The agrarian superpower is having trouble updating its fleet
The modernization of the Ukrainian military fleet in practice comes down to only new orders for the Kuznitsa na Rybalsky plant (formerly Leninskaya Kuznya) owned by Petro Poroshenko.
Director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research Valentin Badrak writes about this in today’s issue of the Ukrainian publication “Zerkalo Nedeli”.
“The plans involve modernizing the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny. Unofficially, the purchase of several ultra-small submarines for the Ukrainian Navy, as well as equipping the Navy with Ukrainian-made An-148MP patrol aircraft, were also mentioned. And also - further construction of armored boats of the Gyurza-M type (up to 20 units) and landing assault boats of the Centaur type (about 8 units), as well as a medium reconnaissance ship,” writes Badrak.
The administration of the Poroshenko plant claimed that the enterprise was ready to produce one military boat every month.
“In the meantime, at the Kiev private joint-stock company “Kuznitsa na Rybalsky” they intend to build two “Centaur” and two “Gyurza-M” landing assault boats during 2019. Plans to lay down two boats by 2018 at the Forge on Rybalsky CJSC were never realized,” writes Badrak.
At the same time, the expert admits that the Gyurza-M boats are very vulnerable to storms, are not very fast and are relatively weakly armed. The Navy has introduced 6 small armored boats, two of which ended up in Russia after the provocation on November 25, 2018 in the Black Sea.
The agrarian superpower is struggling to renew its fleet.