February 20 resource Flot.com citing informed sources reported:
"The long-planned modernization of the heavy missile cruiser Peter the Great of Project 11442 (code Orlan) will be carried out with an emphasis on the repair and renovation of the main power plant of the ship."
On the one hand, the presentation of the material raises questions, even the number of the project is confused: "Peter the Great" was built according to the project 1144.2, code "Orlan". On the other hand, in the naval environment there have been sentiments for a long time that the "Petra" does not need to be modernized like the one-type "Admiral Nakhimov", but just needs to be repaired. The message that "Peter" will be "focused" on the main power plant and repairs, apparently, is somehow connected with these sentiments.
I must say that the modernization of "Nakhimov" really turned out to be super-expensive, and indeed, "Peter the Great" should not go through the same thing, our country simply does not have so much money. But refusing to upgrade the ship is a mistake worse than a crime. Everything is complicated with these ships, but they must develop further.
Nuclear missile
The USSR was 16 years late with the nuclear missile cruiser in comparison with the USA, the Americans laid down their nuclear Long Beach back in 1957, and we began to build the first missile ship with nuclear reactors and missiles in 1973. But in terms of combat power, the new cruisers were supposed to "Plug in the belt" everything. In many ways it happened, the ships turned out to be really very powerful. The lead Kirov frightened the West so much that the Americans began an expensive program to reactivate and equip their battleships with missiles, and the Air Force, for the first time since World War II, began to adapt its strategic bombers to strike against surface targets. The breakthrough of such ships to ocean communications would have to be eliminated by all the US Navy in the theater of operations, and it is not a fact that it would have happened on time. The ships had the S-300F air defense system (96 anti-aircraft missiles), and on the "Peter the Great" S-300 FM and S-300F together (46 and 48 missiles) there are air defense systems of the near-zone air defense, artillery air defense systems. In general, even if we assume that the enemy aircraft managed to destroy such a ship, then the price for such a victory would have to be paid very high.
The ship's artillery mount, AK-130, 130 mm in caliber with two barrels, is currently the most powerful naval gun mount in the world. The lead ship in the series, "Kirov", however, had a couple of hundred millimeters, but this was corrected, as well as many other things, how the lead ship differed from all serial ones. At the time of the ship's acceptance into the Navy's combat strength, only American ships of the Second World War had something stronger, but for such a rival the Soviet cruiser had missiles.
The ships have a powerful sonar system "Polynom", a set of anti-submarine weapons, and in some cases are capable of carrying up to three helicopters on board. Offensive weapons, 20 supersonic anti-ship missiles (ASM) "Granit" - at the time of adoption, perhaps the most powerful anti-ship missiles in the world. Not a single ship in the world can repulse a salvo of such a ship alone, as well as, in principle, win a battle against it (with unmistakable actions of the crew and the commander of a domestic cruiser, of course).
It was planned to build five such ships, but only four were built."Kirov" (later renamed to "Admiral Ushakov"), "Frunze" ("Admiral Lazarev"), "Kalinin" ("Admiral Nakhimov") and "Kuibyshev", which was actually laid down as "Yuri Andropov" (later " Peter the Great"). The latter was completed in 1998 and only for this reason it still walks briskly on the seas.
The collapse of the USSR almost put an end to these ships. Russia had no money to maintain them in a combat-ready state, an exception was made only for "Peter the Great", which did not require such expenses that old ships of the same type required. In fact, Kirov went out of order after a malfunction of the reactor plant back in 1990 - there was no money for its restoration even then, although the ship was then even put on some kind of modernization, which, however, never began. Today it has completely rotted away. On "Frunze-Lazarev" there were no problems with the reactor installation, it was simply rotted off the coast in the Pacific Ocean - today it is also completely, despite the fact that the ship was docked from time to time, it even lay down on the ground due to leaks housing.
