Putin urges increased protection for the fleet against long-range missiles, after Ukraine eliminates another missile ship in Sevastopol, forcing Moscow to move the fleet to mainland Russia.
He [Putin] also said that the fleet is being replenished with new ships, equipped with modern weapons, and that domestic shipbuilders will hand over more than 40 vessels to the Defense Ministry this year.
Russia's high tech side of their military industrial complex is incredibly weak compared to the old USSR days, and even their low tech side is struggling.
Yeah I can believe they're getting 40 vessels in the next year if they include literally everything they're getting. They certainly aren't getting 40 corvettes.
It really depends on the kind of vessel though. China for instance has a ton of ships but less than tonnage than the US, and if you restrict that to ships that could realistically conduct long range opperations that tonnage is buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo even lower than the UK and Japan (not combined). So Russia could just be launching 40 new patrol boats next year, or maybe 2 actual ships and 38 patrol boats.
No way they're replacing the bigger ones, like the Moskva. That one was built in a yard that's now in Ukraine, and Russia hasn't gotten that part back. Even if they did, Ukraine hadn't really maintained it.
It was also launched in 1979, and they haven't built anything that size since the USSR fell.
They'd have to rebuild the infrastructure needed to build the ship. These losses are irreplaceable.
iirc they did build one for Admiral Kuznetsov. It also left that dry dock not that long ago so it's open now. They're having trouble funding anything larger than the Adm. Gorshkov class though. Which is about 50 meters shorter. So even if they did decide to throw down a 180M long guided missile cruiser they wouldn't be able to fund it. In fact they've been trying to get something called the Lidar class going and the Russian Navy is just like, "Nyet."
Well, they seem to be replenishing their submersible fleet in the Black Sea with lots of new under water vessels: for every ship they lose they get a new sub...
Ships are expensive as hell and drones are comparatively cheap. Missiles too. Ships also take a month off Sundays to build in very obvious places because manufacturing lots of big stuff is pretty obvious to any intelligence analyst posting attention.
Yeah, except that per the Montreux Convention, because Turkey has recognized that Russia is “at war”, Russia is not allowed to transit any warships through the Bosporus Strait, so any new combat ship they make has to be made in the Black Sea.