What is it with this love affair with Soviet era naval weaponry all of a sudden? There were some things they did well, but I simply can’t get excited about dang near anything they floated on the water during the Cold War.
The Kirov class were beautiful ships with lots of weaponry, but nearly everything else including subs (until the Eighties) was inferior IMO. Like DesertRhino said in his very good post, they put their resources into things that were strategically important to them and did a good job at some of those.
I always felt that their navy was simply a propaganda tool so they could simply say they had a Navy too (except for their submarines, which they appeared to try hard to improve)
All those well known reservations the Soviet sailors themselves had for the safety of their nuclear submarines had a foundation in truth.
The Kirov class have been modernized and are still around. They are superior to nearly every surface unit in the US Navy. Our fleet in in neglect and our weapons systems are old.
This is what we have to be worried about and this can be mounted on a number of platforms easily. Kirov and Oscar II class subs have been modified to carry these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-800_Oniks
excellent analysis-es both
Any large ship built in the 80s is got to be behind in technology, and about half worn out.
“I always felt that their navy was simply a propaganda tool so they could simply say they had a Navy too”
Very much agree with that. I never saw a coherent strategy with them, but what you said makes sense.
Keep in mind that the author, and by extension the site War is Boring, has been implicated in pro-Russian propaganda.