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Russia Declassifies "Stealth" Warship

Posted by Hemos on from the very-quiet-water dept.

krez writes "Today's RFE/RL Newsline states The Russian Navy has declassified Project 20380, a warship designed with stealth technology. The ship has a range of 4000km, clips along at 30 knots (55 km/h). The ship has both offensive and defensive roles, and comes armed with the supersonic Yakhont first strike missiles, and the Medvedka 400mm anti-submarine missiles. This is a big step in Russia's attempt to re-establish itself as a world naval super-power, after a decade of budget cuts." Technical details are very very scant on here - if you know more, please post below.

8 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. This is stupid... by Colin+Winters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The point of this ship must be that it doesn't show up on radar-but does sonar still work on it, or did the Russians manage to quiet the noise of the ship enough? If they didn't, then they're idiots. Even if this did happen, the ship is still dumb. Unless the ship can somehow cloak itself (impossible) satellites will be able to pick it up. The ship won't be able to move fast enough to avoid detection by satellites, rendering the ship's main function useless.

    Colin Winters

    1. Re:This is stupid... by dygytyz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The point of the stealth excercise is not to be "invisible", but rather to remain undetected long enough to launch a first strike with super- (or even sub-) sonic missiles.

      Nothing is invisible, but getting in the first punch is just as important. It's called the Alabama Kicking Contest.

      --
      Mmmm... Pistol Whip...
    2. Re:This is stupid... by Guppy06 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "A visual search of even a thousand square miles (That's approx the possible area after 5 hours at 30 knots) would take a horrendous amount of time, and even then you'd have found one ship and would need the satellite to be fairly dedicated to tracking it."

      You neglect to mention the size of the wake of a ship going at 30 knots. It's easy to find something small when you have two long lines pointing right to it.

      Also, you ignored the infrared. Unless these things are nuclear, it's going to have a tail pipe and the corresponding exhaust plume.

      "Radar and sonar are still the only reliable ways to find ocean going vessels, and the technology to severely reduce the effectiveness of sonar has been around for quite a while."

      For underwater vessels. For an awful lot of money you can make a submarine somewhat harder to find with passive sonar, but a submarine doesn't have to slice through the surface of the water. Which brings us back to the wake...

      "Adding radar mitigating tech to a ship is the last step to making it effectively dissapear, espacially with a few dozen of them around to track..."

      Stealth doesn't make it impossible to find, only difficult (making it impossible would violate a thermodynamic law or two), and it becomes quite easy once you know the signature of what you're looking for. Besides, hiding from the radar on your average destroyer is one thing, hiding from an Aegis cruiser is something else.

  2. Re:This is stupid... but you said it anyway. by Tsar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd assume that Russia's intent with this craft is not to launch a war against the U.S., but to give them the ability to approach other radar-equipped ships at sea without raising the alarm, with the side benefit of being impervious to radar-guided weaponry. Very useful for drug interdiction, coastal patrol, and generally dealing with seafaring baddies who don't have minute-by-minute satellite imagery at their disposal. I think that includes 95% of the world (and most of the U.S. fleet as well.)

    Just because the combined intelligence resources of the West could be brought to bear to track one of these things doesn't mean it's useless. Our carriers are pretty easy to spot, and look how handy they've been lately.

  3. Impressive? Only in it's role. by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First guess, this is a small(er) combatant, not a major fleet unit. (Based on previous Russian naval philosophy.) It could either be the centerpiece of a frigate navy, or the building block of a real navy. Given Russia's ongoing economic problems, don't bet on it being much more than vaporware for a decade at least.

  4. Re:If it's anything like MIR... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Uhm, not quite. Your mind is still living in the 90's, obviously. If you'd actually have bothered to take a look, our Russian friends are quite ahead of their time considering that their government was just overturned not more than 10 years ago. Let's see... They're deathly poor but somehow still manage to be a major partner involved with an international-class space project, develop stealth ships, develop helicopters that our US air force scientists use as blueprints for weapons design on their Apache and Commanche copters [Kamov 50 "Black Shark"] [vor.ru]. They somehow manage to secure funding from a whole lot of EU countries and Japan [itochu.co.jp] for an International Business Center, but yet, they're incompetent?

    See, that's precisely the type of racism and prejudice that's keeping us from being able to have normal social relations with them -- We judge them without even knowing what they're like. And that's quite disheartening.

  5. RE: Who needs stealth boats... by gordguide · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "... Sure boats have been usefull in the past.. but really I dont feel that they can keep up with the pace with stealth bombers capable of coming in, wiping out an area and getting out undetected. ..."

    Naval force is invaluable in modern warfare; there are numerous examples but an obvious one is the current action in Afganistan, a landlocked nation. Without the current cooperation from previously hostile nations, naval air power could have still done the job.

    Stealth aircraft are neither undetectable nor invulnerable to intercept by missiles. Serbian forces were able to shoot down 2 stealth fighters in action against the former Yugoslavia. Conventional radar has extreme difficulty detecting them but there are currently 2 different methods to track them; both systems are well known to US and Soviet military and have been tested by both nations (and no doubt others).

  6. Re:We've had it for a while by PD · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did you realize that Afghanistan is landlocked? Not much worry that the Afghans will get one and threaten us. But if they do, I'm sure the Swiss Navy will take care of it for us.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.