As of today, none of these two ships can no longer be restored to their technical condition, they will be scrapped. But "Kalinin-Nakhimov" was lucky. They decided to keep it and even modernize it. In 1999, the ship was upgraded and repaired at Sevmash. Thus began an epic that continues to this day and will not end earlier than in a few years. Best case scenario.
Rebuilding in a single cruiser
The domestic fleet has one amazing disease that does not go away in any way: constant revisions of technical specifications for the construction or repair of ships, in extreme cases, for changes in the design of each individual ship in the series. This is occasionally caused by corruption, sometimes many years of underfunding, leading to the fact that some of the subsystems for the ship are removed from production when it is still under construction, but, admittedly, this is often just bad management. It is difficult to say in what proportion these factors influenced the Nakhimov's repair time and the scope of modernization work, but the contract for its implementation was signed only in 2013 - 14 years after the ship was transferred to the plant. Then there was a transition to the Sevmash filling pool, dismantling, troubleshooting, and actually the beginning of work, at the very end of 2014.
Most of the information about what would be done with the cruiser came out from under the veil of secrecy very slowly and dosed, but at a certain point it became clear: the ship would actually be built anew. In fact, we are talking about the fact that in a very seriously rebuilt building with a completely renovated main power plant, new weapons, new electronic weapons will be installed, and cable routes will be replaced. The striking power of the ship should increase by orders of magnitude, and the total number of both anti-aircraft and cruise (anti-ship and land-based) missiles will be in the hundreds.
It was assumed that the ship would be able, if necessary, to unleash a salvo of "Caliber" on the coastal target and it would still have anti-ship versions of "Caliber", and even "Onyx" with "Zircons". Its air defense system was strengthened in the same way. The power of the ship was to be unparalleled. Probably, it will be like this when it is finally handed over to the Navy. However, there is another side to this coin.
The name of this party is price. The Navy does not disclose the exact costs of modernizing the Nakhimov, but it is clear that they have either come close or will soon approach a hundred billion rubles. Recall that the cost of a new aircraft carrier for the Russian Navy is estimated at 400 billion rubles. A hundred billion is a lot, this is a brigade of corvettes for the Pacific fleet, which has almost lost its anti-submarine forces, or a complete renovation of all anti-submarine aviation, which flies mainly on aircraft built back in the USSR.
And although "Nakhimov" promises to turn out to be a really very strong ship, the money invested in its repair would be enough to strengthen the entire fleet as a whole, which one ship, with all due respect to it, will not provide. Just because he is alone.
The timing of the most complex restructuring of the ship (this is no longer a repair or modernization, it is completely rebuilt), too, as we usually say "sail to the right", and today we can only talk with a greater or lesser degree of confidence about the delivery of the fleet in the first half of the 20s years.
The expenditure of money and time demanded by Nakhimov seriously scared everyone involved in this project, and I must say that it cost a certain number of people careers, including those who were not involved. It just so happened, the cruiser launched a very large wave along the highest echelons of power.
The fact that nothing of the kind will be repeated with "Peter" was obvious for a long time, but now there are signs that the Navy may throw out the child along with the water. And instead of revising the scope of modernization downward, abandon it altogether, limiting ourselves to repairing the ship and making minimal improvements to the systems already installed on it.
Repair of "Peter the Great"
The most important problem for domestic ships is cable routes. They are traditionally laid in such a way that their complete replacement in cost is sometimes only several times cheaper than building a new ship. At the same time, it is impossible not to change them: over the years, the insulation of the wiring deteriorates from old age. Nuclear cruisers are no exception. The repair of a nuclear power plant will also cost a lot of money. All this suggests that the repair of the cruiser "Peter the Great" itself will cost a lot of money, even without modernization. And this can be an additional trump card for those who would not like to see this modernization.
Nevertheless, even if necessary, it is worth incurring these costs and updating the missile weapons on the ship.
We are not talking in any way about the level of changes in the design, which takes place at the "Nakhimov". We are talking about replacing the Granit anti-ship missile launchers with the same 3S14 universal launchers that the Nakhimov is equipped with (a special version made for this cruiser) and limiting ourselves to minimal changes to all other systems.
