Russian Baltic Fleet corvettes return home after Atlantic deployment

corvettes

KALININGRAD, December 9. /TASS/: A group of the Baltic Fleet’s warships comprising the corvettes Boiky and Steregushchiy returned to its home base of Baltiysk after successfully accomplishing long-distance deployment missions in the North Atlantic, Fleet Spokesman Roman Martov told TASS on Wednesday.

"During their deployment that lasted 77 days, the corvettes Boiky and Steregushchiy covered a total distance of almost 9,500 nautical miles. In the Atlantic Ocean, the warships’ crews held drills for air, anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare defense and practiced assigned tasks," the spokesman said.

While staying in the Atlantic, the corvettes dealt with the tasks of searching for, detecting and destroying a notional enemy’s submarine with anti-submarine armament in interaction with the crews of Ka-27 helicopters of the Fleet’s naval aviation based on the decks of the Boiky and the Steregushchiy, the spokesman specified.

The warships also held drills for delivering a missile strike from Uran anti-ship missile systems against a notional enemy’s naval groups with electronic missile launches and held training for the corvettes’ personnel and anti-terror squads to defend the ships against saboteurs, he said.

"The basic task of the deployment by the corvettes Boiky and Steregushchiy to the Atlantic was to ensure the constant naval presence of the Baltic Fleet’s ships in the area of its responsibility," the spokesman said.

Multi-purpose corvettes

The Boiky and the Steregushchiy are Project 20380 multi-purpose guided missile corvettes developed by the Almaz Central Marine Design Bureau (St. Petersburg) to accomplish green-water missions, fight enemy surface ships and submarines, patrol coastal waters and provide fire support during amphibious assault operations.

The Project 20380 corvettes are armed with multi-purpose artillery guns, surface-to-air missile/artillery systems, supersonic missiles, automatic artillery launchers and other types of armament. The Project 20380 corvettes can carry a Ka-27 helicopter.

The Steregushchiy is the Project 20380 lead corvette operational in the Baltic Fleet since February 2008 while the Boiky is the Project’s third warship (the second serial-produced ship) in service since May 2013.