Project 1164 Atlant: Slava Class cruiser

If that billion is spend on Russian parts and Russian Labour who cares?

It means the Russian Navy gets a big ship and if they made it from scratch they would make it as small as they could to make it as cheap as they could.

This way they will get a much better ship and the money spent will go to the shipyards so they can improve their skills on an old boat.

Any major improvements they make could be applied to other in service boats of that type.

It might have Bazalt but I suspect they will change that to Vulkan as that is made by a Russian company.

Hopefully with their standardisation programs in place they will unify the electronics and weapons and propulsion with existing Slava class vessels and will replace the large Bazalt missiles in angled launchers with a large number of UKSK vertical launch tubes for many more missiles.

The reduction in size of electronics and other equipment might allow for the refit... because the old Bazalt launchers sat on the deck, whereas the new vertical launch bins take up space below deck. Perhaps a bit more automation to reduce the crew size and free up some more space might help?

I think the standardisation will work both ways... in building and in operation.

A good ground up redesign with all new electronics and weapons can be applied to all the Slava class vessels they have, which means what they do to this Ukrainian ship they can also do to the Slava class vessels in Russian Navy service too (AFAIK they have 3 vessels so this Ukrainian addition will make a nice round figure of 4).

This will make the upgrade cheaper and they can optimise the upgrade and will likely be quite efficient by the time they do the last vessel.

The obvious other benefit is that you end up with a group of ships that use all the same standard stuff as the other new ships in your fleet which increases production of specific components which should reduce costs, both to buy, to fit, to use, and to maintain, and also operations costs and training costs and maintainence costs will be reduced because you learn how to maintain the main guns on one vessel and get transferred to a different class and it has the same gun connected to the same sensors... etc etc.

Any news about admiral lobov slava class crusiser fate?

What kind of new systems could involve a future modernization of slava class cruisers?

Current armament:
Anti-ship Missiles: 16(8x2) P-1000
Long Range SAM: 64(8x8) S-300F
Point Defense: 40(2x20) Osa-M
Artillery Guns: 1x2 AK-130 130mm
CIWS: 6x AK-630
Torpedoes: 10(2x5) 533mm


Redut SAM could be fitted?
And Naval Pantsir to replace Osa-M

What kind of new systems could involve a future modernization of slava class cruisers?

Current armament:
Anti-ship Missiles: 16(8x2) P-1000
Long Range SAM: 64(8x8) S-300F
Point Defense: 40(2x20) Osa-M
Artillery Guns: 1x2 AK-130 130mm
CIWS: 6x AK-630
Torpedoes: 10(2x5) 533mm


Redut SAM could be fitted?
And Naval Pantsir to replace Osa-M

The standard armament for future Russian vessels is UKSK launchers for anti ship, anti sub, and land attack missiles, so UKSK launchers would replace P-1000. Redut is currently the SAM option, though there is a possibility that UKSK could be adapted to SAMs as well.
In terms of artillery they have 130mm guns in a stealthy lightened turret called A-192M, or the new 152mm guns being based on the joint Coalition programme.

It all depends on how much they want to spend and when they want to do it. Do it now and they could do a cheap and simple upgrade. Wait 5 years and do a more expensive and more thorough upgrade.
Personally I think the best solution is to do both a simple and cheap upgrade now with new electronics, and in 5-10 years time apply a more thorough upgrade with new technologies that will be cheaper then.

GarryB wrote:

What kind of new systems could involve a future modernization of slava class cruisers?

Current armament:
Anti-ship Missiles: 16(8x2) P-1000
Long Range SAM: 64(8x8) S-300F
Point Defense: 40(2x20) Osa-M
Artillery Guns: 1x2 AK-130 130mm
CIWS: 6x AK-630
Torpedoes: 10(2x5) 533mm


Redut SAM could be fitted?
And Naval Pantsir to replace Osa-M

The standard armament for future Russian vessels is UKSK launchers for anti ship, anti sub, and land attack missiles, so UKSK launchers would replace P-1000.

P-1000 missiles are not vertical. If they replace them that means they must rebuild the ships

Quite true, but the Vulkan is a Russian missile so they might just keep producing them for the remaining Slavas.

Of course at the end of the day the Slava had a lot of electronics in her and was intended as the cheap option if the Kirovs failed as a flagship. This suggests a lot of internal space could be freed up simply by removing the old obsolete electronics and extra crew and make a deep upgrade possible.

They could just keep the Vulkans as it is an impressive missile, but fitting UKSK should reduce the top weight of the ship and improve performance dramatically. Just replacing the myriad of radars and sensors with a main AESA will simplify and modernise the design dramatically.

Of course in a deep modernisation they would need to replace the propulsion with a nuclear unit... there is no point in operating conventional powered Slavas in carrier groups where even the destroyers are nukes.

A carrier group moves as far and as fast as its slowest shortest range element, so the point of going nuke is to increase speed and make range unlimited.

GarryB wrote:Quite true, but the Vulkan is a Russian missile so they might just keep producing them for the remaining Slavas.

