A Russian naval design bureau is creating a new class of military vessels, news agency TASS reported Tuesday, in effect replacing a design that was recently scrapped because of its dependence on foreign components.
The new design will be based on the Tiger-class (Project 20382) corvette, a family of small warships built in Russian shipyards for export to customers in Southeast Asia. The Russian navy is now interested in the vessels, which were designed by the St. Petersburg-based Almaz design bureau, said Alexander Shlyakhtenko, the company’s CEO.
But rather than offering the navy the existing design, “[w]e are now using [the Tiger-class] to create an entirely new vessel,” TASS quoted Shlyakhtenko as saying. “This corvette will be a breakthrough,” he said, adding that construction of the first new corvette will begin in St. Petersburg in 2017, with the first ship to join the navy by 2019.
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