"Admiral Lazarev", nuclear cruiser: history and characteristics

Missile cruisers are quite a new kind of ships that grew up not from classic cruisers with a rich biography, but formed a separate direction in the world shipbuilding on the basis of destroyers. A special place in their development was occupied by a subclass of nuclear warships.

And since they were created to conduct a nuclear-missile war, they did not have traditional constructive protection. And a part of the displacement meant for carrying heavy armor was absorbed by increasingly new types of weapons with their changed volumes and energy consumption, as well as crew quarters, to which the requirements also changed, especially on ships intended for long-term autonomous navigation.

The Orlan Project

The project was based on the premise of creating an ocean ship of unlimited autonomy, which was supposed to search for, and then destroy, nuclear submarine missile carriers in the open spaces of the World Ocean.

The Leningrad Northern PKB received a TOR for the development of a new project, which was named Orlan and number 1144. The project envisaged a local scheme for protecting the most important types of weapons from the impact of a missile attack. Therefore, most of the weapons were hidden under the deck.

The main enemy of the new ship was a powerful enemy aircraft. And to combat it, weapons of air defense of different principle of action and calibers were introduced into the armament. Anti-ship missiles were designed to deal with aircraft carriers.

Project 1144 was very stretched in time, supplemented and processed. The appearance of a multipurpose combat ship was becoming clearer and clearer. At one stage, the future ship was finally classified, it became a heavy nuclear missile cruiser.

Analogs abroad the ships of the project "Orlan" (abroad, he received the designation Kirov-class battlecruiser named after the first TARK) do not have. The total displacement of the cruiser is almost 26 thousand tons, whereas even a non-serial missile cruiser with a nuclear power plant "Long Beach" of the US Navy is one and a half times less.

The government of the Soviet Union decided to build four warships of this class.

After the first cruiser was laid, the project was finalized, and the next three cruisers were built under Project 11442. All ships differ in the types and quantities of weapons. It was assumed that all ships would be equipped with a new design, but not all types of weapons were put into mass production and added as soon as they were ready. Therefore only the last cruiser corresponds to the project almost completely.

Project ships 1144

TARK "Kirov", founded in 1977 in the spring, came into operation in the last days of 1980. In 1992, was included in the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy under the new name "Admiral Ushakov" and was decommissioned in 2004. Now he expects recycling.

Next was the Frunze, founded in the summer of 1978 and commissioned in the fall of 1984. The new name of the ship is Admiral Lazarev. The nuclear-powered cruiser was the only one of the Orlan ships to serve in the Pacific Fleet.

Tark "Kalinin" was laid with some lag, in the spring of 1983, it entered the system at the end of 1988. Later it became known as "Admiral Nakhimov". Now is in Severodvinsk under repair and will be transferred to the Northern Fleet in 2018.

"Admiral Lazarev," an atomic cruiser whose modernization can begin only after the first ship of the series is either disposed of in Severodvinsk, or will complete the reconstruction and go to the place of service "Admiral Nakhimov", awaits the decision of its fate at the mooring wall of the factory in the Pacific Ocean .

The construction of the fourth ship, the completion of the first stage of which was due to the collapse of the USSR and, in connection with this, a drastic reduction in funding stretched for many years. Established in 1986, it was commissioned only in 1998. But now the flagship of the Northern Fleet "Peter the Great" is the only one carrying a service.

Technical data of the cruiser

So, the current "Admiral Lazarev", the nuclear cruiser, whose length is 252, the width - 28.5 and the draft - more than 9 m, became the second ship of the project "Orlan". The cruiser's half-tank is about 70% of the length of the ship. It is divided by watertight bulkheads into sixteen compartments. There are 5 decks throughout the building. In the stern under the deck is equipped with a hangar for three helicopters and a lift for feeding them upstairs, premises for storing fuel and ammunition. The main material of superstructures is aluminum-magnesium alloys.

