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.

Comments

Coincidence?

[MiTEG]

This is really interesting- could it happen to be a coincidence that this is announced the same day that Bush announced the U.S. withdrawl from the missile treaty even though Putin said it was a bad idea? On a side note, there seems to be hardly anything about this on all the top news sites, but it was on the front page of my newspaper this morning. How could something so significant be ignored so quickly?

Re:This is stupid...

[djrogers]

In order for a satellite to track one of these, you'd have to find it first. What exactly do you think that sattelites use to 'pick up' ships as you put it? It's not visual surveillance - they would be tasked on a ship _after_ its location has been discovered or narrowed down to a relatively small area.

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.

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. 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...

Re:This is stupid...

[forgoil]

There is already a stealth boat produced, and I am quite sure that it is not a secret. How do I know? Because I've seen it myself, and so has a lot of other people. Check out Smyge on google and you will know what I mean. Why aren't we then run over with these things? My guess is for the same reason as the US airforce doesn't only fly F117 (which I've also seen live ^_^) and B2s and why YF22/YF23 (dunno if they changed the designation) won't take over quite yet. Cost. We are talking about very expensive pieces of equipment with very very limited uses. It's time to sell farming equipment instead of weapons, the ones who buy need to feed their people!

The US had it and CANCELED it!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

We've had it for a while

Of course, our Navy won't talk about it.

We've had it for a while and talked about it quite a bit. And decided it was silly.

A large stealth vessel was part of the original stealth project, and is well documented. (It was a very fast powered twin-hull, which gave them an opportunity to absorb or redirect the microwaves that got into the space UNDER the main body of the craft.)

The problem was that it DID work.

But the rough surface of the sea also reflects radar. The stealth craft blocked this. The net result was a dark streak on the radar background, with the stealth ship exactly at the end of the streak closest to the radar antenna.

Effectively it was a big, black arrowhead on a dim green background, pointing exactly at the stealth vessel. The only thing missing was a label saying "Stealth ship HERE".

To solve this you'd need to deliberately transmit a fake of a surface reflection behind you - which means that you need active ECM for EVERY radar that shines on you. Then you risk showing up as a spotlight on PASSIVE radar.

Sea Shadow

[Animats]

The Sea Shadow was a stealth prototype, built by Lockheed's Skunk Works in the late 1980s. It used to be docked in Redwood City, California, and it's now in San Diego. It was just a prototype for radar tests; no weapons, slow speed. Ben Rich, who headed the Skunk Works at the time, wrote about it in his "Skunk Works" book. Lockheed and the Navy didn't get along.

"Stealth ships" are a blue-water navy idea. But there hasn't been a major blue-water naval engagement in years. Today, the U.S. Navy is mostly used to project power onshore. Stealth isn't the primary criterion for that role. Armor matters more.

There's a good argument for heavily armored battleships for shore bombardment, but the old ones took thousands of people to run, and the Navy is short on people. The U.S. Navy had an "arsenal ship" concept in the early 1990s, but never built any.

Russia needs professional navy, not stealth ships

[Infonaut]

Unfortunately for the Russian Navy, excellent ship designs don't equal mission readiness. Look at the ill-fated Kursk, for example. It was the pride of the Russian submarine fleet, designed with a double-hull, an escape pod, and as much underwater stealth technology as they could cram into it.

The Kursk sank on a training mission, and according to a revealing and meticulously researched print article in the October, 2001 issue of Men's Journal, the two primary reasons for the tragic death of the entire crew were: 1) faulty cheaper torpedoes, and 2) a Russian fleet chain of command that put covering their asses before the welfare of their sailors.

The Russian Navy is in dire straits. Submarine crews spend much of their time foraging for food. Their morale is terrible, training quality is low, and discipline is not what it should be.

Having the best equipment in the world is no substitute for having well-trained, motivated, sailors. Until the Russians can completely overhaul their Cold War-oriented, top-heavy, political-appointee command structure, and start spending money on training and sailors rather than on huge new weapons programs, they'll continue their rapid descent into military irrelevance.

Further reading about the Russian military from sources around the world:

BBC
India
Russia