Ukraine has nowhere to put its new anti-ship missile
Ukraine has actually abandoned plans to build corvettes for its naval forces, which were advertised back in the days of Viktor Yushchenko. Valentin Badrak, director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research, writes about this in today’s issue of the Ukrainian publication “Zerkalo Nedeli”.
“The implementation of the expensive Corvette program has been postponed to a distant and very vague time frame: delivery of the lead ship is scheduled for 2022, and the fourth in the series for 2028. The Ukrainian Navy is aware that it will not be possible to solve the problems of the current war with one or even two corvettes. Therefore, the completion of the main ship is currently not funded,” writes Badrak.
According to him, if the Ukrainian government gave state guarantees for the construction of corvettes, then banks from China, Belgium or Holland would be ready to allocate funds for its financing.
“True, they demand that the project be carried out through the legal support of their country. Kyiv has a lot to think about, given the completion of work on the creation of a new Ukrainian anti-ship cruise missile, Neptune, with a range of 300 km. Completion of state tests is planned for April 2019, followed by adoption into service,” writes Badrak.
According to him, in 2014 the Ukrainian Navy had 25% of its personnel and 13 ships, boats and support vessels left. The Ukrainian Navy today has only one frigate, one outdated corvette (under repair), one missile boat, four small armored boats, one medium landing ship and one raid minesweeper.
At the same time, the combat power of the Russian Black Sea Fleet now consists of 45 ships, seven diesel submarines (six new) and about 140 auxiliary ships and boats. We are talking primarily about a missile cruiser, 6 frigates (of which three are new), 6 corvettes, 7 large landing ships, 6 missile boats and 8 minesweepers.
A qualitative feature of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is the fact that a significant number of ships are carriers of long-range Caliber cruise missiles.
Ukraine has nowhere to install its new anti-ship missile.