SEVASTOPOL, August 23. /TASS/. The Project 22800 Karakurt-class latest corvette Tsiklon armed with Kalibr cruise missiles will enter service with the Russian Black Sea Fleet by the year-end, the Fleet’s press office reported on Monday.
"The inclusion of the Tsiklon small missile ship in the combat structure of the Black Sea Fleet is scheduled for the end of 2021. The warship will be fulfilling tasks within a taskforce of the Black Sea Fleet’s missile ships," the press office said in a statement.
The warship has been prepared for its trials that are due to begin soon. The Tsiklon is currently based in Novorossiysk where it state trials will be held. The ship’s crew, which is manned with contract-enlisted personnel, has been trained at the Navy’s integrated training center in St. Petersburg and has arrived to learn to operate the new warship, the statement says.
The missile corvette Tsiklon was built at the Zaliv Shipyard in Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula and floated out in the summer of 2020. The warship belongs to the Karakurt class of small missile ships and is armed with the Kalibr versatile cruise missile system, the AK-176MA artillery gun, the Pantsyr-M seaborne anti-aircraft missile complex and large-caliber machine-guns. The warship has an operating range of 2,500 miles and its sea endurance is 15 days.