The Severnoye Design Bureau JSC being Russia’s leading designer of destroyers, frigates, corvettes and boats has been successfully solving tasks of military-technical cooperation with Republic of India for four decades now.
The cooperation was triggered in 1975 by a contract for building Project 61ME frigates at the Soviet Union’s shipyards. The lead ship of a 5-unit series (frigate Rajpur) was handed over to the Indian Navy in 1980. Delivery was followed by a number of joint projects.
In the end of last Century three frigates of pr.11356 also designed by the Severnoye Design Bureau specialists were handed over to the Indian Navy.
The chief feature of the export frigate lies in its suite of armaments. This is the world’s first warship armed with a Club-N strike anti-ship system firing 3M-54E missiles (with firing range is up to 220 km) fitted with a supersonic warhead discharged at the final stage of the flight.
The project was such a success that Republic of India following results of ships’ operation by the Navy ordered manufacture of another three frigates in Russia. The construction of second series of frigates is carried out at the Kaliningrad-based Yantar Shipyard. But these ships are not complete analogues of the first three. The major difference is availability of the BRAHMOS strike missile system. The system is based on the supersonic anti-ship missile jointly developed by Russia’s NPO mashinostroenia and DRDO of the Indian Defense Ministry.
BRAHMOS missile features speed of up to M 2.8 and maximum flight range of ab.300 km. At the final leg (at approach to target) flight elevation is 5 m which makes it practically invulnerable to opponent’s countermeasures.
High modernizing potential of the frigate enables to offer a new version of the ship within short terms which will not require serious changes in design but will feature more extended combat capabilities first of all in the part of air defense.
The Severnoye Design Bureau is working on the upgraded project of frigate which will feature replacement of the Shtil surface-to-air missile system with the Shtil-1 vertical launcher.
Shtil-1 multi-channel SAM system developed by ALTAIR Naval Radio Electronics Research Institute is intended to conduct round defense of ships against any air attacks in particular to repulse massive missile and aerial attacks, as well as to deliver strikes at surface targets.
The system’s composition can include one or several launchers with missiles, fire control system. The system operates interacting with the ship’s 3D radar. The composition of the system offered for installation on the future frigates includes 2 combat modules with 24 missiles.
Such a composition enables to ensure round defense of the ship (sector of fire of 360 deg.), as well as rate of fire of 30 launches per minute as launch of the first missile can be immediately followed by the start of the second one.
