The Project 11442M (codename: Orlan) heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov set to become the Russian Navy’s most powerful surface ship after its repairs and upgrade at the Sevmash Shipyard is being prepared for its handover. After all the works are concluded, the warship will deploy to the sea where the delivery team and the crew will check the vessel in all the modes of its operation. The Sevmash Shipyard has begun setting up and training the delivery team for the Project 11442M ship. The crew will comprise workers, builders, adjustment and test engineers, designers, technologists and specialists of other professions. Overall, the delivery team will comprise over 1,000 people.
The Sevmash Shipyard is carrying out the repairs and upgrade of the Project 11442M cruiser on its embankment. Admiral Nakhimov is the third battlecruiser of the Russian Navy’s Kirov class. The ship was originally commissioned into service with the Soviet Navy in the 1980s, known back then as Kalinin, a name the ship kept until 1992. From 1997 Admiral Nakhimov is undergoing a repair and a refit to receive new and improved weaponry and had been scheduled to re-enter service with the Russian Navy in around 2022. The Shipyard’s specialists will load onto the cruiser and install over 5,000 items of equipment and more than a million of various items. About 200 km of pipelines and 1,800 km of cables will be laid on the Fleet’s future flagship. All electric installation works are being carried out by specialists of the Arktika enterprise.
In 2018, Aleksey Rakhimov, the head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, stated that the end date of the reconstruction remained 2021 or 2022, but additional changes made by the Ministry of Defense had made would require an amendment to the contract or a new contract. She was relaunched in August 2020 and was then expected to start sea trials in about 2023. It is expected to receive 174 VLS tubes: 80 for anti-surface and 94 for anti-air warfare. In early 2022, Sevmash CEO, Mikhail Budnichenko, noted that weapons systems for the cruier would include: the Fort-M (NATO reporting name: SA-N-6 Grumble) and Pantsyr-M (SA-22 Greyhound) air defense systems and Paket-NK and Otvet antisubmarine warfare weapons. It was also reported that the cruiser would potentially be armed with up to 60 3M22 Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missiles.
JSC PO Sevmash (“Severodvinsk Machine Building Plant”) is a Russian joint-stock company (JSC) under the vertically-integrated United Shipbuilding Corporation. The shipbuilding operations of Sevmash is in the port city of Severodvinsk on the White Sea in the Russian Federation. Sevmash is the largest shipbuilding enterprise in Russia and today the country’s only nuclear submarine producer. The shipyard’s main specialization is manufacturing of ships, submarines and military equipment for the Russian Navy. Sevmash is the only shipyard in Russia producing nuclear submarines. An increasingly important product line for the shipyard is production for oil and gas fields projects on the Arctic shelf, including oil platforms.
