Russia Might Talk Tough But its Navy is a Shrinking Wonder

[Kapitan]

PPP of Russia is around $4.1tr USD which is healthy

[jaop99]

The best thing is that nobody should mess with Russia. Like China, they have a large atomic arsenal, any conventional war that goes badly for either of them, can turn into a nuclear catastrophe.

[Georg Lassen]

Originally Posted by jaop99

The best thing is that nobody should mess with Russia. Like China, they have a large atomic arsenal, any conventional war that goes badly for either of them, can turn into a nuclear catastrophe.

By that logic everyone should just take it up their ass when Russia comes calling.

[Georg Lassen]

The main mission of the Russian Navys surface fleet is protecting the Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk nuclear bastions, their strategic deterrence and second strike cabability.


The attack subs, nuclear and conventional, are tasked with the offensive operations against enemy subs, invasions and LOC.


This dictates the minimum level that Russia will invest in the navy, frigates and submarines will mostly be produced.

[ikalugin]

Current state of the Navy (minus SSBNs, specialist and supporting vessels):

 

There are several keys areas.
- The SSBN program is doing ok, with 5 more Borei-A on the way to begin replacing 6 Delta-IV and 3 Delta-III.
- SSN/SSGNs do not get as much love proportionally wise, with only around 1/4 being replaced with the Yasen-M run (6 boats) with another 1/4 being modernised (5-6 boats).
- SSKs are getting a stop gap Improved Kilo program, which would replace around half of the old boats (6+6). There is some work on new Ladas, but those would most likely stay a very small class till there is a big run of Kalinas.
- Major surface combatants are getting slow (Kirovs) or small (Slavas) refits, there are no significant replacement programs on the horizon (Leader is not happening any iime soon)
- One of the bigger issues is the situation with the escorts, there are around 11 destroyers (3 Sovremeny, 7 Udaloy-I and 1 Udaloy-II) still surviving and their replacement with Gorshkov class FFG is rather slow due to the delays with Gorshkov. The lighter escorts that nearly died as a class in post Soviet era are getting beefed out by Steregushy/Gremuashy class corvettes (light FFGs really, 5+8). There was also a limited Essen class run of FFGs for the BSF.
- For the minor surface combatants while there is a decent program for the small missile ships (Buyan-M 7+6 and Karakut 1+11) that do give new capabilities (Kalibr LAM) but the lack of new small ASW ships and minesweepers/hunters drives some people nuts.
- The amphib construction is rather limited, Navy is waiting to procure big ships.
- There is new construction of supporting vessels such as tankers, etc.
The biggest issue seems to be the industrial side, which did not do as well as some other sectors of MIC in the pre GPV-2020 days.



Overall the missions seem to be:
- strategic nuclear
- defending the Russian coastline
- supporting martime flanks of land forces
- supporting operations abroad (ie Syrian express, Kalibr launches, etc)
with the desired (but not really reacheable) goal to create out of region power projection tools.


What could be quite interesting is how Zircon would come into play in 2020s. Zircon on the Bastion batteries and a number of other platforms could provide a very good (1000km class allegedly) reach, which would solve most of the strike needs in the nearby maritime regions. This is important, as 1000km from our bases covers a lot of key maritime estate globally due to how sprawling Russia is.