[Official] 'Peter The Great' News Thread:

This is the question, why have a floating target when you can have several Submarine Atomic Cruisers of the Yasen-M type, which can slip away after firing from several different places, also with a crew of only 64 ??

You keep calling aircraft carriers floating targets, but subs are invincible?

Russia has lost more Subs than they have lost aircraft carriers.

Imagine the Nakhimov fires a salva missile in the North Atlantic, then you have the entire NATO navy doing the "hunt for the Bismark"

And HATO ships getting sunk by Russian Corvettes and MiG-31Ks will be the result... HATO might have a rather bigger and on paper impressive fleet but in reality they actually can't even operate within MiG-31K range of Russia without the serious risk of being sunk in enormous numbers.

Any ship on its own is vulnerable... that is why you use ships in groups to provide mutual defence...you can make a group of all corvettes or you can make a group that can defend itself properly and also take the fight to any enemy that wants  to present itself.

Cruisers, Destroyers and Carriers are important components of a decent grouping of ships.

Imagine this ship sunk in the North Atlantic, 750 guys frozen to death like the passengers of the Titanic, a very hard blow

And the nuclear attack on the country responsible with millions of dead will help Russia deal with that loss... the fact of the matter is that we have no idea what happened to the Moskva, but what is pretty obvious is that if it had a decent upgrade of all systems including its fire suppression systems and air defence and sonar systems and it was part of a group of ships working together protecting each other it would probably still be sailing around today... but because they went fucking cheap and left it with its original armament and equipment something happened.

Give me more Yasen-M for 40-50 billion rubles each , and send "Peter the Great" to the Naval Museum

Yeah, cause Russian Subs never sink losing all hands...

All this workforce should be making Yasen-M like donuts.

You are not understanding the strategic issues here... a Yasen-M is an SSGN... which is very good if the role is taking down the US Navy... but the US Navy can't get anywhere near the Russian coastline in fear of being killed by MiG-31Ks with Kinzhal right now and in the near future whatever they design to replaced it now they have working scramjet engines.

Russia does not need cruisers and aircraft carriers to win WWIII, they need a blue water navy to secure their interests in trade with the rest of the world... which is something a Yasen would be totally useless at... because revealing its presence would actually make it rather a victim than a bully... and just sinking ships is an act of war.

The only reason to modernize the Nakhimov is not to have two nuclear cruisers at the same time, in fact, the reason is not to go 10 years without a nuclear cruiser if the PtG were modernized.
If they had wanted to have 2 nuclear cruisers they would have had them operational at the same time, but anyway when an MLU arrives you are left without one for years-

Having two means refits and repairs don't need to be periods when you don't have long range cruisers available to your navy. You can upgrade one and test it and while it is being tested you can crack open the other one and see what needs to be replaced and fixed... eventually you will work out what worked well and what was probably not worth spending money regarding the first upgrade after extensive testing and then you can decide what to upgrade on the other vessel.

so the Royal Navy is not a "blue water" Navy?? its largest combat ships are the Type 45 with 6000-7000 tons

In its own terms it is a support Navy to HATO and Britannia no longer rules the waves anywhere.

They have to borrow ships from other navies to provide a full escort to either one of their two carriers... they planned to have 12 new destroyers but ended up only being able to afford 6 and they have serious design problems... for a country leaving the EU market and expecting its old commonwealth to be its new market... if it needed a decent navy that would be now... and it simply hasn't got it... especially with the F-35s they operate from their carriers which will likely suck up most of their budget... if they are lucky a few more will crash and they can save some money on operational costs... reported to be 96 thousand pounds per flight hour...

The US Navy should have combat ships larger than the Burkes?? (I don't even count the Ticos anymore, they are a relic of the Cold War)

The US will have hundreds of destroyers, so they don't really need cruisers... and it is really funny you use the British Navy and the US Navy as examples as both have aircraft carriers... which you seem to ignore.

Surely if carriers are floating targets they would be the first designs to be scrapped and replaced by destroyers or frigates...

The USA had several nuclear cruisers but they were a failed experiment, they did not last long in service and also did not have more than 180 meters in length

So Russia needs LCSs and some Zumwalts as soon as possible...

While the strategy of the USSR and now Russia and China is to help developing countries to develop, through cooperation and technology transfer. That is, Iran must be able to defend itself, the same as any other major country, Russia will help it, but it will not send its ships to the Persian Gulf in a systematic way.

If Russia wants access to the worlds oceans they need ships that can go there and stay for months if needed... sending one at a time is stupid... so groups of ships... that will need to be protected.

In the current conflict Russia has not just used ground based radar and ground based SAMs to defend its surface forces... it is actively using AWACS and fighter and ground attack aircraft to support operations and it will be the same at sea... whether they are manned or unmanned, airborne radar is useful.

Russia does not need ships in the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific and of course today the large ships are doomed to disappear, as in the 1940s the battleships were

A single police officer is not safe either, but when you have groups of them and they all work together then they become an effective force with the right equipment and support.

Russia needs a police force that can rescue the third world from the organised crime gangs of the west... the organised crime gangs of the west have lots of military resources and just having some SSGNs is not going to cut it.

Maybe you should look for a world map and take a look at it:
It is the USA that is isolated from the World Island (Eurasia + Africa) where 7 out of 8 human beings live

It is only isolated if you deny it a navy like you seem dead set on in regard with Russia.

Without a navy Russia will rely on others to deliver its goods and bring it goods and implement its trade with the rest of the world.

