Russian Navy: Status and News #5

I'm amused that you think a Pantsir missile has an effective range of 40kms You might be able to lob one on a parabolic arc and cover that distance but you won't hit anything...

Pantsir is a CIWS. Redut is a full fledged medium range AAM.

Replace the Furke radar by all means, as the adoption of more powerful radars will give extra capabilities to Redut.

Isos wrote:

Big_Gazza wrote:I'm amused that you think a Pantsir missile has an effective range of 40kms   You might be able to lob one on a parabolic arc and cover that distance but you won't hit anything...

Pantsir is a CIWS. Redut is a full fledged medium range AAM.

Replace the Furke radar by all means, as the adoption of more powerful radars will give extra capabilities to Redut.

Unless they can use the 150km 9m96, the air defence of this ship will mainly be used against antiship missiles.

Detection of low flying missile is within 40km range only so a pantsir is enough and allow more missiles than the 12 redut.

If they can use the 150km 9m96 then keep the redut but if it is limited to the 40km one go for a pantsir because in reality it won't change a lot the capability of the ship but will carry more missiles.

Does the new mast with Zaslon radar allow the use of 120 km missile?

The other problem, anyway, is that the number of VLS cells
Is limited... 12 Redut cells means up to 48 short range 9M100 missiles, but if you mix there also the medium to long range 9M96 the number of missiles carried would be quite low...

Possibly it could be worth anyway to replace the current (Gun only) CIWS AK-630 with a missile /gun CIWS with Kortik (Kashtan) CIWS, unless they even decide to put the state of the art pantsir...

I'm amused that you think a Pantsir missile has an effective range of 40kms Very Happy You might be able to lob one on a parabolic arc and cover that distance but you won't hit anything...

The current 20km range ones have claimed kills out to their designed 20km in Syria.
https://www.russiadefence.net/t1878p675-pantsir-s1-news-thread#202820
Based on Syria experience they're doing upgrades to Pantsir-S1M with new 30km range missiles.

The new generation Pantsir-SM will have new 40km range missiles, same on the naval Pantsir-M -> 40km.

Honestly it seems kinda crazy for what was supposed to be a point-defense system to be expanded to Medium range capability, would seem more important to focus on improving the sub 15km range capability to me but its not me making the decisions

Does the new mast with Zaslon radar allow the use of 120 km missile?

The quoted specs are 1m^2 target at 75km so it should be be able to properly utilise the 60km missile.
But 120km is not going to be much use unless in some kind of cooperative engagement scenario, maybe somewhat useful vs P-8s?

I start by saying that i believe that some of the posts here, this one included, could be moved to "Naval Air Defence systems" thread.


Anyway in the most basic concept the choice of the main air defense system for low/mid displacement ships (from light corvettes to light frigates) is guided by principally two main operational tasks and obviosly the relative cost of in terms of realization/manteinace/ammo-replenishment  :

1) Self defense anti-munition role.
2) Broader area-denial air-defense useable also for ship-group colaborative engagement.

While for low tonnage ships the choice of an high performance short range self-defense system or very high performance short-to-medium range AD system -such as the Панцирь-М could appear by far the best choice in terms of capitalization of the limited hull's volume, sensor capabilities and cost for unit and single interceptor in countering enemy high-cost antiship missiles we must taking into account that the choice instead of an air defense system of medium to long range with vertical launchers ,active radar homing and ship-group integrated target designation such as Полимент/Редут allow all ship of a group to fully contribute to the defeat of the air attack and/or the dilution of the density of ther delivered anti-ship munitions even if purposely arranged to coming all from one sector to saturate the capability of a single ship of the group.


Let examine some of the most important technical design choices behind some of the characteristics of the previously named air defense systems:

Панцирь-М system has been designed (like the Каштан-М before it) with a four interceptor missile for side, instead of the 6 of the ground based systrem ,this apparently odd choice follow instead an anti-saturation concept; in facts the system boast a 32/48 missile under-hull interceptor's storage over the 8 ready to fire that can be authomatically and independently recharged in a group of four for each side, moreover at significantly reduced times in comparison with the old Каштан-М .

