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Russia Declassifies "Stealth" Warship
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.