Most of Russias problems right now is grain and fertiliser stuck in European ports because European middlemen shipped Russian goods to the world on european ships using european insurance... most of Russian trade was in US dollars on EU ships and with EU insurance... Russia was handing the west lots and lots of money for nothing... but more importantly when Russia shipped things on western ships and insured things with western companies the west had a very very good idea of the Russian economy and its trade relations and its future... well using Russian ships insured by Russian companies with contracts paid in Rubles or Yuan.... and all of a sudden the west doesn't know everything about Russia any more... but Russian ships with Russian insurance sure as hell need a Russian Navy that can come to the rescue if things go wrong because you can bet your arse the US Navy or the British Navy or the French Navy for that matter are not coming... or they are already there and are the problem.

Why do you think that the UK maintains bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus, Djbouti, Diego Garcia, Singapore, Brunei, etc...???

Because they are colonial ?

As London diminishes as a financial centre their ability to maintain such bases will sort that out soon enough.

the size of surface combat ships will go down and that of missile-launching submarines will be larger than theirs.

I don't doubt new Russian destroyers and cruisers wont be as big as Cold War equivalents, but their carriers will be bigger than 50K tons... they have already said as much and so if you have a big target you want to take to sea with you then make it as big and as capable as you can make it and make big cruisers with lots of missiles to help defend it.

Russia is never going to have as many ships as HATO so their ships need to be very capable... they do have the advantage that they don't need to police the entire world all the time like the US used to.... but even they are shifting responsibility there too... it wasn't long ago that the US said the UK could look after Europe while they focused on Asia and China which was seen as the bigger problem... hahaha... how did that turn out.

The Sovremenny with 7900 t and +350 crew will be covered by the 22350 of 5400 tons and 200 crew

Not really... the 22350 is still a frigate, while the Sov was a destroyer class... the ability to carry weapons has greatly improved and while you can suggest that new ships can carry more than previous cold war generation ships, I would argue that new ships will need rather better weapons to do their job.

A British destroyer in the Falklands could be overwhelmed by a single Exocet missile attack with one missile attacking. Their SAMs had one or two guidance channels so only one or two targets could be engaged at a time.... a modern destroyer needs to do rather more than carry more missiles... even a single Kashtan mount can do better than a British destroyer from that period but odds are one Kashtan mount wont be enough these days either.

Russia is in a much better position than the British or US because even their Onyx missiles are a challenge, but even still they will be launched in volleys to improve their chances of getting results.

For HATO a very large force can be amassed... but needs to be amassed because Harpoons and Tomahawks are obsolete attack weapons, whereas a single Zircon will have a good chance of getting through the strongest defences and put any ship out of action for a while.

Battlecruisers like the Kirov are a thing of the past.

Large cruisers make sense for Russia because they are not going to have 100s of destroyers... they might end up with 30 or 40 frigates and 24-36 destroyers and maybe 8-12 cruisers if they can get the funding over the next few decades, but even that wont happen overnight.

Cruisers make sense for Russia even if it is not so sensible for other navies.

An of course having a large fleet of ships means protecting them with aircraft also makes sense too.

The UK saved money getting rid of their fixed wing aircraft carriers and the result was that Argentina thought they could take them on.

If the UK had fixed wing carriers with Phantoms and Buccaneers they would have greatly reduced their losses and made a victory more sure... to the point where the conflict might never have happened in the first place.

"No decisions were made on the cruiser Peter the Great. It fulfills its intended purpose as part of the Northern Fleet, "

If they had dozens of cruisers then getting rid of a few older ones would make sense but the Orlan class makes more sense than the Atlant class in terms of potential for upgrades and operational performance...

True that Nikhamov was a very long and frustrating stop start affair, but I think the Navy knows what it wants by now. The Peter should be ready at a fraction of the time and cost imo.

Taking an old house and trying to modernise it can be slow and expensive the first time, but the second time you do it you have experience and you can test the upgraded house and work out what changes were worth the time and money and what changes were not.

The PtG is a working ship... unlike the Nakhimov, which has spent most of its operational life in dry dock or doing nothing at all.

The Orlan class is not a uniform class, there were changes... the first ship had two 100mm gun mounts while the others had the single twin 130mm gun mounts, and I would expect the time between the first and the last ship being built the internals changed a bit too.

The goal is not to create a brand new super ship that is the best in the world and can escort aircraft carriers on their own and invade countries to steal their stuff.

It is a long range large ship with enough space for enough weapons for a fight without having to run away mid fight for a reload... it is a ship the west notices.

It is also an opportunity to try new stuff that will end up on their new destroyers and new cruisers, which will avoid problems in the future... perhaps they might want to test new nuclear propulsion systems too... perhaps a laser based air defence system?

Plenty of room for a big gun and lots and lots of missiles.... and big radar and lots of optical ball mounts for laser target markers to illuminate enemy drones for laser guided rockets or laser guided shells to hit... or just more powerful lasers to take out.

In any case, the Peter the Great should not be modernized, its time has passed.

Lack of modifications and upgrades probably sank the Moskva. If you want to put them in service then they have to be able to fight and if they have to be able to fight then they need upgrades and improvements to allow them to do so in a different age from when they were built.

Look at all the upgrades to the T-72 to make it combat worthy... and how successful and cost effective such upgrades can be... but you are suggesting using a T-72 built in the late 1970s with no upgrades at all and thinking you can send that into battle...

The Russian MIC are not profiteers... if it costs x amount then that is what it costs... but the more UKSK launchers you buy and the more redut systems and improved TOR systems you install that is more money and experience to the companies that make them that allows upgrades and improvements to their systems and weapons which leads to further improvements to your destroyers and cruisers when it comes time to make them.

The Nakhimov will take the baton until approximately 2040-2045.

