Project 20380(5): Steregushchy Corvette #2

Could ships of this size be made to carry naval variants of the S-400 and S-500 systems? Having a greater dispersion of naval air defence could be advantageous for use in defending the Russian mainland.

Well the current British Daring air defence destroyer... their version of an American AEGIS cruiser could be used as a model... a 130mm gun at the front so you know it is a warship, plus perhaps two quad launchers for Uran as the token anti ship capability and then the UKSK replaced with Redut and extra Redut launch tubes as well.

Redut is for 9M100, 9M96 (both models), and S-400 they have said though for each 250km and 400km range S-400 you would be able to fit four 9M96 missiles or 16 9M100 missiles so obviously every really big missile they carry will reduce the total number of missiles carried by a huge margin.

Add some TOR missiles in deck launchers and of course a couple of Pantsir systems and you have a ship optimised for air defence only.

The new UKSK launchers, the UKSK-M expand the range of missiles and equipment you can load into the tubes to include SAMs like 9M96 and S-400, as well as Shtil/Naval BUK....

But it is always limited as to what you can fit on a Corvette or Frigate... which is why countries go for bigger ships too when they can.

A single corvette wont be amazing on its own but when you add it to a group of other ships... the same size or bigger then their performance and capabilities increase significantly. The extra radars and sensors and missiles and guns provide depth and reach.


If you want a picket arsenal air defence ship I would go for modifying one of the older ships... a Slava class or a Udaloy class ship.

If you think about the original electronics on those boats... they had computers the size of large rooms that have the processing power of a modern cell phone... a huge amount of internal volume would be freed up just by ripping out the old stuff and putting in new stuff that might fill 1% of the volume and yet be thousands of times more powerful and capable, and much of the new stuff is modular and automated so the crew size could be reduced significantly too.

After you reduce the crew and make all that space with the new electronics you should then have an enormous amount of space when you take the old weapons out and put the new weapon modules in... meaning instead of x number of SAMs you could carry before, you should be able to carry 10x SAMs now or more, and the new launchers that can carry attack missiles can also carry SAMs along with dedicated SAM launchers to fit in small nooks and crannies where nothing else would fit... like a deck mounted naval TOR launcher, or ten.

Being a much bigger ship you could fit bigger radar arrays and sensors etc etc.

It makes more sense to perfect a few Corvette types optimised for the different fleets they have and then just make them in long series.... making one off single unique ships is slow and frustrating... serial production is much more profitable and quicker because you have already solved most of the problems.

They could probably replace the 8-cell UKSK in the bow of 20385 with 2* 8-cell Redut for 32* cells total without too much rework but wouldn't improve the radar/firecontrol (which I suspect isn't really able to properly utilise the 120km 9M96 version).

Well if they replace the UKSK with UKSK-M they could load 4 9M96 missiles in each of the 8 tubes which gives you 32 extra 60km/150km range missiles but the capability of using Shtils as well as the wide range of land attack, anti ship and anti sub missiles the UKSK can carry.

To step up to S-3/400 size missiles you're going to dramatically reduce the cell-count because they're way bigger than 9M96

I would presume that one S-400 missile... the 250km and the 400km range models would fit one missile to each UKSK-M launch tube as that same tube can hold 4 9M96 missiles, so you could sacrifice some numbers for range... perhaps a single 400km range missile and two 250km range missiles, plus 4 tubes with 150km and 60km range 9M96s (in packs of four) and the remaining single tube could have 16 9M100 self defence SAMs of 15km range with IIR lock on after launch seekers.

That means for a single 8 tube launcher you could have 1 x 400km, 2 x 250km, say 4 x 150km and 8 x 60km range and 16 x 15km range SAMs... which would be a total of 31... not bad... if there is no risk of long range targets you can boost numbers in the other range classes, or add an anti sub or anti ship or land attack missile.

The big mystery there is Redut cells look like they should be big enough to quad-pack 9M96 or load single S-300 size missiles, yet as far as has been publicly stated/shown/hinted they are actually only single 9M96 each.

Something I have pondered here myself... the amount of padding around the missiles seems to be rather excessive... especially when you look at the missiles on the land based S-400 and S-350 systems with their slim narrow cannisters.

It has been mentioned that the Redut launch system is compatible with 250km and 400km missiles, which sound like the full calibre S-400 missiles to me.

On a side note I think it is odd that they have not developed aircraft carried and launched versions of 9M96... AFAIK the 9M100 is going to be used as a self defence short range missile for aircraft including bombers that are carried inside weapon bays where its lock on after launch capability would be useful.

The long slim design of the 9M96 missiles would be ideal for internal weapons bays too and being ARH and with a flight range of 60km and 150km from a ground launch, their performance from an aircraft at speed and altitude should double or triple those ranges against some targets...

As far as I understand the four canisters on the left are the size of the previous pic S-400 canister, the bigger canisters on the right should be the same size as S-500 canisters.

The problem of them being Army and Air Force weapons means most of the time the S-300P and S-300V are rarely shown side by side and never operate side by side in exercises...

Not sure there will be a naval version of S-300V except a S-500 for use against ballistic threats... it might have its own large launcher for use on cruisers and CVNs... perhaps it might also carry enlarged two stage Iskander type manouvering missiles of the future with scramjet motors and mach 15 speeds and ranges of 2,000km to 4,000km...

The idea wold be to have batteries comprising of multiple ships in order to increase survivability against saturation attacks, it would not matter if a ship only carried 10 S-500 missiles and only a small radar.

The primary value of a bigger ship is the ability to not just carry an array of weapons to defend itself... but also enough missiles to defend ships it operates... the purpose of a cruiser is to create an air defence shell or umbrella for smaller ships to operate under.

If they can layer their missiles it would be even better because the UKSK-M is designed for missiles up to 10 metres long so a short missile like 9M100 you could fit 16 missiles in the width of the tube but you could probably also fit 2 or three layers in the depth... so 32-48 missiles per tube means you could probably reserve one or two UKSK-M launch tube for CIWS self defence and be very well defended... they are lock on after launch missiles with two way datalinks... an ideal weapon to face swarm attacks...

One thing I've always wondered about the UKSK-M is if they'll be able to stack smaller missiles like 9M100 ontop of each other or not? Also, will Redut be unified with the UKSK-M?

Wondered that myself.

The problem is that they might not think it is worth it for Corvettes and Frigates and the UKSK-M might be reserved for their bigger ship designs... and of course we still don't know about the S-500... it might be that current Redut launchers with 12 tubes can actually carry 12 x 250km and 400km range big missiles and that they can also fit 48 x 9M96 60km and 150km ranged missiles in the 12 tubes, which would mean if they were that way inclined they could fit 192 x 15km range 9M100 missiles in the 12 tubes... if they wanted... without layering.

You do start to worry about how much all these damn missiles are going to cost, but then the UKSK-M drawings posted include also EW countermeasures loads as well so they likely wont be loading weapons into every single tube I suspect.