Posted on 09/19/2017 8:08:23 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Russia's most powerful surface combatant, the nuclear powered Kirov class battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great), is a fascinating vessel to say the least. The ship is the manifestation of the Soviet Union's top naval weapons technology during the waning years of the Cold War. You can read all about it in this past profile I did on the class. Although she has received some light upgrades in recent years, Pyotr Veliky will be leaving the fleet in the next couple of years to undergo a deep refit. Her long mothballed sister ship, the Admiral Nakhimov, is finishing a similar deep refit and will be taking the Pyotr Veliky's place as the flagship of the Northern Fleet .
This means that Pyotr Veliky still has much of its original armament, including the 20 massive P-700 'Granit/SS-N-19 'Shipwreck' anti-ship cruise missiles stored in canted launch tubes in her bow. And its one of these hulking "carrier killers" that Pyotr Veliky test fired this week. Thankfully, the Russian Ministry of Defense released video of the launch, which is a pretty rare sight to say the least:
I described the SS-N-19 in a previous profile I wrote on the Kuznetsov class aircraft carrier, which also carried a dozen of these missiles:
"These missiles were designed in the late 1970s and intended to allow Russia’s future capital ships to be able to reliably strike American carrier battle groups from outside the range of their surface-based weapon systems. In combat, the missiles would be launched in large salvos, they would then scream toward their targets as fast as mach 2.5 at altitude or at about mach 1.5 while low over the water.
The missiles were very advanced for their time, integrating networking and automated cooperative “swarm” tactics. They were launched at a target (or targets) usually based on third party data, such as coordinates derived by a scout ship, a maritime patrol aircraft, or even a submarine. They would fly toward their targets from over 350 miles away on inertial navigation, then as they approached the suspected target area, one missile out of the swarm would “pop up” to higher altitude to use its own active radar and anti-radiation sensors to obtain updated targeting info. It would then classify these targets and assign them to missiles in the swarm below.
If the pop-up missile was destroyed another one would automatically take its place. The missiles could also accept midcourse updates from third party sources as well and supposedly had connectivity to the now defunct Soviet-era EORSAT satellite network. Once in the terminal attack phase of their flight, each surviving missile would acquire its own target and prosecute that target, blazing over the horizon at supersonic speeds and giving (presumably) American close-in weapon systems little time to react.
There is no doubt, the P-700 was born to be a high-end carrier killer. Their speed and numbers would overwhelm a Carrier Battle Group’s defenses, and their individual warheads were large enough to register a kill even on America’s largest surface combatants.
The Soviet Navy’s aspirations were clear, with twenty of these monsters available on Kirov class battlecruisers, two dozen on Oscar class nuclear guided missile submarines, and a dozen on the carriers that would eventually be known as the Kuznetsov class, Soviet surface action groups could have filled the air with these deadly missiles."
The SS-N-19 with its booster attached is about the size and weight of a combat loaded MiG-21 and packs a 1,650 high explosive charge or a 500kt thermonuclear warhead. In the case of the former, a near miss is still a certain kill, although it's very unlikely that the Russians still deploy these missiles loaded with nuclear warheads.
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Russian crew handles a massive P700/SS-N-19.
So yeah, this was the missile behind Soviet Russia's "carrier killer" strategy of the last decade of the Cold War. But technology has changed a remakrably since the 1980s and the upgraded Kirov class ships will do away with the SS-N-19 system altogether. In a previous piece on the upgrades that will be done to these vessels, the description of what will take the SS-N-19's place is impressive:
"These refitted Kirov class battlecruisers will supposedly feature a whole new set of sensors and subsystems, and most ominously, weapons. Russia’s TASS news agency reports that the ships will receive totally updated multipurpose vertical launch systems, making these ships capable of carrying a much wider variety of anti-ship missiles and many more of them.
Navyrecognition.com sums up this upgrade well, and their analysis is consistent with other sources on the matter:
The Sevmash Shipyard and the Special Machinebuilding Design Bureau (KBSM, a subsidiary of Almaz-Antei) made a deal for 10 3S-14-11442M vertical launch systems (VLS) to equip the Project 11442M Admiral Nakhimov missile cruiser being upgraded now. The contract is valued at 2.559 billion rubles ($33.5 million).
Thus, the ship’s 20 inclined below-deck launchers of P-700 Granit antiship missiles (SS-N-19 Shipwreck) will be replaced with 10 VLS modules of the UKSK versatile ship-based launch system. The VLS modules will total 80. The same solution is expected to be applied to the Pyotr Veliky cruiser.
The 3S-14 VLS can launch the missiles of the Kalibr family (SS-N-27 Sizzler). In addition, the equipment for testing the VLS using mockups of the 3M-54, 3M55 and 3M22 antiship missiles is to be ready be December 2016...”
