Russia Launches Massive Warship; Peter The Great Not Much Good Now
ITS KEEL WAS LAID 12 YEARS AGO, when the Soviet Union still existed. It is one of the biggest naval vessels in the world. But its mission vanished with the Cold War.
MOSCOW - One of the largest warships in the world, the nuclear-powered Peter the Great, finally has been delivered to the Russian navy. But the massive six-deck ship, bristling with weapons, has outlived the Cold War for which it was designed.
The 823-foot-long cruiser is the last of four in its class. They are the largest warships - except for aircraft carriers - built by any nation since World War II, said Arthur Baker III, editor of "Combat Fleets of the World."
The first of the four was launched in 1977. But two are already out of service, and experts say the newest arrival is not likely to be on the high seas any time soon.
Indeed, at a time when the Russian navy is so strapped for cash that it must retire ballistic-missile submarines early for lack of maintenance, and when Russia's shipyard workers and sailors are routinely paid months late, the Peter the Great stands out.
When the keel was laid 12 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union and the ship was named the Yuri Andropov, after the late Soviet leader and KGB boss. Many predicted it would never be finished, and it languished for years at a St. Petersburg shipyard. President Boris Yeltsin changed the name in 1992.
Other navy officials have been quoted as saying the Peter the
Great may be used for training, but could never be used in combat because Russia lacks the proper escort ships - without an escort it would be just a huge sitting duck.
The ship's construction was plagued with delays, and once it finally got to Baltic Sea trials in 1996, a steam line burst, killing four sailors. While it was on that maiden voyage, a Swedish fighter jet tried to photograph it but crashed just 200 yards away, killing the pilot.
The cost of the ship is not known, but some informal estimates are about $1 billion.
The ship was formally commissioned at a ceremony April 18 at the headquarters of the Northern Fleet in Severomorsk. Hoisted above was the flag bearing the St. Andrew Cross, a symbol dating to Russia's sea-loving czar, Peter the Great.
But many analysts consider the ship a huge white elephant. The emphasis today is on smaller, more versatile ships, analysts said.
The ship was designed in the 1970s when the Soviet Union's military planners wanted to be prepared for a global conflict; the missile-laden ship was intended to be an aircraft-carrier killer in the Pacific.
It carries 20 SS-N-19 anti-ship missiles in four rows of five tubes angled inside the hull. It has a crew of 610.
Analysts said the Peter the Great will never make it to the Pacific Fleet; there is speculation that the navy may eventually have to close the Pacific Fleet and keep only the Northern Fleet. Baker said the Pacific Fleet lacks facilities for maintaining the massive ship or refueling its twin nuclear reactors.
Even if it never sees duty, the Peter the Great's commissioning provided a little uplift for a country that was once a global naval superpower. "I think they wanted a symbol of Russian naval power," said Dmitri Trenin, a military analyst in Moscow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "I think that's why they decided to concentrate resources in completing it when so many others were left rusting away."