26.11.2012
Text:
Photo: Western Military District Press Service.
According to a source, Project 20380 corvette
Boiky is passing shipyard's sea trials without gun. "That's not trials at all", complained the staff officer.
Besides, gun mount A-190 produced by
Arsenal design bureau is by no means as good as it is declared, said the Navy spokesman. According to him, naval mariners try not to use
Universal gun mounts mounted on Russian corvettes.
"Fire rate of the gun declared by the manufacturer as 80 rounds per minute has not been tested. If you fire at nominal mode, the gun will be stuck after third or four round. Either the case will skew or elevators will come loose. There are problems in loading system. New defects every time. So, we have to conduct only single-shot fire. The system was poorly designed and even worse manufactured", reports
Izvestiya citing the officer.
According to a representative of United Shipbuilding Corporation, gun mounts A-190
Universal also displayed bad performance on Indian frigates INS
Talwar, INS
Trishul, and INS
Tabar built in Russia.
The
Arsenal design bureau shifts the blame to the project developer, i.e. the
Burevestnik research institute. United Shipbuilding Corporation decided, however, to relegate production of A-190 back to the
Burevestnik institute. A spokesman for the
Arsenal bureau described that decision as a weird step as his company had managed to eliminate most of the gun's defects.
Ship-based gun mount A-190 was developed early in 2000's on the basis of 76-mm gun AK-176. Its weight is about 15 tons; firing rate is up to 80 rounds per minute; destruction range is 21 km. The gun can be mounted on ships displacing more than 500 tons including frigates, corvettes and patrol craft.
Built under stealth technology, corvette
Boiky was laid down in 2005 being supposed to join Russian Navy in 2012.