There is no total reservation on the cruiser, but the bottom is made double for protection against combat damage, and at the waterline level there is a thickened shell belt around the perimeter, its height is 1 m below the waterline and 2.5 m above it.

Armor Protection

Armored protection is carried out in the engine and reactor compartments, rocket cellars, helicopter hangar, cellars of ammunition, fuel storage. The artillery installations, the main command post of the ship and the combat information post are protected.

"Admiral Lazarev" - an atomic cruiser, the characteristics of which allow unlimited time to be in autonomous navigation on a nuclear reactor. And on boilers at the declared speed, he can stay in the sea for 1000 days.

Its maximum displacement is 26.2 thousand tons. On the auxiliary boilers can speed up seventeen knots, and on the main plant - 31 knots, or in the land measurement 57 km / h.

Power point

"Admiral Lazarev" is an atomic cruiser, whose engines work on nuclear fuel.

The power plant is two-shaft with five-bladed screws. It consists of two water-cooled thermal neutron reactors, the capacity of which is 600 mW, two steam turbines with a total capacity of 140 thousand liters. from.

Each of the two autonomous sections of the steam generating unit includes a reactor with systems and service devices. The PPU is located in the reactor compartment. On either side of it, along the bow and stern of the ship there is a steam-turbine plant of two autonomous parts, and each of them operates on its own line.

On the cruiser there is also a reserve option for providing steam turbines. Automated steam boilers on organic fuel produce an hour 115 tons of steam each.

The supply of steam and condensate is carried out on any board along a branched network of pipelines.

The ship is powered by four turbo-generators, each with a power of 3000 kW, and four gas turbine generators of 1500 kW each. They are located in four compartments.

Such an energy installation makes it possible to provide electricity and heat to a small town of thousands per 150 population.

Missile weapons

TARK "Admiral Lazarev" is an atomic cruiser, the armament of which is supplemented by aviation with missile, antiaircraft, artillery, torpedo-mine.

The main strike force of the ship is the twenty anti-ship missile systems Granit, supersonic cruise missiles with a starting mass of 7 tons, flying low at the target, with a flight range of more than 600 kilometers. They are located in launchers under the deck in the bow. The elevation is 47 °.

The missiles in flight are autonomous, one of them flies above the others in the volley and controls them, distributes the targets, before the goal they all perform a counter-toned, complex maneuver.

For near defense on the cruiser are installed on both sides of the nose superstructure of the Osa-MA missile system with a retractable two-beam PU for 40 missiles.

The main means of air defense of the far zone on the cruiser are two S-300F "Fort" anti-aircraft missile systems, with six vertical launchers each.

One PU is designed to launch eight missiles, that is, the whole ship can release 96 missiles simultaneously. Goals, the speed of which reaches 1.3 km / sec, "Fort" is able to hit at a distance of up to 75 km, at an altitude of 25 to 25 thousand meters.

Artillery and antiaircraft weapons

The nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Lazarev was equipped as artillery armament with a two-torpedo 130 mm AK-130 turret located in the stern with the M-184 firing control system, which can simultaneously support two targets. Horizontally, the tools can be turned 180 °, vertically lowered to minus 10 ° and can be raised to 85 °.

This versatile complex can fire at air, coastal and sea targets at a speed of up to 86 rounds per minute at a distance of up to 25 km.

"Admiral Lazarev" - an atomic cruiser, anti-aircraft short-range artillery on which was represented by four batteries of two six-barreled 30-mm AK-630M assault rifle and a total ammunition of 48 thousand shells.

Antisubmarine weapons

The heavy nuclear missile cruiser Admiral Lazarev was equipped with the Vodopad missile system as antisubmarine weapons, and the rocket torpedoes of the 83RN or 84RN model were launched from torpedo tubes along the sides of the ship. The rocket dived into the water, at the depth of the engine was launched, it flew off and through the air reached the target at a distance of 60 km. Only there the combat part was separated - a 400 mm self-guided torpedo UMGT-1 or a nuclear depth bomb. The ammunition was up to thirty rocket-torpedoes.

