Beg your pardon?

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E G Farblo RE:Beg your pardon? 11/10/2001 8:07:34 PM

The Imperial Russian Navy wasn't worth a damn and neither was the Soviet Navy. Now the navy is rotting and rusting away. The only ships that were ever worth a damn are the nuclear powered ice breakers and I'm not even sure they're part of the navy.

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Navyman RE:Beg your pardon? 11/11/2001 12:36:09 AM

Janes's what bar and grill? Do you even know what Blue Water Navy means? Here is a hint, A navy capable of large scale power projection operations far from homeport. Something the Soviets never could manage to do. See they lacked lack of any large-scale capital ships, and rarely operated their ships in a battle group like performance. In fact the closest they ever got to capital ships was the 3 Kiev ?Carriers,? (A title which at best is loosely applicable considering they have about as many planes as our amphibious assault ships.). 3 Moskva/Moscow class helicopter carriers, (once again a loosely applied title in light of their limited firepower, and vulnerable to multiple avenues of attack, in other words they were floating harpoon targets.). Finally, 4 Kirov Battle Cruiser (Incidentally originally an Anti-Submarine platform which were retrofitted to operate against land and air targets which normally doesn?t seems to work that well. Oh and this is the only remaining active large ships the Russians have). Interestingly enough, the largest portion of the Soviet and now Russian fleet is made up of Patrol Boat class ships, aka Brown Water Ships, used in rivers, and coastal areas. As for their navy forming part of the backbone of their nuclear deterrence, that is pure garbage, the Soviets relied mostly on a mixture of fixed and mobile ICBMs that would be complemented with their strategic bombers. I think you are mistaking their large numbers of submarines, for a large navel nuclear presence. (There were only 6 Typhoons ever built, and only three remain, however they are tied up at their docks rusting away.) Although they had large numbers of varied class subs, they were mostly a collection of 50?s and 60?s technology (about half were useless conventional subs) and all of their subs were loud, which made them easy for us to track. This forced them under the polar ice, and of course, limited their application, and any time they came out, we were right there thanks to our underwater detection nets. (Oh another little bit of info, the Soviets used to place two reactors on their boats in case one gave out, however in order to avoid the making them so heavy they were unmanageable, they reduced the shielding which cut short the lives of their best sub drivers, thereby reducing their institutional memory.) Russia, as has been pointed out, is preoccupied by land warfare mostly due to being invaded so often. This obsession, limited their ability to field a truly powerful navy not to mention they also lack an unobstructed warm water port. This is important if you plan to operate year round.

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