Fleet development priorities
Aside from the fifth-generation Husky nuclear submarine and the aircraft carrier of the future, the most ambitious project for the Russian Navy is the mysterious nuclear destroyer. The people of the project 23560 ship have long been known under the designation "Leader".
A little about the future of the fleet as a whole. To understand the prospects for this project, you need to look at other development priorities. Back in January of this year, Vladimir Putin announced the approval of the state armament program for 2018-2027. The Ministry of Defense said that 20 trillion rubles are provided for its implementation, of which 19 trillion will go to the procurement, repair and development of weapons, military and special equipment, and one trillion - for the construction of the corresponding infrastructure. Some experts have called the program "reasonably balanced." However, it really is without obvious distortions, and even more so without distortions towards the Navy. Nevertheless, the fleet should receive new boats of projects 885 and 955, new large surface ships armed with "Caliber", as well as helicopter carriers, on which the newest Ka-52K "Katran" will be based.
At the same time, everything is very ambiguous with the "Leader". It is planned that at first Severnaya Verf will build two new helicopter carriers and only then will it start building nuclear destroyers. It is worth noting that the start of production of the second helicopter carrier is scheduled for 2022 with delivery to the fleet in 2026. It is not difficult to calculate when the fleet will receive (or, more correctly, will not receive) a super destroyer. Of course, time adjustments can be expected, but they are unlikely to be in the direction of accelerating the development and construction of Project 23560 destroyers.
Power point
Strictly speaking, in addition to fierce competition for the distribution of financial flows, the project of the destroyer "Leader" may face other, even more serious difficulties. It should be noted right away that the detailed parameters of the ship are unknown to date. However, what we now know allows us to draw a number of important conclusions. Recall that the completion of the outline design of the nuclear destroyer became known in July 2017. According to the data presented at that time, the development of the draft design of the promising ship was completed in 2016: by the beginning of the year before last, the draft design was 60 percent ready, and by the end of 2016, specialists had completed it completely.
It is assumed that the ship's displacement will be 14 thousand tons (previously 17, 5 thousand tons were also indicated). In length it will reach 200 meters, and in width - 20. The crew will be 250-300 people. It is noteworthy that recently the destroyer has been increasingly mentioned precisely as a ship with a nuclear power plant, although a few years ago, obviously, other options were also actively considered.
But even at this stage, everything is not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. There are reasons for this. The nuclear power plant has obvious advantages: first of all, it has unlimited cruising range and high cruising speed, due to the absence of the need to save fuel. Everything often has a downside, this is just such a case. The fact is that, all other things being equal, it is more expensive to operate ships with nuclear power plants than ships with conventional power plants. Just one example. American Virginia-class nuclear-powered missile cruisers were not only expensive, but very expensive to maintain. The annual operating costs of the nuclear-powered ship turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than the operating costs of the famous Ticonderoga: $ 40 million versus $ 28. That is why the Americans sent all Virginias to retirement ahead of time, after the end of the Cold War. By the way, two Rolls-Royce Marine Trent-30 gas turbines are installed on the new US destroyer Zamvolta. Nobody will make nuclear-powered ships out of Arlie Burks either, and such modernization is hardly possible, in principle. After all, a nuclear power plant, among other things, has significant dimensions.
This may seem paradoxical, but despite the stated advantages of the YSU, it is almost impossible to apply them in practice in the case of the “Leader”. No one is going to make round-the-world voyages on the new destroyers: in fact, the ship will perform all the functions that modern ships of this class at least perform. It is possible to dramatically increase the tactical potential of the navy if new aircraft carriers are built. But the "massive" transition to nuclear power plants, most likely, will not give anything but an additional headache.
And it should be borne in mind that Russia is not America. She has no interests in all parts of the Earth, the task of controlling the World Ocean was not set. It is also not entirely clear why a nuclear power plant is needed for a combat unit, which will work in close conjunction with other ships with conventional engines (with a corresponding dependence on their capabilities). We are no longer talking about the risks of accidents and related international scandals.
Armament
Another important aspect is weapons. But it is rather vague and undefined. While there are no precise characteristics, it makes no sense, for example, to go into details of the Leader's air defense. It is assumed that the ship will receive 64 UKSK cells designed for the Caliber, Onyx and Zircon missiles as strike weapons. Of course, a hypersonic missile with a range of about 400 kilometers looks tempting. However, now "Zircon" is just being tested. How they will end is unknown. As we know, aiming a hypersonic missile at a target is associated with a number of fundamental difficulties, which, apparently, cannot be fully resolved even by the United States.
It turns out that the project of the new ship is highly dependent on technologies that do not yet exist. For this, by the way, the promising American submarine Columbia was recently very criticized. At the same time, to create such a complex and expensive ship, without having a "wunderwaffe" in the person of the hypersonic "Zircon", perhaps there is no point at all. After all, a nuclear power plant alone does not make a ship a "carrier killer." For effective combat use in this case, he will need air cover and good protection against attacks from enemy submarines. In a word, everything without which any other destroyer cannot operate.
Are the sanctions good for us?
To the aforementioned difficulties, another one may be added, which was considered by experts of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in the report "Risks of the implementation of GPV-2027 associated with the lack of modern structural materials." In military shipbuilding, steel is still the main structural material (92%). In the future, composites may supplant it, but when exactly this will happen is unknown. Due to the sanctions, the situation in metallurgy, in particular, in the production of special steels, is deteriorating, and it is often not necessary to rely on supplies from abroad at all. According to experts of the analytical center, these difficulties represent one of the most underestimated risks of the new weapons program, which, obviously, to one degree or another, may affect the project of the promising destroyer "Leader". However, in the presence of such serious conceptual contradictions, it may not come to the production of ships at all.
The feeling does not leave that the nuclear destroyer project is pursuing some very strange goals of its own. Far from the needs and aspirations of the Russian Navy. All this by no means adds to the chances of the imminent birth of a new giant. Russia, by the way, is often criticized in the West for the use of "battleships of the XXI century" in the face of the nuclear cruisers of Project 1144 "Orlan". It is no secret that many experts perceive them as a kind of "mammoths" that have long been over for retirement. But this is a slightly different topic for discussion.
