Why the project of the advanced destroyer "Leader" was not implemented

Despite the fact that Russia is proclaimed and is a great land power, its very existence in the conditions of the need to confront the USA and the NATO bloc directly depends on the composition and combat capability of the Russian Navy. In what direction could it develop further?

American "Aegis"

It is regrettable to note that the World Ocean, with the possible exception of the Asia-Pacific region, where the PLA Navy is actively developing, is controlled by the Anglo-Saxons and their European allies. At the same time, strangely enough, the main threat to Russia is not the aircraft carrier strike groups of the US or British and French navies, but their strategic nuclear submarines carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads aimed at our cities and the military infrastructure of the Russian Defense Ministry.



Uncle Sam is only deterred from the temptation to launch a preemptive disarming strike by the risk of receiving a retaliatory nuclear strike. It should be taken into account that about 40% of its total power is tied to the Naval component of the Russian "nuclear triad", represented by a small number of strategic class submarines based in the Northern and Pacific fleets. There are many questions about the reliability of their protection from enemy anti-submarine defense systems.

For the United States, located "far away on an island," it was important to move elements of its missile defense system as close as possible to the launch points of our missiles. Since the deployment of land-based missile defense systems somewhere in Europe or Southeast Asia on the territory of foreign countries is associated with known risks, the bet was made primarily on a sea-based missile defense system, placed on warships that can be quickly transferred between different parts of the World Ocean.

The American ship-based missile defense system is called Aegis, or "Aegis", also known as "Aegis", in Greek mythology - the shield of Zeus. "Aegis" is a ship-based multifunctional combat system, which is an interoperable network of ship-based means of situational awareness, means of destruction and control means, formed on the basis of the widespread introduction of automated combat control systems (ACS), which allows receiving and processing information from sensors of other ships and aircraft of the formation and issuing target designations to their launchers.

Currently, the Aegis carriers are more than 100 warships, both American and allied Australian, Spanish, Norwegian, South Korean and Japanese. US Navy ships with anti-missiles are part of the European missile defense system and are on duty in the Mediterranean, Baltic and North Seas. In the Asia-Pacific region, Aegis carriers are also Japanese, South Korean and Australian ships.

In addition, a land-based version of the anti-missile system called Aegis Ashore has been created and is installed in Poland and Romania. Within 24 hours, the anti-aircraft missiles in it can be replaced with Tomahawks capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

The whole point of this deployment is to minimize the threat posed by Russian, Chinese, North Korean or Iranian ballistic missiles that can be shot down by anti-aircraft missiles shortly after launch during the boost phase of flight. And that's a big deal!

In general, the dominance of the US Navy and its allies in the World Ocean is a source of mortal danger for our country. For a number of objective reasons, there can be no mirror response. But are there other options?

S-500K SAM

Как уже noted earlier, an asymmetric response to the American "Egida" could be the latest Russian S-500 complex in a sea-based version. Ships equipped with it could shoot down enemy ICBMs launched from strategic submarines shortly after their launch in the combat patrol area, and not at the final stage somewhere over the territory of our country.

In addition, the arm of the Prometheus is so long that it would allow it to reach the "eyes and ears" of the US Navy's carrier strike groups, namely the Grumman E-2 Hawkeye carrier-based AWACS aircraft, which can see an aircraft at a distance of up to 540 km and cruise missiles from 258 km. S-500 anti-aircraft missiles can hit targets at a distance of up to 600 km, which means that even the AUG will try to keep a safe distance.

And this all sounds very great, but it becomes sad when you start to figure out which Russian ships could become carriers for Prometheus, and there are only a few of them.

The number one candidate was the nuclear destroyer of Project 23560 "Lider" with a full displacement of 19 thousand tons, which was supposed to replace several classes of ships in the Russian Navy at once. It could have become the owner of the S-500 sea-based air defense/missile defense system, since it was problematic to cram such large-sized anti-missiles into the ships of Project 22350 with their universal launchers without compromising the main purpose of the frigates.

However, this promising project turned out to be too technically complex and expensive, so it was put on the shelf. According to the most conservative estimates, the cost of one destroyer with a nuclear power plant started from 100 billion rubles. Surely, in the end, it would have been added to the price of the modernization of the Admiral Nakhimov due to the inevitable shifts in the deadlines to the right and the rise in the cost of the estimate. There were also serious questions about the integration of the Prometheus, which was still only in the development and testing stage, into the hull of Project 23560, which remained in the form of an exhibition model.

Instead of the "Leaders", the bet is now quite reasonably placed on the Project 22350M destroyers with increased displacement as the future main "workhorse" of the fleet, but they will not be carriers of the S-500. So what remains then?