And there is no reason why an upgraded PtG can't continue operations just as long with the right upgrades and improvements. That is good value for money and it means they can spend more time getting their new cruisers designs right.

This list goes on but some people will always fall for the gimmick.

It is funny that people claim large carriers are obsolete because of swarm drones and hypersonic anti ship missiles... but who has those hypersonic missiles... and how good have they been over the years making ships able to stop their own anti ship weapons?

Kashtan was designed to stop Soviet supersonic anti ship missiles and their new air defence systems will be developed to stop Zircon and missiles like that... if anyone can work out an AD system that can stop ICBMs and hypersonic missile threats it is Russia... and of course how is an enemy naval group going to carry a viable drone swarm... well the Orlan class was one of the original carriers of 20 supersonic swarm drones called Granit.... 7 ton anti ship missiles that communicated and coordinated their attacks to maximise their lethality... and with an upgrade they can carry 80.

To carry enormous numbers of drones that are so small they are difficult to detect and deal with using modern SAMs you will need some pretty big ships to cart them around in....ships that could be targeted from thousands of kms away by a hypersonic anti ship missile the Russians might already be making for those UKSK launch tubes or the bigger tubes for their S-500 missiles for their cruisers.

A Cruiser sized ship with a 203mm gun on the front and another at the rear could deliver a drone swarm itself... firing 50 rounds a minute with shells carrying a scramjet motor to accelerate the shells to 10 times the speed of sound to reach targets 500+km away with optical guidance... spotting ships sitting on sea water is pretty easy... a simple IIR sensor could be used to find targets easily enough... completely passive with each round finding its own target moving at enormous speed it might not even need a HE warhead... the kinetic damage alone might be enough.... perhaps a 5kg HE bursting charge with another 10kgs of incendiary material to get a good fire going...

Maybe you're right, but the last Pr.885M was laid down back in 2020. Actually two of them on the same day. Nothing since...

Indeed... plans can change... maybe they had a breakthrough in some technology that they want to put in the next gen design and so cancelling the last two Yasen so they can start the new design sooner could be the new plan.

Considering the rate, they can simply lack the space.

Naval planning is complex and part of that planning revolves around shipyard space.

A new focus on their navy for connecting Russia to the world without going through Europe to get there might lead to more investment in shipyards and training new workers and introducing new tooling and new materials and new systems... and getting rid of foreign owners of ports and shipyards who leech money from the system and actively slow down growth and development in Russia.

On the other hand, in practice the Nakhimov really did take a lot more time and money than expected,

Well perhaps part of the problem with the Nakhimov is that the PtG was out there doing what the Nakhimov was needed for so there was less urgency to get it out and working, and when the PtG goes into dry dock it wont need to be rushed because the Nakhimov will be testing out the upgrades and improvements whose experience can be fed back to decide what upgrades or changes might be most useful and cost effective.

and what's more the vulnerability of the Moskva cruiser proved alarming - a ship which was more or less a design contemporary of the Peter the Great.

Bollocks... the Moskva was a not upgraded plan B ship for use in case the Orlan class was a failure or ended up being too expensive.

Is it really risking pilling all this money and time into a legacy platform, which will inevitably be less protected and have a whole bunch more crew to lose to the sea than a whole new modern, smaller, more automated class?

The crew of the ship is determined by the systems on board... a really big ship like a cargo ship does not automatically have a huge crew, while a cruise ship will have a very large crew and compliment to look after the passengers.

An Orlan... even in its original form was well protected from enemy action with excellent radar and air defence systems and sonar and its own aircraft too.

I wouldn't say Zirkon is that good. For it to be good it needs a very good plateform too. Russia still lack a good number of Gorshkov class. The Zirkon blue water carriers can be counted on one hand...

Every new and upgraded Russian Navy ship will carry launch tubes to carry Zircon (UKSK) and even ships that don't carry it can have a shipping container with them inside so they can launch them too. Zircon is excellent... it is like a tomahawk but TEN times faster and a rated similar range (about 1,500km).

US navy still has the advantage with more carrier based fighters that have long range missiles which combined with fighter range gives them a longer strike range than zirkon,

Except those US carriers are vulnerable to even just one Zircon, while a Russian Corvette which might carry 16 Zircons would require a half dozen Tomahawks to have a chance to kill them... experience in Syria suggests that the BUK system is very very efficient at destroying low flying subsonic missile threats and I would suggest the Viking S-350 would actually be even better in that role... Russian air defence is excellent, so even if they lack outright numbers they have powerful attack and powerful defence capacity that should make the west rather nervous.

The real game changer is Kinzhal IMO and future hypersonic missiles mounted on fighters. They have strike range of almost 4000km from plateforms that are way safer than ships.

Kinzhal is excellent but to get that range it needs to be launched at high speed and high altitude... there is no way it would get its reported 2,000km range launched from an aircraft slower than a MiG-31K.

Kinzhal and MiG-31Ks are excellent for coastal defence, but to reach further and to operate around the world from ships and subs you need Zircon... the ground or surface launched Kinzhal is the Iskander which can only reach 500km, so Zircon is the best option at the moment.

But now they have it working and ready for service I am sure they will be able to boost performance with larger fuel tanks and optimised rocket/scramjet design... shortening the solid rocket booster might allow them to carry hundreds of litres more fuel which might extend its flight range considerably, and new algorithms for speed and altitude could further extend its effective range and flight speed...

Best for russia is to restart mig-31 production to get 100 newly build kinzhal carriers.

The speed with which they can get airborne and launch their missile and return to base and repeat I would say they wont need enormous numbers of them because ships will take a long time to leave the area so the engagement time frame will allow them to slaughter a carrier group quite efficiently.

