Project 22350 Admiral Sergei Gorshkov

This is the first major warship designed in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Project 22350 Admiral Sergei Gorshkov far sea zone frigate, finally commissioned on 28 July 2018, is an escort ship intended for the distant maritime and ocean zones. This project will feature engineering solutions that were used to build Mk 11356 frigates for the Indian Navy. Project 22350 is a general service frigate (Great Guardship according to the soviet classification). This new frigate type is designed to execute long-range strike, ASW and AD missions.

The design of the ship "a high percentage of novelty" - at least 30% of new technologies and developments. In particular, part of the hull and superstructure element is formed by stealth technology. The ship was so secret that even the appearance was initially only known to designers and shipbuilders.

In Soviet times, repeated attempts were made to create a multi-purpose surface ships capable of solving such problems as fighting air defense, anti-submarine and surface ships potential enemy. Even in the second half of the 1960s, the North PKB project was carried out multi-purpose ship 61K (61A projects and 61bis - just variations on this theme), and later the same office carried out projects 11560 and 11990 "Anchar" (displacement of 12,000 tons, SAM "Hurricane", RK "Onyx", PLRK "Waterfall") multipurpose destroyer class ships cruiser. At the end of a series of Project 956 was planned construction project destroyers 11000 with gas turbine plant, in almost the same housing, with a SAM type "Hurricane" RCC "Onyx" KR "Caliber" PLRK, helicopter. But all of them remained not embodied in metal.

From the construction, perhaps, BOD "Admiral Chabanenko" Project 11551 [NATO Udaloy] can be called a multi-purpose - multi-purpose vehicle. It had a powerful detection and anti-submarine warfare (PLRK, helicopters), stroke missile complex "Mosquito", only air defense (SAM "Dagger ") were not sufficient for the collective defense of fleet, covering the landing troops and convoys from air raids. But the price of the issue was such that all managed to place weapons on the ship with a displacement of 9,000 tons.

There is another example of creating a multi-purpose ship, this missile cruiser Project 11442 "Frunze" is much better resolved the question of collective defense - S-300F with a range of up to 100 km. However, the displacement of the ship was already 24,000 tons, actually "missile battleship" - the main gauge of the Kyrgyz Republic "Granit" long range. And it is clear that many of these ships can not be built, along with the head "Kirov" Project 1144 was built four cruisers.

However, technological progress brought to fruition a unification of missile weapons control systems and sharply increased radar systems and the accuracy of their contact with targets. At the beginning of the XXI century in Russia there were promising missile systems such as "Caliber-NCE" with anti-ship missiles 3M54E, anti-submarine missiles and cruise missiles 92RE 3M14E for firing at shore targets, and type "Yakhont" supersonic anti-ship missiles. Moreover, there were created universal launchers to launch them and unified management of these systems ship missile systems.

In addition, there is now SAM type "Rif-M" and "calm" with a very effective SAM (9M96 and 3M317ME respectively) medium-range and rate of vertical launch missile launchers. All this has created a frigate with a displacement of 22350 project only 4,500 tons. Nowno one can be surprised at multipurpose frigates and destroyers in the world, the United States created the cruiser "Arleigh Burke" in England EM 45 type, in other NATO countries, multipurpose frigates, etc. etc.

Russia developed the Project 22350 frigate for domestic deployment, though the reduced signature integrated design is said to be similar in design philosophy to the Project 17 frigates of Indian Navy. The Project 22350 design is reported to utilize "engineering solutions" used to build the Project 1135.6 Talwar class frigates for the Indian Navy, another instance of Indian defense orders reviving projects for Russian industry. The Indian Navy's Project 17A frigate RFI was for a set of seven stealth frigates, each costing about Rs4,000 crore. The Indian plan envisaged the first ship to be built at the foreign shipyard, with the remaining units being built at Mazagon Docks Ltd in Mumbai or at the Garden Reach Shipyard in Kolkata.

The frigates are equipped with combined gas turbine and gas turbine (COGAG) propulsion systems. The two cruise gas turbines and two boost gas turbines will be connected through two shafts. The COGAG propulsion is more efficient than combined diesel and gas (CODAG) and combined diesel or gas (CODOG) propulsion systems. The COGAG system delivers more economical transit at cruise speeds.

Main power plant - diesel-gas turbine (two afterburning gas turbine engine with a capacity of 27,500 Hp each and two diesel propulsion engines with a capacity of 5,200 Hp). Engines for the first two frigates were built at the Ukrainian enterprise "Zorya" - "Mashproekt" (Mykolaiv city). The company "Zorya" Mashproekt performs a series of contracts to supply major power plants (GEMs) for the latest Russian class frigates "Admiral Gorshkov" and Project 11356 frigates.

Manufactured and supplied to the Shipyard "Severnaya Verf" by the Russian company "Turborus", two M56 installation capacity of 60,000 hp for the new Russian frigates of Project 22350 "Admiral Gorshkov" and "Admiral Kasatonov". The power plant for Project 22350 frigates, it is produced jointly by Ukraine and Russia, because Russian companies are at the stage of development of its production. "Zorya" Mashproekt produces, in particular, only the gas generator and gearbox this setting, while Russian enterprises manufactured turbine and automatic control system.

The possibility of fitting the next series of ships with Russian engines seems a distinct possibility. In the future new ships of the Russian Navy and the FSB Border Service are expected to be equipped with new generation of power plants of domestic production, a development of Rybinsk Propulsion Engineering. Some media reported about faults in the Admiral Gorshkov’s power unit. However, the shipyard rejected the media reports, saying there were "no problems" with the power unit and "the ship performed well at the trials."

At the same time, a tender was opened on the state purchases website for fulfilling works to rebuild the gas turbine engine for order 921 of Project 22350 (the Admiral Gorshkov frigate) on the premises of the Saturn research and production association acting as the sole supplier. Severnaya Verf is the client of these works estimated at 135 million rubles ($2.7 million) and scheduled to be finished by December 2016.

"The purchase cost indicated in the materials includes a set of various works as part of the enterprise’s operational activity," the United Shipbuilding Corporation president said, commenting on the information posted on the state purchases website.

By February 2018 the Admiral Gorshkov, lead ship of the new Project 22350 series of frigates, was to be commissioned in August, with Admiral-series vessels expected to become the backbone of the Russian Navy's ocean-going presence over the next decades. The Admiral Gorshkov was designed with universality in mind, with the "capability to combat surface ships and submarines with equal effectiveness, attack land-based targets with high-precision weapons, resist aircraft of the probable enemy, carry out reconnaissance by taking advantage of its low visibility characteristics, and much more." The ambitious nature of the project has not been without its problems, the most serious among them being delays to the Admiral Gorshkov's commissioning. The timeframe has been pushed back several times.

Navy command remains confident about the prospective vessels and their capabilities. In 2016, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed that the Russian Navy would commission six Project 22350 frigates by 2025. Before that, the Navy said it hoped to receive over a dozen of the Admiral-series vessels in the near future for service in the Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.

The long construction of ships today has become the reason that many ship systems can already be considered obsolete. The rapid development of electronics, outlined in recent years, is the reason that the combat modules and control systems of the ship are quickly becoming obsolete.