Russian Navy To Get 40 Fiberglass Minesweepers By 2030

The Russian Navy will get 40 Project 12700 advanced fibreglass minesweepers by 2030, Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vladimir Korolyov said Tuesday.

"Anti-mine defense ships are being serially built as part of the efforts to develop and re-arm the Navy’s minesweeping forces. Before 2030, the Russian Navy plans to operate about 40 Project 12700 mine countermeasures ships," TASS reported quoting the Navy chief as saying.

The third ship of this series, the Vladimir Yemelyanov, is under construction at the Sredne-Nevsky Shipyard in St. Petersburg in northwest Russia. It will be floated out until the end of the second quarter of 2019. Two more warships of this Project, the Georgiy Kurbatov and the Yakov Balyayev are also under construction.

The Aleksandrit-class minesweeper (Project 12700) is a new Russian minesweeper class of ships with hull made of light-weight monolith glass-fiber reinforced plastic. The ships are designed to use various flails, as well as tele-guided and autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vehicles to disable or destroy mines at safe distances.