Two Russian guided-missile cruisers from Russia’s North and Pacific fleets met off the coast of Syria as part of a 16-ship Russian Navy formation, according to satellite photos taken on Thursday.
Slava-class cruisers RTS Marshal Ustinov (055) and RFS Varyag (011) were part of a 16-ship formation in Syrian territorial waters near Russia’s sole foreign naval base in Tartus as captured by European Space Agency’s satellite imagery, reported Naval News.
“This is the concentration of essentially the entire Russian Navy in the Mediterranean, in one place. Ordinarily, these vessels would be operating in distinct groups,” reads the report from Naval News.
The formation includes the two Slavas, two Udaloy-class destroyers, two guided-missile frigates, two Kilo diesel-electric attack submarines, a Buyan-class corvette, two assault boats and a variety of auxiliary vessels.
The two Slavas had been operating at either end of the Mediterranean as the head of two separate surface action groups. A third Slava, RTS Moskva (121), is in the Black Sea.
The 11,500-ton Slavas were designed around launchers that can hold 16 SS-N-12 Sandbox anti-ship cruise missiles – each about the size of a telephone pole. The 1970s era ships and missiles were crafted to battle U.S. and NATO aircraft carriers by overwhelming them with a barrage of high-speed cruise missiles to sink ships.
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