The Kinzhal missiles are in mass production so they wont be running out of them any time soon.

But MiGs and Kinzhals are only good around Russia... the Med, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Northern fleet area and Pacific... aircraft carriers and cruisers will be useful around the world... and don't think the Zircon is their last missile... they will continue to make new missiles and weapons and systems of all sorts of types... including drones.

You would at least need something like the Tu22M3M with a bit more legs to have a significant strategic impact.

I think the MiG-31K is the best platform for the job till the MiG-41 is ready... the Kinzhal is rocket powered so the higher and faster you can launch it the better its performance that is otherwise fixed. With Zircon it has a scramjet motor that can be throttled to use fuel as efficiently as possible, so it would be better for use from a range of platforms from land based Tu-22M3Ms to carrier based Su-57Ks... with a external wing pylon mount ... so the plane can get airborne and fly to the launch point where it releases the two Zircon missiles continue its mission with weapon bays otherwise full of weapons.

It is claimed that they removed the radar in the MiG-31K and it became unable to conduct long range air defense to balance the center of gravity of the aircraft, or reduce the weight, or whatever so it can carry Kinzhal.

I think the removal of the radar was also to make it lighter so it could fly faster and also make it cheaper. When launching Kinzhals against enemy ships that are up to 2,000km away from the launch position flying there at mach 2.6 and then immediately turning around and flying back to base at a similar speed means the air threat to these aircraft would be low, but you could have an escort of MiG-31BMs if there was any risk.

Removing hundreds of kgs in radar makes the planes lighter and faster and cheaper which is all good news as a Kinzhal launcher.

They are not strategic missiles.

They would be used in WWIII to stop naval attacks from western countries so in that sense they are strategic defence missiles.

But those are not blue water navy and are not well defended.

They are mobile and entering service and will eventually form a rather large force of quite a large number of launch tubes...

If you want to launch them from your shores just load a truck with a uksk launcher, way cheaper.

Zircon is a replacement for Onyx, so Bastion launchers will get it, but most enemy ships will recognise the threat and loiter at greater ranges so having a corvette that can sail 1,000km out into the sea to launch an attack is useful, and of course Yasen class and even Kilo and Lada class subs can launch surprise attacks from almost anywhere.

Oscar and Yasen-M are very good plateforms. But they will have their hands full trying to counter the 50 Virginia subs. And they are still more expebsive than a squadron of mig-31D by a great margin.

Oscar is an anti carrier sub... Lada and Kilo class SSKs will be hunting western subs in Russian waters, while Yasen and Shchuka subs will be hunting western attack subs in open waters...

Last time I check they plan to keep only 90 mig-31.

They are keeping MiG-31BMs for interception duties... the numbers for the MiG-31K are for the Navy and are counted separately.

They have put the engines back into production which suggests they will bring some more out of storage and back into use. The MiG-31K is a cheap upgrade because it doesn't need a radar or other sophisticated stuff...

1500km range + 2500km range of kinzhal is 4000km strike range.

The longest range I have seen for the Kinzhal is 2,000km and the flight radius of the MiG-31K at mach 2.6 is 750km... so 750km out... launch... and 750km back... about 13.5 minutes in each direction... so from takeoff to missile impact could be as short as 13.5 minutes plus 2,000km divided by (330m/s x 10) which is about 10 minutes missile flight time plus 13.5 minutes aircraft flight time... so three and a half minutes before your MiG-31K is to land at the airbase it took off from the target will have been hit if it was 2,000km away at the time of launch.

23.5 minutes from takeoff to ship destruction... say 20 minutes to refuel and reload a new missile and you could sink a lot of ships very quickly.

Waiting till they get closer will increase the missile launch rate...

All the countries and enemy navues are within reach from safe launch positions. I would buy 200 mig-31D even without radars and r-37 capability and some 1000 kinzhal any day way before ordering any cruiser or destroyer.

And when those enemy navies remain 3,000km away from your territory and blockade and regime change any country that dares to trade with you and your economy starts to contract... how are you going to pay for those planes or anything really.

Western tactics is contain and isolate... a navy is the opposite of being contained and isolated.

Well if it takes even a third of the same amount of effort or time as the Nakhimov, then might as well just put that instead towards building the lead ship of a new class that you'll have to do anyway sooner or later, and by doing so actually save money in the long run.

They are not going to build any ships that size or capacity any time soon so they would not save any money at all, they would just lose capabilities.

Upgrading the PtG only makes sense as a stopgap essentially until the new class of nuclear powered destroyers is ready. How long will that be if maximum effort is geared towards that versus gearing maximum effort towards upgrading the last remaining Kirov-class in service?

The new destroyers and new cruisers are likely to be all electric drive with nuclear power plants for electricity generation so they likely wont be laying any down for a while, which means upgraded old ships are it for the time being... which is actually not a huge problem because as I keep saying... they are not for WWIII... they are just a presence that can ensure Russian access to the worlds oceans and trade partners in the rest of the world.

If on the other hand the PtG can be upgraded in 4-5 years time tops, for an affordable price and no chance of delay, then sure, it might be worth it.

If it was up to me there would be two options... one would be to say that the Nakhimov is doing its job so the PtG is not a huge priority so a relatively cheap upgrade to sort out problems and issues and upgrade the sensors and weapons could be done relatively quickly and cheaply... but the other option might be to take advantage of the fact that the Nakhimov is in service so they could try some new stuff on the PtG like new AESA radar arrays and new huge sonar arrays and perhaps a new Nuclear power plant that will be used in the new destroyer and new cruiser designs so you get to work out any problems and issues that might come up so that when you start building the new destroyers first their radar and sonar and new weapon systems will have some of their bugs worked out already and already be in production perhaps.

