The Russian Navy has been replenished with a new 12700 Project minesweeper

11 August, 2024 Launching ceremony of Afanasy Ivannikov Project 12700 minesweeper. Photo credits: Russian Navy The Russian Navy has been replenished with a new Afanasiy Ivannikov Project 12700 minesweeper.

Russian media reported on this. The ship was built at the Sredne-Nevsky Shipyard, which specializes in the construction of small displacement ships. The Afanasiy Ivannikov minesweeper that was launched became the ninth ship of this type to be transferred to one of the Russian fleets after passing factory tests.

Launching ceremony of Afanasy Ivannikov Project 12700 minesweeper.

Photo credits: Russian Navy

As a reminder, this ship was laid down in September 2021 and is designed to search for, detect, and destroy sea mines. It is equipped with hydroacoustic systems deployed both on board the ship and on teleoperated and autonomous underwater vehicles. The ship is designed using a large number of composite materials, which in theory should provide increased survivability.

First of all, the bottom of the ship will not contain sea mines, which work on the principle of responding to the ship's magnetic field. The ship has a minimal set of onboard weapons, consisting of a 1 AK-306 30mm automatic 6-barrel gun, as well as an Igla-1 or Verba portable anti-aircraft systems.

Launching ceremony of Afanasy Ivannikov Project 12700 minesweeper. Photo credits: Russian Navy

Today, the Russian fleet includes eight ships of the Project 12700 Aleksandrit, and 5 of them are at various stages of construction.

Militarnyi previously reported that a new "Stupinets" corvette of the Project 12418 Molniya was launched in Russia at the Vympel shipyard in Rybinsk. The new boat has the same name as the Russian Navy's long-time only Project 1241.1T corvette in the Caspian Sea. Allegedly, the designers of the boat, the Almaz design bureau, modified the Project 12418, which is visually evident even with those built for Vietnam and Turkmenistan.

You can see a different placement of the anti-ship missile launchers and the number of launchers for anti-ship missiles.