MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - The Moskva missile-carrying cruiser, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, has put out to sea to practice some combat skills.
"The crew will practice air defense, the use of electronic warfare equipment, damage control, and comprehensive defense and protection of the ship during the sea passage and on unsafe roadsteads," the fleet said in a statement on Friday.
At one of the stages of the exercise, the crew will practice simulated use of the ship's main missile system, it said.
After completing the exercise, the cruiser will return to its Sevastopol base.
The Project 1164 Moskva cruiser was laid down at the Nikolayev (currently Mykolayiv, Ukraine) shipbuilding plant in 1976 and was originally named the Slava. It was launched on July 27, 1979. It combines high maneuverability, seagoing performance, and speed and can act in remote areas of the World Ocean.
The principal weapon of the Project 1164 cruisers is 16 launchers for P-1000 Vulkan supersonic anti-ship missiles with a range of 550 kilometers developed by the Reutov-based NPO Mashinostroyeniya machine building association affiliated with Tactical Missiles Corporation. Owing to their combat capability, these cruisers are commonly referred to as carrier-killers in NATO countries.
According to open sources, the P-1000 missiles, whose control systems include artificial intelligence elements, can share data and build a common action strategy during an attack by allocating targets among themselves and performing a simultaneous approach from different directions.
To provide air defense from the sea to the Russian military facilities in Syria, the Moskva cruiser performed a mission in the eastern part of the Mediterranean from September 2015 to January 2016.