A 152mm gun for destroyers could be mounted on the PtG for testing, with new ammo and testing storage and gun arrangements that could be mounted ready to go on new Destroyers... then perhaps in 10 years time the Nakhimov could get a 203mm gun mount for testing for new cruisers.

New missiles and laser systems and of course new jamming and EW equipment etc etc.

New drones too...

The Tu22M3M/Khinzal can easily reach Pearl Harbour from Russia. The Mig-31/Khinzal can not.

But Tu22M3M launched Kinzhal wont have the same missile flight range as it would launched from the faster higher flying MiG-31K... and besides a Yasen launched Zircon launched from the South Pacific would be more of a surprise, and less need to fly past Japan and the risk that would entail for a large aircraft.

Aviation with long range hypersonic missiles is just the perfect tool to destroy enemy navies.

Horribly vulnerable... an SSGN would be rather better... in fact for strategic attack SSBN would be best... or thunderbird and poseidon launched from Russian airspace/waters would be easier and simpler.

Modernising the PtG won't require re-inventing the wheel, just repeat orders of materials and ammendments of the previously developed documentation.

Most of the time with the Nakhimov was spent wondering whether to even upgrade it at all, and of course when they did decide to upgrade it there would be issues with components sourced from Ukraine or other former soviet states that were contributing when it was built but not when it came to upgrades...

Now the west is full on nazi, a working cruiser is even more valuable to Russia and their new role reaching out to the rest of the world for trade and improved relations.

And more importantly that is thousands of kms of open water where US ships and aircraft operate, any of which could launch SAMs at your MiGs or any inflight refuelling aircraft they might be using.

The point is that if Russia is launching missiles at Hawaii why would they waste time launching anti ship missiles... they might as well start with SLBMs because that is where it would end.

More interesting would be to motivate the Hawaiian natives that they need to get rid of their white european colonial oppressors and take their country back.

At the very least it will get them rights to run casinos...

The core point is that the shift from rocket powered manouvering hypersonic threats (Kinzhal and Iskander) to air breathing scramjet powered hypersonic manouvering threats (Zircon) is like the shift from rocket propelled aircraft (that were tested but never used because of their extreme lack of endurance meaning they were either too big or very short ranged) to jet engine propelled aircraft which could easily extend their range with external fuel tanks and improved more efficient and more powerful engines....

For Scramjets that is all ahead of us.

Traditionally on a two stage solid rocket missile both sections had solid rocket motors and once the first stage burned out it was dumped making the rocket lighter and with a much better power to weight ratio... but with a scramjet motor you could have the fuel tank on the front or scabbed around the outside and dropped incrementally as they emptied... gradually losing weight and reducing drag... the thing is that with a solid rocket the thrust is fixed so once you get to the top speed that the rocket can fly at at that altitude and air density etc then any thrust over and above that coming out of the rocket motor is totally wasted... with a jet engine it can throttle back till it reaches a decent speed that does not waste a lot of fuel and then as the fuel burns and the extra fuel tanks get empty and are dropped it can accelerate faster using fuel rather more efficiently.

It is a bit like a car really... using high revs burns the most fuel but if you burn revs to get to high speed and top gear and then drop the throttle back to idle then you are travelling the fastest you can while burning the minimum fuel rate so you get the best range. Having to slow down and speed up or having the throttle at full all the way will reduce range even if it slightly increases your speed.

It is why aircraft use afterburner taking off because at low altitude and low flight speed their fuel burn and flight range would be poor. Climbing to altitude where they can fly faster with a lower throttle setting extends range and increases flight speed dramatically.

There is no way a scramjet missile will be flying much faster than mach 3 at low altitude, but with the same throttle setting they could be flying at mach 10 at 30-50km altitude just fine, because less drag helps... and all the energy you burned climbing up that high can be recovered when you drop down on the target so it is not wasted.

It can go at subsonic speed and save fuel and also get inflight refueling. So reaching a target 4000km away is not impossible.

Well theoretically it could carry fuel tanks under its wings and drop them when they are empty, or it can fly with inflight refuelling aircraft to extend their flight range, but the further away from Russia they get the more vulnerable they would be to a surprise attack... I would suspect most of the time they will take off and accelerate to top speed and then launch their missiles at top speed and top altitude and not fly the full 750km they can reach at that thrust level and they probably wont start to launch missiles at targets until they are 1,000km away from the Russian coast just to make sure once they start launching missiles that they will have plenty of time to sink the entire group of ships before they can sail outside the flight range of the missiles.

The first missiles will likely target the carrier but also missiles will be launched at the AEGIS class cruisers because of the risk of them shooting down missiles... so one Zircon into the carrier to stop carrier operations and then one into each AEGIS class cruiser and then as more missiles arrive they will hit the carrier and cruisers and then destroyers and other support ships.

And BTW it's just a matter of time before they find out they can put a bigger booster on kinzhal carried by tu-22M.

I rather think more could be achieved by developing a new Iskander missile that uses scramjet propulsion... Zircon is half the weight of the Kinzhal and offers comparable performance, so a rocket scramjet powered Iskander missile could have rather better flight range and still be rather smaller and lighter and more compact.

Now the INF treaty is gone and wont be coming back now that the EU is nazi central and having lots of IRBMs and MRBMs pointed at them is much cheaper than using strategic weapons like ICBMs, I would think weapons like the SS-20 would be revisited... but with scramjet technology it could be dramatically shrunk down in size and weight and carried around in larger numbers on a greater variety of platforms including ships and trucks and trains.

