What is this Cyclone missile ship that the racists have brought into the Black Sea Fleet?
“The Cyclone became the first ship of the 22800 Karakurt project in the Black Sea and the fourth ship of this project in all Russian navies.
In the still-occupied Crimea, the racists introduced a new small missile ship of Project 22800 “Cyclone”, which was built at the Zaliv plant in Kerch, into the Black Sea Fleet.
The ship was laid down in 2016 and launched in 2020 and is the first ship of this project in the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the fourth in all Russian navies. Three more ships of this project are part of the Russian Baltic Fleet.
In general, the 22800 Karakurt project was created with the Buyan-M small missile ships in mind, which formally belonged to the river-sea class due to their shallow draft. This decision was dictated, in part, by the fact that Russia considered the Buyan-M to be a means of circumventing the ban on the deployment of cruise missiles on ground-based complexes.
At the same time, the actual operation of the Buyan-M showed its low seaworthiness, and the 22800 Karakut project was launched, the outline of which was first shown in 2015.
“The Karakut can be classified as a corvette, with a gross tonnage of 870 tons and a length of 67 meters. The ship’s crew is 39 people, and its autonomy is 15 days. The ship’s propulsion is provided by three M507D-1 diesel engines of 8000 hp each.
The maximum speed of 30 knots is 55.5 km/h, with a range of 2,500 miles on an economical 12-knot cruise.
Despite its size, traditionally for the Russian Federation, the ship received quite powerful weapons in the form of 8 universal launch pits for Kalibr and Onyx missiles. The ship is also equipped with a 76.2 mm AK-176MA artillery system.
The traditional weak link in the air defense of Russian ships is closed by the installation of a naval version of the Pantsir-ME air defense system with a declared range of destruction of air targets by missiles up to 20 km and up to 15 km in altitude. It is worth noting that the naval version of the Pantsyr was equipped with the much faster-firing multi-barrelled GS-6-30 instead of the 30-mm 2A38. Up to 2500 rounds per minute for the 2A38 versus up to 5000 rounds per minute for the GS-6-30.
The ship’s radar system is the Mineral-M, which consists of an active and passive radar station designed to survey the surface area.
Four fixed radars 1RS-3, which are also installed on the Pantsyr air defense system, are supposed to be responsible for airspace surveillance, with a declared range of up to 70 km. The ship’s combat information system is Sigma.
In total, from 2016 to 2019, four more ships of the 22800 Karakurt project were laid down in Kerch, and three more are scheduled to join the Black Sea Fleet by the end of 2023, and the last one by the end of 2024.
