Russian Navy. Sad look into the future. Part of 6. Corvettes
In studying the capabilities of our SSBNs, SSNs, SSKs and this strange EGSONPO, we paid special attention to the ability of the Russian Navy to solve its most important, strategic task, namely the task of delivering a large-scale and devastating nuclear missile strike on an aggressor country. To do this, the fleet must have modern types of SSBNs and ballistic missiles for submarines, and, in addition, is obliged to ensure the combat stability of strategic missile submarines until the moment they use nuclear weapons weapons.
Therefore, we will begin the description of surface ships with light forces destined for operations in the near-sea zone and capable of assisting other forces in ensuring the security of the deployment areas of SSBNs. In other words, in this article we will talk about corvettes.
First, a little stories. In the USSR, anti-submarine defense in the near-sea zone was engaged in patrol ships, as well as small anti-submarine ships, and boats. TFRs were represented by a very successful project 1135 and its modifications.
In the standard 2 810 displacement, domestic designers were able to fit the stationary SAS MG-332 Titan-2 quite good for its time, towed by the SAS MG-325 Vega, and the most powerful anti-submarine armament, which included a quad anti-submarine rocket launcher aerial module aerial package aerial control unit, which included a quad anti-aircraft missile system, a quad missile system, and a powerful anti-submarine armament, which included a quad anti-submarine aerial control unit. "Blizzard", two four-pipe torpedo tubes and bomb-bombs. In addition, the ships had a pair of self-defense SAMs Osa-M and two twin 4-mm units. These ships received gas turbine chassis and were deservedly loved by sailors for their reliability, high combat and seaworthiness. In total, the USSR built the 76 ship for the 21 project and another 1135 - for the improved 11M project, and, in addition, the 1135 ships were built under the 7 "Nerey" project for the border guards of the KGB of the USSR, whose anti-submarine capabilities were weakened, but which, if necessary, also Could be brought to the TLO water areas.
Small anti-submarine ships were presented:
Project 1124: very good for its time ships.
Of course, in the standard 830 tonnage it was impossible to place a powerful gas generator (the famous Polynom just weighed about 800 tonnes), but the IPC still had two sonar stations with an antenna and a lowered antenna, and four 533 as the main anti-submarine armament mm torpedoes It is unlikely that the individual search capabilities of the IPC struck the imagination, but this was bathed by their multiplicity - starting with 1970, 37 ships of this type entered the USSR fleet. The IPCs turned out to be quite successful, and therefore, starting with 1982, their advanced versions were put up - under the 1124M and 1124М projects, the 31 ship was built. They received more sophisticated airborne systems, and with the same main armament (two two-pipe torpedo tubes) and somewhat enhanced self-defense armament — the advanced Osa-MA system (and not Osa-M on the 1124 project ships), 76-mm (and not 57-mm) machine gun, AK-30M 630-mm “metal cutter”. And besides this, one IPC was built on the project 1124K, on which the OSA “Osa” was replaced by the “Dagger”. In total, the Navy of the USSR received the 69, 1124M / MU, and K projects. 1124 ships. As in the case with the 1135 project guard ships, these IPCs “liked” the KGB, which had built a certain amount for the protection of the USSR sea borders. But, since they did not belong to the navy, we will not take into account the “KGB fleet”.
Project 1331M: these ships were designed in the GDR, with the help of Zelenodolsk PKB.
In general, the ships were not very successful and were inferior to the IPC family 1124. Nevertheless, the composition of the fleet of the USSR replenished 12 IPC of this type
The ships of the above projects had a standard displacement of more than 800 tons, but then we will consider the BMDs where they are smaller, to 450 tonnes, so it makes sense to classify them as anti-submarine boats (although in the USSR Navy they were considered to be IPC)
Project 11451: a very original project of the 320-ton ship on hydrofoils.