Here some data of the reduced performance export systems.
http://www.kbptula.ru/ru/razrabotki-kbp/kompleksy-pvo/pantsir-me

Because the number of contemporaneously engaged targets for each Панцирь-М is  just four the system employ all the four on a side and immediately begin to replace them ,from its 32 missiles under hull storage, while those four interceptors are guided toward theirs targets , in the main time if other targets of a anti-ship missile salvo are present the system employ the four ready missiles on the other side and begin to replace them and so on and on.    

Anyone can easily understand how  this elegant solution witht he standard two Панцирь-М installations allow the use of 80/112 low-cost interceptors and four 6-barrel rotary 10000 rounds/min capable auto-cannons, with performance characteristics significantly higher than ground based counterpart, to defend a relatively low tonnage ships from terribly high cost missiles such as LRASM or NSM excluding ECM and soft-kill ship mounted defense systems; the efficiency of this system obviously benify greatly from the new hypersonic interceptor with vastly increased range recently introduced, that will "free" the engagement channels of the Панцирь-М in few seconds while downing the targets much farther from the ship.  

While a pair of Панцирь-М can go a very long way in render almost practically and cost/time of production-wise unrealisable an attack with missiles such as LRASM on a domestic corvette or frigate (just for example the entire year procurement plan of LRASM for the FY 2021 is of 56 missiles at a cost of 224,4 mln dollars o a bit more of 4 mln dollar for single missile !!)

https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_Weapons.pdf

on the other side it will not provide any kind, of very limited, area defense capability -both for sea and coastal targets- neither the necessary stand-off distance against other more subtle air menaces like jamming aircraft and air-delivered anti-radar missiles that could degrade the single ship or group of ship cababilities to defend themselves while remaining safely outside engagement range if the unique system present would be Панцирь-М.

The mere presence of some ships with the system Редут mounted would force the jamming aircraft well outside the range where the density of the jamming signal would be capable to effectively interfere with the integrated radar sensors of the ships for not say render suicide a mission foreseeing the employment of relatively low cost planning bombs or very high-cost anti-radiation missiles.

H I Sutton
@CovertShores
·
4h
Interesting. Submarines however, will continue to *increasingly* provide the blue water reach


The number of Russian large ocean-going warships is to decrease significantly by 2027. This development and the prospects for large naval vessel construction were discussed at the end of 2019, at a special meeting of the Naval High Command, local military media disclosed on 14 February.

At the end of the State Armaments Programme (GPV) 2018-2027, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov should remain in operation.

The Kirov-class Orlan nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, flagship of the Northern Fleet, and possibly the Atlant-class missile cruisers Moskva (first of class) and Varyag will undergo refits and upgrades.

Russia is troubled by delays to both large naval vessel construction and the acceptance of launched naval vessels that remain undergoing trials and are yet to be commissioned. The delays seem more pronounced than in other navies. As elsewhere, construction capacity has become finite. New yards are being built in the Far East. Further construction capacity was acquired with the annexation of Crimea, but mostly for smaller vessels.

Orders are on the books for the construction of additional Yasen-M nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines and Lada-class diesel-electric submarines. According to sources cited by Flot.com on 14 February, by 2027, the Russian Navy should receive at least six of the latest Project 22350 Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates and probably at least one of the modified Project 22350M series frigates currently under construction.

Naval amphibious forces will be supplemented by two improved Ivan Gren-class landing ships. They should also be joined by two Universal Landing Ships to be laid down by the Zaliv shipyard in Crimea in May 2020.

https://www.janes.com/article/94464/russian-navy-ocean-going-warship-numbers-to-be-radically-reduced?socialmedia=twitter

This guy is obviously a politician.

Jack Detsch
@JackDetsch_ALM

Supreme NATO allied commander Gen. Tod Wolters admits that the Pentagon doesn't have full visibility of Russian submarine deployments in the Atlantic Ocean: "We do, but not for 100% of the time."

