Picture of the Day

When the Soviets Russians come to town with their Soviet Russian cruisers, naturally I am going to post pictures. Big thanks to Scott for this nice shot. That looks like Craig Hooper in the bottom right corner.


This one is from Patrick, who caught the old Soviet Russian war wagon as she made the transit in SF bay last Sunday.

If you were at the open visitation and have photo's, send them in. This last one, also from Scott, is outstanding. Click the pic for higher resolution.


The Slava class runs about a little over 600 ft long and with about a 68 ft beam. If you look closely there is a rather nice sized Captains yacht back on the starboard side there near the ramp. That little boat is actually able to fit in the same space that consumes the large sandbox missile launchers outside the main superstructure going down the center of the ship.

A ship about the same length, with several well armed short range small boats able to be deployed like this little Captain yacht would make a perfect mothership for irregular warfare operations, whether one is talking about anti-piracy or riverine. I'd put a giant flight deck on top of those deployable boats (in other words, the ship would be a commercial design that would look like a 1930s era aircraft carrier) with the bridge up front.

For about $500 million (estimate based on T-AKE cost), that would be a pretty impressive irregular warfare mothership for deploying surface, subsurface, and air based vehicles, and we wouldn't have to send our Slava class combatant equivalents to chase speed boats off the Horn of Africa. Just saying.