Russia Smartly Lets the Soviets Go

As we discussed here often, some of the new Russian frigates and corvettes bring a lot of bang for the buck. Not a global fleet, but strong regional naval potential.

Some of the former Soviet Navy units they still have are not just dated, but expensive to repair and tactically out of date. 

The Russians had a few fever dreams of throwing a lot of money in to upgrading some of the former large surface combatants that, on paper at least, look incredibly impressive.

If you think about what it would take to bring them in to modern fighting shape ... not to mention deferred maintenance ... the numbers do not look all that smart. Those limited resources probably best invested in modern kit.

Well, it looks like smarter minds prevailed.

The Russian Navy with state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom decided canceling planned service-life extensions and modernization on its two legendary nuclear-powered Kirov-class battlecruisers or heavy missile cruisers, according to Izvestiya newspaper.

According to media reports in recent weeks, the Russian Navy has decided to recycled two heavy nuclear battlecruisers of Kirov-class – the Admiral Ushakov and the Admiral Lazarev owing to funding shortfalls.

In 2021, it is planned to scrap of the heavy missile cruisers Admiral Ushakov (factory number 800) of the project 1144 and Admiral Lazarev (factory number 801) of the project 11442 for a long time already withdrawn from the Russian Navy.

In their prime, they were beautiful, dangerous, and inspiring.

Their time has passed.

Let's take a moment to look back.