Flying an aircraft to deal with a naval threat is available right now so it is relatively cost effective.... but imagine a IRBM with a range of 4,000km that can be based in coastal bases near the coastal defences that can be launched any time you want and when that missile reenters the atmosphere at about 4,000km a dozen scramjet powered anti ship missiles are released that dive down and spread out and manouver as they fall and start up scramjet motors with relatively small fuel tanks to accelerate and power dive into naval targets from near space at mach 15 or 16 or so...

Eventually you could fit the same payload onto their new heavy ICBMs that can attack the US by going over the South Pole by partially entering orbit... which means they could land their payload at any point on the planet... which is great for sinking enemy carrier groups... but still no replacement for a navy to keep sea lanes of communication and trade open for Russian ships and the country ships they trade with.

lol1 How do you stop a mig-31 2000km away ? You can't.

Couple of things... first HATO are arseholes but they are not totally stupid... they know MiG-31Ks carry Kinzhals and what they are for, or what they can be used for.

A US carrier group sitting 2,000km off the coast of Russia in the Pacific... the MiG-31 launches and starts the attack, but carrier groups are not stupid and might have sent an AEGIS class cruiser ahead as a picket ship, or it might even be one of their new frigates... it could be anything, but more importantly for Russian MiGs to engage US carrier groups 2,000km out into the Pacific they will have to fly out of their own air space and a few sneaking Jap fighters lurking around wont be near the target 2,000km out into the ocean, they might be 200km away and fly round behind the MiGs as they head out hoping to get a shot at them when they come back.

If there are 12 MiG-31s and 6 are BM models with AAMs then they wont be a super easy threat to deal with... but if the Jap force is 50 x F-15s with extra fuel and AMRAAMs then there is a good chance not all of those MiG-31s are going to make it... obviously the Russians are stupid either and might have a flight of Su-35s and Su-57s with S-70s operating in overwatch, but flying MiG-31s out of Russian airspace to reach deeper and deeper into international waters increases the risk to those aircraft because they don't have normal radar and normal AAMs to defend themselves with.

Extending their flight range further out of the Russian air defence network is not a great solution...

Meanwhile your SSN will be hunted by enemy SSN, choppers and sonars

But the SSGN is designed to sink ships and sink enemy subs... in the middle of the pacific ocean choppers would need to be operating from ships, which the SSGN can sink before the choppers reach them because those choppers will be performing sub hunting operations scouring the sea around their own ships looking for subs... that sub from a distance can launch torpedos to sink the ship well before the helicopter gets anywhere near them.

but I am not saying that Russia needs to build huge cruisers now, just that they should not dismiss ships like the PtG while they are still struggling to build low numbers of frigates.

Indeed I am not saying Russia should build huge cruisers now and even in the future I don't think they will build them as big as the Orlan class, but at a time when they lack cruisers and destroyers they should be very careful deciding what to scrap and what to keep.

Getting rid of their cruisers and most of their destroyers and only having frigates and corvettes and submarines would put them in the same position as Germany during WWI and WWII where they were essentially blockaded by the west and their international trade ceased and they had to invade Africa to try to get to oil supplies...

Now I am not suggesting a single aircraft carrier and a few more Bismarks would have made a huge difference, but Russian ships have better attack missiles than the west which is the equivalent of better armour and better guns by a wide margin... which means the only threat to the Russian ships would be enemy air power... which is why I think cruisers and air defence carriers make sense for them too.

They have one carrier now and two Orlan class cruisers and a few Atlant class cruisers and I don't think they should be scrapping any of them just yet unless they had very very good reason to do so.

Nobody says that the size reduction of the vessels is not a desirable goal and a trend, that is rather obvious actually. Does not imply that you need to rush to scrap invaluable assets while you still don't have a proper replacement for them.

Ironically the Corvettes seem to be getting bigger and heavier as they add weapons and sensors to them to make them more multirole and more flexible, but I agree Cruisers will probably get smaller largely because their old anti ship missiles and long range SAMs were enormous and the electronics for all the processing that needed done and management of the fleet required enormous mainframe computers at the time... but even the guns have been transformed... previously corvettes with 57mm and 76 mm guns now have 100mm guns and even 130mm guns that were previously only carried on destroyers and cruisers, but the new guns are a calibre lighter with the new 100mm guns being the weigh of the 76mm guns but retaining the 100mm guns performance and ammo.

The size of the Orlans were mainly determined by the size of the P-700 missile (and the need to carry 20 of them for a nice salvo),
the need of a long-range AD missile system (S-300F) and the nuclear propulsion.

I would say the nuclear propulsion allowed the Orlans to be the size they were so instead of the much smaller and cheaper Atlant class with only 16 Vulcan missiles with deck top launch tubes taking up lots of space and raising the weight of the missiles higher than needed, the Orlan design allowed a much better more efficient distribution and capacity of weapons.

The SS-N-14 launcher on the bow of the Orlan and the SS-N-20 launcher just in front of the bridge with the Fort launcher between is a bit clumsy and bulky and certainly replacing them with more efficient vertical launch tube multi missile systems makes a lot of sense... the 80 missile tubes of the UKSK launchers allows the Onyx or Zircon or land attack cruise missiles or the Otvet that replaces the SS-N-14 to be carried in large numbers, but I would like to see a fixed grid array for S-400 missiles like the Shtil-1 launch array be used to replace the Fort system, especially if it had the flexibilty to carry 9M96 and  9M100 missiles as well as the original large heavy missiles.

