As the aggressor’s propaganda declares “cheerfully”, it allegedly “successfully solves the problem” of “strengthening the standard air defense means of patrol corvettes” of the Black Sea Fleet of Project 22160, of which Russia had four in the zone of naval aggression for 2022, these are “Vasily Bykov”, “Dmitry Rogachev ”, “Pavel Derzhavin” and “Sergey Kotov”.
Since the regular air defense systems “Igla-S”, “Verba’ and “Zhalo” were obviously not enough, the Russian invaders decided to install ground-based anti-aircraft missile systems “Tor-M2MK” on the decks of the corvettes.
It is also stated that the “Viktor Veliky” patrol ship built at the Volga Zelenodolsk plant by the end of 2022, as well as the long-suffering Black Sea corvette “Mercuriy” located in the Baltic, has already built-in complexes.
However, the presence on four “old’ corvettes of the “Thor” systems installed “manually” on the decks may make some sense until the ship gets into a minimal storm, but whether the aggressor’s attempt to lead the “new” corvettes through its inland waterways to the Azov and Black Seas are still a big question.
In any case, the practice of countering Russian aggression knows many cases of the destruction of the same “Tor” complexes on land; it is obvious that at sea this situation can cover both the complex itself and its carrier corvette.
