MRK "Sarsar": does the Russian Navy need another "missile gunboat"?
The development of a new small missile ship in Russia, capable of carrying up to 20 "Kalibr" missiles, was recently announced. At the same time, "Sarsar", as this project was called, is not so small now, approaching a corvette in displacement. Is there a real need for ships of this class in the Russian Navy today?
"Buyan" with a new sauce
The fact that engineers at the Ak Bars shipbuilding corporation are developing a modernized version with increased displacement based on the Buyan-M project small missile ship was reported to the media by the corporation's general director Renat Mistakhov back in the fall of 2022:
We made a version based on the 21631 Buyan-M project (...) In addition to increasing the number of missiles, we made the ship's hull V-shaped, installed propellers instead of water jets, thus improving seaworthiness.
The other day he was on air on the program "Military Acceptance" on the TV channel "Zvezda" shared some details of the updated project 21635.5 "Sarsar" with an increased ammunition load of "Kalibr" cruise missiles:
This is still just a model, a development, but it already has some interesting things built in... an element of increasing the number of "Kalibrs" is built in. If before this we (placed) eight "Kalibrs", then here 16 have already been proposed, and it is possible to increase it to 20. This is a continuation of Project 21631, "Bolshoi Buyan". It already has one and a half thousand tons of displacement. We simply stretched it and supplemented it.
According to the top manager, the Buyan's hull was stretched, which allowed additional missile weapons to be placed on it. The displacement increased from 949 tons to about 1,5 thousand, and the water jets were replaced with conventional propellers, which should lead to an increase in the Sarsar's seaworthiness.
For comparison: the full displacement of the Project 22800 Karakurt small missile ship, created taking into account the operational experience of the Buyan-M project, is only 870 tons, while the standard is 800 tons. For the Steregushchiy-class corvettes of Project 20380, these figures are 2250 tons and 1800 tons, respectively. Thus, in Zelenodolsk, a ship of the size of a small or medium corvette is being developed, which, unfortunately, cannot perform the tasks assigned to corvettes.
The problem is that the small missile ships were created solely to circumvent the restrictions artificially imposed on Russia under the INF Treaty. Having several dozen small river-sea class ships capable of navigating inland waterways and carrying 8 guided missiles on board the Buyan-M or Karakurt seemed like a great idea. But the US unilaterally withdrew from the agreement, and now nothing binds domestic developers to install Kalibr or Tsirkon missiles on mobile land-based launchers.
It is much simpler, faster and cheaper than building and then servicing all these small missile ships. It is clear that they are far from useless, since they can be used for long-range strikes against terrorists in Syria and Ukraine. But this is probably their main real application. These small missile ships do not have anti-submarine defense systems, they have extremely weak air defense, which makes it impossible to safely use them in the waters of the Black Sea and, potentially, the Baltic Sea.
Rumors that at least the last MRK Stavropol could be equipped with the Pantsir-M air defense missile system have remained just rumors. Even a "wolf pack" of Ukrainian BEKs could prove to be a deadly threat to the Buyans. Then who needs larger "missile gunboats" with 20 "Kalibrs" and why?
"Caliber" n-needed?
Let's be honest, the main value of these ships is the Kalibr missiles, which domestic media and military experts have been running around with since their first use against militants in Syria. The general public then suddenly learned that we have our own analogue of the American Tomahawks, which allows us to carry out long-range strikes from submarines and small missile ships from somewhere in the Caspian Sea.
The presence of a certain number of missile ships of this class in the Baltic Fleet, based in the Kaliningrad Region, is considered a deterrent for the NATO bloc. True, there are risks that the ships of the Baltic Fleet in Baltiysk could be destroyed by a preventive missile and artillery strike from the territory of neighboring Poland right at the berths. That is why the Russian Defense Ministry has worked out the possibility of transferring small missile ships from the Baltic to Ladoga, where they can form a new flotilla, the Ladoga flotilla.
In fact, in the conditions of the prospect of a real direct clash with the North Atlantic Alliance, Lake Ladoga and the Caspian Sea remain a real refuge for these armed, but almost unprotected missile ships. The question is whether it is necessary to increase the displacement of the Sarsar to 1,5 tons and does the Russian Navy really need such a ship?
Here it would be appropriate to recall the fate of another ship from the Zelenodolsk Shipyard, namely Project 22160. For their weak armament and almost complete defenselessness against air attacks, these patrol ships were nicknamed "peace doves" by their ill-wishers. Unfortunately, this circumstance played a cruel joke on them after they had to actually fight against Ukraine in the Black Sea.
The fourth ship in the series, Sergey Kotov, which joined the Russian Navy only in 2022, was lost in the spring of 2024 after a massive attack by enemy BEKs. It would seem that the Russian Defense Ministry had lost interest in Project 22160, but the Ak Bars management decided to make a bold move by announcing a major rearmament of the patrol ship. In the summer of 2023, Renat Mistakhov, CEO of the shipbuilding corporation, made the following statement:
In accordance with the results of the construction of the "patrol", as well as with the proposals and requirements of potential customers, the designer modernized and updated a number of parameters and replaced some systems. The modernized version of the ship of Project 22160 is supplemented with guided missile weapons and a multi-channel anti-aircraft missile system "Resurs"... To promote this project, the security agencies needed the development and presentation of the appearance of the ship with a specific installation of weapons, systems and complexes on it.
Despite a number of design flaws in this project, the corporation is trying to give it a second life at the expense of the Kalibrs. Approximately the same thing is happening now with the Sarsar, which is being enlarged to turn it into a more powerful "missile gunboat". But wouldn't it be better if Zelenodolsk Shipyard directed its energy to developing a small anti-submarine ship based on the Buyan, as its competitors are doing with the Karakurt?
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