>Dr. Gorenburg from Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies has an excellent blog where he tracks the developments in the Russian military.
Last few weeks he has written several blog entries about the future of the Russian Navy. I have found his comments interesting and enlightening.
He predicts that
Ten years from now, Russia is likely to have a Navy that is focused primarily on coastal missions, though with some out of area capability and maintaining the submarine component of its strategic deterrent. The core of the surface fleet will consist of frigates and corvettes, including a significant number of new ships of the Admiral Gorshkov, Krivak IV and Steregushchii classes. More distant deployments will be carried out by the aging Udaloy destroyers and a few modernized Kirov and Slava class cruisers, though the Navy will be desperately working to replace these larger ships as they reach the end of their lives. They will be joined by foreign-designed Mistral (or similar) class amphibious assault ships, which will be used as command and control platforms for out of area operations. The navy will also be working on building a new aircraft carrier, but the project is unlikely to be anywhere near completion by 2020. Its existing Admiral Kuznetsov carrier will still be in the fleet, but will be spending more time getting repaired than actually sailing.
His predictions and his analysis are very fact based and sound. And they are in general in accordance with reports coming from Russian Navy. But nevertheless, I personally feel that all these forecast are little far stretched.
First and fore most the Russian shipbuilding industry must deliver, good designed, modern ships within industry standard timelines. Currently there seems to be problem of bringing various companies together to deliver defence projects.
Secondly there should be an evident political will such as the Reagan administration’s 600 ship Navy plan to support the new constructions projects. Such a political motivation can help the Russian defence industry to reshape itself.
In an interesting coincidence, when Dr. Gorenburg started published his vision, RIA Novosti reported, citing sources in the shipbuilding industry that The Russian Defense Ministry will hold a competition in September to select a new corvette for the Navy to replace the Steregushchii (Project 20380) class, as it was not meeting moderns naval standarts.
Here are links to Dr. Goreburg’s essays:
The Future of the Russian Navy Part 1: Large Combat Ships
The Future of the Russian Navy Part 2: Smaller Surface Ships
The Future of the Russian Navy Part 3: Submarines
The Future of the Russian Navy Part 4: Summary and Conclusions
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