SEVASTOPOL, December 24. /TASS/. The crew of the latest patrol ship Sergey Kotov built for the Russian Black Sea Fleet held its first practice of receiving a Ka-27PS search and rescue helicopter of the Fleet’s naval aviation on its flight deck during drills, the Black Sea Fleet’s press office reported on Friday.

"The exercise of the helicopter shipboard landing was held in the Black Sea as part of the final stage of the ship’s state trials. After successfully landing on the deck, the helicopter’s crew inspected the smooth operation of all of the ship’s flight deck systems and the shipboard teams responsible for helicopter flights. Landing on a ship is the most difficult type of naval aviation flight personnel training. Interoperability between the ship’s crew and the flight personnel is one of the most important elements of the professional training of sailors and pilots," the press office said in a statement.

Patrol ships of this Project have a helicopter deck and a hanger and aviation fuel storage faculties on their board to accommodate deck-based rotary-wing aircraft, the statement says.

The state trials, under which the ship’s crew practiced the shipboard helicopter landing, are set to be completed by the end of this year, after which the patrol ship Sergey Kotov will enter service with the Black Sea Fleet’s Novorossiysk naval base, following an order by the Russian Navy commander-in-chief, the press office specified.

Project 22160 ships have been engineered by the Severnoye Design Bureau in St. Petersburg in Russia’s northwest and are designated to protect and defend the maritime economic area, carry out escort and anti-piracy operations and perform search and rescue missions. They are armed with a 57mm artillery gun and a surface-to-air missile system and can carry Ka-27PS helicopters.

The patrol ship Sergey Kotov, which was named after an outstanding Soviet naval sailor, World War II veteran and Hero of the Soviet Union (1944) Rear Admiral Sergey Kotov, was laid down on May 8, 2016, and is the Project 22160 fourth-built and third serial-produced warship.

The patrol ship Sergey Kotov was constructed at the Zelenodolsk Shipyard in Tatarstan in the Volga area jointly with Kerch shipbuilders. The Black Sea Fleet’s Novorossiysk naval base currently operates three Project 22160 patrol ships: the Vasily Bykov, the Dmitry Rogachev and the Pavel Derzhavin.