Universal landing ships for Russian Navy

It has nothing to do with scale... if you wanted to put shipping crates of any size on the deck of a carrier you might have some tie down points to chain it down for rough weather, but you wouldn't bother with a raised platform area of any size... it means you can't use that space for anything else except stacking crates.

If they just painted lines as guidelines as to where any containers could be placed there then when they don't have containers to go there they could part 2 or 3 Helix type helicopters there with their rotors folded.

The reason the area is highlighted in blue is because that space is set aside for vertical launchers... and considering it is a helicopter carrier then I would suggest the most likely contents would be Redut S-350 SAMs... which can also carry 9M100 very short range CIWS type missiles that are expected to be used as anti missile missiles for ships and aircraft (fighters and bombers) and armour.

The location is just in front of the main bridge... which is probably not the ideal place to stack shipping containers...

They show helicopters in the drawing... if they are supposed to be shipping containers why not show shipping containers... and why just there... they could stack shipping containers all over the deck in lots of places...

Beneath this image:



It says:

Russian president Vladimir Putin examines an artist's concept of the Project 23900 assault ship.

An Artists concept...

Such ship are escorted and adding redut would increase the price.

Such a ship needs to be able to defend itself, and price is not as important as getting a ship you can use that can defend itself.

My bet would be on two or three pantsir which is still not cheap to have... or maybe some igla turrets or palma ciws.

Most previous models for this job had 130mm gun mounts for naval gun fire support... I would think a 170km range 152mm Coalition gun mount would be very useful...



I would say a Pantsir in each corner of the deck, plus some AK gun mounts or duets as well, plus the blue rectangle in front of the island and the blue areas on each side of the rear of the ship...

Their best defence against other ship is at the end the choppers that can detect enemy ships 600 or 700km away and use kh-35 missiles. Also drones equiped with radar could provide surveillance 24/7 to have a good picture in a bubble of 500km from the ship.

Obviously seeing targets is critical... you can't shoot down what you don't see... the combination of drones and helicopters and of course the other ships it will be operating with will be very useful... but what happens when a shore based artillery system opens up on that big juicy ship target... the ships seen with SAMs so far don't have an enormous abundance of missiles... are they supposed to squander them all protecting this helicopter carrier?

The containers that go in the blue areas are containers for Redut missiles because the ship needs to be defended when operational but also in transit when it might not be surrounded by ships with plenty of SAMs to waste defending other ships... remember their minelayers will also be clearing mines with no major SAMs to defend themselves and likely troops ships and cargo ships that also are not able to defend themselves that the other ships are supposed to protect as well...

Those vertical SAMs take very little actual space and would add enormous defensive capability to the vessel which could make the difference between keeping the ship or losing it... all their ships have some defence capability.

The Kuznetsov will have escorts and its aircraft would be vastly more capable of defending the carrier itself, but it still has 192 TOR based SAMs and 8 Kashtan mounts plus a further 6 AK 630 mounts...

The equivalent of 24 TOR vehicles, 8 Tunguska vehicles and 6 30mm gatling turrets all defending the ship... plus 12 supersonic long range anti ship missiles of course.

Regarding the gun artillery, that this new concept does not seem to have any is dissapointing. If gun artillery is too heavy it should atleast have something like the Zubr's pop up MRLS systems, perhaps Uragan instead of Grad.

I suspect the use of docked landing vessels and helicopters is to allow the ship to operate up to 150km offshore, which would render most ballistic rockets redundant... the 170km 152mm gun rounds they are developing are for shore bombardment as well as use on land... maybe they might develop a 203mm gun based system that has a 200km range with perhaps a 40kg HE payload... (the full round would be 110-120kgs like standard 203mm rounds normally, but this round could use the extra weight for a ramjet or scramjet booster plus fuel with a 40kg HE payload to deliver to targets at extreme range...

The Mistral they ordered were very lightly armed.

But we really don't know how they were going to modify them... would they just replace the 50 cals with Kords and the Mistral mounts with Gibkas... or do you think they would put real weapons on there....

They order them with space made for russian weapons and there was no VLS.

They wouldn't buy a new ship to modify it then. They would have asked french to let space for VLS if they really wanted to.

The Redut system takes up a lot of space and I doubt there is much unused space on the Mistral design for it... clearly it wasn't an option.

But when you are making your own there is the opportunity to fix the weaknesses in a design you were going to buy off the shelf.

I don't think they will bother fitting Redut to the improved Ivan Gren based landing ships... they are much smaller, but I still expect them to be better armed than Mistrals.

Again their best weapons are the choppers. AD should be able to repeal an attack of subsonic cruise missiles, nothing more. They will also get the new VTOL jet if they make it which will allow to intercept other jets.

