Project 23560E Lider - Cancelled
The project to create a large surface combatant for the Russian Navy with unique capabilities and a nuclear power plant - the destroyer Leader - seems to be buried forever. This was the pride of all shipbuilding exhibitions of recent years in Russia - the atomic destroyer Leader. Moreover, this was done some time before the decision became public knowledge.
This directly followed from the publication of documents of the designer. Sometimes in corporation reports, procurement information, or other documents that seem at first glance interesting only to company employees and business participants, there is very interesting information. Such a document emerged in early 2020 in blogs and the press “The annual report of the joint-stock company Northern Design Bureau for 2019”. The Northern PKB is an experienced and respected organization in military shipbuilding that has given life to many warships. The report contains a lot of interesting information about what work the SPKB performed regarding the creation of new ships and vessels. Of particular interest, however, are these lines: "... suspension by the customer of the previously planned development of works (with the scope of work in 2017-2019) for project 23560 after completion of the preliminary design of 23560 in 2016." The customer - the Ministry of Defense - suspended all work, and back in 2016. This is what directly follows from the report.
The pre-draft design of the Leader class ship, also known as project 23560 with an atomic main power plant, was approved by the Ministry of Defense in 2013. From 2013 to 2016, the ship’s developer, Severnoye PKB JSC, worked on a preliminary design, which, according to media reports, was later approved by the Ministry of Defense. Around the same time, some media outlets distributed optimistic reports that already in 2019 the lead ship of such a project could be laid down. And then everything calmed down. Although the model of the destroyer continued to be transported from exhibition to exhibition, officials had not made promises to begin building such ships for a long time.
The future large “frigate” of project 22350M is now considered the main large surface ship of the far sea zone by the Ministry of Defense. This ship with a displacement of approximately 8,000 tons (from Leader promised from 13,000 tons) and the main power plant based on gas turbines that Russia can produce - marching M-70 and afterburner M-90RU, promised to be much easier to create than a gigantic nuclear missile strike ship, whose analog in the world were never built by anyone (Project 1144 TAKR Orlan, the most famous representative of which is Peter the Great, although more of a Leader, but much more modest in capabilities and , apparently technically easier). In addition, it is very clear that the project 22350M will be incomparably cheaper.
It is difficult to evaluate “by eye” the cost of ships not yet designed to the end, but something is obvious. If the 22350M "pulls" several tens of billions of rubles, then the lead "Leader" will be released in about a hundred. A series of such super-destroyers at a price will be comparable to the program for the construction of an aircraft carrier fleet or a manned flight with a Russian passport to the moon, moreover, on a domestic spaceship.
At the same time, the need for an attack rocket ship in exactly the form that the Leader is planned to put it mildly is not obvious. It should be noted that large warships themselves, capable of performing tasks in the far sea zone, are useful and needed both in peacetime and during the war. However, it is an atomic, high-speed and heavily armed missile ship that is not something urgently needed - it can be replaced in almost all cases by "large" missile frigates.
In principle, there is only one war scenario in which Russia will need such ships and in which they will be indispensable - this is a full-blown, naval, non-nuclear war with the United States. In such a war, naval strike groups deployed in the Atlantic and the Pacific from such destroyers will in fact become a huge problem for the United States.
Having an advantage in speed and, therefore, an advance in deployment, having an unlimited range, such ships (subject to accurate information about the enemy) will require completely disproportionate forces to fight against themselves, which will also have to pay very dearly for any success. And this will help alleviate the situation for Russia at the “home” theater of operations, and very much. Moreover, ships will have a chance to return home from such a mission, despite the superiority of the enemy in strength. It is this scenario that is a rare combination of circumstances in which missile ships have some chances (though not very large, but non-zero) to wrest a victory from the carrier fleet. Especially if they will be helped by submarines and aircraft.
But how real is such a war? How likely is it that Russia will fight against the United States in the same way as Japan during World War II, and without the use of nuclear weapons? This is one of the most unlikely scenarios of a military conflict in which Russia may be drawn into. And if so, then the likelihood that the "Leader" will be critically important, indispensable for the country's defense is small.
Apart from the ocean war against the United States, the tasks of an attack rocket ship will be completely solved by 22350M. They can well replace the destroyers of project 956, and the BOD of projects 1155 and 1155.1, and the missile cruisers of project 1164. That is, the same ships for which the Leader was intended to replace.
It is not surprising that the "Leader" began to be forgotten. Since 2018, the number of references to this project in the media has sharply decreased. True, on December 9, 2019, the TASS agency issued a statement by the head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Alexei Rakhmanov, that the corporation was preparing to build a series of nuclear destroyers. “We are preparing for this to be the next beginning of a long series of ships in the far sea zone,” he said, speaking about the Leader destroyer plans. The realism of such statements already raised questions.
Although there was no documentary evidence of the suspension of work on the Leader, the situation was still obvious. The ship clearly disappeared from the media field, and the Ministry of Defense did not remind of past plans for this project. What then moved the chief USC? Why did A.L.Rakhmanov say that the USC is "preparing" for the fact that these ships will be produced in large series?
Possibly this was the voice of the USC’s business interests during the period when the approval of the new state armaments program and the revision of the “Military Shipbuilding Program until 2050” is possible. For USC, a series of ships at the cost of, for example, seven hundred billion rubles would be a "gift from heaven." In the current program, the Leader was the main ocean ship in the medium term. And today there is the highest chance that it will never be at all.
In his speech on December 2, 2019, at a meeting on naval shipbuilding, President Vladimir Putin said: “In the coming years, it is necessary to actively increase the combat capabilities of the fleet. In many respects, this depends on the planned admission to the military structure of the Navy of frigates and submarines designed for the use of Zircon hypersonic missiles (this weapon becomes extremely important for maintaining strategic stability), as well as destroyers and landing ships. ” Whether the president was referring to just an abstract destroyer or some kind of gas turbine missile ship project (for example, 21965 or the future “big” frigate of project 22350M will be re-qualified as a destroyer) - time will tell. Now the urgent need for the construction of a series of super-expensive atomic destroyers "Leader" is far from obvious, unlike the project 22350M.
Work on the latter, however, has also been suspended for several months already - and this also directly follows from the report of the Special Design Bureau. But this may be due to some organizational reasons. Four months is not at all the same as a long-term delay with the Leader, whose chances of building it are already almost zero. Apparently, the Ministry of Defense does not want to see this ship "in the metal." And that means it will never be seen.
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