Project 22350: Admiral Sergei Gorshkov #3

I hope they continue 22350 production even after starting with 22350M.

The 22350 is not a bad design and in many ways is good enough for a range of roles and tasks. The 22350M is an upgrade or improvement that might be better suited for some more demanding roles.

They essentially have four fleets and one flotilla... the Caspian Sea flotilla is not exactly demanding but perhaps one or two frigates wouldn't hurt once the other fleets are sorted in terms of numbers.

I would say frigates are about as much as the Baltic Fleet would require because they are largely stuck in a bottleneck anyway and Russia has little need to project power in that direction anyway except to ensure their shipping does not get interfered with.

The Black Sea could probably do with more frigates, but I think the Pacific Fleet and the Northern Fleet would get the bulk of the frigates of both types... if we say 6 of the  smaller variety in the Baltic Fleet and say 8 of the smaller type 22350 in the Black Sea Fleet plus perhaps 6 of the larger 22350M in the Black Sea Fleet too, and then maybe 6 of the smaller 22350s in each of the two major fleets and perhaps 8 of the larger 22350Ms in each of the fleets of the north and east.

That would work out at 6 BF and 8 BSF and 6 NF and 6 PF which would make 26 ships in total for the 22350 and  6 BSF and 8 NF and 8 PF which would make 22 project 22350M.

By the time they have made those they will have had some experience with the enlarged project 22350M and should be able to get a destroyer design ready for production, which will probably be a further enlarged Project 22350M with nuclear power and increased armament and endurance of course.

Ideally they should be laying down their first destroyer design after a few years experience with the 22350M so they can use that experience to perfect the design.

Why? After the current order of 22350s they will have enough to defend their territorial waters. They should then focus on larger vessels like the Super Gorshkov and Lider in order to protect their interests in the open ocean and on other continents.

They are both just Frigates and while they could sail to other countries they wouldn't last long against most opponents because of a serious lack of armament persistence.

Super Gorshkov will be a useful ship in an around Russian waters, but not really something that will dominate the waves anywhere else.

Probably would be rather interesting to evolving and developing countries around the world who want a modern navy with capable ships that are not nuclear powered.

Japan is a set of islands, with economy extremely dependant on sea routes.
It is surrounded by nations having territorial disputes for multiple territories.
Russia is a giant landmass, with bulk of it's export carried by land corridors, or seas that can be considered their own.
We are comparing apples to oranges here. Russia won't have the same imperatives Japan has.

To be fair Russia has relied on Europe for its exports to the rest of the world, a situation that has clearly changed and Russia now needs to deal with its exports on its own and not rely on middle men to earn good money getting Russian products to their international customers.

This means they need to work on their trade routes and expand their capacity to get their products to customers around the world without risking western interference because they will continue to interfere with Russias economy every way they can.

But this does show that at least in terms of crew automation the Admiral Gorshkov design is starting to fall behind.

One of the problems of the LCS ships for the US navy was that the ships normal compliment of crew was too small to maintain the ship at sea. They didn't keep up with maintenance because there were not enough crew available to do it... things like painting the exterior of the ship before entering a harbour on a visit etc etc.

Most ship hit by a missile will be unserviceable anyway. It's not a disadvantage to have smaller crew.

In a modern war it is possible that a small drone might damage the ship only...

Most of the Japanese "Destroyers" are Frigates.

The Japanese Navy has been seriously under estimated mostly because they decided to take on the US Navy during WWII... earlier conflicts against Imperial Russia, or just their paper potential before they took on the Americans in the Pacific and you would say they are a world class force. Things like poor code use that allowed the enemy to know what they were doing before the troops on the ground even got their orders can limit the performance of any force.

Their navy planes were world class, the much vaunted British Navy could not have defeated the Japanese Navy on their own during WWII... or now.

Designing and building ships takes time and planning... I suspect their new destroyers and cruisers will be nuclear powered and possibly all electric drive too which makes it a steep learning curve but also potentially a very capable and powerful fleet too.

They have shown they have compact powerful nuclear power modules that would be ideal for use on shipping...

Some of their destroyers have GaN radar. wrote:

This means that the Japanese have overtaken the US in terms of radars. Does Russia intend to develop GaN-based radars?

This means that Russia is still far behind. They would make a big leap forward in the competition if they perfected ROFAR. This is probably a long way in the future. Although Russia was successful, they were the first to have a PESA phase scanning radar on the MiG-31 aircraft.

This means that Russia is still far behind. They would make a big leap forward in the competition if they perfected ROFAR. This is probably a long way in the future. Although Russia was successful, they were the first to have a PESA phase scanning radar on the MiG-31 aircraft.

Not far behind at all... it is more to do with production capacity than technology... in terms of technology Russia is in the lead with the use of different wavelength radars for anti stealth use, and the computing power to process those signals to extract useful information from them.

The US is behind China and Japan in production and technology.

China really only recently directing their production and technology capacity to their military in earnest, it would not surprise me for China to be ahead of Japan in a lot of areas that Japan thought they led.