You could use the same argument to claim there are no Klintok SAMs on the Kuznetsov or Kashtans or AK-630 gun mounts... or for that matter Shipwrecks... but you would be wrong. The fighter planes on the Kuznetsovs why would they need SAMs and CIWS?

Ask the Russian Army why they bother with Tunguska and Pine and TOR and BUK and S-300V... surely the Air Force will protect them... perhaps they remember the first part of WWII when the Air Force was struggling to survive itself and not in any position to protect the Army or the Navy...

But I agree it would be good to see 4×8 redut (which take very little space) and the mast of the Gorshkov on the top. The mast is already produced and it would make the ship as good as a Gorshkov.

I can understand complaints about putting UKSK launchers all over it, but Redut and a decent large AESA system would be of huge benefit for the ship and the ships operating with it... four AESA arrays on this ship would be 10-15 m higher off the water than the ones in the corvettes and would have a better view of the airspace... bigger and with more power... you could use those and have the support ships operating radar silent or just listening...

I would think over half the Redut missile load would be CIWS point defence 9M100 missiles which would be rather valuable for self defence.

This ship isn't going to be some 50-60k carrier, it's at most going to be 20ish tons. that leaves little space considering the insides of the vessel must be hollow enough to allow for all the specialist features etc landing ops, Medical areas etc.

This ship is going to be heavier and bigger than Mistral... so over 20K tons... they can fit Redut to Corvettes and Frigates.... it is not a bit bulky system...

And how about this rendering for clarity... Rendering of the new Project 23900 LHD (Picture source: JSC Zelenodolsk Design Bureau)

Note the source of the picture is the design bureau building the ships....

No blue patch... it actually shows vertical launch bins for missiles and the Pantsir mounts...

..and either naval Pantsir or Tor systems on each corner.  I think its an absolute given that these vessels will have greater SHORAD than any comparable Western (or Asian) designs. Lets be serious - with the preponderance of AShMs in the worlds navies (and air forces), why the @#%& would a designer of a large combatant not want to provide comprehensive point defense??

These LHDs will be biggest new-build surface combatants laid down since the dissolution of the USSR, so why would the Russian navy not fit them out accordingly?  VSL bins for short-medium range AAM coverage plus heavy SHORADs should be their base case.

The names Sevastopol and Vladivostock in the top right corner... in a drawing by the company making the ship... sounds like someone is in denial...

But that is fine... it is a bit of a shock when you realise Russia is not America or the UK or France when it comes to design.

Honestly I am surprised it only has four Pantsirs... I thought waist mounted systems might have been included too...

Of course they could be Palma...

..and either naval Pantsir or Tor systems on each corner.

Look like Kashtan mounts to me which suggests Pantsir which is its replacement.

The other things look like RBU launchers which is odd... maybe something that launches anti torpedo rockets?

Doesn't look like Gibka or Komar...

Tell that to navyrecognition.. . that is where I got the image from... look for yourself:

https://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/news/defence-news/2020/may-2020/8485-russian-mod-signs-contract-for-two-project-23900-helicopter-carriers-lhd.html

Note the date... May 2020...

At the bottom of the above page is:

Copyright 2020 TASS Navy Recognition. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

-> one outlier for whats obviously actually a shipbucket fanart vs a pic with the Zelenodolsk logo being shown to Putin

The difference between the two images is that one has Pantsir systems in each hull corner and the other one doesn't... both show vertical launchers for missiles in front of the island...

And who says the image shown to Putin contains all the secrets of the real ship...

And you claim it is fan art... Zelenodolsk has a Twitter account?

The link I gave had this:

Rendering of the new Project 23900 LHD (Picture source: JSC Zelenodolsk Design Bureau)

As credit for this specific image... are you suggesting something posted on Twitter suddenly becomes fan art... considering they are all the same image and two are credited to Twitter and the most recent to the JSC Zelenodolsk Design Bureau... wouldn't it be fair to say that the twitter source for the image was probably the JSC Zelenodolsk Design Bureau and that this is a legitimate rendering of what they are planning to make?

When was the last time the built a helicopter carrier with no air defence?

Why would they not want Pantsir on their new ships?

I can understand quibbling over the 130mm guns some suggest they might be fitted with, but Pantsir is a pretty standard air defence system they will have on most of their ships.

I have no idea why that second tread was made, that ship class (Priboi) won't even be getting built

That doesn't make sense... why would you not be allowed to make threads about projects and designs that never entered service?

GarryB wrote:The other things look like RBU launchers which is odd... maybe something that launches anti torpedo rockets?

RBUs are often sneered at as "archaic" (as its assumed that any ship that carries them won't get close enough to an SSN/SSGN to use them) but they would be very useful as point defenses against UUVs.