Pr. 58250 "Gayduk": Ukrainian light frigate

If you're anything like me you might have wondered what the formerly very strong Ukrainian shipbuilding sector has been up to. I'm not aware of their potential civilian accomplishments, but even compared to Russia's naval industry (which was undeniably hard hit by the post-Soviet crisis) their military shipbuilding seemed to have gone completely off the air, to all intents and purposes. As far as I knew, the most ambitious Ukrainian warship project was the Gayduk Corvette, a semi-stealthy multirole vessel with mostly legacy Russian armament and sensors which yet did not seem to be going anywhere. However, it turns out that the keel has been laid in the mean time and some interesting new information has recently been published, showing that it has evolved considerably (nevermind the fact that after recent spending cuts, its future is once again in doubt):

http://forums.airbase.ru/2009/11/t69336,8--proekt-58250-poslednij-shans-ukrainskikh-korabelov.html

(Original source: "Defense Express" Jan./Feb. 2010)

Perhaps the most significant changes are the Western weapons (although the design is intended to be modular and can be fitted with Russian systems instead) and the new Ukrainian 3D search radar with 4 fixed phased arrays. Similarly, it's helicopter is apparently supposed to be a Ka-27 upgraded with equipment from the NH90 NFH.

Specifications:

Displacement - 2500t
Length - 112m
Beam - 13m
Maximum speed - 32 knots
Range - 4000nm
Endurance - 30 days
Complement - 110 crew
Propulsion - Zorya turbines, Caterpillar diesels
Combat system by DCNS
Towed array sonar by Thales
EW system by Kvant
SAM - 16x Aster15
CIWS - 2x Millenium
SSM - 2x4 Exocet Block III
ASW - 2x3 torpedo tubes (MU90 or A244)
Gun - OTO 76mm
Hangar - 1x modified Ka-27
Hulls planned - 10

The first attachment shows the original, fairly unremarkable (save for the Lynx helo) iteration, the others are newer but note that the magazine spread features a different superstructure compared to the other CGIs (which also seem to have AK-630, not Millenium). Specifications for the early variant can be found in this pdf-brochure:

http://pics.use.ua/goalfiles/240.pdf

Actually, I had noted the progress on Militaryphotos too.


I must say, I'm surprised they have even gotten this far as the renders were doing the rounds for several years without anything happening. Apparently there has been some degree of mission creep and fluctuations in weaponry. For example, it was initally planned with Western weapons and systems, then a hybrid of Western and Russian weapons, then solely Russian systems. Now its firmly back to Western systems Can't help wondering given both events in and the Economy of Ukraine whether this will go the way of ORP Gowron and end up as an OPV?! Sadly, its now very badly need (along with proposed sister ships) as Ukraine now faces grave threats to its maritime security and Russia has " expropriated" several Ukrainian naval vessels. If Gaiduk was completed to spec it would actually be a fairly formidable vessel.


C

I'm surprised it isn't scrapped yet!

Tzoli said:

I'm surprised it isn't scrapped yet!

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National prestige, I suppose. Plus probably enough corruption & embezzlement schemes around it, to make its scrapping the destruction of main evidence.

It's worse than that image above shows.
The shipyard is basically in ruins....dead.

RIP

alright lads let's chip in and turn her into a cruise ship, i've got a crisp $5 bill, happy to pitch in

Ukraine: such a huge aerospace - nuclear - naval - military - industrial potential, presently wasted or in ruins. Will the country ever recover ?
(sidenote: I keep reading "gay duck" lmao)

Archibald said:

Ukraine: such a huge aerospace - nuclear - naval - military - industrial potential, presently wasted or in ruins. Will the country ever recover ?

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No, because no one is interested in that. Externally, there are no interest in Ukraine as anything more than source of raw materials and - for West - thorn in Russia side. Internally, Ukrainean leadership is hopelessly corrupt, relying on prolonged conflict on the Donbass to hold the population in line (any disagreement or opposition could always be labeled as "traitorous in wartime"). They are basically repeating the 90s lawlessness in Russia, with the additional lean toward ultra-nationalim.