According to the developers, he had to quickly go to the area where the submarine was spotted, search for it with the help of the MNNXX-1 Star (MG-01) smashed and destroy, for which he was armed with four 369-mm torpedoes. It was considered extremely useful for the Black Sea, before the collapse of the Union, they managed to build 400 of such boats
The 12412 project was an anti-submarine version of a missile boat with a standard 420 tonnage.
Received the Bronze SJS with a podkilny and low-towed antennas, 4 * 400-mm torpedoes, 76-mm and 30-mm artillery systems. For the Navy of the USSR, 16 of such ships was built (another 20 - for the KGB of the USSR).
So, the 32 patrol ship (excluding the KGB ships), the 81 small anti-submarine ship and the 18 IPC, which we decided to consider anti-submarine boats, and the total - 131 ship, were commissioned in the USSR. The author of this article does not have data on how many of them are left in the fleet today, but as of 1 in December 2015 g in the composition of the Russian Navy was listed as:
The patrol ships of the project 1135 / 1135М - 2 units: "Ladny" and "Inquisitive"
IPC project 1124 / 1124М: respectively 2 and 18 units.
IPC project 1331M - 7 units.
Anti-submarine boats - not at all.
And all - 29 ships.
The Russian fleet also includes two patrol ships of the 11540 project (Fearless and Yaroslav the Wise) and the last singing frigate of the 01090 Smetliy, but according to the author, they are more of a frigate, rather than to corvettes, and in this article will not be considered.
Obviously, the capabilities of the PLO surface forces, as compared with the times of the late USSR, have decreased by a factor of several. But the problem, in essence, is not even the fact that the number of domestic anti-submarine ships decreased by 4,5 times. Even if, by magic, they suddenly returned today to the ranks of the fleet, their effectiveness against modern means of submarine warfare, such as the submarines of the 4 generation, could not be high. Being commissioned before the collapse of the USSR, they would today have a very respectable age of about 30 years and more, and in any case, in the very near future, it would be a time of rest.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the state program of armaments on 2011-2020 was planned to build as many 35 corvettes. And, undoubtedly, such an ambitious number of warships in the coastal zone could indeed largely restore the surface PLO component of our Navy.
However, this did not happen.
HPV-2011-2020 assumed the commissioning of six corvettes of the project 20380 and twelve - the project 20385, and then the transition to the construction of ships of a new type. Such plans were fully justified, because, first, the development of the 20380 technical design was completed in 2001, which was already distant, so that by the end of the LG-2011-2020 ship was not the last word of naval science and technology. And secondly, the 20380 project and its upgraded version of 20385 can hardly be called successful ships.
Since in the past we have already described the shortcomings of this project, this time we will limit ourselves to a brief listing of them.
The first drawback - weapons, inadequate tasks of the corvette. First, the ships are simply overloaded with weapons, although for the sake of justice, we note that the founder of the series, the corvette Steregushchy, was least affected by this lack. Moreover, a helicopter, eight anti-ship missiles “Uran-U”, ZRAK “Kortik-M”, 100-mm AU and two 30-mm “metal cutters”, along with eight tubes of the small-size torpedo complex “Package-NK”, looked quite reasonable in the standard displacement 1 800 t. In general, it was a fairly balanced ship with universal weapons. It would look very well as an export ship for the third world countries, but in terms of its combat capabilities it didn’t meet the needs of the Russian Navy.
The "Urans" were too weak to use the corvette as an attack ship, and in general the use of a fairly large, but not very fast (27 knots) ship in this capacity raises great doubts. But there is no doubt that the main enemy of our corvettes will be enemy submarines, and the "Steregushchiy" carries quite powerful (for its size) hydroacoustic systems for their detection. But at the same time, the corvette lacks any adequate anti-submarine weapons: the "Paket-NK" installed on it is more of an anti-torpedo than an anti-submarine system: although its 324-mm torpedoes are capable of attacking enemy boats at a distance of 20 km, their speed is only 30 knots, although the maximum speed of the torpedoes of this system is 50 knots. Defense "Steregushchy" would be sufficient provided that "Kortik-M" is brought to a working condition (there is information that the complex experienced problems with both the SAM and artillery "finishing off" the target after it was attacked by missiles) or replacing it with a naval version of the Pantsir.
