First Down "Ivan Papanin", More To Go.

You may recall few years ago I wrote about them: Icebreakers With Strategic Reach.Today, Russia launched first of them (this will be series) Ivan Papanin (after famous Soviet Polar explorer). Here is how 8,500 tons of displacement looked today. She (rather He) is a beauty (my hat off to guys from Airbase forum, via Admiralty Wharfs).

Ivan Papanin

Yet another step in Russia weaponizing ice-breakers (wink, wink). The so called Arctic Patrol Ship will carry helicopter, artillery complex, manpads and will be able to take on containers for notorious Kalibr missiles. A rather mighty package for escort, monitoring, rescue and, of course, strike functions. These ships are capable of breaking through 1.5 meters thick ice, which is very impressive.  Two of them are under construction but rumor has it that the number will be significantly larger. First two are a test run for a concept as a whole. Follow-on ships may have some parameters tweaked as experience and data begins to flow in. Here is how they will look upon completion:

I guess this answers the question where Russia's attention is focused upon. After all, brand new Resonance (Rezonans-NE), over-the-horizon radar, was launched today at Novaya Zemlya (in Russian). This thing tracks and develops targeting against anything, including hypersonic weapons (up to M=20), I will omit here jokes about "stealth". My main question in this situation is this: what is the pay for officers who serve there, not to mention service ratio: is it one year as two plus insane pay rate? To the best of my knowledge there are no good bars or shopping malls there, but sure as hell there is a former nuclear testing ground. So, not exactly family-friendly place this Rogachevo is, especially when polar bears get a party going, but it is totally conceivable that eventually even there one will be able to buy a bottle of Jack without flying out to Arkhangelsk. Just a thought.   

Icebreakers With Strategic Reach.

Russia is a huge player in Arctic and Soviet/Russia's history there is one of incredible scientific effort, resilience, courage and of very real economics. Moreover, Russian fleet of icebreakers, both conventional and nuclear, is simply without rivals. In May 2016 Russian Navy ordered two Arctic patrol ice-breakers ("corvettes") of Project 23550.  Today, the first of them, Ivan Papanin, was laid down at Admiralty Wharf in St. Petersburg. These ships will have a bizarre weapons' suite. In a classic Russian tradition of "you can not spoil the porridge with butter" (kashu maslom ne isportish), new ice-breakers will have 76-mm gun, machine guns and, of course, and you may have guessed it--they will be able to carry a notorious Kalibr complex, possibly both with land-attack and anti-shipping configuration. 

    

These will displace 6000+ tons.

Here is the plaque:  

                   

The struggle for Arctic resources and the importance of Northern Sea Route will continue to grow  and appearance of these ships seems to be a good response to a very dynamic situation. It will get interesting there in coming decades, especially with a development of Arctic Continental Shelf. If the experience of  Cod Wars is any indicator (and it is) things may get nasty pretty fast even between allies, as HMS Diomede found out the hard-way when was rammed by Iceland's cannon boat Baldur. 

        

HMS Diomede

Hopefully, things may get sorted out in a much more civilized manner, but it is always good to have a good anti-shipping missile complex just in case. Especially when one has to guard things of this nature:

              

In the end, there is always a threat of a Social Justice Warriors, aka Green Peace.