Originally Posted by
Kent Based
I always thought that Soviet ships looked better than western ones due to their appearance of bristling with weapons. I mean compare the Moskva with the USS Sullivans above. It now seems possible that strapping 16 cruise missiles to the upper deck is asking for an ammo fire if struck by enemy weaponry? I'm guessing Nato ships that store missiles internally have more options for fire suppression in the event of fires?
Reaching back into my years of needing to know about the Soviet Navy and why their ships and our had
different design assumptions.
0. Our Navy was built from the ground up for power projection, the Soviets more for sea denial, although Admiral Gorshkov moved toward power projection and sea line control as he led the Soviet Navy in it's growth into a true Blue Water Navy.
1. The major surface combatants were built - the Slava(CG) / Kirov(CGN) / Udaloy (DDG)/ Sovreminyy(DDG) classes in particular - with an eye towards Naval warfare being a case of "the battle of the first salvo". (Among others, John Keegan covers stuff like this in his various evolution of warfare books).
2. Their long range cruise missiles were big and meant to disable aircraft carriers (when not nuclear tipped) and more (when nuclear tipped). This was a complement to Oscar and Charlie SSGNs who had similar long range and big cruise missiles meant to take out major formations of surface combatants (USN/NATO) and in particular CV battle groups. The Aegis Anti Air Warfare system had as its primary objective the neutralization of the cruise missile saturation scheme (Air, surface and sub surface launched) which was understood to be the Soviet's opening gambit in any 'battle of the first salvo' engagement. (It had other uses, but that's where its hard requirements came from back in the 70's).
3. The Soviets did not spend the money on habitability that we did.
4. Lots of Gatling type gun mounts for their own Cruise Missile defense systems.
5. Hormones replaced by Helix eventually (hey, look, aviation content!) and based on our observations of watching their flight ops, for night ops they just turned on the lights, while the USN did stuff in the dark with red lights, etc. (This before NVGs became a standard bit of kit~ we did unaided night flying and we liked it!).
While I won't comment on the seaworthiness of their various surface combatants - my overall naval architecture knowledge is very slim - there were surface officers/fish heads of my acquaintance who questioned the general sea keeping qualities of some of the Soviet designs.