JohninMK wrote:H I Sutton
@CovertShores
·
4h
Interesting. Submarines however, will continue to *increasingly* provide the blue water reach


The number of Russian large ocean-going warships is to decrease significantly by 2027. This development and the prospects for large naval vessel construction were discussed at the end of 2019, at a special meeting of the Naval High Command, local military media disclosed on 14 February.

At the end of the State Armaments Programme (GPV) 2018-2027, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov should remain in operation.

The Kirov-class Orlan nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, flagship of the Northern Fleet, and possibly the Atlant-class missile cruisers Moskva (first of class) and Varyag will undergo refits and upgrades.

Russia is troubled by delays to both large naval vessel construction and the acceptance of launched naval vessels that remain undergoing trials and are yet to be commissioned. The delays seem more pronounced than in other navies. As elsewhere, construction capacity has become finite. New yards are being built in the Far East. Further construction capacity was acquired with the annexation of Crimea, but mostly for smaller vessels.

Orders are on the books for the construction of additional Yasen-M nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines and Lada-class diesel-electric submarines. According to sources cited by Flot.com on 14 February, by 2027, the Russian Navy should receive at least six of the latest Project 22350 Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates and probably at least one of the modified Project 22350M series frigates currently under construction.

Naval amphibious forces will be supplemented by two improved Ivan Gren-class landing ships. They should also be joined by two Universal Landing Ships to be laid down by the Zaliv shipyard in Crimea in May 2020.

https://www.janes.com/article/94464/russian-navy-ocean-going-warship-numbers-to-be-radically-reduced?socialmedia=twitter

I do not believe the situation for blue sea ships wi be really worse than the current. Sovremenny class destroyers practically do not exists anymore in the fleet, and there are only 2 slava class cruiser active (even if they plan to do a basic overhaul operation on Moskva, to keep her alive until 2030.

But yeah, finally they are buidling new ships capable of operating far from home.

even if it is not a destroyer, and more limited in endurance, admiral Gorshkov frigate went in a nice tour around the world last year. Such ships can be a good replacement in capabilty if not in Size for the soviet era Destroyers.

And Gorshkov M probably can replace even Slava class cruisers...we just need to see when they can actually start building them...

By 2027 we can expect at least 8 22350 frigates and maybe one or two 22350M. In addition they are overhauling and modernizing the udaloys. Those should survive until 2032 at least.

As we wrote before, they just need to start building blue sea vessels in more than one shipyard.

JohninMK wrote:This guy is obviously a politician.

Jack Detsch
@JackDetsch_ALM

Supreme NATO allied commander Gen. Tod Wolters admits that the Pentagon doesn't have full visibility of Russian submarine deployments in the Atlantic Ocean: "We do, but not for 100% of the time."

Congratulations Mr. Politician-Man, you just discovered purpose of submarines

Honestly it seems kinda crazy for what was supposed to be a point-defense system to be expanded to Medium range capability, would seem more important to focus on improving the sub 15km range capability to me but its not me making the decisions

The tubes they use for the missiles and the two stage missile design means there is plenty of potential to extend the range, so making longer ranged missiles means you can start engaging enemy threats earlier in the engagement making the system rather harder to overwhelm, and in fact capable of engaging some launch platforms as well as just the munitions they are launching. They are also improving their sub 15km capacity with the quad missiles in each missile tube which fairly efficiently improves close in engagement performance and capacity to take on large numbers of threats at one time.

TOR is being improved to engage 32km range targets too so I suspect there is a clear requirement to engage out to serious distances with these systems.

It is also important to bear in mind that Pantsir and TOR use command guided missiles which means DIRCMs are totally ineffective as are flares and chaff... most targets have no defence from such missiles and that includes F-35s...

I start by saying that i believe that some of the posts here, this one included, could be moved to "Naval Air Defence systems" thread.

Will do.

OK after looking at the posts I decided to remove the comparison Russian/US/Chinese navy thread and leave the air defence related thread as I think comparing navies is a separate topic from a thread about the Russian navy development and news, while the intricacies air defence missile types is directly related to Russian Navy development and news, so this thread keeps the discussion on Pantsirs vs S-350 and loses the discussion about who has the biggest dick... Russia, US or China....