Dilandu said:

Archibald said:

Ukraine: such a huge aerospace - nuclear - naval - military - industrial potential, presently wasted or in ruins. Will the country ever recover ?

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No, because no one is interested in that. Externally, there are no interest in Ukraine as anything more than source of raw materials and - for West - thorn in Russia side. Internally, Ukrainean leadership is hopelessly corrupt, relying on prolonged conflict on the Donbass to hold the population in line (any disagreement or opposition could always be labeled as "traitorous in wartime"). They are basically repeating the 90s lawlessness in Russia, with the additional lean toward ultra-nationalim.

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You nailed it perfectly, particularly the last sentence. The resemblances and parallels are indeed startling - and rather disturbing. Yeltsin bad times, here we go.

(Back then I saw a good joke about it on TV. Circa 1996 in the news many people were wondering where on Earth had gone all ten billions of dollars of loans the IMF - International Monetary Fund - had pumped into Yeltsin's Russia, supposedly for post-Soviet rebuild.
The humorous answer was "these dollars bills have been used to stuff Boris Yeltsin body and preserve him - Lenin style" - and a Yeltsin puppet was shown, half dead with glassy eyes and with dollars sticking out his mouth, nose, and ears ROTFL)

Archibald said:

Back then I red a good joke about it. People were wondering where on Earth had gone all ten billions of dollars of loans the IMF had pumped into Yeltsin's Russia, supposedly for post-Soviet rebuild. The humorous answer was "these dollars bills have been used to stuff Boris Yeltsin" - and his puppet was shown, half dead with glassy eyes and with dollars sticking out his mouth, nose, and ears ROTFL)

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Alas, the joke that holds too much grim truth.

I got that joke from "Les Guignols" - which was a French TV (Canal+) puppet satirical show that drew inspiration from a British one called "Spitting image" - and vastly improved it.
It lasted 30 years or so, from 1987 to 2017 and remains cult even today. After a weak start, in the Yeltsin days (1996 then) they were at their absolute best - only to slowly decline afterwards.

It's nice to read Russian imperial nonsense in the English forum.
There are objective laws of economics that the economically unprofitable declines.

And then there is out and out corruption, it has to be said.

Ukraine is a young country, if you are even a little bit of a historian, you should know what madness and sodomy reigned in the United States thirty years after gaining independence.
Don't fall for Russian imperial propaganda. We just grow and develop, and believe me, science and technology have not gone anywhere. Only real, not a Soviet imitation of fruitful activity

Grey Havoc said:

And then there is out and out corruption, it has to be said.

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Of course. Corruption is a consequence of the imperfection of the state mechanism and its interaction with society. The Ukrainian people have no experience of life in an independent country. The state system has always been imposed from the outside and the people of the century have grown in a negative attitude towards the state. Think it's easy to change?

Politics should be kept of posts as far as possible.
That the Ukrainian government currently cannot fund this project is self-evident. We don't need a discussion about how corrupt the Ukrainian government may or may not be. It's sufficient to say that the Gayduk programme was ambitious and found to be unaffordable and the builder collapsed financially.

Hood said:

Politics should be kept of posts as far as possible.
That the Ukrainian government currently cannot fund this project is self-evident. We don't need a discussion about how corrupt the Ukrainian government may or may not be. It's sufficient to say that the Gayduk programme was ambitious and found to be unaffordable and the builder collapsed financially.

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Steel cut and hull sections being built for ADA-class corvette for Ukraine

Turkish shipbuilder signed minutes with Ukrainian OKEAN plant from Mykolaiv, which will be responsible for armament installation when the final agreement is signed. UAH 3.8 bn were allocated to corvette construction program in 2021.

