different wavelength radars for anti stealth use, and the computing power to process those signals to extract useful information from them.

The US is behind China and Japan in production and technology.

China really only recently directing their production and technology capacity to their military in earnest, it would not surprise me for China to be ahead of Japan in a lot of areas that Japan thought they led.

Certainly in the cauldron of actual war western stuff that was supposed to be superior has turned out to be rather ordinary, which is very bad considering it costs top dollar to buy and to operate.

Russia will spend the money for the best when it is worth it, but clearly their AESA radars for fighter aircraft are not sufficiently better than their existing types to justify the extra cost.

I suspect experience with large naval arrays of AESAs and of course the spreading use of AESAs on helicopters and SAM systems and now even tanks will lead to improvements in performance that makes the cost worth it... which ironically will lead to an increase in production which will speed up the improvements and reduces costs to acceptable levels.

22350M should have similar endurance and range as Udaloy class and a total as 96 VLS cells (64 UKSK +32 redut) basically the same as the america Burke class destroyer.

That should be enough also in blue waters operations.

Not suggesting it is bad by any means, but considering enemies will try to use swarm technology to overwhelm ships away from friendly waters I would say a proper destroyer with a 152mm gun with airburst shells with some ability to manouver to hit targets or get very close before exploding, plus an array of other air defence missiles would be preferable.

The difference between a destroyer and a cruiser is that a cruiser can defend a group of ships much better than a destroyer which can probably defend itself but would run out of missiles rather quickly with a concerted attack.

New generation very short range small missiles to defeat drones as well as lasers used over short distances to defeat drones and enemy munitions would probably need nuclear power for sustained useful fire power and all the optical and radar and sonar based systems for detecting an tracking threats, on, below, and above the water.

The Russians had the choice of the MiG-29M or the MiG-35 for the low cost 4th gen fighter and they chose the more expensive but more capable MiG-35.

They have not produced it in enormous numbers because they are on the verge of getting light cheap 5th gen single engined fighters that might not be very different in operational costs and purchase price to the MiG-35, but they wont know until they get these single engined fighters into the air and tested... claims are just claims until they can be proven.

The first iteration of the Su-27 was awful, but a quick redesign and it became a very very good aircraft... but even still Ukrainian Su-27s have not fared any better than Ukrainian MiG-29s against Russian air defences... which are formidable.

Frigate "Admiral Golovko" plan to hand over to the Navy on December 25

Source: https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/19549063

Krepost wrote:Frigate "Admiral Golovko" plan to hand over to the Navy on December 25

Source: https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/19549063

Rumor is that 3 more ships will raise the flag on that day.
The contenders are: Burya (Karakurt class), Naro-Fominsk (Buyan-M class), Lev Chernavin (pr12700 Alexandrit class) and Kronshtadt (Lada class).

Time will tell.

Putin takes part in the ceremony of raising flags on new ships of the Russian Navy

Golovoko accepted into the navy, along with Naro-Fominsk (Pr 21631) and Lev Chernavin (Pr 12700).

source

Final confirmation that the new marine gas turbines and gearbox trains fitted to the Golovko have been successful. Eat shit Zorya Mashproekt. Sorry about all those obliterated design offices and factory halls, but you clowns chose to go down the Nazi path, so don't cry when the inevitable happens.

Of course it is a good news, but it will be important to rebuild zorya as well after Nikolaev is liberated.

It could be first done as a joint venture between Saturn , Kolomna and ZVEZDA and maybe they could concentrate on reductor gears and diesel engines and later also on production of naval and  energy aeroderivati e gas turbines in cooperation with Saturn and Perm engines.

Russia needs anyway to start a centre of excellence for production of new generation diesel engines, and this could be a good starting point.

There are already other ships that have problems due to slow pace of construction of diesel engines and or lack new modern diesel of russian production.

As far as the engines for 22350 (and other ships)

Zvezda (Sankt Petersburg) produces the reduction gears for the 22350 and the high speed diesel for the 22800 corvettes (very old design)

 Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Plant (Moscow region) is producing (in addition to locomotive engines) also the medium speed diesels for 20380, 22350 and for some submarines.

And Saturn (Rybinsk) is doing the new naval gas turbines.

Problems with the construction of Project 22350 frigates

I am not even surprised anymore. The shipyards underbid each other to gain the contracts. Then when they deliver the ships the cost increased. The government isn't interested in paying more than originally contracted. A lot of these shipyards are owned by private interests who took over government assets for pennies when the Soviet Union collapsed. And they don't pay their utilities bills, loans to government owned banks, etc. Eventually these companies will all be nationalized but thus far it has been happening really slowly.

This is the owner composition of Severnaya Verf according to Russian Wikipedia:

As of 07/01/2011:
    JSC "Western Shipbuilding Center" - 20.96%
    CJSC "EXTRALINE" - 21.63%
    Limited Liability Company "Northern Design Bureau" - has the right to dispose of more than 20 percent of the total number of votes
    OJSC "EFeS Northern Verf" - has the right to dispose of more than 20 percent of the total number of votes
    OJSC "Machine Building of the Northern Verf" - has the right to dispose of more than 20 percent of the total number of votes

As of 04/2008 the company has two main shareholders:
    "United Industrial Corporation" - 72.19%,
    The state represented by OJSC "Western Shipbuilding Center" - 20.96%.

Problems with the production of gearboxes for Project 22350 frigates

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4802509.html

George1 wrote:Problems with the production of gearboxes for Project 22350 frigates
https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4802509.html

This article has several errors. Zvezda created a new facility to make reduction gears. This was used to make the reduction gears for the Project 22350 (starting from the 3rd ship) and Project 20386 (the initial ship was to be called Mercury but it was later renamed to Derzky).