The latter has been moved to here

Regarding the Redut launchers the ones fitted to the corvettes and frigates so far have enormous tube liners when loaded with 9M96 missiles.

It is the equivalent of taking an S-400 four tube launcher on the back of a truck and replacing one large full size S-400 missile (like the 250km or 400km range models) with a single launch tube for a 9M96 (the 40km or 140km range models).

Now it is possible that these missiles are special and need lots of wiring and space around them to work but that makes me wonder why the 9M96 launch tubes fitted to S-400 launchers can be loaded four tubes in the space of one of the larger missiles.

If that can be used on Redut that means four missiles per hatch so we are talking about 48 missiles per launcher for the 140km and 40km range 9M96 missile types, plus the capacity for 192 missiles of the much smaller 9M100 which fit four missiles per 9M96 missile, or 12 x 4 x 4 = 192 missiles.

The combination of 140km range missiles and 40km range missiles would deal with aircraft... target information could come from other platforms including UAV carried by the ship itself as these missiles are ARH and could engage targets outside the direct line of sight of ship based sensors. The 10-15km range lock on after launch 9M100 missiles with a datalink back to the launch platform should be rather realistic because they are basically talking about the same guidance with the Hermes 100km range air to surface missile... a thermal EO seeker with a datalink back to the launch platform and very high speed etc etc...

Of course having said that Pantsir is an excellent system and could be loaded with those quad missiles for hitting small drone targets in swarms and the missiles themselves are command guided so they are incredibly cheap... you could carry a shipping crate on the deck with extra missiles for them if you need them... there is potential for a HMG mount with SOSNA missiles mounted too as a cheap simple line of sight very high speed missile that could be hand loaded at about 35kgs each in their tubes...

TOR is being improved to engage 32km range targets

Oh I missed that, wow.

If they can get the 12* Redut into doing quad-pack properly then Zaslon-Redut would be serious kit for a ~2000ton light frigate.

vital for Pacific because they will be used predominantly for guarding White Sea bastion from hostile subs which neither requires UKSK nor endurance,

Actually the UKSK launch tubes can hold 91RE1 anti sub ballistic rockets to engage enemy subs 40-50km away in a minute or two, and could also be loaded with anti ship missiles in case the enemy decides to send some surface ships too...

UKSK launchers just make the ship more flexible and are the way forward for Russian ships in the future.

Oh I missed that, wow.

It was in the Combat Approved video on Youtube on the programme about the TOR system.

As reported previously TASS sources in the shipbuilding industry, the tonnage of new ships for the Russian Navy class will be 25 thousand tons, the maximum length is about 220 m. a Single Russian UDC will carry on Board more than 20 heavy helicopters, get the camera dock for landing craft and can carry up to 900 Marines.

Nice...

Well that is true, but having your corvettes carrying UKSK launchers is a force multiplier... any surface ship force anywhere can have missiles added that they can't use effectively on their own... there is no way a corvette could use 2,500km range land attack cruise missiles against point targets effectively on their own... they need an enormous C4IR network from the special forces on the ground detecting radio and cell phone communications or satellite or drone footage of specific people entering a building or certain materials delivered to a building which suggests it is storing weapons or making bombs or is a comms centre or HQ... once the coordinates are worked out and a flight path determined then any old platform can launch a calibre missile... but if you only have UKSK launchers on your cruisers and destroyers then they wont have that many in service.

By adding them to their corvettes it does increases costs, but you could make cheap models of Kh-35 to launch from these tubes so they can be cheaply armed and be effective for a range of roles, but when needed you can use them to support larger ships with more useful weapons...

Even a Ka-27 can't deliver a torpedo 40kms distant at a speed of mach 2 like the 91ER1 can... the sub will first hear it is under attack when the torpedo splashes into the water perhaps 1km or less from its current position. In comparison a torpedo launch from 40km away gives you rather more warning... the speed of sound in water is 1.6km/s so 40km / 1.6 = 25 so 25 seconds after the sub launches a torpedo the target sub could hear it, but at 50knts, which is about 70km/h means your average torpedo will take half an hour to cover 40km...