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Turkey hosted a ceremony to lay an ADA ship for the needs of the Ukrainian Navy

According to the existing agreements, in 2022 the corvette will be transported to Ukraine and in 2024 it will be part of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

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A less ambitious but more effective way of implementation with the involvement of foreign experience and technologies was simply chosen.

That's better, although this is the Pr. 58250 Gayduck thread.
That unrelated vessel would perhaps be better posted in the Military Thread.

kaiserbill said:

That's better, although this is the Pr. 58250 Gayduck thread.
That unrelated vessel would perhaps be better posted in the Military Thread.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forums/military.41/

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Sorry, but initially Pr. 58250 Gayduck was an unrealistic project. The main point was simply to get money out of the budget. And Ukraine did not have a need for such ships. After the changed political conditions, an analysis was carried out for its urgent completion. It turned out that the project was outdated and not designed very well, and the plant had lost both equipment and specialists. Therefore, it was decided to stop the dead-end program and replace it with the one I gave. So the topics are interrelated. However, although I know the topic a little, but the modern fleet is outside the area of my interests and competence. I will try not to interfere anymore.
Regards.

You are not interfering Biber.
Contributions are welcome. Thanks for the honest analysis on the Gayduck.
I suppose there was also the point of trying to inject some much needed work, via the Gayduck, into the decaying shipyard?
Regards

You need capital to run shipyards, finding that capital is a problem.

Hood said:

Politics should be kept of posts as far as possible.
That the Ukrainian government currently cannot fund this project is self-evident. We don't need a discussion about how corrupt the Ukrainian government may or may not be. It's sufficient to say that the Gayduk programme was ambitious and found to be unaffordable and the builder collapsed financially.

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This is a prime example of how imperfectly the "no politics" policy works and the challenges of policing it.

That's why I will preface this post by making the observation that stating undeniable facts about political and historic events is not the equivalent of displaying or trying to justify or propagate personal political preferences per se, as in "being political". I'm aware though, that a favorite tactic of trolls (and more professional disinformation peddlers for sure) is to dispute (unflattering, disadvantageous to them) facts anyway as that, aside from muddying the issue, may succeed in moderators reacting to the posts by removing them in bulk, as if any issue or statement - veracity be damned - could thus be rendered "political". This intentionally weaponized irrationality, of course is to the grave detriment of intelligible and actionable communication, not to mention completely antithetical to the "no politics" policy itself.

To return to the case in point: The original posts (preceding this exchange in 2021) of this thread are from 2010 and 2014, roughly from an era when Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine. He was/is in many ways beholden to Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Yanukovych's history of corruption is thoroughly documented and was intrinsical in why he was such a staunch ally of Putin and how that relationship was managed through oligarchs, crony Russian natural gas transit deals and such. (An interesting detail is that his campaign manager, longtime international U.S. political consultant Paul Manafort, later reprised his role in an uncannily similar vein in Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Furthermore Ukraine and Ukrainians were put in a variety of absurd and precarious positions in the 2020 U.S. election by the then presidential administration either relying on their corruptibility or portraying them as corrupt; this unnecessary confusion and wavering of international support for Ukraine on, to them, completely external to their own interests, irrational and fabulistic grounds of course also played into Putin's hands.) Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 as he had reneged at the last minute on an Ukraine/EU trade deal in favor of Putin basically offering him a substantial cash reward. Massive popular demonstrations supporting the Ukraine/EU deal ensued and basically Yanukovych lost his standing as an effective Putin regime proxy.

So what was the basic premise (and indeed requirement) of that Ukraine/EU trade deal that was so unpalatable to Yanukovych/Putin? Reducing corruption and better adherence to international standards of trade - and Ukrainians made their preference for this clear in no uncertain terms. The reward for Ukraine itself for standing up to Yanukovich's and Putin's corruption on a grass root level? A Russian invasion, continuing to this day, into Crimea, Luhansk and Donbass, in contravention of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994 (where Russia, the U.S etc. agreed to respecting and ensuring the territorial integrity of Ukraine as they relinquished control of their legacy Soviet nuclear weapons), not to mention a plethora of other international accords and laws. That's 14.000 Ukrainians (plus the various nationalities on the downed Malaysian flight) dead and counting.