They could replace the 130mm guns with 152mm guns and take advantage of the enormous performance increase that would achieve... shared with the Army upgrades of their guns of the same type and calibre. Perhaps a 203mm gun for the future for both parties?

Tsirkon, Kaliber and Otvet are much smaller as the P-700. New AD missiles in the range of the old S-300F are more compact.
All this saves space and leads to smaller ships despitze having better living conditions for the crew.

A modern Orlan would propably be in the 10 - 12.000ts range.

And that would be the trap western countries fell in to... they would say that the Zircon is unbeatable so we really only need 20 of them and our SAMs are amazing so we don't need as many as the Orlan carried and all of a sudden you have a tiny ship with zero growth potential over its operational life.

With western electronics western weapons were smaller... part of that as that they expected anti ship missiles to damage the target and not outright sink it with one shot like the Soviets did so new western missiles were often a similar size to the systems they replaced which made upgrades more expensive and also less impressive... which is why most modern frigates and destroyers in the west still only carry about 8 anti ship missiles.

The new Russian cruisers are certainly going to be smaller than their cold war cruisers but remember they will be nuclear powered which means they can be heavier than if they had conventional power, but they will also be electric drive ships which means a real shuffle around which should also make them smaller and lighter by getting rid of lots of very heavy things like drive shafts to the propellers which are hundreds of tons each on a large ship... not to mention gearboxes and transmissions etc etc.

The electronics will also be dramatically smaller.... mainframe computers in the 70s were building sized and the Orlans had a lot of computing power... they were the command centre of their fleets doing lots of targeting and data processing of sonar and radar and intercepted signals.

The Orlans are about 24K tons... I would expect their new cruisers will be in the 14 to 18K ton range with much better armament and sensors and drones and a much smaller crew.

Of course they don't want to make the same mistake the Americans made with the LCS whose crew was too small to perform normal regular maintenance on their ship, meaning when it got back in dock after an operation it needed a lot of work to get it ship shape again...

(They didn't say but I suspect some of the work required stronger sailors so couldn't be performed because of the gender of some of the crew which couldn't contribute muscle in the same way the male sailors could.... but don't mention that because it is sexist...)

I disagree, the Russian navy would need 30-40k tonne nuclear powered warships to carry a sizable number of S-500/550 anti-air/ballistic/satellite missiles and the powerful radars to guide them, not to mention other exotic weapons like Peresvet laser systems.

That is an odd weight class that would only ever be filled in a modern navy by an arsenal ship.

During WWII or WWI it would be heavy guns and armour to make it that heavy but it would be very slow... these days a ship that weight would either be a cargo ship and very slow, or to be fast moving it would need to be over 300m long because of the needed hull shaping (length to width and weight ratio) and propulsion, which would make it a real bitch.

I think to get enough S-500s would be rather simple... you likely would not need thousands... a dozen is probably more than enough, and not so many that space on the ship wont be overwhelmed with missiles you might hopefully never need to use. They need more space for the 9M96 and S-400 missiles and the new tiny missiles for shooting down artillery shells and artillery rockets in the 10kg weight range could be carried in the thousands on the Orlan already, together with upgraded Pantsir and TOR as well as close range 9M100 missiles and of course 30mm and 57mm guns as well as perhaps an air defence 152mm shell and laser dazzlers and perhaps also laser weapons to shoot down air threats like drones and missiles and even faster threats.

Big_Gazza wrote:

Its been stated on this forum many times, but I'll repeat it for the sake of argument.  Big ships have capabilities that small ships simply lack.  Long-range endurance, multi-role cruiser armaments (AA, AS, ASW), heavy surveillance radars mounted at height, high power sonars, multiple classes of AD missiles with overlapping capabilities and larger inventories, space for extensive C&C facilities (ie fleet flagship).  Blue water navies with effective force protection cannot be built just using corvettes and missile boats, or even frigates.  There is a reason why the USN is comprised of destroyers and flat-tops.

well us destroyer's displacement is ~9000tons while Orlans have ~28,000 tons you see little difference? yes Russia needs bigger ships than corvettes but the question is always size vs capabilities vs costs

Big_Gazza wrote:

GunshipDemocracy wrote:

well us destroyer's displacement is ~9000tons while Orlans have ~28,000 tons you see little difference? yes Russia needs bigger ships than corvettes but the question is always size vs capabilities vs costs

Combat effectiveness is a big unknown, and real-combat combat is never fully predictable, but I think the modernised Nahkimov (with hypersonics) will probably be able to take down 2-3 Arleigh Burkes without loss.

let assume that she can, but she but cannot be simultaneously in 2-3 places

That is not the point however.  Russia needs a few big modern ships to give her an effective and credible power projection capability in her oceanic near-abroad.  Without committing to an all-new cruiser design (eg Lider) the modernised Kirovs are currently her only option.  IMHO the Russians have made the right choice - scrap the two old Kirovs, upgrade Nahkimov, evaluate the result before committing to the same for PtG.  Plan for new cruisers in ~10 years time once the new generation of weaponry (eg hypersonics) has been introduced, teething issues solved, and brought to full operational capability.  I do lament the loss of 2 of these great ships however.  I have many fond memories in the 80s of looking at the pics of these unrivalled warships, and savoring the butt-hurt from deeply jealous Western navies and establishment scribblers

Orlans are undoubtfully great ships. Not big (that too ) but great Before Urine war RN was considering reasonably big ships like 18-20k tons with capabilities equal to Orlans. Yet Id assume that costs fo maintenance would be much lover. But such big ships without air coverv might be not enough to defend against massive drone/air attacks. I'd say some aircraft carriers would be nice add on. But this takes time , lot's of time.

