Two new ships for Russian Black Sea fleet

On May 7, a double launching took place at the "Zelenodol'skiy" Shipyard in Zelenodolsk, Tatarstan. The new missile ship and offshore patrol vessel are intended for the Black Sea Fleet, which has been badly battered by the Ukrainians and needs reinforcements. Interestingly, both ships are of the classes that suffered during the war against Ukraine.
 
New ship with Kalibr missiles

The first case involves the small missile ship Typhoon (Russian: Tayfun) of Project 22800 Karakurt, reports navalnews.com. Last November, a ship of this class – the Askold – was severely damaged by a Ukrainian missile attack on Kerch. Originally, the name Typhoon was given to the second ship of this class (the first serial vessel), built at “Pella” Shipyard in Otriadnoye near St. Petersburg. However, this one was renamed Sovetsk. Typhoon is to be handed over to the Russian Federation Navy by the end of 2025. This rather long construction time for the relatively small ship is due, among other things, to problems with the supply of M507D-1 main engines, manufactured by St. Petersburg-based “Zvezda” plants.

 
The small missile ships (in the West classified as corvettes) of Project 22800 were developed by the Central Maritime Design Bureau “Almaz” and have been under construction for the Russian Navy since 2015 at three shipyards: “Pella”, “Zelenodol’skiy”, and “Amur” in the Far East. This shows the importance that Moscow attaches to them. To date, there are only four Karakurts in service (three in the Baltic and one in the Black Sea, recently re-deployed to the Sea of Azov), while 12 more are in various stages of construction.
 
The Project 22800 small missile ships have a full displacement of 800 tons, with dimensions of 67.0×10.0×4.0 meters. They are powered by three M507D-1 diesel engines with a power of 5884 kW each. They provide a top speed of 30 knots and a range of about 2,500 Mm at 12 knots.
 
The Karakurts’ primary armament is an eight-cell 3S14-U1 Universal Vertical Launcher (UKSK) for Kalibr-NK system missiles. Karakurts, along with other similar vessels – the Project 21631 Bujan-M small missile ships – are the only surface carriers of the Kalibr missile system of such compact size. In addition, the ships have a 76.2mm AK-176MA gun, a Pancyr-M missile-artillery air defence system (on the first pair two 30mm AK-630M guns), two 12.7mm Kord machine guns, a MANPADS Igla or Verba, and DP-64 anti-diver hand grenade launchers.
 
Target detection and missile fire control is provided by the Minieral-M radar system, and the 5P-10-03 Laska system is used for artillery fire control. As announced by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu in April this year, the “Zelenodol’skiy” Shipyard is to hand over three Karakurts to the Russian Navy by the end of the year.

New patrol ship

The second ship launched was the offshore patrol vessel Viktor Velikiy of Project 22160. And in this case, the twin was out of luck. In March of this year, the Ukrainians, using unmanned strike boats, sank the latest unit of its class, the Sergey Kotov.

 
The keel of the Viktor Velikiy was laid on November 25, 2016. The contract for the production of the OPVs was awarded to the “Zelenodol’skiy” Shipyard, although in practice they were built mostly by “Zaliv” Shipyard in Kerch, Crimea, annexed by the Russians in 2014 (both plants are part of the Ak Bars holding company). These units were criticized from the beginning for being under-armed. Objectively speaking, they were designed and built for auxiliary tasks, and in the realities of full-scale war with the use of new striking means (Kamikaze drones), they proved defenceless.
 
According to the designer – „Severnoye” Bureau – the OPVs of Project 22160 are designed to protect territorial waters, patrol the exclusive economic zone, combat smuggling and piracy, search and rescue, monitor the environment, protect ships, etc. As a result of the experience of the ongoing conflict, it was planned to rearm them on an ad hoc basis with the Tor-M2KM modular air defence system, but this has not happened so far.

Essential armament consists of a 76.2mm AK-176MA gun, two 14.5mm MTPU-1 machine gins and two 55mm DP-65 remote-operated grenade launchers. The patrol vessel displacement is 1,800 tons and the dimensions are 94.1×14×4 meters. The ships are powered by two 16D49 diesel engines, providing speeds of up to 25 knots. There are three vessels in service (all in the Black Sea), while two are under construction. Continued production is not planned.