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Lexicon · Russia

Slava-class

The Soviet-built Slava-class guided-missile cruiser — a Cold War "carrier-killer" anchored around 16 deck-mounted P-1000 Vulkan anti-ship missiles and an S-300F area air-defence system, now reduced to two active hulls after the sinking of the Black Sea flagship Moskva.

Slava-class
FIG.01 · Russia Image - Slava-class. Photo by U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cold War “carrier-killer” cruiser — a heavy surface combatant that packs sixteen deck-mounted P-1000 Vulkan anti-ship missiles and an S-300F area air-defence system, now reduced to a two-ship force after the flagship Moskva sank in 2022.

Overview

The Slava-class, known officially as Project 1164 Atlant, is a Soviet-designed, gas-turbine-powered guided-missile cruiser built for the Soviet Navy and inherited by the Russian Federation. The class was intended to hunt NATO carrier strike groups by saturating them with long-range heavy anti-ship missiles, while also providing fleet air defence with an S-300F Fort (SA-N-6) surface-to-air system. Three hulls were completed at the 61 Communards Shipyard in Mykolaiv (now Ukraine) during the 1980s; a fourth was left unfinished. After the lead ship, Moskva, was sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles on 14 April 2022, only Marshal Ustinov (Northern Fleet) and Varyag (Pacific Fleet) remain in active service.

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