Certainly in the cauldron of actual war western stuff that was supposed to be superior has turned out to be rather ordinary, which is very bad considering it costs top dollar to buy and to operate.

Russia will spend the money for the best when it is worth it, but clearly their AESA radars for fighter aircraft are not sufficiently better than their existing types to justify the extra cost.

I suspect experience with large naval arrays of AESAs and of course the spreading use of AESAs on helicopters and SAM systems and now even tanks will lead to improvements in performance that makes the cost worth it... which ironically will lead to an increase in production which will speed up the improvements and reduces costs to acceptable levels.

22350M should have similar endurance and range as Udaloy class and a total as 96 VLS cells (64 UKSK +32 redut) basically the same as the america Burke class destroyer.

That should be enough also in blue waters operations.

Not suggesting it is bad by any means, but considering enemies will try to use swarm technology to overwhelm ships away from friendly waters I would say a proper destroyer with a 152mm gun with airburst shells with some ability to manouver to hit targets or get very close before exploding, plus an array of other air defence missiles would be preferable.

The difference between a destroyer and a cruiser is that a cruiser can defend a group of ships much better than a destroyer which can probably defend itself but would run out of missiles rather quickly with a concerted attack.

New generation very short range small missiles to defeat drones as well as lasers used over short distances to defeat drones and enemy munitions would probably need nuclear power for sustained useful fire power and all the optical and radar and sonar based systems for detecting an tracking threats, on, below, and above the water.

The Russians had the choice of the MiG-29M or the MiG-35 for the low cost 4th gen fighter and they chose the more expensive but more capable MiG-35.

They have not produced it in enormous numbers because they are on the verge of getting light cheap 5th gen single engined fighters that might not be very different in operational costs and purchase price to the MiG-35, but they wont know until they get these single engined fighters into the air and tested... claims are just claims until they can be proven.

The first iteration of the Su-27 was awful, but a quick redesign and it became a very very good aircraft... but even still Ukrainian Su-27s have not fared any better than Ukrainian MiG-29s against Russian air defences... which are formidable.

lancelot wrote:
It turns out that one of the reasons for the delays in delivering propulsion units for the other remaining Project 22350 ships was that UEC basically tried to drip feed the advance payments. Zvezda is claiming that contractual time to deliver the reduction gear to UEC can only be counted after the last advance payment is done. And the court judge ruled on their side.

http://tinyurl.com/4vsrrcp2

Actually I don't agree with the court ruling...

When you order something you are going to pay for in separate payments... especially a custom made item, you normally make the payments to start production so that if the order is cancelled the you get paid for the work you did.

The first payments pay for setting up and starting making your item whatever it is... I would be very pissed off if I ordered curtains to be made for a house and I pay in three month installments and on my last payment find out they can't get the fabric I want because they only started making the curtains when they got my last payment.

Claiming holding back money is a scam because you keep the interest for the money till it is transferred makes no sense because in this case the money would need to be allocated for the job... by paying in payments that money will be allocated in separate budgets and would not be sitting anywhere earning interest.

In fact it would suggest the opposite... the company making the products wants up front payments so they can put money into the bank and earn interest drawing out money for the build as they need it.

They do need to improve things to make things make more sense... I think privatisation was a bad idea because the Russian MIC is not allowed to make the sort of profits they make in the west so it will never be as profitable as many seem to think.

The 4-5% profit from each project would barely cover all the stuff they would have to pay for including investments in new technology and training and facility upkeep etc etc.

They could only really survive on export orders where there is more profit margin.

Sometimes free market competition is a good idea, but in things like the MIC or education or healthcare then public funded makes the most sense and gives the public the best value for money. 4-5% profit is just fine for a public company... a public company is not about profit.... it is about employment and spending government money on military projects in Russia.

That is fair enough but equally the Russian Navy has a fixed budget and money for things doesn't fall from the sky, it has to be planned and allocated so handing over the entire amount at once can lead to CEOs misusing the funds and then asking for more.

They essentially seem to be ordering a product and paying installments so the company making the product doesn't have to fund everything out of their own pockets.

Breaking down the costs of production in the contract should mean they know how much they need at each step and not handing it all over at once means you can spread the price of the order over time which saves the Navy money.

I am sure the companies making the productions would rather get the entire payment all at once and they can put it into an account and as they draw money out of it they can continue to receive interest on the remaining amount... not to mention they can make loans and buy tooling ahead of schedule when it might be cheaper or easier to get, or prepay some services to ensure they are available in the time window they need them for, but it also can lead to some managers getting nice bonuses and trips to do research on something important etc etc.

They need to work it out so neither side is suffering because both sides of the equation need to be healthy and functioning efficiently if they want a good result.

Paying money upfront almost never solves any problems, and runs the risk of corruption... especially with privately owned companies that are in the red.

Nationalise them and then fix them.

Wish the west would hurry up and steal Russias assets abroad... then they can just sweep through and seize the assets and shares of westerners that are holding Russian companies hostage...