Missile Cruiser Moskva Fires SS-N-12 (photo: Mil.ru)
Definitely don’t be on deck for this. Mil.ru covered Black Sea Fleet flagship Slava-class CG Moskva (121) firing one of its deck-mounted SS-N-12 ASCMs during inter-fleet training in the Atlantic this week.
TK Zvezda provided video of this firing and lots of others.
SS-N-12 Launch (photo: TK Zvezda)
This might be one of the few times (possibly only the second!) in Moskva’s career that it’s fired its primary weapon system. In 2008, New Times covered what it reported as the very first.
This seems somewhat improbable. Moskva, née Slava, surely fired its reputed “carrier-killing” SS-N-12s at some time during the zenith / denouement of the Cold War in the mid- and late 1980s. There also had to be acceptance-related firings by the lead unit of the guided missile cruiser class during the early 1980s.
However, very casual research leads one to conclude that most Russian Navy cruise missile firings come from subs or “small missile ships” and “missile boats.”
Nevertheless, Moskva heads Russian Navy ships currently training and bound for a number of Western hemisphere port calls. No one can really deny that the Navy is getting more miles under the keel than five or ten years ago.
Russian Defense Policy 