Project 20836 Derzkiy-class modular Corvette

Building large composite structures can be quite expensive. Just look at what happened with the US Zumwalt class. The last ship had a steel upper structure just to cut cost.

It is more likely lack of progress on decisions as to what they want to do with it that are the problem... the US is having a similar issue with its LCS boats that it does not know what to do with... some of which have already been scrapped.

When they finally complete it they might decide it is the best thing in the world and make a few more, and like the first of any type it is going to be slow and expensive... when CDs replaced cassette tapes they were $32 dollars a CD, compared with about $20 for a cassette tape... the excuse to start with was that the technology was new and expensive but when the price did not drop very much at a time when they were stamping them out at enormous speeds on a few cents worth of plastic disc we were told it was more expensive because the quality was better.

Obviously the first new type of ship structure is going to be slow and expensive but production means it gets faster and easier and cheaper and it might cost more to create a new mould... but once that mould is created it might be rather cheap to mass produce superstructures on its basis and it might work out rather faster and cheaper... they don't know until they try to serialise production and they are not going to do that with only one or two built.

They have to make decisions based on assessments and estimates and best guesses...

Broski wrote:To this very day I still don't know what the point of Project 20386 is, what's it supposed to do that Project 20380/5 can't?

It is a glorified giant patrol boat with a propulsion system as expensive or more than a frigate's and about the same displacement.
Think of it as the Russian LCS. It even has the same sales pitch of being "modular" with containerized packages.

So youre comparing this ship to the zumwalt which is a failed concept POS...

That is a fair comparison if you made it before the Zumwalts were declared failures...

The theory seemed solid and it had enormous potential and it broke new ground in a lot of areas, but for some reason they decided to start serial production before they had solved all the problems... it is like they assumed everything was planned properly and everything would work despite how advanced it was supposed to be.

It is almost like they went to fast prototyping and said this new prototype looks good... put it into production before it is complete... any minor problems we can fix with upgrades... but the problems were major and fundamental in the case of the gun and are not likely to be solved any time soon.

If this really was a promising design and not an expensive hulk with barely more capabilities than the gremyaschi don't you think the navy would be assigning more resources to complete it quickly?

No, because as well as being promising... it is also risky... and they don't want to rush it into serial production and get enormous numbers into the water only to find problems that can't be fixed or a design and materials that don't deliver on their promises and never get easier and cheaper to make...

The way it looks, we have 3-5 more years of consturction plus 5-8 years more tests. It seems it will be obsolete before it enters service in the early 2030s.

Think of it as what it is... composite materials for warships... the promise is lighter and cheaper and more stealthy, but what if it never gets cheaper and burns like a candle, and the promises about how long it lasts without maintenance are lies or just optimistic bullshit... if you listen to the BS in aircraft planes would be 100% composite by now with ceramic electric motors, but they are not.... it is useful in some areas but not all areas.

Experience with racing Yachts shows de-lamination under stress can be a problem too...

If you think of this more as a one off test vessel with enormous potential but also a lot to prove...

ANd now its being compared to the LCS.... man, this ship mustreally be a moneywasting trashcan.

Some times new ideas fail. Sometimes an idea gets overhyped and is not tested enough before progressing to the production stage.... they were going to make hundreds of Zumwalts if they worked... they ended up stopping the programme at 3, while the LCS was stopped at about 16...

It was laid down in 2016 and floated out in 2021 to be complete afloat... hardly a disfunctional gestation... it is supposed to be a new stealthy corvette and they want about 10 of them in total... they have other corvettes in construction and also Frigates so there is no urgent rush or high priority of whacking these things out in enormous numbers... the examples of the LCS and Zumwalt suggest getting the first one right and working makes good sense.

Why do you think they should rush something so important?

"But the americans have problems with the LCS and zumwalt" is a fallacious argument since these 2 projects should never have been started, let alone built, so therefore the mercury should never have been built. Same with the mercury.

The concepts and ideas behind the Zumwalt were sound enough... the idea behind the F-35 were good too... standardisation across the western world of a stealthy 5th gen F-16... essentially a Checkmate... but the Americans can't do cheap and affordable... but they made it the opposite... much more expensive than it needed to be because the US MIC is interested in profit.

Also being as incompetent as americans is not an excuse, but a shame.

At the planning level the ideas were good going forward, but they allowed the MIC to ruin the projects...

Time, R&D and resources were spent building this crappy hulk that instead could've gone to more 23085s and enlarged gorshkovs.

The enlarged Gorshkovs and more 23085s are being built and I don't think having more money in the budget would make them come faster.

The is a slow steady well planned and implimented project that may lead to an excellent ship the Russian Navy might buy large numbers of and perhaps even export to a few countries... or not.

[quote]
Also the mere fact that the navy doesnt have a good idea what this ship should do in its doctrine is a clear example of a concept being a failure.[/quoet]

They haven't even completed it yet and you are calling it a failure.... at least you are being fair... how about you tell them why it failed and what could make it work and everything will be fine.

Its not "fundamentally new". Its just a conventional light missile frigate with the same weapons as the gorshkov. If it was fundamentally new, it would have electrothermal guns, mircowave lasers, S-500, UKSK that can fire SAMs, etc.

Fundamentally new for the Russian Navy... stealthy and modular... and who knows what they are going to have on board.

Being delivered by barge I presume the superstructure was produced at one of the places that built 20380 superstructures/is building the Minesweepers so the skill/construction speed won't have been the issue there.

I suspect the likely problem is that they have already decided they want more than one UKSK launcher and one Redut launcher and they are having problems fitting them in.

