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Russia’s armament support ship Academician Kovalev goes to sea for state trials

The vessel is designed to load, unload and transport weapons and is capable of carrying the Kamov Ka-27 (NATO reporting name: Helix) helicopter or its versions

ARKHANGELSK, November 12. /TASS/. The advanced Project 20180TV armament support ship Academician Kovalev built by the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk in north Russia has gone to sea for state trials before joining the Russian Navy, shipyard spokeswoman Nadezhda Shcherbina told TASS on Thursday.

"The armament support ship Academician Kovalev has left the shipyard and gone to sea today [on Thursday] for state trials that will last about a week. The acceptance report will be signed in December," she said.

According to the spokeswoman, the shipyard has removed all the ship’s imperfections detected during the shipbuilders’ trials in October.

The Project 20180TV reinforced ice-class armament support ship Academician Kovalev was floated out in the summer of 2014 for its further construction afloat.

The vessel is designed to load, unload and transport weapons.

The Project 20180TV armament support ship has a full displacement of about 6,000 tons, a length of 107.6 meters and a maximum speed of 14 knots.

The ship has three cranes of two types of cargo-carrying capacity and is capable of carrying the Kamov Ka-27 (NATO reporting name: Helix) helicopter or its versions.

The shipyard signed a contract with the Russian Defense for the construction of the vessel in September 2011. The 20180TV armament support ship was developed on the basis of the Project 20180 rescue tugboat Zvezdochka built by the Severodvinsk-based shipyard and delivered to the Russian Navy in 2010.