page_title: List of battlecruisers of Russia
section_title: Kirov class
hierarchical_section_title: List of battlecruisers of Russia / Kirov class
caption_attribution_description: English: Profile of a Soviet Kirov-class (Project 1144 Orlan) guided missile battlecruiser.
context_page_description: After the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russian Naval General Staff decided that it needed a squadron of fast "armored cruisers" that could use their speed to maneuver into position to engage the head of the enemy's battle line, much as Admiral Tōgō had done during the Battle of Tsushima against the Russian fleet. This concept was very different from the primary roles for the battlecruiser envisioned by the British Royal Navy and the Imperial German High Seas Fleet, which consisted of scouting for the main battle fleet and attacking enemy reconnaissance forces. The Royal Navy came to the same conclusion and developed the Queen Elizabeth-class fast battleships that could force battle on an enemy fleet and had enough protection to attack any type of ship. However, World War I and the Russian Civil War interrupted the construction of the Russian Borodino-class ships and all were scrapped.
context_section_description: In the 1960s, the Soviet Union originated Project 1144 Orlan, a project intended to design and build a large, nuclear powered anti-submarine vessel. At the time, the Soviets did not envisage that arming surface ships with anti-ship missiles was required, as then current doctrine had it that submarines were the main platform for attacking enemy shipping. However, the sinking of the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat in 1967 by anti-ship missiles fired from an Egyptian missile boat led to a re-think of the use of surface ships in the role. The threat of US Navy surface ships, which were increasingly capable of a range of different missions, led to the idea of a single ship combining anti-aircraft, anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities crystalising.
  The first hull was laid down at the Baltiysky Zavod in Leningrad in March 1974 under the name Kirov. By the time the ship was launched in December 1977, she had been reclassified as a "heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser" (Russian: тяжёлый атомный ракетный крейсер; tyazholyy atomnyy raketnyy kreyser), with its primary armament being 20 SS-N-19 Shipwreck (P-700 Granit) anti-ship missiles. Commissioned into the Northern Fleet, Kirov was the largest surface warship, excluding aircraft carriers and amphibious assault vessels, built since the end of the Second World War. Equipped with both anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles, as well as area defence and point defence surface to air missiles, torpedoes and a pair of 100-millimetre (3.9 in) guns, the ship gave the Soviet Union a visible platform for power projection in the immediate absence of large aircraft carriers. Following the appearance of Kirov, two more units, Frunze and Kalinin, were commissioned at four-year intervals. When Frunze was commissioned in 1984, it was seen to have a different weapons fit to Kirov, with the pair of single 100 mm guns swapped for a twin 130-millimetre (5.1 in) turret, and the SS-N-14 Silex ASW missile system deleted in favour of adding eight SA-N-9 Gauntlet SAM launchers. In the event, none of the four ships of the class received a completely identical armament fit.
  The size of the Kirov class was approximately 28,000-long-ton (28,000 t) full load. This was around the same size as a First World War super-dreadnought battleship, and significantly bigger than any contemporary cruiser design, leading to commentators in the west describing them as "battlecruisers". Their appearance was a major factor in the US Navy reactivating its four Iowa-class battleships in the early 1980s. The fourth unit, Yuri Andropov, was launched in April 1989, with plans advanced for a fifth ship, to be named Kuznetsov. However, the fall of the Soviet Union saw funding for the Navy collapse—the fourth ship, renamed as Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great), was not commissioned until 1998, while the fifth hull was cancelled, and the remaining three laid up in varying states of disrepair. The first ship, Kirov (renamed as Admiral Ushakov) is projected to eventually be scrapped, as it has already been defuelled, while Kalinin (renamed as Admiral Nakhimov), considered to be in better condition, is intended to undergo a major overhaul to return her to active service by 2021. Once Admiral Nakhimov has rejoned the fleet, Pyotr Velikiy is planned to undergo a similar modernization. The fate of Frunze, renamed as Admiral Lazarev, was less clear, as the intention was to carry out an inspection of the ship to determine its overall condition once work on Admiral Nakhimov was completed. However, in April 2019 it was announced that both Admiral Ushakov and Admiral Lazarev were to be finally withdrawn and broken up.
caption: Right elevation of Kirov class
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