Upgraded Kirov class: Project 11442 [Admiral Nakhimov]

As pointed out by Podlodka77 the upgrade consisted of replacing the 20 tubes for Granits with ten UKSK launchers, each UKSK launcher can carry up to 8 missiles, so ten launchers means 80 missiles... but that includes anti ship and land attack and anti sub missile options so it is very unlikely to carry only Zircons or only Calibrs or only Otvets (anti sub weapons).

The SAMs include replacing long range (S-300F) and short range (naval TOR and naval Pantsir missiles).

The original ships carried 96 x S-300 type missiles and about 64 naval TOR missiles together with 6 Kashtan gun/missile mounts with about 32 missiles each.

That adds up to 96 plus 64 plus 192, which is just over 350... most of which are short range point defence missiles.

Now the old missiles are rather big and could be replaced with smaller more compact weapons that could be carried in much greater numbers... the naval TOR system for instance could be doubled to 128 simply by using the new missiles that are half the size and with better performance and range (15km vs 12km and 16 ready to use missiles instead of 8 on the ground vehicle version.)

We know the upgraded ship will be carrying 80 anti ship or anti sub or land attack missiles in 80 tubes, but we don't really have any concrete numbers or types for SAMs.

They might even have a laser system for defeating drones within 5km or so like they have on land... and brand new mini SAMs they are developing that are designed to be carried in enormous numbers to defend against artillery or swarm attacks might not take forever to develop...

The naval tor system replaced the obsolete SS-N-14 anti sub system... they used torpedo tube launched SS-N-15 or 16 I think to replace them, so the space freed up was fitted with naval TOR missiles

OSA is certainly obsolete... but not a obsolete as the Sea Cat or Sea Slug SAMs were in the early 1980s in the Falklands conflict... they can still shoot down low flying subsonic threats effectively enough.

TOR are significantly better... and the newer TOR even more so.

The core point is that the Kirovs were huge partly because all the weapons they had to carry, but also because of the enormous amount of computing power they fitted inside it because it was going to be a command flagship managing the battle.

With upgraded electronics and systems... even a desktop computer from the late 1990s ( 166Khz pentium level processors) could replace mainframe computers from the 70s and 80s that were likely fitted to the ships... these days a cell phone has more processing power... not to mention air conditioning systems and other equipment is much smaller and more effective and efficient. Power cables haven't changed much but fibreoptic cables carry vastly more information over much thinner cables...

It would actually be rather fun to look at a Kirov class ship design and look at how things are now smaller and how you could re pack them to free up vast amounts of space for more weapons and of course automating many procedures and systems would mean a dramatic reduction in crew size allowing better comfort and more onboard food supplies for longer more comfortable journeys.

Better sensors and equipment and new things like optical jammers and lasers for shooting down small drones... and indeed the facitilies to launch and recover small drones of the sub surface, surface, and airborne variety...

Also the opportunity to test new weapons that the new destroyers and new crusiers might be using... remove the old 100mm guns or the twin 130mm guns depending on the model and put in a 152mm gun mount for testing. Try some radar controlled 57mm guns with air burst and guided rounds... upgrade the propulsion to test electric motors... test new nuke NPPs... spend money now to save money down the track.

If the gun fitted to the Zumwalt had been fitted to a normal destroyer they could have tested it and worked out the bugs and could have saved some embarrassment further down the track... testing all new stuff in a single ship makes trouble shooting thousands of different interrelated problems all at once almost impossible.

Proven components linking together is enough trouble shooting... don't make it worse with unproven components all going together for the first time.

92 (probably) S-300FM air defense silos

92 divides into 8 as 11.5, which is a rather odd number.

The original systems had 8 missiles under each hatch, making the missile total for the 12 hatches 96.

Even if they replace the rotary launch arrangement (which I think they should), they would likely massively change the number of missiles I would think... probably double the number at least... by fitting rows and rows of Redut launch tubes.

Now that they have their own oil tankers and are building more tankers and cargo ships they will need to increase the number of ships they have that can operate anywhere in the world...

They are going to have to massively expand their ship production capacity, so funding will have to be directed there too.

They will need to start working on new Destroyers and Cruisers pretty soon so I would think the two Orlan class ships they have would be an ideal opportunity to test new technology and systems for future ships to operate.

Testing things in the field is always better than in any lab and when you have a brand new ship where everything is new it becomes a nightmare to isolate problems and identify issues.

Testing things on other platforms makes a lot of sense and getting them right means less complication when testing other things.

I would say upgrading these large ships is an excellent opportunity to test some new 152mm gun mounts that could be used on new Destroyers and perhaps even new 203mm guns that could go on future cruisers with even greater range that can be used at sea and on land.

Missile launchers could be adapted and updated to hold much larger missiles or smaller missiles in multiples in each launch tube... Destroyers and Cruisers need area defence SAMs rather more than Frigates and Corvettes do.