Alas, the development of the 20380 corvettes went completely the other way - they tried to install the Redoubt anti-aircraft missile system on the ship. Of course, there was no possibility to put on the ship of such a small displacement a multifunctional Polimer radar, which was supposed to carry out fire control of this air defense system. As a result, the task of issuing target designation and correction of missiles in flight (until the moment when their homing head captures the target) was attempted to entrust to the full-time general-purpose radar "Furke-2", which is not intended for this at all. According to some, unverified data, today, some kind of effective management of missiles is provided by the Puma radar control of artillery fire, but this is not certain.
With the improvement of the corvette on the 20385 project, its armament underwent significant changes: two light four-barreled anti-ship missiles Uran-U were replaced with a vertical launcher for eight Caliber missiles, and the number of Reduta cells was brought to 16 (on 20380 ships, their It was 12), in addition, to control the SAMs used a new radar. Anti-submarine capabilities also increased to a certain extent, because the family of Caliber cruise missiles also includes missile-torpedoes (91Р1 and 91РТ2). But the “admiral revolt” began here, because with such weapons the cost of the 20385 corvettes reached the price of frigates of the “admiral” series (the 11356Р project) which was completely unacceptable. The corvette should be relatively cheap to be massive, otherwise there is no point in creating ships of this class. Moreover, in their combat capabilities, seaworthiness, range, the 11356Р frigates left the 20385 corvettes far behind.
The second drawback is the use of a diesel power plant. The fact is that of the four types of power plants: atomic, gas turbine, steam turbine and diesel, the shipbuilders of the USSR mastered the first two perfectly. There was not much point in creating diesel engines for any large surface combatant ships, and without that, the Soviet Navy had enough problems with the different types of weapons and equipment. Moreover, ship diesel engines are surprisingly difficult, one can say that in the world only Germans and Finns have succeeded in such diesel engines. However, for the corvettes of the project 20380 adopted diesel power plant. Understanding that you should not count on your own strength, we assumed to equip domestic warships with German diesel engines from MTU. But, after the introduction of sanctions, the use of the brainchild of the “gloomy Teutonic genius” had to be abandoned and switched to the products of the national Kolomna plant. In which diesel engines for electric locomotives are not bad, but their ship "products" essentially lose to the German ones in terms of reliability.
In general, it can be stated that the 20380 / 20385 corvettes of the XVUMX / 20380 corvettes suitable for mass construction, reliable “horses” for the coastal seas did not work out. Unsuccessful choice of weapons, inactive anti-aircraft missile system, unreliable running gear ... And after all, it cannot be said that the project had absolutely no merits. The designers managed to solve a very nontrivial task of placing a helicopter hangar on a ship of such a small displacement, to provide reduced radar visibility to place very numerous sonar weapons ... but all this, alas, did not make the 20385 / XNUMX corvettes successful.
To date, there are five corvettes of the 20380 project, including the “Steregushchy” (transferred to the fleet even before the launch of the LG 2011-2020). Five more corvettes are in various stages of construction, while the “Loud” will obviously be ready in 2018 g, the rest are expected in 2019-2021. As for the 20385 project, only two ships of this type, the Thunder, were laid. and "Agile" - they must replenish the fleet in 2018-2019.
On this construction of the corvettes of the 20380 / 20385 family is likely to be completed. True, the press expressed an opinion (RIA News, 2015 d) that at least six ships of this type will be built for the Pacific Fleet, for which two more ships should have been laid at the Amur Shipbuilding Plant, but due to the fact that 2018 d was already in the yard, and the bookmarks did not take place most likely they will not. Thus, the composition of the Navy will not replenish 18, as originally planned for the LG 2011-2020, but only 12 corvettes project 20380 / 20385. The only plus in all this is only one - there are very good chances that most of them will indeed join the fleet before 2020 g, and the rest will be operational at the beginning of the 20's. This century.
