Friday, July 24, 2020

Pavel Derzhavin.

Is the latest of the planned project 22160 multipurpose ships which, at some point of time, I characterized as a shitstorm corvette. You can see Pavel Derzhavin getting ready to trials in Novorossiisk. 
And this class of ships would have probably remained as a class of shitstorm corvettes, but something happened, which have put many rumors to rest, together with reputations of many self-proclaimed "experts", who for years were declaring that no work was done on combat modules for these ships. They were wrong. As Izvestiya reported two days ago (in Russian) the trials for combat modules for these corvettes and other ships of this size will commence this summer. That, as you may have already guessed, changes the dynamics completely for such ships and gives them a serious ASW and strike capability, among other combat missions. That also may provide impetus for further development of the class of the two already being built corvettes of project 20386 which created a controversy of sorts due to their sensor and weapons' suites. 

But the idea was always sound when looked at its realization creatively. 
Having eight 3M54 or P-800s would make ships like project 22160 a rather deadly proposition under any circumstances, plus, 20 and 40-feet standard shipping containers fit very well on a variety of platforms, especially when distributed properly and Russians love distributed lethality, and, unlike the US Navy, who only recently started to wake up to this concept, pioneered it. Containers (combat modules) for pr. 22160 (and 20386) will most likely be "plug and play" and should integrate nicely with existing reserved ships' systems. It is my speculation but something tells me that I am not off by much in this particular case. Considering the size of this class (pr. 22160) of 6 ships this can roughly provide the salvo of additional 24 to 48 anti-shipping missiles of different classes, including 3M22 Zircon. As Alice used to say: "It is getting curiouser and curiouser."  

No comments:

Post a Comment