Russia will start building modernized Murena hovercraft in 2023

MOSCOW, January 10 – RIA Novosti. In an interview, it was said that the Khabarovsk shipbuilding plant plans to start the construction of the Murena hovercraft landing craft according to a modernized project this year.News. Khabarovskthe chief engineer of the plant is Sergey Korolev.

The Khabarovsk Shipbuilding Plant (KhSZ) is part of the United Shipbuilding Company.

“We defended the initiative work, the technical project for the creation of Murena-type landing hovercraft. This is an absolutely unique project for our factory, no one has built it before us, it is now being modernized and we are waiting to sign it. It has a contract this year <…> Hopefully we will start construction this year,” he said.

From 1985 to 1992, 8 Morays were built in the KhSZ, which were transferred to the border service. Seven of them were decommissioned and destroyed in 2005, and the last of eight hovercraft D-143 (PSKR-143, serial number 317) built for the USSR Navy is shelved at the KhSZ workshop.

Also from 2002 to 2006 three boats were built for the South Korean Navy as part of the Murena-E export project. In September 2018, plans to build eight boats from 2019 to 2027 were announced.

The Project 12061 Murena hovercraft landing craft is a series of Soviet and Russian high-speed landing craft designed for amphibious landing on an unequipped shore. They belong to the 4th row ships. Boats are capable of providing fire support for amphibious landings or setting up minefields, transporting self-propelled, traction and non-self-propelled equipment.

The Murena can reach speeds of up to 55 knots (102 kilometers per hour) and can carry a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles or 130 soldiers. The ship is armed with two 30-millimeter AK-306 automatic artillery mounts and two AGS-17 Plamya grenade launchers.

At the Euronaval-2014 exhibition in France in 2014, a model of the Murena-M boat, specially designed to operate as part of the Mistral type universal landing craft, ordered in France and not taken over by Russia due to Western sanctions, was presented.

After Paris refused to deliver Mistrals to Moscow, in 2020 the first two universal landing craft of the Russian project 23900, Ivan Rogov and Mitrofan Moskalenko, were laid at the Kerch shipbuilding plant Zaliv. craft.