Admiral Nakhimov nuclear cruiser to return to Russian Navy in late 2022

Steve wrote:
“I wonder if that’s fitted for but not with P800 and S400 ?

From the Drive (Warzone) 2 years ago:
Delivery Of Russia’s Refit Nuclear Battlecruiser Delayed But Progress Looks Impressive
The Kirov class nuclear powered battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov has been in dry dock undergoing a deep refit for years now, with the promise being the ship would come out the other side basically new, with a whole host of new weapons and sensors.

The Russian Navy’s plan is to eventually have two massive Kirov class ships operational at the same time, which will be a first in nearly two decades. Before that can happen Admiral Nakhimov’s refit needs to be completed, after which the Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great), which soldiers on today with largely all its Soviet-era weapons and sensors, will replace it in dry dock. After the Pyotr Veliky is refit to the same standard as the Admiral Nakhimov the two battlecruisers could potentially roam the seas for decades to come.

Executing a deep refit it on a severely dated, 28,000 ton nuclear battlecruiser that has sat idle for over a decade and a half years in the frigid White Sea is no small task. In fact, the Russian Navy’s initiative to refit the Admiral Nakhimov is a decade old, with work only really picking up steam in 2014. And now the news is that the ship’s delivery will be pushed back yet another year, to 2021.

Originally the project was going to end in the latter part of this decade, around 2018. Then it was pushed back to 2019, and then 2020. Normally this would sound like the whimpering end to yet another over ambitious and under funded Russian weapons initiative, but in this case it appears to be quite the opposite.

Images and video shot recently of the giant surface combatant show it receiving a lot of attention, with many portions of the vessel totally gutted, especially areas where new weapons and sensors will go in the place of old ones. Scaffolding encompasses almost the entire vessel, and even its red hull paint paint look fresh.

There is no question that the ship’s refit is deeply underway and that it’s not just a cosmetic facelift and bolt-on remodel aimed to squeeze a few more years out of a tired old design, it’s a total rework of the vessel that is very unlikely to not come to fruition with so much momentum behind hit. And once Sevmash shipyard is finished, Admiral Nakhimov, which was launched in 1986, is slated to bristle with modern weaponry.

The refit ship is slated to feature a whopping 174 vertical launch tubes—more than any other surface combatant or submarine in the world. 80 of these tubes will be filled with modern Russian cruise missiles, such as the subsonic Kalibr, supersonic Onix, and supposedly the hypersonic Zircon. Additionally, the ship’s air defense capability will be adapted from the S-400 system and will have the rest of its tubes stuffed with the family of missiles associated with it (40N6, 48N6, 9M96). In addition, pretty much every combat related system on the ship is supposedly going to be replaced with modern components and many of the ship’s other systems will also be overhauled. The work is being done by Sevmash shipbuilding.

I was thinking that, not so much the appearance (although I like your comparison) but more about top-weight and how much ballast she might need to be carrying down below to compensate for that.

I suppose that with all the lead shielding then if the reactor is as low as possible in the hull that’s probably a good start on the ballast to counteract the car breaking yard up top but surely quite a lot more ballast than that must be needed because not only is that superstructure big and ugly but it also seems to me to be unusually tall ending up in a nightmare for top-weight management.

An Astute class would crack her back without breaking a sweat.

These where originally built in the 1980s as carrier killers armed with SS19 Shipwreck Anti Ship Missiles. The USN brought out the Iowa class from retirement and Tomahawked them up as a counter ( Ah the good old cold war!!!)
As stated a Sub would kill one of these in short order .

I was on a number of FRE that escorted these around the UK waters and up to the North Cape back in the day. They are Friken Huge! The RAF tried to get one of them to turn on the radars to no avail by bouncing them with Buc’s. I will always remember seeing a Buc flying over the flight deck, below the level of the superstructure dumping thick black smoke out the engines as it did it… Happy days!

I see your logic but thats a very brave proposition to claim the ‘battleship’ is now going to retrieve its premier position in place of the Aircraft Carrier for all sorts of reasons I won’t bore this forum with. Taking your logic to the extreme however you could argue all seaborne assets are sitting targets for land based long range systems tied into far superior sensor assets that will tell them theoretically wherever any given enemy vessel is and the bigger they are the easier to do so. So maybe all large ships are liabilities in reality and as small vessels can carry lethal long range anti ship missiles you could perhaps more logically argue they along with with surveillance drones and/or high complex satellite tracking information (which this ship would need to ever consider an ability to out ‘range’ the lethality of a modern aircraft carrier) will be the future of naval supremacy especially if capable of swarming.

i doubt they would go anywhere without there own subs patrolling around them. so probably more use to there enemies to find their subs

Yes… good point.

And Russia has been spending years doing nothing on this total waste of space. I think I know who has the best navy.
Russia … Putin … talks big but they regularly expose their incompetence.

frying pans that heat themselves

One would imagine she would light up like a Christmas tree!

Its rather large.
When we escorted one We carried a Lynx fitted with a specialist Synthetic aperture radar in a pod to do radar cross section mapping of one …that along with a couple of tefal headed boffins to work it.

I think it was code named Sunfish. It apparently cost more than the Lynx did.

Albert – There is a potential candidate for that type of Ship in the Italian Navy”s future DDX project.

‘…their carrier we all slag off looks far better then our carriers’.

In what way though? The only thing I dislike about our carriers visually is the persistence of a less flowing ski jump than most others around the World but that has nothing to do with efficiency. I do assume you are meaning ‘visually’ simply because by no stretch of the imagination are/were Russian carriers in the same ball park in carrier operations as ours as a pathetic if brief performance off of Syria clearly showed.

Now as an offensive missile destroyer (but a number of times bigger) you could have an argument, though in reality its not a concept others have thought worthy while surely you would be far better having those assets in a smaller ship (or even the specialist cruiser discussed here) (re) built for them than a large one full of compromises saddled with a totally inadequate air capability. When you see the limitations the US has fought with on the new America Class even with its specialist flat top layout one can only guess at the limitations of such a half and half ship (especially a very old 1st attempt design for the Russians) must suffer from.

It`s so that it looks like varnished wooden decking from the days of sail from the air. Mind you I was told that by an ex Russian air force officer who may have been on a wind up.

Hides the rust.