Project 23900 "Ivan Rogov" Amphibious assault ship

Besides, if we take a Chinese 071 type to compare, they have 2x RAM-like systems and 2x plain gun CIWS. Here you can see a double Pancyr, that combines both, so it has the same number of missile system, same gun systems - only combined. And the missiles are about 5-7x the range.

In that case though the Chinese are copying western levels of air defence and not Soviet... isn't ironic that the air power focussed west is very lax when it comes to air defence for ground and naval forces... they expect their air power to be there and to get the job done.

The Soviet and Russian Army and Navy generally expect to be left on their own with no air support and arm their forces to expect to have to defend themselves accordingly.

I guess that there is some nice VLS system hidden somewhere we can't see.

When I first saw drawings of this ship those... what appear to be crates in front of the island were coloured blue and appeared to be a vertical launch system, but on this model appear to be rather strange shallow crates... unless they are recessed into the deck... and why would they be?

The drawings also showed similar blue "launch bins" on each corner of the deck... I mean if you look at the Kuznetsov the launch bins for the old Kinzhal don't take up a lot of space and new modern versions would take up even less and instead of fitting four sensor mounts, one in each corner of the island they could perhaps put them in each corner of the deck out of the way. Using just a grid array of launch tubes with the newer missiles they could easily carry them in large numbers all ready to fire... super cheap command guided missiles which are rather accurate in their current versions... and something they could retrofit to smaller vessels and the Kuznetsov itself as well.

Nice touch though with two models of the ka-65 Minoga on board.

I remember in the 1990s seeing models from the 1970s that were to represent what the Kuznestov and Ulyanovsk classes were going to look like and they both showed MiG-23Ks. I think it might have made a rather good carrier based plane actually, but the Su-33 and the MiG-29K made more sense for the real carriers of course... just like now the Su-57 and a new smaller aircraft would make more sense moving forward too for their next gen fixed wing carriers.

Maybe make these nuclear powered and replace the two masts smoke stacks with Redut launchers...

Good real world test for NPPs they will be using on destroyers and cruisers soon...

https://www.korabel.ru/news/comments/uspeshno_zversheny_zavodskie_ispytaniya_podrulivayuschego_ustroystva_moschnostyu_1_mvt.html

The tests took place in Nizhny Tagil on February 10. The thruster was manufactured by Ship Propulsion Complexes for the project 23900 ship.

The tests were attended by representatives of the customer from the plant. Butoma, Kerch, department of transport support and maritime register.

The ship will stay away from the coast most of the time, that´s why it carries helicopters and landing craft/AVC´s. But additional AD weapons will come in containerized form if the mission requires it.

At the very least a ship needs to be able to defend itself, or at least contribute to that defence... this is supposed to be a warship and most gun mounts are fully dual purpose systems that can be very useful in various different situations.

The talk of extending the firing range of 152mm guns to 180km suggests a bit of naval gunfire support should be practical, though mounted on a cruiser it could have plenty of ammo on board and not take away from the primary role of a helicopter carrier which is carrying troops and armour and support equipment to support a landing.

Perhaps some sort of gunship could be on the cards in the future able to fire the sort of amount of ammo we see being fired in the Ukraine conflict per day...

Perhaps even a longer ranged 203mm gun could be joint developed between the Navy and Army to reach 250km with guided HE shells... what better way to launch a swarm attack on an enemy ship than to fire 120kg guided shells from 250km away at a rate of 60 rounds per minute... most defences would be overwhelmed very quickly... some western ships wouldn't even stop the first shell...

The work is moving forwar. You have to remember that these are ships with a displacement half of huge aircraft carriers, so it's a powerful structure

They started out with 20K ton Mistral ships and currently are talking about 40K ton vessels so it is already much bigger than it was going to be.

But that is good because bigger means more room for things and more flexibility.

It might be able to carry 1,000 marines and helicopters and armoured vehicles to deliver them to and move them around on the battlefield but most of the time it will carry rather less and be able to operate longer further afield.

It is a bit like a fixed wing carrier... aim for bigger than you need... no one was ever upset for buying a computer hard drive that just had too much capacity... you use it eventually.

They couldn't make a labding in Ukraine, why they bother making any landing ship.