A 12-mm jet 12,000-mm RBU-6000 "Smerch-2" bomb was installed in the bow and two 303-mm bombsets of 6 RBU-1000 "Smerch-3" at the stern.

Squadron

"Admiral Lazarev" - an atomic cruiser on board which was based on an aviation detachment of three heavy helicopters anti-submarine modification or target designation, depending on the tasks assigned. They could perform search and rescue missions, reconnaissance and target designation, anti-submarine search. In addition to the hangar under the deck, the lift and the storage of ammunition, the cruiser was equipped with a runway at the stern and a post of aviation control with the necessary navigational equipment. For the crews, separate cabins were provided.

The cruisers of this project were the first to receive such a reserve of displacement, so that you could hide under the deck and cars, and a stock of fuel to them.

Radar weapons and communications equipment

"Admiral Lazarev" - an atomic cruiser with the latest electronic weapons. It included survey radars MP-600 Voskhod and MP-710M Fregat-M, combined in the Flag radar system, two Vaigach navigation stations, two low-flying targets Detachment, the Privod-V system "For radio navigation of helicopters.

Radio-technical reconnaissance and electronic warfare were carried out by the Cantata-M complex. The means of counteraction included also two coupled launchers of a complex of fired jamming with ammunition of 400 rounds, a towed false torpedo target with a powerful noise generator.

The radio communication complex "Typhoon-2" consisted of communication systems in different wave bands, including satellite communications "Tsunami-BM".

The management was carried out with the help of the combat information management system (BIUS) "Logger 44".

Ship crew

Atomic missile cruiser Admiral Lazarev, av. 1144/11442, served the crew of more than seven hundred people, including 100 to 120 officers.

For officers and midshipmen one-and two-berth cabins were intended, for sailors and foremen-cabins, designed for 6-30 people. At the disposal of the team were two baths, a sauna, a swimming pool measuring 6 × 2.5 m, fifteen showers, a medical unit with an X-ray room, an outpatient clinic, an operating room, a hospital and a pharmacy.

For rest on the cruiser there are three wardrooms, a salon, a gym.

And on board there were own television studio, three elevators and forty-nine corridors with a length of almost twenty kilometers.

The Past of the Cruiser

"Admiral Lazarev", the nuclear cruiser, which until 1992 had the name "Frunze", from 1984 to 1996, replaced several of the aircraft numbers: 190, 050, 028, 014, 058, 010, 015.
The cruiser was launched in the spring of 1981, entered service in the fall of 1984, and in the autumn of 1985 made a transition from the Baltic to the place of service in Vladivostok.

On the way, the TARK went to the ports of Luanda in Angola, Aden in South Yemen and several ports of Vietnam.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to serious problems, including in the navy. While the last ship of the series was being built with great efforts, the first two came almost completely out of order. In the 90s of the last century, the Admiral Lazarev fleet was withdrawn from the combat fleet for a long time and became a joke in the Abrek bay. At the end of the century, it was prepared for disposal, then they found a small part of the means for repair at one of the regional repair enterprises.

At the end of 2002, a fire broke out on a ship in one of the cabins. With fire, fought for four hours, but safely extinguished. Two years later, the nuclear power plants were removed from the cruiser.

So in 2011, looked like "Admiral Lazarev", an atomic cruiser (photo below).

The Future of the Cruiser

While the ship is on the road, guessing about its future fate is useless. The decision to modernize has been made, but whether it will be carried out, and to what extent, time will tell.

"Admiral Lazarev" - the nuclear cruiser, whose modernization will be carried out under the reduced technical reconstruction project of the Admiral Nakhimov TARK, has now been repaired at the dock for restoring buoyancy at the 30 shipyard of the Pacific Fleet and looks forward to further changes in its destiny.

Let today of the four highly autonomous TARKs in the ranks of only one, they still remain the largest and most powerful armed in the world in its class. The first and only surface nuclear ships of the Soviet and later Russian navy, which have no analogues in the world.