Shipbucket

Hello everyone,

I've started working on fictional designs for the Gepard class, and came across a few unbuilt or short-lived variants which are not documented in SB so far.
The history of that class is fairly complicated, and made all the more confusing by the meltdown of the Russian industry in the 90s and the subsequent scramble for exportable versions.
This means that only the beginning of that history will be covered here.

Disclaimer: The drawings presented here are drawn from scratch from re-scaled drawings, rather than based on Gollevainen's current version. Full credit goes to Golly nevertheless as that drawing has been a major inspiration and source for details, in addition to the usual pilfering of parts from other more current drawings

Though the Tatarstan is the first ship of the Gepard class to enter service, the origin of the project lies in the Pr.11660, which is equipped with much more modern systems. One hull was laid down between 1988 and 1990, but was never completed and had apparently been broken up by 1993. Further work on this variant was discontinued in 1992 due to excessive costs in the post-Soviet economic climate.
According to some sources, the name "Yastreb" was associated to that hull at some point.


In parallel to the Pr.11660 above, meant for domestic Soviet service, an export version was developed under Project 11661 around hopes of India buying up to 12 hulls to replace their Petya-class light frigates. This never came to be, although at least one hull had already been laid down (sources are unclear on the amount of hulls laid down to Pr.11661, but only one survived). The lead boat was launched in 1993 with the full export weaponry typical of a Soviet coastal defense frigate, with the expensive new systems of Pr.11660 replaced by legacy systems: AK-630s and one Osa-MA SAM replaced the Kortik combined CIWS, and the planned Medvedka ASW missile launchers were replaced by 533mm twin torpedo tubes.
The boat was renamed "Tatarstan" in 1996, but was not accepted in service until 2003. At some point in the interval, the ASW equipment was removed and replaced with light weapons.
The drawing below shows the Tatarstan in that interim configuration, although an accurate date is not available.


As usual, comments are welcome.
Redundancy with Gollevainen's current version will have to be addressed at some point, and there's me hoping as well that no one else was working on it in parallel...

Edit: Noticed that the Medvedka launcher box on the Yastreb was my fictional version, and replaced it with a more historical version from the Pr.1145 MPK. Therefore, credit to Eswube for the RPK-9 and Uran launchers.
Edit N°2: Turns out I forgot to fill out the lattice in the back strut below the main mast. Corrected on all variants, along with a few other details like the paint on the shafts.
Edit N°3: As part as a general relocation of my public pictures from Photobucket to Dropbox due to compression problems, I am re-linking these as well, and taking the opportunity to reinstate the separate successive versions. Above the originals are back, below are the same ships, updated following the discussion below:

Very nice work.
There were some Gepard variants with helicopter facilities too I believe, some with just a flightdeck and other with a flightdeck and hangar. Are you going to have a crack at those too?

Hood wrote:Very nice work.
There were some Gepard variants with helicopter facilities too I believe, some with just a flightdeck and other with a flightdeck and hangar. Are you going to have a crack at those too?

Thanks Hood!
The Gepard variants with helicopter facilities fall in two categories:
1) Poorly documented early proposals that never left the drawing boards
2) Second-generation variants of Project 11661K/E designed for export in the late 90s and 2000s

I'm interested in category 1) but the lack of sources means that they will probably belong with fictional rather than never-built designs, and category 2) is a completely different kettle of fish that is not on my worklist yet. Surprisingly, I have had a harder time finding correct drawings of the more recent 11661K and 11661E variants even though they have been all over the news.

Nice work

Excellent work! Keep it up!

You don't have to credit me for inspiration

Anyways, nice work, theres good thing going on there in your drawings, Only point that rises is the the dark pixel line beneath the bridge top, is it supposed to be shadow under overhang?

As for other versions, The magnificent book Provereny Morem, 60 Let ZelPKB provides this earlier rendition of 11660 project (in not so magnificent scan )

...as well as this helicopter variant labeled as Pr.11663


Another helicopter variant has been floating in the net since late 1990's, I've first seen it on Voennyy-Parade (Military-Parade) August-October 1996, Back in the day when it was propably only one moderately english online military publication from Russia in the net. I so vividly remember this one beeing part of the set of other linedrawings from the gepard family, but as it was dial-up internet and other early internets random weirdness, the pic only loaded midway, leaving the helicopter version out to tease us on the little thumbnail pic. Very fustrating that was for my teenage patience The same pic have naturally ressuerected in the internet lately, but It was somewhat joyfull discovery for me to actually find a hard-copy of the same magazine and that very number from a bookfair In Helsinki last autumn.


