Russian Navy: Status & News #1

Yes... it has a particularly high radar frequency (MMW band) and can determine the type of ship it is attacking too.

A short range model would be useful... perhaps in the 300kg weight range with a flight range of perhaps 80-90km with a more compact seeker... perhaps an IIR seeker with a backup ARH radar sensor. A 30-40kg warhead that was SAPHEI... ie semi armour piercing high explosive incendiary... which means it will punch through the outer hull of the target and explode inside the ship and start fires...

The UKSK model would need a 50kg solid rocket booster to launch it... give it fairly large fold out wings to reduce the required thrust and give it an efficient aerodynamic shape to keep its size down... its targets will not be military generally so it doesn't need to be supersophisticated... in fact a data link sending back IR video of the target would allow the launch platform to target the rudder, or engine area or the bridge if necessary of the target to get it to stop. It could cruise to the target at medium altitude to maximise speed and reduce fuel consumption and when it gets close it could perhaps increase the sweep of the large wings to reduce drag and increase speed and drop down to a sea skimming mode for the last 15km or so to the target.

For military targets such a target would be easy to swat out of the sky, but most smugglers/pirates/illegal fishermen will likely never see what hit them.

You could fit 3 or 4 missiles on top of each other for the length/depth of the UKSK tube system so you could carry 6-8 missiles in two tubes, with the remainder of the tubes fitted with anti sub and anti ship missiles of other types...

Austin wrote:The documentary on Russian Navy states that Russia Navy has a fleet of total 100 Fleet and submarine and now ranks 5 behind US , UK , France ,India.

Is that estimate accurate ?

With more ssbm than India and UK. Its nuclear sub force is more than that of India... etc etc etc.

History channel is not accurate with nearly anything.

Does that really need answering? There is no such thing as invincible or impervious. Pretty much any defence system can be oversaturated, as well as they have still a headroom for failure, no such thing as 100% accuracy. As well, with newer defence technologies, there are newer offensive systems too, and systems like brahmos and onyx would be enough. AEGIS destroyers are good, but like any vunderwaff equipment being hyped by the MiC, nothing is invincible.

Dont always trust "words" from an advertisement.

The Russian navy is sizing down its range of weapons and that includes big heavy anti ship missiles their missile boats used to carry.

For some boats 4-6 large heavy anti ship missiles were potent weapons, but today it makes more sense to carry 8-16 much smaller lighter missiles... and for existing vessels it makes more sense to replace older larger heavier missiles with more smaller lighter weapons.

They will decide on one it seems like, they are just making projects with both types of powerplants.

Building both would be a terrible idea IMO. Just focus on one ship, and get a production line going.

Making a cheap simple (mass produced) destroyer and a more expensive nuclear powered model actually makes a lot of sense.

If they go with cheap then they doom any carrier group to the speed and range of the slowest vessel in the group that will include destroyers... even if the carriers are nuclear powered they will have to move at the speed of the slowest vessel to maintain the group. Having lots of destroyers will not compensate the group for reduced speed and regular refuellings... remember if the group has to go from the Northern fleet to say Cuba that could mean two or three refuellings for a conventional destroyer... which means refuelling ships speed... about 16 knts. If all the ships are nukes then they can travel most of the time at up to double that speed the entire trip... speed is important.

It also means they can optimise their force structure with cheaper conventional destroyers able to make port calls to countries that don't like nukes ( like NZ ) and they can have them relatively cheaply, while still having the rather more capable and powerful more expensive ships.

Lets face it... with standardisation the electronics and radar and systems and weapons will be similar... UKSK launchers, Redut launchers, etc etc... the difference will be numbers and the antenna size of the main radars plus of course the deployment range.

They are working on new compact reactors, so their might not actually be that much of a size difference between the two different destroyer types... they have nuclear power generators they designed for satellites and space exploration that they could actually use as batteries for a diesel electric that would make rather more sense than any other AIP type.

They had in the 1980s a reactor that was designed for a mission to Mars that had an operational life of about 13 years that could continuously generate about 200 MWs of electrical power. As a by product its cooling system could be used to heat a facility on Mars so the 200 MW could be used for things other than heating... which made it much more useful as heating would be about 30% of the power requirement for a base on Mars... having it generate hot liquids that can be used to heat the base just as a by product was a serious bonus and in a sub like a Kilo class having a heating system for use in polar regions would be very useful. In more tropical regions the seawater can be used to remove heat from the system, or more stealthily the water in the ballast tanks can be heated to reduce the external signature of the sub.

From memory the reactor was 1m square and 4m long and could be used to continuously keep the batteries on a diesel electric topped up or directly power the sub. Put four on board and you could probably remove the diesel components and just have an all electric sub.

Having a few shipyards building ships is not OK... we want plenty of work for all of them... the fact that only a few yards can handle large ships at the moment is largely because only a few yards have been properly active building modern ships... increase the number and size of the ships being built and have more shipyards able to build ships.

Having yards making small boats is critical as you need small boats too.

I agree there is no need for new carriers this decade, but the ships they are building now need to be able to hold their own for much longer than older ships needed to, so making them bigger and more expensive might allow future growth in performance to allow them to stay in service longer meaning other types can be built when they would normally be making replacements for the ships they are building now.

This longer view means better value for money and longer production runs. If they can make it modular enough the difference between a nuke and a conventional ship would be 2-3 sections that could perhaps be swapped out if needed/desired... I don't think an all nuke fleet is affordable but in 15 years time perhaps nuke propulsion will have evolved to the point where it is safe and efficient and cheaper than it is now... cheaper than fossil fuels.