I do not know whether Gayduk class frigates, if entered into service, in themselves could've changed the political and military calculus or the events substantially. Perhaps the project was indeed designed to be futile from the beginning. What is certain though is that they are a glaring example of how corruption can very much be used as an offensive weapon in conflict (degrading capabilities, readiness, purpose and morale), as can such sweeping generalizations about "Ukrainian corruption" as demonstrated in this conversation here that are, unbeknownst to the casual reader, effectively highly detrimental, very purposefully directed falsehoods. While perhaps appearing snappy or anodyne, these comments are most certainly "political" and in bad faith to boot. (We can discuss Russian general staff theory on perpetual sliding scale conflict elsewhere.) It is notable though that, after a few critical moments, Ukraine has managed thus far to withstand the brutal onslaught and has during an ongoing conflict managed to upgrade its defensive capability substantially, reflecting a wider societal disengagement from previous corrupt and imposed dependencies such that they became true existential threats.

At the very least it can be said that generalizing from the likes of Yanukovych can be a grave misreading of society and its latent morality and norms at large, leading to truly hubristic, inhumane, tragic and costly miscalculations.

I'm not in the habit of reporting posts (not least because I view the "no politics" policy - due to no specific or idiosyncratic fault of the owners and moderators of this site - so problematic) to get them removed. Indeed, if they can be factually challenged, I'd rather that the purposefully offhand comments stand in the record as reference than to vanish into oblivion - at least thus there can be a measure of sustained accountability. Such active rather than reactive "depoliticization" is no easy endeavor but mere deletions can be and, as evidenced, are used against themselves. I believe some sweeping generalizations about "Ukrainian fascists" have already been removed from this conversation; it's worth pointing out that while virtually every country has their far right actors Ukraine doesn't stand out in this regard - in the last elections no far right candidates were elected into the "Rada", the Ukrainian parliament. Not for nothing, the current president is of Jewish descent and from a minority Russian (not Ukrainian) speaking family. In this conjunction it is also pertinent to note that Putin's regime has been quite active in supporting far right movements around the world; whether this represents an opportunistic degradation (and corruption) of perceived competitors, cultivation of potential autocratic allies or a more consistent preference in up for interpretation - the existence of the policy itself is not.

Another complication is of course that providing context involves not insignificant costs in time and effort as compared to various forms of disinformation. How many will manage to read such a long, meandering post? How many will even cursorily check the facts themselves? Will this post be deleted summarily if reported? How much damage can be undone, or have those ships sailed as much as the Gayduk frigates have not? Make of this what you will, at least I've made a backup of it.

I haven't removed any posts from this thread and wasn't planning to.
I just wanted to nip this in the bud before we ended up with a series of arguments between our Russian and Ukrainian members (or anyone else who decided to chip in).

I think the planned goal of ten Gayduks was ambitious even in 2010, even if it had been a Western European nation with such plans it would have been a large undertaking. As biber550 has posted, a few years subsequently it was decided to acquire two Turkish Ada-class corvettes. Given the costs of restarting an entire shipyard for such a small order this makes reasonable sense and is a cost-benefit dilemma that many governments/navies have had to face.

Hood said:

I just wanted to nip this in the bud before we ended up with a series of arguments between our Russian and Ukrainian members (or anyone else who decided to chip in).

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I would not participate in such pointless dicussion. All I want to remind, is that any conflict have two sides. And truth is usually in between.

Upforce, please keep your political views out of the forum.
Your post contains your personal take on political events, is emotive, particularly the language you use.
And it is almost guaranteed or designed to derail the thread.
There are other forums for those kinds of posts.
This is a higher quality forum.