On April 20, 2023, the TASS news agency reported, with reference to a "source in the naval sphere", that "the issue is being worked out" about the withdrawal of the Peter the Great heavy nuclear missile cruiser of Project 11442 from the Russian Navy, "since the experience of repairing and modernizing the Admiral Nakhimov cruiser of the same type showed that that it's very expensive." In turn, the RBC news agency in the article "Experts have assessed the benefits of the decommissioning of the cruiser Peter the Great" gave a number of comments on this matter.
Heavy nuclear missile cruiser "Peter the Great" project 11442 during interspecific exercises of the Northern Fleet in the Barents Sea, 05/25/2021 (c) Lev Fedoseev / TASSHeavy cruisers of project 11442 "Orlan" are the "white elephants" of the Russian fleet, whose maintenance is too expensive.
Potentially, they can be replaced with smaller ships, but more efficient, experts say.
Military experts agree that the withdrawal of the nuclear cruiser "Peter the Great" from the fleet may be appropriate. Earlier, the command was working on the issue of decommissioning the cruiser, with reference to a source in the naval sphere, TASS reported.
According to him, the possible write-off is due to the fact that the experience of upgrading a ship of the same series - the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov - showed that "it is very expensive." Later, a RIA Novosti source familiar with the situation in the field of naval planning denied this scenario. The ship can be "put into reserve" for subsequent modernization, he said.
"Peter the Great" is a heavy nuclear missile cruiser of the Soviet project 11442 "Orlan". According to this project, from 1977 to 1989, only four ships were launched - Kirov, Admiral Lazarev, Admiral Nakhimov and Peter the Great himself. The construction of three more ships of this project was canceled.
The total displacement of the cruiser is 25,860 tons . It is the largest non-aircraft carrier warship in the world. The list of Peter the Great's weapons includes 20 installations of the Granite P-700 anti-ship missile system, the S-300F Rif anti-aircraft complex (a marine modification of the S-300 ground-based complex), the 3M87 Dirk missile and artillery complex with 30 mm caliber guns, several 130 mm AK-130 artillery installations.
"Peter the Great" is the only ship of project 11442 "Orlan" in service. Kirov and Admiral Lazarev were decommissioned in the late 1990s and sent for disposal. "Admiral Nakhimov" has not been at sea since 1997, for 24 years it has been under repair and modernization in Severodvinsk. The dates of his return to the fleet are regularly postponed. In 2021, it was planned for 2023, but in August last year, Vladimir Korolev, Deputy General Director of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) for military shipbuilding, said that the deadlines could be shifted by another year.
Military expert, researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations Ilya Kramnik, answering the question about the expediency of keeping the Peter the Great in the fleet, noted that there are different points of view regarding the need for this ship.
"What are the advantages of a cruiser? This is a large, heavy ship, on which you can place a large number of different weapons, a lot of missiles of various types: attack missiles, anti-submarine, anti-aircraft. If we talk about the possibility of deploying new weapons, then there really are no analogues of the "Peter". This is really the largest non-aircraft carrier in the world - only American aircraft carriers are larger," the expert says about the advantages of the Peter the Great.However, Kramnik emphasizes, Peter the Great has a big disadvantage - it is the price of its maintenance, modernization and repair, which it faces.
This was shown by the experience of more than 20 years of repair of the same type of Admiral Nakhimov."Modernization of Nakhimov is very expensive and very long.
Orders for Nakhimov for the production of various parts and assemblies were fulfilled in the last decade. In this decade, if there is a modernization of the "Peter", orders for it will be fulfilled. Therefore, it will not be possible to get the effect of seriality, because seriality is when you build something at a rapid pace one after another. And there is too big a gap here. Therefore, there is an opinion that it is better to order four new frigates for the same money that the Nakhimov repair cost, and not to repair the Peter. They seem to be smaller, but together they also carry quite a lot of various weapons," Kramnik says.
But, according to Kramnik, the key issue here is the political will and the tasks that the fleet will face in the future. "The main thing is what tasks are set for the fleet as a whole and what tools are needed for this. If we need to ensure some kind of presence in the oceans or even seriously prepare for the fact that we may have to deal with the naval forces of the United States and allies, then ships like Nakhimov and Petra are needed. If you do not prepare for such a conflict and consider that the fleet is needed primarily to protect your own coast, and exits to the ocean are needed only within the framework of certain local operations in remote theaters, not against the United States and NATO countries, then in principle you can do with frigates. But this is a matter of goal-setting and rather a political issue," the expert believes.
The scientific editor of the magazine "Arms Export" Mikhail Barabanov agrees with Kramnik - he also believes that there is no economic feasibility in preserving such a ship. For the Russian navy, both Nakhimov and Peter the Great are "white elephants", the maintenance of which is too expensive.
"I think that the issue of the withdrawal of "Peter" in the current economic and military-political situation is a foregone conclusion and it's only a matter of when the authorities will mature to this. The ship is not very efficient and needs repair and modernization. Repairs and modernization of Nakhimov stretched for 15 years, have not yet ended and cost more than 200 billion rubles. Obviously, these are completely inadequate costs, especially in the current situation when the army lacks the most necessary. For 200 billion rubles, which will be required for the repair and modernization of the "Peter", it is possible to build four or five frigates of the project 22350 of the Admiral Gorshkov type," he says.
In addition, Barabanov points to another disadvantage of such cruisers - the need to train huge crews who are distracted from service on other ships. "Two cruisers require a total of 1,500 trained personnel, these are nine frigates of the Gorshkov type. In general, the sooner we get rid of these "white elephants", which are both cruisers of Project 1144, the better it will be for our defense," said RBC Barabanov.
The flagship of the Northern Fleet, which includes the Peter the Great, as well as the entire Russian Navy, is the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. From November 2016 to January 6, 2017, Admiral Kuznetsov and his air group performed combat missions off the coast of Syria - this was the first time he participated in combat operations since launching in 1985. For the last five years, since 2018, the cruiser has also been under repair.