New large radar arrays and Sonar equipment etc etc and drones could be tested on these big ships.

They are going to have two large 40K ton helicopter landing ships and one fixed wing aircraft carrier by about 2029, so they are going to need a couple of cruisers to operate with them at least, though their new Destroyers will probably have Orlan level armament, some new Cruisers would still be valuable.

From what I have read it seemed to me that of the two ships they have laid down, one is going to be a naval infantry landing ship carrying naval infantry plus their armour and also helicopters and landing ships to deploy them to a landing zone as quickly as possible, with transport helicopters delivering equipment and troops and attack helicopters providing air support... I would expect Destroyers and Cruisers would also be delivering fire support using 152mm guns too.

The second ship is supposed to be a dedicated drone ship where the 1,000 odd naval infantry and their accommodation is replaced by drone control equipment and drones themselves, with an enlarged hospital portion of the ship and with transport helicopters but the armour and troops replaced by enormous volumes of drones of all types including submersibles and land capable robot vehicles and air drones to support the other landing ship.

If it is successful they will operate them in pairs with the drones vessel providing support to the landing ship.

Obviously they would need escort vessels and an aircraft carrier to provide AWACS and fighter support.

The Naval Infantry armour might be Kurganets based or Boomerang based or a mix... both of which are amphibious, though they had their own designs of various vehicles too.

The small landing boats the Mistral used seemed rather good and the Russians might produce their own version of that to quickly and safely land armour on the beaches without needing a lot of swimming, which would get your armour past obstacles the enemy might have planted on their beaches, and also reduce the risk of armoured vehicles sinking.

The thing is that drones are nice when they are cheap and used in enormous numbers, but to get a drone to do all the things a Ka-52K can do would make the drone actually more expensive than the manned aircraft and the loss rate will be higher too simply because there will be no one on board to save it.

They have been showing an interesting range of new drones, but the core features of air support are AWACS and Fighters.

Drones are good for some missions... if you want to look carefully at large stretches of enemy coast before you decide to commit to a location to attack then some air drones and submarine drones make a lot of sense to zip in and have a look and then come back.

During the actual landing being able to send some small drones in to look for threats and dangers to the landing force and destroy them when they find them is very useful too, but if the enemy sends armour or air power then often a drone to look and monitor and watch while shipboard artillery or missiles take out the threats is also a good thing too.

The quality of the radar fitted to a modern fighter like the MiG-29K is vastly better than that fitted to any drone that can be considered expendable.

I would love to see that they replaced the 130mm guns with new 152mm guns from the Coalition programme, but they have not mentioned that so far.

Artillery has proven useful on land but on sea it would be even more useful because there are not trees or bushes or buildings to hide things behind or inside... a ship or surface drone can be distinguished by a falling round with optical sensors... and the falling round can manouver to hit said target...

The 130mm guns with less than 30km range are not that impressive any more and the shell weight is not amazing.

They had a reasonable rate of fire for their calibre and were not bad weapons, but the 152mm Coalition offers vastly increased range and accuracy and a heavier shell that is joint funded between the army and the navy and using the same rounds will be good for production and arms caches and logistics.

A gun able to fire at a target 50km away at a firing rate of 30 rounds a minute or more for a twin barrel naval gun would be hard to defend against... a string of incoming 50kg guided artillery shells is the ultimate swarm attack... especially if the propellent and angle of firing is used to ensure they all land at almost the same time.

That would seriously distract the target ship from the Uran flying low and fast approaching from a totally different direction...

And even if you stop the first volley the ship likely carries thousands of shells and can launch volley after volley.

A British destroyer has 48 SAMs that would probably shoot down artillery shells, and its 8 Harpoon anti ship missiles wouldn't reach a target 50km away in the time a 152mm gun could launch guided 50 shells at them... which is assuming none of the shells fired are not jammers or filled with chaff or decoys to upset the target ships radar, or perhaps even an EMP shell to make radar emission useless for a minute while the optical guided shells destroy the ship.

Obviously with improved shell design and propulsion systems they want to expand the max range from 70km to over 160km... which makes it interesting... perhaps a future swarm ship with 203mm guns maybe... and 57mm autoguns for self defence from enemy swarms?

As far as Russian warships and their capabilities in anti-ship warfare are concerned, Russian ships have realistically gone ahead.

The Russian Navy has more on its plate than just trying to face off with HATO and not every ship they build and put into service needs to be able to take on a US carrier battle group on its own.

Having dozens of launch tubes for million dollar missiles makes little sense if you don't need that capacity all the time.

The UKSK launch tubes are good because they can take a variety of missiles including land attack missiles and also anti ship but also anti sub weapons as well.

