Built for over 5 years: Russia launched the small corvette Grozny

At Russia’s Amur Shipbuilding Plant, the corvette of project 20380, Grozny, was launched. The slipway construction period alone for this ship, with a displacement of 2200 tons, lasted more than 5 years.

The Russian United Shipbuilding Corporation reported the event on 24 October, announcing completion of work on the slipway. The ship now awaits final fitting-out and lengthy trials, while its crew has only just begun training. The occupiers plan to transfer the vessel into the Russian Navy around 2028.

Modest scale and slow pace

Grozny became the fifth serial ship of project 20380, which is being built at the facility to designs from the Almaz design bureau.

Overall, its slipway period alone lasted 5 years and 2 months, an anomalously long time for a ship with a displacement of only about 2200 tons.

For comparison, in the time the Russian military-industrial complex spends on one small corvette, the US, China, or Western European countries manage to build and commission full-fledged destroyers with displacements of 8000–10000 tons.

Technical shortcomings

In addition to slow production rates, experts have repeatedly pointed out serious technical defects of ships in this project. Chief among the problems are an unreliable propulsion plant, high radar signature, and a lack of modern strike weapons.

The baseline corvettes of project 20380 are not equipped with the universal launch complex UKSK 3S14, so they cannot launch Kalibr cruise missiles, Oniks anti-ship missiles, or Zircon hypersonic missiles.

Instead of modern missile armament, the ship is fitted with the outdated Soviet Kh-35 Uran complex.

The armament also includes an A-190 100-mm artillery mount, two AK-630M anti-aircraft 30-mm mounts, 9M96 family surface-to-air missiles, and torpedoes with a caliber of 324 millimeters.

Characteristics of the corvette of project 20380:

displacement: 2 200 tons;

length: 104,5 meters;

beam: 13 meters;

maximum speed: 27 knots;

crew: 100 people.

By the way, in the summer the Defense Forces struck another corvette of project 20380 – Boikiy. It is among the newest surface combatants of Russia’s Baltic Fleet.

The damage to this Russian corvette occurred in Kronstadt near Saint Petersburg. The strike was carried out while the ship was undergoing repairs.