KALININGRAD, August 6 (Itar-Tass) — The new frigate Admiral Essen, a second in a series of Project 11356 ships, has been laid down at the Yantar shipyard in Kaliningrad.
The frigate will join the Russian Navy by 2014.
Vice-Admiral Viktor Chirkov, commander of the Baltic Fleet, which tests Yantar’s new ships, said at the keel laying ceremony that the Admiral Essen would serve in the Black Sea Fleet, just like its counterpart, the Admiral Grigorovich, laid down in December 2010.
Yantar plans to start building a third Project 11356 frigate, the Admiral Makarov, this autumn. The ships will be handed over to the customer in 2014 and then start building another three such ships.
“Yantar, which has a good reputation among navy men in many fleets will have enough orders to fill in the years to come, and our country will be effectively protected at sea,” Chirkov said.
Vladimir Spiridopulo, Director-General of the Northern Design Bureau which initiated Project 11356, expressed confidence that “Yantar will fulfil the order in properly as it has the experience of solving even more challenging tasks.”
Yantar is now building three Project 11356 frigates for the Indian Navy and will commission them in 2011. The three frigates for the Russian Navy is the first order for a series of warship in its newest history.
Admiral Nikolai Essen, whose name was given to the new ship, is a renowned Navy officer. He is closely associated with the revival of the Baltic Fleet after the devastating Russian-Japanese war. It was owing to him that the fleet was in full combat readiness when World War One started.
Project 11356 frigates are designed for sea and oceanic combat against surface ships, submarines and aircraft both on its own and within a group of vessels as an export ship.
Yantar was established on the base of the Koenigsberg branch of Schichau Werft in 1945 after the end of World War. Several generations of Kaliningrad shipbuilders put their time and effort into the development of the new enterprise and the production of hundreds of ships. Over more than 50 years of its history Yantar has become a well-known builder and repairer of modern war ships and civilian vessels.
Yantar is a modern and dynamically developing enterprise with the broad experience of building and repairing vessels and ships of different classes and purposes. The shipyard operates in the following fields: commercial shipbuilding, naval shipbuilding, metal structures manufacturing, ship repairs and conversion, shipbuilding from aluminium alloys, and mechanical engineering production.
Yantar is the only Russian shipyard situated in the southeaster part of the Baltic region in the proximity to Europe’s largest industrial centers.
The city of Kaliningrad is the only Russian ice-free port on the Baltic Sea and the capital of the westernmost region of Russia with the status of the Special Economic Zone and developed transport infrastructure.