Although the small missile ships of projects 21631 and 22800 have a small displacement, the possibility of accommodating 8 anti-ship missiles 3M54 "Kalibr" or Onyx, and maybe in the future also Zircon, gives these ships significantly better capabilities in anti-ship combat compared to Soviet projects, with the exception of cruisers. Although even those missiles on cruisers are not technologically at the level of newer missiles.

The fact that new small ships have potent weapon load potential that even compares with Soviet battle cruisers suggests they are not doing too bad, for many patrol duties all this excess fire power is not going to be needed, but a critical factor is that even the new small boats are fully multirole.

In the past only Cruisers had weapons for most jobs... the primary weapons of the Udaloy Destroyers and the Sovremmeny Destroyers were intended as single role weapons... the anti sub missiles of the Udaloy could be used against ships as a very secondary role but the Udaloy was optimised to hunt subs from its propulsion to its sensors and its weapon fit while the Sovremmeny was optimised for hunting enemy ships with its Sunburn missiles and guns to its propulsion system... 8 anti sub or 8 anti ship missiles on each and each was considered well armed.

These new Corvettes with 8 launch tubes that can take anti sub or anti ship or even precision guided land attack missiles that no previous Soviet ship or sub had the capacity to use, or a mix of different types.

The brand new guns are impressive, the new missiles are active radar homing new generation missiles that are very effective and the land based models have been tested in Ukraine.

However, ONLY two projects have universality, namely project 20380 corvettes (20385 is an even better solution) and project 22350 frigates.

All their new ships will get UKSK launchers and I suspect when the new small short range cheap SAMs are developed... the 10-20kg missiles intended to be carried and used in enormous numbers even their smallest ships will be well defended... with modern AESA radars being more widely deployed and production as it increases will get cheaper so they will start to fit them to everything... that level of radar coverage and precision will make command guided missiles one of the most effective defences for the navy because command guided is super cheap... no expensive sensors in the missiles to be destroyed with each use... the TOR and Tunguska/Pantsir use command guided missiles very very effectively and the missiles are very cheap and deadly accurate.

They don't need every ship to be an AEGIS class cruiser, there are lots of naval duties that wont even require such levels of missiles and sensors, but even their smallest ships will have modern capable systems and equipment.

The Caspian Sea and Black Sea and Baltic Sea don't need super ships, though the Black Sea will need ships that often go to Africa and further afield just like the ships of the Pacific and Northern Fleets will too because the Russian Navy and the Russian merchant marine is what is going to connect Russia to the rest of the world and generate income and growth and development.

Why is the west shooting itself in the foot with sanctions on Russia?

Because Russia is growing and developing... new roads and new rail links and new air ports even new Space Ports... there is money to be made in Russia and the western companies that went there knew that and were making good money till their own governments kicked them out and now Russians or Turks or Chinese or Indians are going to fill the gap and make that money instead... and this will be replicated in every country in Asia and Africa and Central and South America because there is more money in developing and growing a country than there is in destroying it... something the west has forgotten.

As for the 152 caliber gun, it is not impossible that the Koalitsiya-M (M for SEA or MORE in Russian) variant will appear. The current Koalitsiya-SV carries the suffix SV which stands for "land army".

A naval official has stated that the 152mm gun will be used by the Navy... now they weren't specific and didn't mention if it was just going to replace the 130mm Bereg Coastal Gun system or if it would also be fitted to new Destroyers and new Cruisers, but the new 130mm gun they have developed is a single barrel gun, and while it has a decent rate of fire and is a fraction of the weight of the old twin gun system, it simply wont have the sustained fire performance of the old gun.

You don't generally use Frigates or Corvettes for fire support of landings, a Destroyer at the very least or a Cruiser would offer more sustained support because it would carry rather more ready to fire shells.

The 130mm is not a bad gun but the 152mm Coalition beats it in every department by a very wide margin already and they plan to extend the shooting range to over 150km... I seem to remember 170 to 180km figures being mentioned, which is significantly better than the over 25km range of the 130mm guns and likely with a much heavier shell.

The current Coalition has a shell with a range of 70km that uses guidance built in to the fuse system, so further improvements in range should benefit the Navy as well as the Army... and I would think the success of artillery on the battlefield in the Ukraine might make the idea of a 203mm gun suddenly become interesting because that would take the 50kg shell weight up to 110kg shell weight, which makes the range of effects you can get from the round more interesting... at 203mm you could probably develop jamming and exotic rounds like EMP... or guided missile that packs a real punch... you could create a shell of 203mm calibre that has a very long focus HEAT warhead that detonates 30m away from an armoured target with the plasma jet focused to form a thin beam of vapourised metal liner that could penetrate enormous amounts of armour at speeds that will blow past any APS system that does not reach out to 30m.

You could even load a ground mobile drone carrying jammers that moves to make it difficult to deal with... or one that carries multiple independent mini suicide drones...

The potential is enormous.