Result from Ukraine show you need cruise missiles to blow up everything accross the enemy land. Nowadays any country can get shore based batteries and destroy a landing force pretty easily. And with those semi-sub drones with 200kg warheads it's even easier.

The tests took place in Nizhny Tagil on February 10. The thruster was manufactured by Ship Propulsion Complexes for the project 23900 ship.

The tests were attended by representatives of the customer from the plant. Butoma, Kerch, department of transport support and maritime register.

That is interesting... those look like thruster pods... which suggests instead of having a conventional shaft and propeller it might have thrusters and electric propulsion which would be rather interesting and quite innovative...

They couldn't make a labding in Ukraine, why they bother making any landing ship.

Who said they can't make a landing... the new landing ships don't need to be used for landing even if that is what they are... a friendly country having a colour revolution imposed on them might invite Russia to send some troops to help stabilise the situation... sending naval infantry is easier because they come with full armour and support helicopters around the world when needed.

Using hovercraft to deploy troops and armour they could fly over mines and defensive structures on the beach... the point is that the landing force are like a parachute force... with their armour they have mobility so they don't need to land on the target they are attacking, which is likely to be well defended from air or sea attack... landing 50km away and then driving to the target means a sea based attack... you could attack an airfield and have further ground forces come in via air power too to support your attack and give weight to your light mobile forces.

When Russian ground forces attack Odessa I don't think a Ukrainian army will even exist as a proper entity and to support their attack from the East, a landing force could take Ukrainian territory from the western side of Odessa and rapidly surround the city with negotiations with the city leadership to start on a surrender rather than a siege.

These landing ships wont be ready till 2028 at the very least so they will likely only be used in the next conflict with the west...

these ships are more like troop transports / floating bases but rule out their use in open conflict, as they are floating targets like all other surface ships

Yeah, you have written off all surface ships, which means HATO is really in the shit because they have lots and lots of very expensive targets and their primary enemy has hypersonic anti ship missiles... in comparison Russia lacks a lot of surface ships but at least its main enemies don't have hypersonic weapons to threaten them.

These are landing ships, so you load them up with troops and armour and you ship them to where they are needed... which might be an open area of beach to land via landing boats, hovercraft and helicopter, or it might be via a friendly held port, or some humanitarian mission or disaster relief, but in any case they will not operate alone and will have a range of support vessels operating with them all looking for threats and dangers and all prepared to shoot things down.

The new naval air defence systems are based on the latest ground based air defence systems which seems to be effective most of the time... the difference is that land based systems have to defend the entire battlefield... which of course they can't so we get situations where the enemy shells civilian targets and Russian military air defences don't stop them all... well with naval systems they don't need to stop the enemy landing missiles and shells and rockets into empty ocean... all the potential targets will also be armed ships with sensors and communications equipment and air defence weapons.... unlike the Ukraine where populated areas might not have any air defence systems defending them because there are simply more populated areas than air defence units.

By the time these landing ships are in the water and operational they should have the improved Gorshkovs in service and at the very least some new design destroyers laid down and in production.

They are emergency tools so if there is an emergency they might use them, but they are also brand new and will take quite a few years to work out tactics and procedures for using them properly.

It took experience in Syria to work a few things out regarding carrier operations, and it wont be any different for new large helicopter landing ships.

On Odessa, rule out an assault on the city, when Ukraine falls apart the city's own inhabitants will seize power and request the protection of the Russian Federation.
Remember that the Odessa People's Republic was proclaimed there in 2014

I hope you are right... a lot of bloodshed could have been avoided if more had been as smart as this, but you can't bank on them doing a sensible thing like that without pressure so that the undecided don't listen to the idiots...

I would say a useful addition would be 57mm gun mounts with air burst ammo and proper radar and EO sensors to detect targets in the air and on the sea surface, plus of course SAMs including but not limited to naval TOR... they were working on new TOR missiles designed to hit small drones and enemy artillery shells and rockets.

The Kuznetsov had 196 launch tubes but that was the very old bigger missiles from the first TOR that only carried 8 rather big missiles. The newer TOR with 16 ready to fire missiles takes up the same space with double the missile load and the new missiles (which we have not seen yet) double that capacity again.

The new laser systems they are using for shooting down drones would be useful too...