TASS reports that the upgraded Kirovs will house a mix of hypersonic Zircon, supersonic Onix and long-range subsonic Kalibr cruise missiles, and that with an arsenal of 80 anti-ship missiles stuffed in their vertical launch tubes, these ships will have have “enough to engage any existing naval force globally.”
And this doesn't include the updates to other armaments, including its air defense systems. In total the refitted Kirov class cruisers will have somewhere around 174 vertical launch cells and will sport a seagoing version of the S-400 air defense system.
With all this in mind, and with the Pyotr Veliky heading into refit it the not so distant future, this may be the last time we get to see one of the big "Shipwreck" carrier killers being slung off a Kirov class battlecruiser's bow.
I’m sure that ship will always have at least 1 of our nuclear attack subs watching her 24x7 silently.
The sub that was supposed to be doing that was in port for mandatory diversity training and the installation of gender neutral heads (bathrooms).
Also, if you hadn’t noticed, Obama winnowed down our fleet - including the replacements for the Los Angeles class boats, the Virigina-class. Which are actually deliberately degraded from the original 688 follow on, the Seawolf class. Which we only built three of before we decided we didn’t need an awesome underwater killer and went with the cheaper Virginia buses with less capability.
If you are down to CWIS the shit is wide and deep. Only a few seconds worth of run time and minimum of five minutes to reload. Five minutes is an eternity if missiles are inbound.
I know how they justified killing off the Sea Wolf claiming that it was designed for an enemy that no longer exists. However I am still pleased that we have a constant pipeline of subs being built vs nothing new for the Russian since they are broke.
That’s especially true when you forgot the lesson of the Belknap and return to building ships with aluminum hulls and/or superstructures.
Hate to tell you, but the Virginia build program was massively slowed down by the sequester... and someone forgot to tell the Russians that they didn’t have anything new because they ‘only’ developed two new classes in that time (Yasen, Borei) and they just launched another brand new one that is supposed to rival or surpass the Seawolf, let alone the bargain basement Virginas.
Oh, and they’re back up to Cold War patrol levels. We’re, uh, not.
I don’t think “don’t use aluminum” is the real lesson of the Belknap, but “don’t be an idiot about using aluminum.”
Guns and surface action between warships under 10,000 yards is while not entirely a thing of the past, a vanishing event. Much like tanks in the post war era when it became clear that anti-tank munitions could blow through any conceivably practical thickness of steel armor, antishipping munitions have gotten to that point. If you get hit, you’re going to be screwed, so going with superheavy armor becomes pointless.
The Russians have more to fear from a ramming by the US Navy than our carriers.
You have a point. However, the LCS fiasco is an example of being an idiot.
The LCS isn’t just an example of being an idiot about the application of materials in a warship, it’s also being an idiot about arming a warship, configuring a warship, manning a warship and automating a warship.
I like that they are expensive to maintain. It serves our interests.
When I read about the successor system I thought "great, have fun with that, and have fun paying for that".
——I like that they are expensive to maintain-—
The ship is a jobs program. Maintenance provides jobs.
In a warless economy, defense maintenance jobs are very desirable
So are ours. Go look at the problems our DDG 1000 has.
Or the massive, expensive problems with the LCS: http://www.navytimes.com/pay-benefits/military-benefits/2016/09/05/navy-orders-big-changes-for-littoral-combat-ships-after-engineering-problems/
My comment touched on the massive money problems Russia faces. They are poor compared to us, in a big way.
It reminded me of the meme that the Soviet effort to match our space shuttle was the last straw that broke them economically, in some part.
I do not know if that is actually true, but I know they spent a lot of hard cash on it because they could not fabricate a lot of the complex stuff themselves, and had to buy it on the world market with real money.
So I say to the Russians “Spend, spend, spend”.
They aren’t crippled by entitlement spending like we are, though. And a decade plus of neglect in all aspects of our country.
Right now, we have a second rate Navy that blunders into merchant ships, while we dump billions into making our armed forces “diverse” instead of effective warfighters. That’s a really expensive thing. And they’re not hampered by that at all.
The LCS program is a confluence of multiple wrong headed decisions. It’s a CF of massive proportions.
United States 18,569,100 — European Union[n 1][19] 16,408,364 2 China[n 2] 11,218,281 3 Japan 4,938,644 4 Germany 3,466,639 5 United Kingdom 2,629,188 6 France 2,463,222 7 India 2,256,397 8 Italy 1,850,735 9 Brazil 1,798,622 10 Canada 1,529,224 11 South Korea 1,411,246 12 Russia[n 3] 1,280,731 13 Australia 1,258,978 14 Spain 1,232,597 15 Mexico 1,046,002
Twice the size = twice the target.
“A few thousand drones is another matter.”
Just a software update.
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