Of course at the end of the day the Slava had a lot of electronics in her and was intended as the cheap option if the Kirovs failed as a flagship. This suggests a lot of internal space could be freed up simply by removing the old obsolete electronics and extra crew and make a deep upgrade possible.

They could just keep the Vulkans as it is an impressive missile, but fitting UKSK should reduce the top weight of the ship and improve performance dramatically. Just replacing the myriad of radars and sensors with a main AESA will simplify and modernise the design dramatically.

Of course in a deep modernisation they would need to replace the propulsion with a nuclear unit... there is no point in operating conventional powered Slavas in carrier groups where even the destroyers are nukes.

A carrier group moves as far and as fast as its slowest shortest range element, so the point of going nuke is to increase speed and make range unlimited.

Is it worthy such a radical and costly modernization for 3 ships?
It is more preferable to get start with the new cruiser with such money which will have much more strike capability

The thing is that they are working hard on Destroyers right now and they likely wont complete that design till this year or next year let alone lay down a hull and start serial production.

A new, from scratch design needs to be built and tested thoroughly before you can start cranking them out in the numbers you need.

They need lots of Corvettes, several dozen Frigates, and 20-30 destroyers pretty soon to replace retiring and obsolete vessels. What with carriers and of course all the support ships and infrastructure needed to operate them I doubt they will be building cruisers till after 2025, and they will have Mistral class carriers in 5 years or less that will need large ships to support its operations.

The short term solution is a minor upgrade of Kirov and Slava class vessels.

Nothing radical, but get rid of stuff you can't support like Granit from the Kirovs and give them an electronics suite that will allow them to communicate with other Russian navy assets.
For Slava replacing the Vulkans with UKSK launcher bins is a bit radical because the Vulkans are obviously external and the UKSK is internal.

In the short term moderate upgrades will make both vessel classes more useful than they already are without costing so much that they can't afford other things they need like the smaller ships or the carriers they need the big ships for.

In the longer term the obsolete weapons and equipment on the moderately upgraded large ships will become more and more expensive to support, so a more intensive upgrade will be warranted.

They will need a new compact and powerful nuclear propulsion system for their new carriers and the Kuznetsov, so by 2020 they will have perfected its design and already put it in the K and tested it, so if it works then putting it in the new carriers as well as the Kirovs and Slavas should make a unified fleet with unified weapons and sensors and propulsion... the benefits of commmonality outweigh the initial costs of doing it.

Project 21956 is considered a cruiser class.

Project 21956 is considered a cruiser class.

It is considered to have the firepower of a cruiser... just the same as an OSA class missile corvette was considered to have the firepower of a WWII battleship with its SS-N-2 anti ship missiles.

That doesn't mean the OSA can perform the roles of a WWII battleship, nor does it mean this new destroyer can perform the role of a cruiser.

Putting a nuclear reactor into the 1164s, might as well build new cruiser from scratch

The new reactors will likely last 30 years without refueling, so it might be the case that they are made to be modular so they can be plugged in like a battery. This would mean you could have propulsion pods instead of huge heavy drive shafts and gears. With electric motors and infinite gearing the vessels would become much more manouverable, and more importantly the heavy reactor and all its shielding can be positioned low in the ship near its centre and positioned like ballast.

On a normal vessel the propulsion goes at the end of the drive shaft and you need to place ballast around the ship to balance it so that it is stable in the water. As the vessel consumes fuel and ammo the balance shifts so you need to be able to shift a percentage of ballast to maintain the balance. By using the reactor as ballast you greatly reduce the amount of dead weight on the ship and make it lighter, so it displaces less than it would otherwise displace... making it faster.

There is no point having nuclear powered carriers zipping around the planet at 35knts+ if the cruisers that are supposed to be protecting it can only manage that speed for 4,000NM before they have to refuel... or in the case of the Kirov class 2,000NM before they run out of fuel and their speed drops down to 16Knts on old nuclear only power.

They are building 10 SSBNs and 10 SSNs with nuclear propulsion between now and 2020... they are likely putting another nuke power plant in the Kuznetsov... I think it would be pretty stupid to not put one in the two Kirov and three Slavas they are keeping.

And if nuclear reactors are all that expensive... how could developing a new cruiser from scratch with a nuclear reactor be cheaper? Putting one into an existing vessel will not be without risks but it should be much faster?

Remember I am suggesting a superficial upgrade and then a later much much deeper upgrade on ships that have largely been kept semi operational. This is not the Gorshkov carrier that sat on a dock for 15 years.

21956 is dead for all practical reasons, and Russian navy was never interested in it. What will the new destroyer look like? Maybe scaled up 22350? Or if Garry is right and it ends up being nuclear powered, I imagine the dimensions will be different.

If current practises are anything to go by they will try to cram as much as possible into the ship as they can... Frigates look like destroyers, so can we assume destroyers will have the weapons and sensors of cruisers?

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I think russia would benefit from selling the admiral lobov to the chinese so they can repair it for their fleet just like they did with the varyag. I doubt the chinese woudnt be happy to get their cruiser. Such a waste to scrap such a large magnificent vessel almost completed for nothing

admiral lobov is Ukrainian my commissar