The Russian Spider: Karakurt Class Corvette

The Karakurt class (Russian designation Project 22800) is the latest corvette class which has been construced currently for the Russian Navy. The name of the class comes from latrodectus tredecimguttatus, a deadly widow spider.

The class is intended to be a more seaworthy, blue water complement to the Buyan-M class corvettes, which had been designed for the littoral zone and are currently serving in Russia’s Caspian Flotilla, Baltic Fleet and Black Sea Fleet.

Project 22800 was first publicly presented by Almaz during the International Military-Technical Forum «ARMY-2015», held in Kubinka. At the time, the class was presented yet as “Project 12300”. During the exhibition, it was also announced 18 ships are planned for construction.

The first two ships, Uragan and Taifun (now Mytishchi and Sovetsk), were laid down at the Pella Shipyard in Saint Petersburg on 24 December 2015.

On 29 July 2017, the lead ship of the class was launched and they were commissioned in 2018 and 2019. Currently, 14 more corvettes are under construction and scheduled to enter service until 2024.

Main specifications:

The dimensions of the Project 22800 corvette are 67 meters of length, 11 meters width and 2.8 meters draft. The 860 tons corvette features a top speed of up to 35 knots, while her economical speed is 12 knots. The range of the ship is 2,500 nautical miles, and have an endurance of 12 days as well.

The ship is powered by two M-507D-1 diesel engines with a power output of 7,360 kWt each and an 8,830 kWt M70FRU gas-turbine engine.

Armament and Sensors:

The corvettes are armed with 76.2mm AK-176MA main gun and Pantsir-M Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) with Hermes-K missiles. For anti-missile defense, the first two ships will only carry a pair of AK-630M gun-based CIWS. Starting from the third ship, they will be equipped with Pantsir-M, a navalized version of the Pantsir surface-to-air missile system.

The ship is also equipped with an eight-cell 3S-14 vertical launcher for Kalibr (SS-N-27 Sizzler) cruise missiles are the main weapon with a range of 2500 km, supersonic anti-ship Onix missiles with a range of 600 km and their equivalents (Yakhont, Brahmos), as well as Zircon hypersonic missiles.

Karakurt-class corvettes have Mineral-M active and passive radars. Active radar detection range for surface destroyer-class targets is up to 250 km. Passive radar detection range for emitting radar systems is 80-450 km. As a fire control radar, she has MR-123 radar system (LASKA), track-while-scan of up to four air/surface/coastal targets in one layer circular or sector surveillance mode.

It can carry Orlan-10 drone with a range of 120 kilometres. It is used as an air scout and pointer. The drones make the corvettes practically invisible, as they do not have to switch on the radars which can be detected by the adversary.

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