Replacement of "Granites" is quite an urgent need. These missiles are nowhere near as formidable as they were when they first appeared. Their number on the ship is frankly small. Even on Project 22350 frigates "Admiral Amelko" and "Admiral Chichagov" it will be possible to equip launchers with a large number of anti-ship missiles or long-range cruise missiles - 24 units. And among them there may be supersonic Onyxes and future hypersonic Zircons, that is, missiles that are more dangerous to the enemy than Granite. But these are small ships, four times lighter in displacement than "Peter the Great".
In addition, "Peter the Great" is practically deprived of the ability to launch missile strikes on the coast, and this is almost a more important task now than attacks by surface ships. In order for the existence of "Peter the Great" in the Navy and the costs incurred by the fleet for its maintenance to continue to make sense, it is necessary to replace its offensive weapons. This ship will fit many dozens of missiles and from a highly specialized attack ship, which is best at hitting other surface ships, it will turn into, if not the most modern, ship, but still a very significant combat unit, incomparably more important than with the current twenty "Granites".
Minimal modernization of shipborne air defense systems, minimal modernization of electronic weapons, systems of mutual information exchange with other ships, and, most importantly, with shipborne helicopters, guarantee that the anti-aircraft capabilities of these ships will remain relevant for fifteen years after Peter the Great returns. into operation. And its offensive missile armament is inadequate now, and it needs to be changed to modern.
An unsuccessful experience with the Nakhimov should not push the fleet to the other extreme and should not contribute to the fact that the ship, after an expensive (remember about the cable routes) repair, remains with the "museum" offensive weapon. This will deprive the ship of the meaning of existence, given how much money it costs for the country.
The strength of the cruisers
Let's imagine that "Nakhimov" is finished as planned, and "Peter the Great" - according to some simplified scheme, with a complete replacement of only shock weapons.
A pair of such ships, with some kind of improved combat helicopters capable of performing AWACS missions and issuing target designations for shipborne air defense systems outside the radio horizon, will require many dozen aircraft for their destruction, and outside the combat radius of base aviation - a full-fledged carrier strike group. Moreover, even in such a situation, the result is not guaranteed.
The cruisers can accommodate a large number of unmanned boats with inflatable decoys, to distract the enemy to decoys and organize "missile ambushes." In the presence of well-functioning interaction with the basic reconnaissance aircraft, they will be able to receive a sufficient amount of information about the enemy so that, when it is necessary to dodge the battle, and choose a rather weak victim for themselves. In the event of a hypothetical war against Russia, the breakthrough of a pair of such ships into the open ocean will force any enemy to remove dozens of ships and patrol aircraft from the tasks of attacking the Russian Federation. This means that all these forces will be diverted from their main tasks.
In addition, the 30-knot move that these ships will be able to maintain for a long time, firstly, will allow them to evade combat when necessary, simply breaking away from the enemy in motion, and secondly, it will make them difficult to invade enemy submarines.
The article “We are building a fleet. Attacks of the weak, loss of the strong raid actions were described that would allow small-sized Russian forces to keep in tension arbitrarily large enemy forces, simply due to superiority in speed and the ability to attack objects and ships that are important to the enemy, which are under weak protection or away from the main theater of operations - and the enemy with a high degree of probability will simply have nothing to answer.
Such actions are one of the very few ways to use a missile ship against superior enemy forces without having its own aircraft carrier, but with success.
And in the presence of working systems for the mutual exchange of information between cruisers, full-fledged sea helicopters and proper preparation, these operations will be quite capable of modernized cruisers. Moreover, cruisers seem to have been specially created for them - high-speed, well-armed atomic ships, including those against an air enemy.
But all this will be true only if after the epic with "Nakhimov" "Peter the Great" also receives a new complex of offensive missile weapons instead of "Granites".
We can only hope that common sense will prevail, and correct, balanced decisions will be made in relation to "Peter the Great". There is no need to be ashamed to demand this from the authorities.