I think this war has proven that ANY air defence system can be defeated by saturation, only question is what is the saturation level required.

Actually I think the opposite, the Russian air defences have been outstanding and are several orders of magnitude better than the best the west has... which is super ironic because the best air defence the west has is a US carrier group air defence network with AEGIS class cruisers and US fighter aircraft.

Ukrainian aircraft are mostly shot down by Russian aircraft so by saying no to an aircraft carrier you are essentially denying yourself the extra warning and the reach of fighter aircraft and their missiles to your outer defence ring.

Even with these formidable ships, a single hit could be fatal.

So the same applies to submarines, so no navy at all?

So what is going to keep your international trade going when your opponents start boarding and seizing your commercial shipping?

So IMHO the idea of multiple smaller ships is a much better bet.

But the equivalent of that is saying all SAMs and aircraft are no longer to be used by the Russian army because big SAM vehicles can be taken out by drones and there is no way to defend really large air strips so the entire defence of the Russian military on land or at sea will be millions of Verba teams... they might get some of them but there is no way they can take them all out. Except of course they could fly at high altitude or use ballistic missiles or just cheap artillery rockets.

large submersible cruiser might also be considered.

That is more than silly. A submersible cruiser is no more safe than a conventional sub when it is submerged but useless as a cruiser when it is submerged...

But if you aim 100 Geranium like drones and 3 hypersonics at the updated Nakhimov, is anyone here confident she would emerge unscathed?

100 Geranium drones fired at Kuznetsov could be quickly and efficiently deal with using the naval TOR system alone with 192 missiles ready to fire, and the west has no hypersonic weapons... the only hypersonic weapons it could possibly be attacked by are Russian or Chinese and the Chinese weapons appear to be ballistic which an upgraded S-400 system could easily deal with... S-400 can deal with targets going almost twice as fast as Zircon at 4.8km/s.

Replacing old S-300 and naval TOR systems on the new Orlan class with S-350 and S-400 should make it world beating... but you know what would make it even safer?

Having an AWACS platform and fighter aircraft providing very early warning of any attack or threat...

Remember, the fatal blow to Bismarck was delivered by a wood and canvas antique, that is a lesson that is still relevant today.

The job to deal with the Bismark paralysed the much vaunted British Navy, and they acted like scared little children till they managed to corner the ship and deal to it... it had an effect way out of proportion of its capacity or fire power.

And the antique weapons the west uses to sink ships could be compared with Swordfish really even today.

well us destroyer's displacement is ~9000tons while Orlans have ~28,000 tons you see little difference? yes Russia needs bigger ships than corvettes but the question is always size vs capabilities vs costs

The US had hundreds of destroyers and two huge oceans to patrol on each of its sides... enormous vulnerable flanks... and lots of shipping lanes bringing everything to the US.

Russia could do with shipping lanes taking its raw materials as well as is finished goods to countries around the world but they are never going to have hundreds of destroyers and thousands of frigates and tens of thousands of corvettes.

let assume that she can, but she but cannot be simultaneously in 2-3 places

Why would she need to be?

But such big ships without air coverv might be not enough to defend against massive drone/air attacks. I'd say some aircraft carriers would be nice add on. But this takes time , lot's of time.

Well the point is that they have the Kuznetsov, and they also have two large helicopter landing ships in the 40K ton weight range that are going to be put into the water in 4 to 5 years time... do you think a destroyer can defend them?

The whole point of a cruiser is to manage the defence of a group of ships... a corvette can defend itself... barely... in a one on one engagement, but not for very long... a group of corvettes can coordinate their defences better but they barely protect themselves and still not for very long because their missile options and numbers are not that great. A frigate can defend itself and with a corvette can defend itself better but its air defence is still not great and a determined enemy with enough resources is a real danger. It is only when you get to destroyer sized ships where the number of missiles starts to get better and you can stop a decent attack and return the favour if the source of the missiles can be determined.

It takes a cruiser and a group of destroyers before you start having a force that can operate in open ocean on its own without having to run away from everything, and a couple of cruisers and an aircraft carrier that really makes them a capable force.

Without aircraft carriers the British attack to take the Falklands could never have happened... earlier they had fixed wing carriers with Phantoms and AWACS platforms and Buccaneers and they would have lost a lot less ships if any because the speed and range of the aircraft would mean better coverage for the ships and a lot more danger for Argentine aircraft and subs and ships. If they had waited a few years and the British had scrapped their carriers they would have had to have gotten the Americans involved and they weren't interested.

If you think Cruisers and aircraft carriers are obsolete and vulnerable then you are saying that strategic airfields are vulnerable and fighter aircraft are obsolete and that the top level of SAMs... the S-400 and S-500 and S-300V4 should be withdrawn as too expensive and be replaced by more S-350s and BUK.

A Orlan class is obsolete now in the sense that a Sovremmeny class destroyer is obsolete now, but that does not mean that they should not have destroyers or cruisers... what they need are modern cruisers and modern destroyers... but until they are ready for production it makes sense to upgrade the old cruisers and destroyers till the new ship designs are ready.

It is funny some say hypersonic missiles make big ships obsolete, but no one is calling for western navies to get rid of all their large ships.... funny that really.

A cruiser with nuclear power on tap could have thousands of lasers placed around its hull for shooting down drones continuously... it will likely be the first thing on the planet that is actually safe from drone swarms... they don't need to shoot down satellites... destroying drones at 10km range is plenty distance to be effective... a laser radar system to detect drones that have no IR or radar signature at all... and a couple of 1,000km range 406mm deck guns to round things out...