Think of it as the Russian LCS. It even has the same sales pitch of being "modular" with containerized packages.

The main difference being the Russia container based modules exist and are in production.

For all we know it might be planned as a long range corvette for use against Pirates and operating further away from Russian waters as a cheap light frigate.

The Zumwalt would have been ok as the original design, which was to be an arsenal ship filled to the gills with VLS tubes.
Congress decided they wanted a long range shore bombardment capability, a lot of money was spent on designing a railgun which never worked properly, so they scrapped that project and added a 155mm conventional gun which unfortunately can't even use regular 155mm artillery ammo. It needs special GPS guided ammo which if procured in the amount 3 ships would use means each round costs about the same as a Tomahawk missile.

The two 155mm guns take up most of the space in the front of the ship. Supposedly there is now a plan to take the guns out and put submarine VLS tubes in them which can launch ballistic missiles with a large conventional warhead.

Even if the problem is getting the electric drive system working... who cares?

Such work is valuable... there are serious shortages of chips and electronics around the world for all sorts of industries because chip production shut down expecting there to be no demand for a while and a few countries... china included are back up to production speed and want materials and components... this alone will have slowed down production of things for the last two years.

Compound that with the complexity of making an electric drive ship and of course it is going to be expensive and slow.

The point is that when they have it working it is a critical step forward in ship design that can be applied to the rest of the fleet of new ships, which they can incorporate into the basic design of all the new ships they are designing... like their Cruisers and Destroyers and CVNs to come.

Dare I say it... it would put them at the leading edge of modern ship design... or the technology might not be ready yet... but the money spent on a hybrid propulsion and power system for a Corvette would be a fraction of the cost of a system for a Destroyer and a good change to learn relatively cheaply.

Being a smaller vessel once the first ship is working they could then produce a dozen or so and get them into the water for operational testing and use all round the place to properly test them in all sorts of situations so the technology can mature faster so it can be applied to bigger ships and other corvettes too.

The Zumwalt was a disaster because they wanted everything in the first ship.... if they had made the first 5 ships more conventional with VLS instead of the gun or a conventional gun, and then made an improved version with a new gun based on an existing standard calibre... I would say 203mm would be the best choice as it could be developed as an Army weapon as well that can use standard ammo to start with.... just develop and build a gun and ammo handling system and start working on improved long range ammo for it... it means you get improved ships faster into service and there is less risk and more focus on getting other things working and mature.

So called experts in the west like to criticise the Su-57 for not having its best engine when it enters service, but most western fighters of the last few decades... the Gripen, the Rafale, the Typhoon, the F-35... even the F-14A and F-16A and F-15A were nothing like the aircraft they turned into over time... the first models were very limited and had all sorts of faults and problems... it wasn't the end of the world and they weren't cancelled because of that... they accepted that over the life of a military system there are growing pains and growth spurts and evolution into the weapon they will become.

Another important factor we are missing is that experience at making composite ship upper structure might be interesting and a little stealthy on a corvette, but when it comes to very large ships top weight is a serious issue... as is radar cross section, so experience making an electric drive ship and working with large pieces of composite material for super structure is very valuable and worth the time and money being spent to develop the skills to make it.

Experience with this ship in actual testing will result in valuable experience with composite materials which might lead to making their destroyers and cruisers out of the stuff... making them lighter and less top heavy...

There are lots of things to learn like being thicker than the equivalent of steel they might find it is better insulation for colder or hotter places which saves on heating or air conditioning in the living spaces... there is also scope for including fire retardant materials to reduce the risk of fire, and of course reduced top weight is always good for a ship in rough weather.

The first composite structures took months, but the newer ones took a few days, presumably because the first ones were done piece by piece in order to make sure the existing structure had cured and was ready before the next piece was added, but the newer ones allowed pieces to be assembled together at the same time instead of one after the other... making build time much more efficient for future ships.

Ironically radar transparent composites can actually increase RCS because it exposes all the bumps and corner reflectors inside the ship structure, but each layer of composite material can be lined with RAM and an inner layer could be used to deflect incoming radar waves away from their sources... the opposite to a reflector on your car or bike that shines light back to a light source for visibility at night.

So it sounds like the design was always to be a high tech stealth corvette design using new modular technologies, but this seems to be a shift in that perhaps they were going to spread out the upgrades and improvements and technologies over the series but now they are going to redesign the first vessel for testing the new technologies... ie 1 guinea pig for them to test things on.

The fact that it has stealth design and other expensive technologies I would think new experimental things like laser dazzlers for use against optical homing weapons would be interesting, and in fact other laser based defensive systems would also be worth testing.

Many of the modular systems seem to be container based systems so much of the testing might involve the ship not changing much but trying different container based modules in different combinations, perhaps weapons and recon sensors and other things like sub surface, sea surface, land and air drones of all types from a stealthy corvette mother ship that can remain in international waters perhaps?

Edit: actually the laser dazzlers are already in service... we know that, so if they are testing new stuff perhaps a container based laser defence system against drones perhaps or other exotic weapons. By making them modular and container based you could use them at sea but also on land on trucks or trains or placed in a field as they would be self contained for the most part.  Being container based they could also be deployed by air or ship or train or truck easily and efficiently too.

The options for drone based systems would be enormous, as would container based missile systems like a naval TOR, or the new mini SAMs for self defence...

There was a US TV programme about one of their ships, but this type has more potential in the sense that Russia is at the beginning of reaching out to the world and it is a brand new vessel which makes it exciting, and its new technologies can be part of the new show which they might be able to sell to the rest of the world to promote Russians as being more than drunks and criminals, as being honourable the way the west pretends to be...