052C/052D Class Destroyers

sanblvd said:

Russia stopped building big ships, while China was only getting started, and older ships can only last you for so long before they need to be scrapped. In the future Russia should just buy destroyers and size up ships from China instead.

Student has indeed became the master.

Click to expand...

Russia has good designs.

For example, their Admiral Gorshkov FFG is a GREAT design and they have built one and are ready to launch a second.



The Admiral Grigorovich FFGs are a very decent design as well (they have for or more of those now:



Other than that...they have built quite a few new Corvettes that are very decent aas well...probably more capable than the Type 056.

But the problem Russia has is money and budget...and then, since it has been going on such a long time, their industrial capability is slacking too because the people who used to do that, and then train new people as they came along, have all retired. (Maybe not all, but enough to have hurt them)

So, they are not able to build as many ships as quickly as they once did, and they are falling way behind the US and China in terms of capacity and numbers.

They will continue building their own designs. I do not expect to live long enough to see the Russians buying new ships from the Chinese. The Chinese did it as a stop gap...and it is costly to do because there are all sorts of language and logistical problems with spare parts and maintenance.

China did it though and then has enough money now to completely refit those ships into a form that is more modern and better for China because they are putting Chinese systems on those ships now, and they can build everything they need to do do so.

Russia will not want to go down that road...and I expect that they will wait a long time to do so even of they had to.

Jeff Head said:

I do not expect to live long enough to see the Russians buying new ships from the Chinese.

Click to expand...

You'll be surprised, remember Russia brought 2 Mistral from France because they were not capable of produce big ships anymore (And didn't get them in the end), and China have demonstrated they have the ability to build full size carrier from nothing, as well as their LHD is under constitutions.... this is exactly what the Russian needed.

I think the bigger problem that is preventing Russian from buying Chinese is their pride, but why not buy the ship from China and refit your own weapon and sensors so that way Russia still save face.

Also yes I notice they build a bunch of 2000t Corvettes and that Grigorovich frig which is in the same class of 054A took them a long time to build, that means they had to relearn a lot of things lost.

Now to scale up to 8000t + destroyers will be even more painful for them, and they might not have enough money to justify rebuilding up their ship building industry to just produce less than half dozen of them, so why not just buy from China, and they can refit their own weapon and call it a day.

Don't discount above possibles.

sanblvd said:

You'll be surprised, remember Russia brought 2 Mistral from France because they were not capable of produce big ships anymore (And didn't get them in the end), and China have demonstrated they have the ability to build full size carrier from nothing, as well as their LHD is under constitutions.... this is exactly what the Russian needed.

Click to expand...

OT
The buy of the Mistrals was also a political project, an effort to try to improve relations with France and so reduce the threat of aggression by NATO, an effort that misfired.
What Russia needs is to modernize its shipyards and build new ones and this is going on. A new large shipyard is building in the Far East. It might be buying equipment for those shipyards from the largest and most modern shipbuilding country, China.

I think it's a bit of ego tripping to think that Russia is desperate enough to buy entire frigates from China when they have several of their own designs.

Jeff Head said:

Russia has good designs.

For example, their Admiral Gorshkov FFG is a GREAT design and they have built one and are ready to launch a second.


The Admiral Grigorovich FFGs are a very decent design as well (they have for or more of those now:


Other than that...they have built quite a few new Corvettes that are very decent aas well...probably more capable than the Type 056.

Click to expand...

Admiral Kasatonov has already been launched some time ago and has started mooring trials. Two more are in the pipeline, one is expected to be launched next year and the hull of the fourth will be assembled by the end of 2017.

Three operational - Grigorovich, Essen and Makarov. Butakov has been launched, but is waiting for GTs, as well as Istomin and Kornilov still at Yantar shipyard.

Two types of missile corvettes are in construction - 21631 (12 launched and on order) and 22800 (18 launched/on order), both carrying 8 cell Kalibr VLS.

Not do discourage or underplay Russia ship building process, but call me when the day they starting to build 7000 ton+ warships. The last 7000 ton+ ship Russia build was the 4 Sov for China in the early 2000s.

As far as I know Admiral Gorshkov is going to take more than a decade from construction to commissions and that's just a frig, most of the newer ships Russia build during the last decade are 2000t Corvettes.

