Lately, there have been many reports about Project 22160 Vasily Bykov warships, which are part of the Black Sea Fleet of the russian navy. Those are technically patrol ships and quite often become a target for Ukrainian naval suicide drones because of their role as convoy escorts.
The latest and most relevant example is when the ship named Pavel Derzhavin got hit two times in a row over October 11th–13th, according to the statement of the Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk.
Read more: The Second Ship of russia’s Black Sea Fleet Exploded On a Naval Mine in the Sevastopol Raid in Three Days
And because the russians have four of them, all deployed in the Black Sea, there is a widespread misconception that it is one of those ships that russian forces use for shelling of Ukraine with Kalibr land attack cruise missiles. Let's make things clear.
Looking at the large warships in the russian naval fleet, we can notice a paradox: Project 22160 corvettes are the most numerous yet least weaponized units of the russian navy.
With a maximum water displacement of 1,800 tons and hull length of 94 meters (~300 feet), a ship of this type has only a single 76mm autocannon, two 14.5mm machine guns, 8 anti-aircraft missiles – either Igla-S or Verba, a few Orlan-10 reconnaissance UAVs, and one helicopter – Ka-27 or Ka-29 (russians also claim Ka-52K can be stationed but it's been never seen actually paired with this ship).
These features demonstrate that the russian military spent all these resources needed to build four ships only for them to become "gunboats" for carrying the flags around during peacetime. As for the effectiveness of these air defense guns, practice illustrates it best: at some point the russian sailors on Project 22160 ships began installing Tor anti-aircraft missile systems right on the helipads on a permanent basis.
At this point, a logical question arises: then who was the first to spread the information that Kalibr missiles were allegedly part of Project 22160 arsenal? The answer is in the reports from 2015–2017 published by russian media. They tried to create an image for the Vasily Bykov project as another "one-of-a-kind" weapon.
It is important to mention the timeframe because once the first two ships got launched into the water in 2017–2018, it instantly turned out that all these declarations were misleading.
Taking a step back, it's noteworthy how the narrative changed over time. First, the military reporters told the readers there will be four vertical launch missile silos placed inside the bow of Project 22160.
Then, a bit later, they refuted the previous statement by saying there would be no silos; still, there'd be a Club-K container missile system placed instead. It would carry and fire up to four Kh-35 anti-ship cruise missiles or the 3M-54 Kalibr, the anti-ship version of the mentioned Kalibr LACM.
Ultimately, though, instead of Club-K systems, russian Project 22160 ships carry around land-based Tor vehicles as their permanent band-aid for air defense coverage. As for the aspirations of integrating Kalibr, the russian media prefer not to recall them at all.
Read more: The UK Defense Intelligence: the Russian Black Sea Fleet Has Intensified Its Defensive and Reactive Posture
