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Amur Shipyard Goes in Building Minesweepers for Russian Navy

Rubric: Russia, Industry

It is planned to kick off building of Project 12700 Alexandrite coastal minesweepers at the Amur Shipyard, an insider told Mil.Today. Vice Admiral Viktor Bursuk, Russian Navy’s Deputy Commander for Armament earlier told that the new-generation mine defense ships for the Russian Navy would be built not only in St. Petersburg but in the Far East, too

Currently, the shipyard prepares for composite production, but there’s nothing particular, the yard’s press service told Mil.Today.

Woven being laid into matrix of the third serial Project 12700 Alexandrite minesweeper

According to a source in the Navy, the Amur Shipyard planned to master production technology of plastic ship sections back in 2015. Using of this technique "would allow building minesweeper-type vessels in the Far East, which is unique for that region", reported the Russian Defense Ministry in 2015.

Only the Sredne-Nevsky Shipyard possesses the composite minesweeper building technology at the moment. The yard’s press service failed to answer Mil.Today promptly whether they cooperate with eastern counterparts in the composite materials sphere.

The Amur Shipyard’s spokesman said they "would be happy to get the minesweeper building contract". However, there is nothing certain in this area, much less any contracts; building of these ships is only intentions.
"The shipyard operates a large fiberglass-making workshop. Yet we’re forming composites manually and only consider introduction of machine-aided processing. In mastering of composite technology we’re assisted by Far East scientists, particularly, the local technical university with a highly experienced profile department", commented the shipyard’s officials. The press service added that the Amur Shipyard was cooperating in composite issues with its St. Petersburg colleagues.
Indeed, Russian shipbuilding companies have intensified upgrading of production and master composite technologies, Valery Meletyev, sales director at the Astrakhan-based Albatros Shipyard told Mil.Today. "We’re in it as well, but east coast guys are at the very beginning", he said.

Vladimir Kalashnikov, founder of Alpkhimantikor and ex production director at Albatros Shipyard shared with Mil.Today that nobody in the Far East was really focused on composites so far. "Sure, at last that’s a new hotspot technology. However, it is still hard in Russia to implant innovations battling the way through bureaucracy", he concluded.

In addition, the Amur Shipyard presently builds Project 20380 corvettes. The Pacific Fleet expects four new ships of this class by the end of 2020. The first one, Sovershenny, is to be handed over this month, deputy defense minister Yury Borisov announced on Monday, June 5.