Apparently, patrol ships of the 20380 project were called to somehow remedy the situation with the failed 22160. But these ships either suffered greatly from an ill-conceived design specification, or they (they have such a feeling) were simply offered at the right time and place.
For the umpteenth time, the developers tried to tie a horse and a quivering doe in one harness. On the one hand, the ship’s displacement needed to be reduced to reduce the cost of construction, but on the other hand, the catastrophic situation with large surface ships required to provide seaworthiness sufficient for operations outside the seas washing the shores of the Russian Federation. As a result, the patrol ships of the 22160 project received a displacement in 1 300 t and 60 days of autonomy, as well as seaworthiness sufficient for the far sea zone (the combination of the above in one ship is more than doubtful, but ...) As you can see, the tasks of the Black Sea ships of this type will include a demonstration of the flag in the Mediterranean.
At the same time, the ships were originally designed for the Border Service of the Federal Security Service of Russia. Their staff weapons, X-NUMX-3 “Bending” air defense missile system (in fact, the turret for Strela MANPADS), 47-mm gun mounts, a pair of 57-mm machine guns and a DP-14,5 grenade launcher complex designed to destroy combat swimmers look quite reasonable for a patrolman, whose task is the protection of territorial waters in peacetime and the detention of violators, but it is absolutely not suitable for a warship in wartime. And the patrol ship of the 65 project does not carry any more weapons.
More precisely, bears, but how? Free space is provided in the stern of the ship.
There you can install several standard cargo containers with weapons placed in them - for example, Caliber cruise missiles, or a mine-complex, or ...
Only there is one problem - as of today, nothing is known about any container complexes other than Caliber. But it is known that the armed forces of the Russian Federation have not purchased a single container complex. Probably, the ships of the 22160 project will have to temporarily resemble without “container” weapons ... that's just nothing more permanent than temporary.
And after all, what a shame - the patrol ships of the 22160 project have very well-developed sonar weapons. These are both the stationary GAK MGK-335EM-03, and GAS with the towed Vignette-EM antenna. There is a hangar (although it looks very narrow) and a helicopter. Throw away all these “flexible” and 57-mm gun mounts with machine guns, put the naval version of the Shell, the usual torpedo tube, and the same “Package-NK” and you would have a great small anti-submarine ship with a standard 1 ton displacement, in which so needs today the Russian fleet ...
... although, probably, still would not have turned out. Because the ships of the 22160 project are equipped with a combined power plant, in which high speed is provided by gas turbines, but the economic move is still the same diesel engines, and on the first ship of the series, Vasily Bykov, German diesel engines from MAN were installed. In other words, six ships that can search for submarines, but cannot destroy them, because they do not have anti-submarine weapons, will go into service with the Russian Navy.
“But wait, what about the helicopter?” The attentive reader will ask. True, the ship has a helicopter, but as far as the author of the article knows, usually a search for enemy submarines is carried out by a pair of helicopters - while one searches, the second carries ammunition to destroy the detected submarines. If there is no second helicopter, then the defeat of the discovered submarine is assigned to the ship - for this, BOD of the USSR was carried by long-range missile-torpedoes. But at the same time carry a sufficient ammunition, and a helicopter can not search for submarines. Therefore, a rather strange method of combat with submarines will be available for the patrol ship; while the ship searches for submarines by its own means, the helicopter is on duty in readiness for takeoff with suspended armament. However, taking into account the short distance of submarine detection and a long reaction time (the helicopter will take off so far), it may easily turn out that there will be no place for the helicopter to return.
Today, six patrol ships of the 22160 project have been laid, the latter, “Nikolay Sipyagin”, 13 in January 2018. Considering that the head “Vasily Bykov”, being laid down in 2014 g, has not yet been commissioned, we can assume that The series will be built before 2022 - 2023.