Off to a sunshine cruise in the Med perhaps? Certainly out to where their contents could be used.

Capt(N)
@Capt_Navy
·
1h
#ВМФ #ЧФ
Flag of Russia
#Russian #Navy RFS 494 'Admiral Grigorovich' and RFS 499 ‘Admiral Makarov' , a Admiral Grigorovich Class frigates of project 11356 leaving #Sevastopol harbor, right now,on 27 February  2020.

Some of the recently or soon to be delivered stuff.

Not really news i supose, but found these amatuer videos of the carrier Minsk. Nowdays abandoned it seems.  What a waste of carrier that could have served many years longer.

Well, the Russians could perhaps buy her back from china if they really wanted to. The Chinese don't care much for the ship but at this stage just not worth the money you'd have to put into her.

SeigSoloyvov wrote:Well, the Russians could perhaps buy her back from china if they really wanted to. The Chinese don't care much for the ship but at this stage just not worth the money you'd have to put into her.

if the Russians really wanted, they would have kept and modernised Admiral Gorshkov (ex Baku) instead of selling it to India.

Minsk was laid down 10 years before Baku, and in the 90s they had a lot of ocean capable ships, but no money for them.

It is absurd however that most of these ships were still quite young when sold as scraps for basically no money.

Anyway, a proper and modern helicopter carrier would be much more useful for the Russian navy than a modernised Kiev class.

In addition building one from scratches is probably easier cheaper on the long term than trying to restore and modernise a ship that has been left to rot for more than 20 years.

Just as a reference, they spent a couple of billion dollars (even if a part of those was for the air wing) and 8 years to modernise Admiral Gorshkov into INS Vikramaditya.

In that time, if you have the facilities you can build a brand new carrier.

The work was anyway useful, because st least someone in Russia has relative recent experience in buidling and upgrading a carrier...

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:Just as a reference, they spent a couple of billion dollars (even if a part of those was for the air wing) and 8 years to modernise Admiral Gorshkov into INS Vikramaditya.

Consider the comparable Indian carrier Vikrant that has taken 10+ years and 3.6B as of last year (and isn't expected to be commissioned until 2021, ie 12-13 years since being laid down).  The Vikramaditya was a bargain by comparison.

That said, the Minsk is floating scrap. If the Chinese don't want it then she'll be off to the breakers yards.

Big_Gazza wrote:

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:Just as a reference, they spent a couple of billion dollars (even if a part of those was for the air wing) and 8 years to modernise Admiral Gorshkov into INS Vikramaditya.

Consider the comparable Indian carrier Vikrant that has taken 10+ years and 3.6B as of last year (and isn't expected to be commissioned until 2021, ie 12-13 years since being laid down).  The Vikramaditya was a bargain by comparison.

That said, the Minsk is floating scrap.  If the Chinese don't want it then she'll be off to the breakers yards.

Well, the indians are not really the world leading champion of shipbuilding.

Let's say that the main problems with Vikramaditya was probably on the communication, P.R. and commercial sides.

Russia probably should have known about the Indian behavior of bad mouthing even loyal suppliers and be more clear from the start about timescales and costs.

I don't negate the fact that India got a decent carrier for a good price, even if with some delays on the established delivery. The problem is that Russia promised an impossibly low price and put itself in the position of being criticizable...


By the way, I read that the Indians probably put on hold the idea of acquiring a third carrier, saying that acquisition of nuclear submarines will take the precedence..

This could play well for the Russians, especially if they finalize in the meanwhile a design for a carrier based on a modernized Ulyanovsk.

In the meanwhile, there are better uses of a few billion dollars than trying to resuscitate, modify and modernise Minsk, considering that with the same money they can build probably 3 or 4 Gorshkov class frigates AND a couple of LHD/helicopter carriers

Just to have an idea about price I saw that an export version of the proposed supercarrier 23000 class would have been around 5.5 billions dollars (possibly including also part of the development cost). Unless they underestimated the expenses a slightly smaller 65000 to 75000 tons ship (like Ulyanovsk) should be cheaper.
Furthermore splitting part of the development cost among more ships, including ideally one or two for India would make a huge difference...