Finaly, here is my latest take on the Osa-M launcher, radar and AK-176

Thanks for the feedback and the support Golly!
If you insist I'll remove you from the credits I'm still not 100% clear on the credit rules, so I tend to err on the generous side.

Gollevainen wrote:Only point that rises is the the dark pixel line beneath the bridge top, is it supposed to be shadow under overhang?

The dark grey line is the cut line/drop shadow between the overhang and the main superstructure. The few black pixels on the left are from the outline of a searchlight that appears to be mounted on top of the navigation lights, which happens to fall right on the same line.

Your side view of the original Pr.11660 helps a lot, though the configuration appears significantly different at first glance (only 1 Kortik in another position, different position for the Uran boxes...). If it makes enough sense I'll try drawing it as an initial proposal, but otherwise I consider the version I've drawn as an "evolved" update integrating some of the lessons learned that would be applied on Pr.11661. That is, providing the drawing I have used isn't an interpretation after the fact based on the final Pr.11661...

The "initial" 90s version of the Gepard 3.9 with 3 CIWS and the helo facilities I already had, though with less definition. Here is what I have been able to make of it so far:

I'm not convinced of all the details in it, and I had to improvise somewhat to make both views fit and make sense of the systems.

Anyway, since we're talking more modern variants, here is the Tatarstan after its refit, as seen in 2007. As mentioned previously, the ASW systems have been removed, since they were useless for service in the Caspian Flotilla.


I will try to come up with something for the Dagestan, but I can't seem to find drawings for this version somehow.
The Pr.11663 with the helipad for domestic service will require some more work.

Very nice work, these have turned out well.
Source material, as ever for Soviet/ Russian stuff, is a tricky minefield given the amount of design work done and the various iterations that appear for all ship designs. Still these are probably among the best Gepard variants I've ever seen.

OK, a last batch of variants and we should be done with the Project 11661.
Turns out they are real, built variants, but I feel they belong more in this thread where they have been discussed already, than they warrant the creation of a new one.
Anyway, here goes:

The second hull launched under Project 11661 in Zelenodolsk in the 90s was not completed with the same layout as Tatarstan, and was relaunched and finished in the early 2000s with more modern weaponry, including a 3R14 UKSK VLS launcher and a single second-generation Palma/Palash combined CIWS. The superstructure and masts also used newer shapes and materials meant to reduce the radar signature of the ship. The ship was reassigned to Project 11661K (confusingly, the same reference as the reworked Tatarstan) and christened "Dagestan".
Following a collision in 2002 that damaged the hull, Dagestan was repaired with distinctive stiffeners along the hull sides.
Dagestan made headlines in September 2015 when she took part in the first Russian strikes against Syrian opposition forces, firing Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea to targets in central Syria, flying over the territories of Iran and Iraq on their 1500-km path.


In parallel, the Zelenodolsk shipyard named for A.M.Gorky was contracted by the Vietnamese Navy to build two 2000-ton-class frigates based on the variant Gepard-3.9 of Project 11661, part of the catalog of designs then marketed on the basis of the Dagestan.
The two frigates built so far for Vietnam are the first finalized examples of the Gepard family to include helicopter facilities, even though a closed hangar was not installed. The weapons and sensors suite are a modernized version of the suite installed on Tatarstan.
Both ships were commissioned in 2011, with a further batch of 2 in construction and slated for commission in 2017.



Note: for want of detailed plans, a lot of details are tentative in these drawings. What detail is included is nevertheless based on in-service photographs.

Anyway, enjoy, and feedback is all the more welcome for the lack of sources.

Edit: somehow noticed after posting and re-reading my post twice that I had forgotten to remove half the portholes on the Dagestan
If anyone needed to illustrate why we need a review process before upload, I guess that does it...

Fantastic additions!