It can be stated that the 20380, 20385 and 22160 projects do not meet the requirements of the Russian Navy. And therefore 28 in October 2016 r. At the Northern shipyard was laid the corvette of the new project 20386 “Daring”. It was supposed to be the “work on the mistakes” of previous projects and give the fleet the “workhorse” it needs so much. What kind of ship this time turned out?
Tasks Corvette Project 20386:
1. Protection of maritime communications within the mile economic zone 200.
2. Opposition to the ships of a probable enemy at any distance from the fleet bases.
3. Ensuring a steady air defense of the ships' connections against air strikes.
4. Search, detection and destruction of submarines in a given area.
5. Providing air defense and fire support amphibious operations.
What catches your eye? First, the corvette of the 20386 project ... has ceased to be a corvette, because with a displacement in 3 400 t (unknown, however, standard or full), this ship can be called anything but the corvette.
According to the author of this article, the following happens. For a long time in the Russian Federation, design offices were on the verge of survival, and were ready to do anything for the sake of budget funds, and the fleet was in dire need of full-fledged warships, but had no opportunity to pay for them. As a result, there appeared a competition of “miracle ships” - in the struggle for financing, the designers tried to shove maximum armament into the minimum displacement and vied with each other to offer the missile cruiser to the displacement of the missile boat. The consequence of this was that our first projects — the 20380 corvette and the 22350 frigate — were re-equipped with a lack of displacement. However, in fact, the cost of a modern ship determines its equipment - the hull itself costs little, so there was no point in saving pennies and creating low-seagoing frigates (these were the 20386 corvettes). As a result, the only truly successful ship project was the frigates of the 11356 project, which became an improved version of the Talvars, designed for the Indian Navy based on the famous 1135 SCR, which the designers did to create an effective warship, rather than trying to cram into the minimum size.
Now everything is gradually returning to normal: for example, the sailors do not want to continue the series of frigates of the 22350 project, but they want to get a much larger ship based on it (we will talk about the 22350М project later). And the same thing happens with corvettes.
The author of this article is not a shipbuilding engineer, but in the drawings of the 20386 project corvettes do not look equal to 11356 frigates.
Therefore, most likely, their standard displacement is about 2 800 t, a little more or less, and the full one is 3 400 t. Thus, we can say that we refuse corvettes as a class and return to the idea of the 1135 project 2 (whose displacement just was 810 2 t) on a new technological base. We plan to build relatively small, but well-armed ships, seaworthy enough to make inter-theater crossings if necessary and be present, say, in the same Mediterranean Sea. In fact, in its functionality, the new ships will replace both the classic corvettes (ships of the order of 000 4 t) and, to a large extent, frigates (of the order of 000 22350 of t). The remaining "frigate" functions will be taken over by the destroyers - and the ships that are planned to be built according to the XNUMX project, regardless of what they are called, are destroyers.
What has changed in comparison with the previous types of corvettes? Fundamental changes have affected the power plant of the ship. Instead of diesel engines, the 20386 Corvette of the project received a combined gas-turbine installation with partial electric propulsion, which consists of two M90FR gas-turbine engines rated for 27500 hp. and two main electric motors with 2200 horsepower, hp. In other words, the electric propulsion of the ship will be ensured by the electric motors, and the gas turbines will provide full power.
The advantage of this decision is that we are finally moving away from diesel engines and gradually introduce electric propulsion on warships. Theoretically, this is a very advanced technology that offers us many benefits: the ability of an electric motor to quickly change speed, and even the direction of rotation of the propeller allows us to make a ship with electric motors very maneuverable. But the main advantage is that the electric movement (at least potentially) provides minimal noise, which would be a huge advantage for the anti-submarine ship.
It must be said that in the USSR and the Russian Federation the electric movement was not something unknown - it was used on icebreakers and auxiliary ships, but for reasons unknown to the author, it was not used on surface warships. If such a scheme turns out to be successful on the 20386 corvette, then it will most certainly be used on ships of other classes, at least the mention of partial electric propulsion for the destroyer Leader was in print.