Complete propulsion complexes for Admiral Golovko and Admiral Isakov were already delivered by UEC to the shipbuilder.

It turns out that one of the reasons for the delays in delivering propulsion units for the other remaining Project 22350 ships was that UEC basically tried to drip feed the advance payments. Zvezda is claiming that contractual time to deliver the reduction gear to UEC can only be counted after the last advance payment is done. And the court judge ruled on their side.

Just for information a M55R propulsion unit consists of a M90FR UEC Saturn gas turbine with a 10D49 Kolomna diesel engine mated together with a RO55R Zvezda reduction gear. The overall contrator for the M55R propulsion unit is UEC. A Project 22350 frigate has two such propulsion units.

Project 20386 has a different propulsion unit. I think it is gas turbine electric. Two M90FR UEC Saturn gas turbines with a 6RP Zvezda reduction gear and some sort of electric power plant.

There was also a lawsuit against Zvezda for delays with delivering the reduction gear for Project 20386. But since this was a prototype you can hardly blame them for having some delays.

Because of substantial delays by Zvezda in deliveries of engines to the Navy, the government basically kicked the former owner out of the company, and it is now owned by Ural Diesel Motor Zavod.

lancelot wrote:
It turns out that one of the reasons for the delays in delivering propulsion units for the other remaining Project 22350 ships was that UEC basically tried to drip feed the advance payments. Zvezda is claiming that contractual time to deliver the reduction gear to UEC can only be counted after the last advance payment is done. And the court judge ruled on their side.

http://tinyurl.com/4vsrrcp2

Actually I don't agree with the court ruling...

When you order something you are going to pay for in separate payments... especially a custom made item, you normally make the payments to start production so that if the order is cancelled the you get paid for the work you did.

The first payments pay for setting up and starting making your item whatever it is... I would be very pissed off if I ordered curtains to be made for a house and I pay in three month installments and on my last payment find out they can't get the fabric I want because they only started making the curtains when they got my last payment.

Claiming holding back money is a scam because you keep the interest for the money till it is transferred makes no sense because in this case the money would need to be allocated for the job... by paying in payments that money will be allocated in separate budgets and would not be sitting anywhere earning interest.

In fact it would suggest the opposite... the company making the products wants up front payments so they can put money into the bank and earn interest drawing out money for the build as they need it.

They do need to improve things to make things make more sense... I think privatisation was a bad idea because the Russian MIC is not allowed to make the sort of profits they make in the west so it will never be as profitable as many seem to think.

The 4-5% profit from each project would barely cover all the stuff they would have to pay for including investments in new technology and training and facility upkeep etc etc.

They could only really survive on export orders where there is more profit margin.

Sometimes free market competition is a good idea, but in things like the MIC or education or healthcare then public funded makes the most sense and gives the public the best value for money. 4-5% profit is just fine for a public company... a public company is not about profit.... it is about employment and spending government money on military projects in Russia.

GarryB wrote:Actually I don't agree with the court ruling...

When you order something you are going to pay for in separate payments... especially a custom made item, you normally make the payments to start production so that if the order is cancelled the you get paid for the work you did.

The first payments pay for setting up and starting making your item whatever it is... I would be very pissed off if I ordered curtains to be made for a house and I pay in three month installments and on my last payment find out they can't get the fabric I want because they only started making the curtains when they got my last payment.

I agree with Garry.

With my suppliers (for something like medium design and make orders) I normally have a payment of something like 10% at the start, 30% after reaching a certain milestones in design, an additional 30% before manufacturing start and the rest after delivery.

For  smaller order (only production of small parts under our design) instead we pay after delivery.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:With my suppliers (for something like medium design and make orders) I normally have a payment of something like 10% at the start, 30% after reaching a certain milestones in design, an additional 30% before manufacturing start and the rest after delivery.

For  smaller order (only production of small parts under our design) instead we pay after delivery.

It all sounds fine and dandy until you realize a company like Zvezda isn't flush with cash to begin with. They have been bankrupt before. They are the only supplier. And the client needs these gears for serially produced ships for a state defense order. This is not the first time Zvezda are making gears for Project 22350 either. So the client knows they can deliver the product, and the time and cost to make it is well established. They should have a proper long term contract for series production instead of trying to penny pinch and order in single units like this. Long lead items, this is claimed to take 19 months to make, also should be ordered well in advance.

That is fair enough but equally the Russian Navy has a fixed budget and money for things doesn't fall from the sky, it has to be planned and allocated so handing over the entire amount at once can lead to CEOs misusing the funds and then asking for more.

They essentially seem to be ordering a product and paying installments so the company making the product doesn't have to fund everything out of their own pockets.

Breaking down the costs of production in the contract should mean they know how much they need at each step and not handing it all over at once means you can spread the price of the order over time which saves the Navy money.

I am sure the companies making the productions would rather get the entire payment all at once and they can put it into an account and as they draw money out of it they can continue to receive interest on the remaining amount... not to mention they can make loans and buy tooling ahead of schedule when it might be cheaper or easier to get, or prepay some services to ensure they are available in the time window they need them for, but it also can lead to some managers getting nice bonuses and trips to do research on something important etc etc.

They need to work it out so neither side is suffering because both sides of the equation need to be healthy and functioning efficiently if they want a good result.

Paying money upfront almost never solves any problems, and runs the risk of corruption... especially with privately owned companies that are in the red.

Nationalise them and then fix them.

Wish the west would hurry up and steal Russias assets abroad... then they can just sweep through and seize the assets and shares of westerners that are holding Russian companies hostage...