The Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy will be reinforced with the new guided-missile corvette Graivoron Buyan-M class of project 21631. The crew is completing the training. Experts believe the corvette will ensure Russian permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean, the Russian newspaper Izvestia daily writes.
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Russian Navy Buyan-M class Corvette 603 Serpukhov southbound of the Bosphorus. (Picture source Twitter account Alper Böler)
The crew of the Graivoron completed the first stage of training in the Russian Navy center. Russian Navy is ready to accept the warships and begin trials, Russian Defense Ministry sources said. All the work is to be completed by the end of 2020 and the corvette will join the Black Sea fleet. However, the sources said the handover to the fleet may take place in 2021.
Corvettes of project 21631 operate in the Caspian flotilla, the Baltic and the Black Sea fleets. The Graivoron is the ninth warship of the project. The corvettes defend the economic zone. They launched Kalibr missiles from the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas at targets in Syria and demonstrated the ability to deliver missile strikes to a distance of at least 1.5 thousand kilometers.
Project 21631 corvettes can lay minefields and block adversary navigation in major sea areas, mostly in straits and at approaches to naval bases, the Izvestia said.
The Buyan-M Project 21631 corvette is the missile variants of Project 21630, build by the Russian shipyard Zelenodolsk. The new ship is equipped with missiles, artillery weapons, and electronic countermeasure equipment.
The Buyan-M weapon system consists of a single A-190 100mm cannon, two AK-630M anti-aircraft guns, eight Club-S Kalibr anti-ship missiles, and four Igla-1M SAMs mounted on a 3M47 Gibka launcher. The second armament includes two 14.5mm and three 7.62mm machine guns. It has a 950-ton displacement ship that is 74 meters (243 feet) long with a top speed of 45 kph (28 mph).
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