The armament of the new corvette largely repeats the ships of the 20380 project. The air defense system is provided by the same “Redoubt” air defense missile system, only the cells will not be 12, but 16 (as on 20385 corvettes). But now they will be managed by a completely new multifunctional radar complex (MF RLC) Zaslon, which is a real highlight of the project.
What is MF RLC "Barrier"? Most of all, it resembles a cross between the American AN / SPY-1 and the British SAMPSON, installed on destroyers of the Daring type. Four phased arrays give the similarity to the American complex, deployed in such a way as to collectively provide an overview of 360 degrees around the ship.
But the American radar was one, not the best feature. He worked in the decimeter range of radio waves, which allowed him to see very high (including objects in near space) and far, but decimeter radar poorly sees low-flying objects, because the latter are on the background of the underlying surface (sea). On the other hand, radars operating in the centimeter range do an excellent job of looking at low-flying targets, but not as good as decimeter targets are controlling high-flying ones. In the Soviet navy, this problem was solved in the following way - survey radars were decimeter, and to control what was flying over the waves, they used a separate, specially designed for this purpose, Podkat radar.
The British in their radar simply combined two in one - their SAMPSON has both decimeter and centimeter grids, while the decimeter provides a general overview, and centimeter - control low-flying targets. This technology brought the destroyer "Daring" the glory of the best air defense ship of all times and peoples.
MF RLC "Barrier" works in a similar way. It also has decimeter and centimeter range radar systems, the principle of which corresponds to the British radar. It is known that the complex controlling the centimeter range uses AFAR.
"Barrier" can still very much. So, for example, the complex is able to conduct not only active, but also passive search, focusing on the radiation of the enemy's electronic systems - in this mode, Barrier is able to detect and track more than 100 targets at a distance of 300 km. Moreover, the complex is able to put active radar interference, and manage passive interference. MF RLC "Barrier" is also versatile in that it can control not only the missile weapons of the Redut air defense system, but also the artillery of the ship. It goes without saying that, within sight, the Zaslon can also provide target designation for an anti-ship missile, and in addition, it provides information support for external weapons systems, such as a ship-based helicopter or an outside fighter.
The only drawback of the “Zaslon” MF RLC is a very moderate range - the target “sees” 1 km with the EPR in a square meter this complex “sees” at a distance of 75 km. This is not a very good result. Although, of course, the developers' claims that SAMPSON is able to see a pigeon (0,008 sq. M) at a distance of 105 km are most likely a publicity stunt (i.e., the British radar can do it, but in ideal conditions, and in such a mode that it will never be used in the usual scanning of space), but still it should be understood that the MF RLK Zaslon is much inferior to the British radar in terms of detection range. On the other hand, we need to understand that we are creating, in essence, the patrol ship and pushing at it “not having any dialogues in the world” weapons and equipment blocking (or at least equal) with what the world's best destroyers of air defense do not need.
An interesting question is: where did this MF RLC “Barrier” come from? Who managed in such a short time to solve all the issues that "torment" the Poliment radar of similar purpose, preventing the entry into operation of the head frigate of project 22350? It turned out that this was the work of the Zaslon Scientific and Technical Center, a developer of on-board electronic equipment for aviation Russian Aerospace Forces, including for the Mig-31BM. The author of this article suggests that against the backdrop of the catastrophic air defenses of the new corvettes, the Zaslon Research and Development Center was able to offer a quick solution based on radars of modernized 4th generation combat aircraft (and even using AFAR). If MF RLC “Zaslon” will work on a regular basis, then this will be a huge breakthrough even if “Polement” proves to be a complete failure. In any case, at the Barrier many necessary technologies will be worked out (for example, such as "transferring" the control of missiles and the object attacked by it from one lattice to another) on which, according to rumors, the "Polyment" stumbled.
