Progress at the Russian shipyards

I'm sure some of you have seen this picture already, but it looks like after spending 17 years in the shipyard, the second Neustrashimy class may soon be ready.



While the Russian Navy hasn't been getting any new surface ships, the shipyards are continuously cranking out for the Indian Navy.

I got this piece from UPI

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- A Russian shipyard announced it would finish
building a new guided-missile frigate for India by early next year.
The Yantar shipyard, based in the port city of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea,
stated Thursday that the frigate was already more than half built, RIA Novosti
reported. The ship will be the second in a class of three Project 11356 vessels
currently being built in Russian yards for India, and it is scheduled to be
handed over to its owners in March next year.
India and Russia closed a $1.6 billion deal to build the three Project 11356
Krivak IV-class guided missile frigates for the Indian navy in July 2006. RIA
Novosti noted that Russia had already constructed three earlier Krivak-class
frigates -- INS Talwar, INS Trishul and INS Tabar -- for India. The Indian navy
received them four years ago.
The last of the six frigates is scheduled to be received by the Indian navy in
2011-12. The three new frigates will be equipped with the new joint Indian-
Russian BrahMos supersonic ship-to-ship sea-launched cruise missile -- SLCM --
system that can fly at Mach 2.8 -- almost three times the speed of sound at sea
level and three times as fast as the U.S.-built subsonic Tomahawk cruise
missile.
The first three frigates in the class were armed with the older Club-N/3M54TE
missile system.
RIA Novosti said the Krivak-class frigates were 4,000-metric-ton ships that
could sail as fast as 30 knots. It described their primary purpose as "hunting
down and destroying large surface ships and submarines."

The new Talwars seems to be like the old Talwars except that they are using Brahmos instead of Club missiles and probably use newer sensors. The other thing is that the new Talwars maybe using Shtil VLU instead of the standard launchers. It's kind of strange that 1.6 billion is used here, because the original contract was for 1.1 billion + 87 million in additional cost in additional requirements. I'm sure part of it comes from the currency escalation clauses, but that still sounds like a lot more. As for the part about "finish building early next year", I think it's referring to just the launch. Even so, the Russian shipbuilders seem to frequently overstate their progress. We could probably say that about many other naval shipyards around the world.