They have not even tried building anything larger than a frig. This is not so for China in the early 2000s their biggest ship was around 5000t but today they can build anything from Corvettes to aircraft carrier at Chinese speed, so its pretty obvious Russia ship building ability has deteriorated a lot, while Chinese went in the opposite directly.

sanblvd said:

Not do discourage or underplay Russia ship building process, but call me when the day they starting to build 7000 ton+ warships. The last 7000 ton+ ship Russia build was the 4 Sov for China in the early 2000s.

As far as I know Admiral Gorshkov is going to take more than a decade from construction to commissions and that's just a frig, most of the newer ships Russia build during the last decade are 2000t Corvettes.

They have not even tried building anything larger than a frig. This is not so for China in the early 2000s their biggest ship was around 5000t but today they can build anything from Corvettes to aircraft carrier at Chinese speed, so its pretty obvious Russia ship building ability has deteriorated a lot, while Chinese went in the opposite directly.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't necessarily say that the Russians' shipbuilding capability has deteriorated, rather that their financial situation has deteriorated, in which case if and when they actually have more money they would just build destroyer-sized ships of their own design. They certainly have the ambition to build even larger ships, like their 17,500t Lider class "destroyers". I think their ability to build this ship is not really in doubt, rather what is in doubt is how they would pay for this kind of ship.

Iron Man said:

I wouldn't necessarily say that the Russians' shipbuilding capability has deteriorated, rather that their financial situation has deteriorated, in which case if and when they actually have more money they would just build destroyer-sized ships of their own design. They certainly have the ambition to build even larger ships, like their 17,500t Lider class "destroyers". I think their ability to build this ship is not really in doubt, rather what is in doubt is how they would pay for this kind of ship.

Click to expand...

Shipbuilding capability and shipbuilding industry, just like any other industry, needs to be maintained, through a combination of either continuous investment and preferably continuing to build new ships, both of which are of course dependent on funding.

Clearly the Russian Navy and their shipbuilding industry are ambitious enough to continue developing designs and concepts like Lider DDG, Shtorm carrier etc, however I think the combination of poor funding since the USSR collapsed+the consequence of poor funding resulting in deterioration of the shipbuilding industry, as well as the relevant industries in subsystems development and integration and some of the institutional experience that they would've once had when building bigger and more complex ships during the USSR days, has led to a decline in the actually ability to build and fit out these sort of larger and more complex ships.


Or at least that's the impression I get when I've talked to some of the more knowledgeable Russian military watchers over on key forums now and then.

Bltizo said:

Shipbuilding capability and shipbuilding industry, just like any other industry, needs to be maintained, through a combination of either continuous investment and preferably continuing to build new ships, both of which are of course dependent on funding.

Clearly the Russian Navy and their shipbuilding industry are ambitious enough to continue developing designs and concepts like Lider DDG, Shtorm carrier etc, however I think the combination of poor funding since the USSR collapsed+the consequence of poor funding resulting in deterioration of the shipbuilding industry, as well as the relevant industries in subsystems development and integration and some of the institutional experience that they would've once had when building bigger and more complex ships during the USSR days, has led to a decline in the actually ability to build and fit out these sort of larger and more complex ships.


Or at least that's the impression I get when I've talked to some of the more knowledgeable Russian military watchers over on key forums now and then.

Click to expand...

There was a first time the Russians built the Slava class. There was a first time the Russians built the Kirov class. There was a first time the Russians built the Kuznetsov class. If they've been there before, they can get there again. And even more basically I would like to think that the people who envisioned ship classes like the Lider and Shtorm know more about Russian shipbuilding capability than you or I or random internet people on Key Forums.

delft said:

The buy of the Mistrals was also a political project, an effort to try to improve relations with France and so reduce the threat of aggression by NATO, an effort that misfired.
What Russia needs is to modernize its shipyards and build new ones and this is going on. A new large shipyard is building in the Far East. It might be buying equipment for those shipyards from the largest and most modern shipbuilding country, China.

Click to expand...

The Mistral deal involved two ships delivered from France, and two ships built in Russia following modernisation of the shipyard supervised by DCNS. That is to say, the Mistral deal was not only a sign of Russia's decline in shipbuilding capacity, but also a plan to improve it.

Incidentally, I never did read anywhere about what happened to the shipyard side of the Mistral deal....