The rest of the armament ship project 20386 is consistent with the previous series of corvettes. These are two four-pipe installations of the Uran-U anti-ship missile missile, the missile's range is 260 km. In terms of its combat capabilities, the rocket is similar to the latest modifications of the “Harpoons” which is more than enough to counter the enemy’s light forces. The launchers themselves are located near the superstructure behind the shields that open only before launching the missiles, which is done to minimize the ship's ESR. The artillery is represented by the 100-mm installation, which is the minimum "gentleman standard" that allows you to talk about the ability of the 20386 corvette to support the landing force, as well as a pair of 30-mm AK-630M (information that the ship will receive much less rapid-firing AK-306 probably still erroneous), torpedoes - the omnipresent 324-mm package-NK complex. There will be a new corvette and a helicopter with its hangar. And besides, for unclear reasons, on the corvette of the 20386 project, as well as on 22160, they placed free space for the placement of container weapons.
In theory, it will, in which case, drastically enhance strike or anti-submarine weapons, or, in addition to the helicopter, deploy a number of UAVs. In addition, the presence of side lazportov allows the use of lightweight speedboats (for example, for throwing sabotage groups in the rear of the enemy) or, more importantly, the placement of unmanned anti-mine devices.
Unfortunately, with all the advantages mentioned above, there are a lot of questions regarding the arming of the 20386 project.
Firstly, it is completely unclear why domestic developers ignore such powerful anti-submarine weapons, like 533-mm torpedoes, which would be very much in demand if an enemy submarine was detected in 15-20 km from the corvette. It seems that the 533-mm torpedo would be the weapon that could destroy the submarine at a distance at which the corvette is able to detect it. As a result, in the current configuration (ie, with the “Package-NK”), the 20386 project's corvette is clearly under-armed against the underwater threat - the submarines, which it will have to look for, have much more powerful means of destruction than he does. Secondly, the modularity of armament led to the unjustified complication of the ship design. There is a hangar on the corvette, but it is underdeck, i.e. Each ships of this type will have to complete helicopter, like an aircraft carrier. And this entails a significant complexity of the design. And, of course, its appreciation.
In the published annual report of PJSC "Shipbuilding Plant" Severnaya Verf "(St. Petersburg) for 2016, the cost of the corvette of project 20380 (" Zealous ") is 17,244760 billion rubles. But the cost of the head corvette of project 20386 is 29,080759 billion rubles. In other words, the cost of the new ship again either came close, or already surpassed the frigates of the "admiral" series, despite the fact that the fighting qualities ... perhaps became better in the air defense unit, but absolutely worse in terms of anti-submarine warfare.
All this raises doubts that the corvette of the 20386 project will become the “workhorse” of the fleet. It is likely that the Russian Navy will need a new type of corvette ...
But even if not, although the fleet showed interest in ten such ships, but according to plans up to 2025, it is planned to commission three such corvettes.
So, in the USSR, the near sea zone PLO was provided by 131 TFR and IPC. Today, their 34: 29 old, still Soviet times, and 5 new corvettes project 20380. By 2025 g, when ships of Soviet construction will retire or lose combat significance, the Russian Navy will have a 21 ship of the corvette class of four (!) Different types of which 6 ships of the 22160 project do not carry onboard anti-submarine weapons.
One more thing. All six ships of the project 22160 designed for the Black Sea. Of the ten corvettes of the 20380 project, six are planned to be based in the Baltic and four are to be handed over to the Pacific Fleet. Both corvette project 20385 go to the Pacific Fleet. And only 20386 designed for the Northern Fleet.
In other words, by 2025, the safety of deploying SSBNs will be ensured by six corvettes in the Far East and as many as three in the northern seas ...
To be continued ...
Previous articles of the cycle:
Russian Navy. Sad look into the future
Russian Navy. A sad look to the future (part of 2)
Russian Navy. Sad look into the future. Part of 3. "Ash" and "Husky"
Russian Navy. Sad look into the future. Part of 4. "Halibut" and "Lada"
Russian Navy. Sad look into the future. Part of 5. Specialty boats and this weird EGSONPO
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