The navy of Russia will be replenished with invisible ships

31 March 2010, in St. Petersburg, another combat ship designed for the Russian Navy, the corvette Soobrazitelny, was launched. The new corvette is the second separate combat unit of the 20380 project. The new warship was named after the old Russian, and later the Soviet tradition to call small warships purely adjective. Prior to the modern "Smart" the same name bore a large anti-submarine ship of the USSR Navy project 61, and before it - the legendary destroyer of the project 7, famous during the Great Patriotic War.

According to the press service of the shipbuilding enterprise, the Corresponding Sovereign has fundamentally important differences from the lead ship of the specified series, the Corvette Steregushchy. During the construction of the “Smart”, all the decisions of the general customer of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation concerning the armament, communications complex, general ship systems, automation systems were implemented. Also made significant changes in the design of the hull and superstructure of a warship.

The lead ship “Steregushchiy” of project 20380 became part of the Russian Baltic fleet at the beginning of October 2008. At the end of 2009, by a decree of the President of the Russian Federation, a number of Severnaya Verf shipyard employees who took part in the design and construction of the ship were awarded state awards. Soobrazitelny will also be part of the Russian Baltic Fleet. It was the “Intelligent” one, currently undergoing trials, who led the naval parade dedicated to the Navy Day, which was attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The displacement of the Corresponding Corvette is 2 thousand tons, the cruising speed is 27 knots, the cruising range is in autonomous mode at the speed of 14 knots 4 thousand nautical miles. The crew of the ship, taking into account the group serving the deck helicopter, will be 100 people. At the current time, the need of the Russian Navy for ships of this class is at least 30 units.

The state armament program, which is designed for the period up to 2020, provides for the construction for the Navy of 40 warships of various classes. It is necessary to immediately say that some of them are truly unique. So, in particular, the assembly of the hull of the new minesweeper, which is made entirely of fiberglass, has been completed at the Sredne-Nevsky shipbuilding plant in St. Petersburg. According to the developers, a ship with a similar hull will become virtually invulnerable to most existing types of sea mines. Also minesweeper will be the world's largest polymer ship. Polymer ships had already been created in the world before, but their displacement was approximately 2-3 times smaller than that of the Russian ship.

It should be noted that during the time that has passed since the collapse of the USSR, the Russian navy has significantly lagged behind its opponents in the introduction of a new generation of systems. It is clear that now it is necessary to catch up at a rapid pace. Quite often this catch-up becomes a serious breakthrough. So, today, Russia has practically come to the creation of a modern unified family of class ships from a small corvette to a huge destroyer, compatible in a significant part of the basic systems and differing mainly in the number of weapons supplied and protection complexes. The continuous unification of the CICS used on all promising and existing 1-3 rank projects will provide the Russian fleet in the near future with the possibility of coordinating the lines of action and managing the forces at disposal that are more serious in comparison with many leading fleets of the world.

Today, Russia is conducting low-volume construction of new class ships. The Corvette "Savvy" is, as stated above, only the second separate combat unit of the 20380 project, in which three more combat ships are being created. It is planned to increase the scale of the construction of warships only after all the information about all the shortcomings and merits of the new projects will be collected and analyzed, which will allow making the necessary corrections. Taking into account the fact that the head ship "Steregushchy" is being tested for two years already, it is not long to wait. Over the next 10 years, the Russian Navy should receive at least 20 corvettes from the 20380 project. Tasks to perform them will be found - from border patrols of their own waters to support large warships, including universal landing ships, cruisers, destroyers and, finally, aircraft carriers, whose construction is planned for the coming decade.

Of course, for such a fairly wide range of combat missions, the 20 corvettes are simply not enough, and therefore, there are occasional judgments about the need to increase the operating costs of building new ships. They are really necessary for Russia, taking into account the enormous length of sea borders, combined with the considerable distance from each other of the central theaters of military operations, call for maintaining a sufficiently powerful fleet capable of withstanding a tough battle with each opponent in their own theater.