Russian Navy Confirms First Destroyer Program in Over 30 Years

Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Admiral Alexander Moiseev has announced that the service will move ahead with the design of its first destroyer class since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Speaking to Russian state media, the admiral stated regarding work on the program: “I note, of course, that we are working… on a promising ship, which is a ship of the far ocean zone.” “The technical assignment was issued to the Navy, it is currently being implemented by the designers and is at the stage of completing the technical project,” the admiral added, noting that the technical design phase is nearing its conclusion. “There is confidence… that the technical project will be completed within the established timeframe. And with its completion, already within the framework of the next program, we will lay down this ship for the Russian Navy,” he further observed. Moiseev described the vessel as a blue water combat platform designed to operate in the far oceans, which would mark a sharp departure from other post-Soviet surface combat ships which have all been small low endurance frigates and corvettes.

The Russian Defence Ministry and the Navy have shown an interest in procuring destroyer sized ships, although the only vessels of this size laid down since the USSR’s disintegration were built for export to China in the 1990s. The ability of the country’s shipbuilding industry to smoothly resume production after more than 30 years has thus been seriously questioned. A previous highly ambitious destroyer design, the Shkval Class, otherwise known as the Lieder Class, was unveiled in the 2010s, with the head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) Alexei Rakhmanov announcing in the final week of June 2020 that industry was ready to begin serial production. The design’s use of a nuclear propulsion system and its considerable size, however, raised serious questions regarding its viability and affordability, although Rakhmanov claimed at the time that up to six of the 14,000 ton ships could be built for by the Russian Navy.

To place the Shkval Class’ size in perspective, the Arleigh Burke Class destroyers that form the backbone of the American fleet displace 8,300 tons fully loaded, while the world’s largest modern destroyer class the Chinese Type 055 Class displaces 12,000-13,000 tons.Other than Russia’s two Soviet built Kirov Class cruisers, no country in the world fields nuclear powered surface combatants due to their immense costs, with the future Russian ocean going destroyer class expected to be a more conservative design that will allow the Navy to belatedly replace many of its ageing Soviet built ships. Even a conservative Russian destroyer design, however, could be highly potent due to the integration of both a navalised variant of the S-400 air defence system, and of the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. These were both recently retrofitted onto a Soviet-built Kirov Class cruiser as part of modernisation efforts, with the Zircon having no rivals in terms of performance outside China.

It remains possible that the Russian shipbuilding industry will rely heavily on transfers of knowhow and technologies from China, which has emerged as by far the world’s largest producers of destroyers with close to 40 having been built over the past decade. The Chinese Type 055 Class is currently widely considered by both Chinese and Western sources to be the most capable in the world. The Russian Navy’s destroyer fleet is considered small relative to the general standing of the country’s armed forces, with just 11 ships in service, all of them Soviet era designs, including 3 Sovremenny Class and 8 Udaloy Class vessels, alongside three cruisers, for a total of 14 ocean-going ships. The new destroyer class could replace all destroyers and the two Slava Class cruisers in service, and potentially allow for a further expansion of the fleet of ocean-going ships.