A Russian come back or come down?

[Kapitan]

Given the world is in recession, and that money is tight and not readily availible as it used to be im wondering now about this report or roumer that i have come accross.

apparently "The Russian navy seeks to re activate a kirov class cruiser admiral lazarev by the end of 2009"
Currently the admiral lazarev (used to be the frunze) has been laid up mothballed in severomorsk since 1998 and last went to sea in 1994, now i cant personally see this ship returning to sea by the end of this year simply because well its been laid up for 11 years and probably not moved and canabalised.

The ship was constructed in 1983 and was assigned to the pacfic fleet so i would immagine if it did get re activated it would return there

Currently the russian navy has two active kirovs admiral nakhimov and peter the great (admiral nakhimov under going over haul in servermorsk and should return to the fleet mid 2010).

My personal thing is should they even bother returning lazarev to service ? a now 26 year old cruiser even if they got 10 years out of it would it be worth it?

Currently the building plans started as of last year 12 borey SSBN's 24 Graney SSN's and a collection of new DDG's and FFG's with upto 6 new aircraft carriers.

Currently this has been scaled back and it looks like only two carriers will be built along with maybe a handful of new surface units and submarines the only area that has remained complete is the SSBN force but then again it is in dire need of replacement.

I see no reports to indicate the slava's and kirovs are to be replaced i doubt they ever will be seeing as they cost so much to build crew and maintain.

I am going to dig into the roumer about the lazarev is to be re activated and will post up anything i find.

Any ideas from you guys on the situation?

[PeriscopeDepth]

That's interesting Kapitan. Got linkies to a source?

PD

[Kapitan]

im working on this now so far its roumer foud it on wikepedia when i was looking up the kirov class, also read this article http://amphibiousnecessity.blogspot....1_archive.html

It states not 2009 but between 2012 and 2015 and it may go to china so im looking for something more definative now.

[bookworm_020]

It would be a hard push to get a ship that long out of service back in. When you also have new ships needing funs to be built and others needing upgrades and maintenance, you have to woder if it's the right decision

[Kapitan]

a ship of its current ag not really its been mothballed 11 years on top of that, whats its pupose? do they need i?

Looking at it they would be better off building a dozen new d for the price it would cost to put this back to work.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

a ship of its current ag not really its been mothballed 11 years on top of that, whats its pupose? do they need i?

Looking at it they would be better off building a dozen new d for the price it would cost to put this back to work.

They've long been trying to put Lazarev (WTF is wrong with good old Frunze anyway, he might be a Communist but IIRC he was still something of a fighting General, while this Admiral Lazarev who is he anyway...) back to work, and I support them in this endeavor.

Somehow, I doubt you'll get "a dozen new" destroyers for the cost to dust off Lazarev. Further, not only does a large ship look prestigious, but the Kirovs even now are still some of the most powerful vessels afloat, and if they modernize Lazarev before sticking her back in the line...

They are also supposed to have some of the best C3I facilities in the Russian Fleet (they are supposedly built as flagships) along with the now deceased Kievs (second to the Kuznetsov maybe?) ... sure there is less to command nowadays but if you are going to go far out once more you'll need good flag facilities - for any tech level, datalinks can be made with broader bandwidth over shorter distances (which is probably why the pure shore command philosophy didn't work for the Soviets).

Finally, according to Japanese sources they are also something of a LO vessel. The extensive masts obviously preclude them being stealth vessels but what could you do especially in the 80s. As it is they chopped their 28000t displacement into a 2000t frigate RCS. Which might be even better for concealment (since it is intended to be a survivable C3 flagship) than trying to shaft it to nothing since AFAIK you can't shaft a 28000 ton ship to virtual invisibility like you can with a plane... so a full scale concealment might be a giveaway (Target the SMALLEST blip!).