Soviet and Russian Naval Project Numbers

The Soviet shipbuilding industry gave every design a project number (проект) when its design bureau opened the file, and the Navy kept it as the formal name of the class: Project 7 destroyers in 1935, Project 26 cruisers, Project 613 submarines in 1947. The number is a design serial, not a type code, but the series grew in blocks that a reader can learn: two-digit numbers for the post-war surface fleet (56, 58, 61), three-digit numbers below 300 for boats and minesweepers (204, 205, 266) and, for most submarines, in the 600–900 range (613, 667, 877, 949, 955), four-digit numbers from 1123 upward for surface ships of the 1960s–80s (1143, 1144, 1155, 1164, 1234, 1241), and five-digit numbers since the 1980s, some extending an older number (1135 → 11356, 1171 → 11711, 1144 → 11442M), most of the post-Soviet ones a new 2xxxx series (20380, 22350, 22800). A Russian name often sits beside the number — Orlan for 1144, Antey for 949A, Yasen for 885, Varshavyanka for 636 — and the class is also known by its lead ship (Admiral Gorshkov, Steregushchiy, Severodvinsk). Modifications stack letters on the number: A is usually the first major revision (949A, 955A, 945A), M is modernizirovanny (885M, 671RTM, 22350M), E is export and K kommercheskiy (877EKM), U usovershenstvovanny (971U), R the Russian Navy version of an export design (11356R); on the 667 family the letters simply accumulate, B, BD, BDR, BDRM, one per step. A dot and a trailing digit mark a version of the same design — 636.3, 1241.1, 1144.2 — and the five-digit numbers simply absorb that digit: 1232.2 Zubr is written 12322, 1143.7 Ulyanovsk 11437. Some numbers carry a leading zero in Russian documents — 06363 for the 636.3 boats, 09852 for the Belgorod conversion — notably the special-purpose submarines of the Defence Ministry's deep-sea directorate. Western intelligence rarely knew these numbers when a class appeared, so it coined its own NATO reporting names: phonetic-alphabet letters for submarines (Whiskey, Foxtrot, Victor, Delta, Oscar), place names for the first post-war surface classes (Kotlin, Poti, Riga), then names beginning with K for the cruisers, destroyers and frigates of the 1960s (Kildin, Kynda, Kresta, Kara, Krivak), and later the lead ship's own name (Kirov, Slava, Sovremenny, Udaloy). The Soviet Navy's own type codes are a third layer, listed below the table.

One lane per Soviet type, one dot per class entering service. The Stalin-era programme fills the first years with gun destroyers, Sverdlov cruisers and the Whiskey series, 215 boats from Soviet yards. The 1960s open every lane at once — the first nuclear submarines, the missile cruisers with K-names, the Yankee and Victor second generation — and the 1970s and 1980s bring the ocean-going fleet of Kirov, Slava, Udaloy, Typhoon, Oscar and Akula. Almost nothing enters service between 1991 and 2008; the renewal since then is a fleet of five-digit frigates and corvettes and of 636.3 Improved Kilos, with the Borey and Yasen as the only new nuclear lines.

The cruiser numbers run from the Project 68bis Sverdlovs, the last gun cruisers, through the Project 58 Kynda of 1962, the first with anti-ship missiles, to the three ships that defined the late Soviet fleet: Project 1134 (Kresta, with its 1134A and 1134B revisions that NATO called Kresta II and Kara), Project 1164 Atlant (Slava) and Project 1144 Orlan (Kirov). The 1144 is the one Western readers find hardest to file: the Soviet type is TARKR, heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser, and at 28,000 tons full load the West called it a battlecruiser. Admiral Nakhimov, rebuilt under Project 11442M after more than two decades out of service, is due to return to the fleet. The carriers are cruisers too: Project 1123 Moskva was a PKR, anti-submarine cruiser, and Projects 1143 and 11435 — Kiev and Admiral Kuznetsov — are TAVKR, heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers, a label commonly explained by the Montreux Convention's bar on aircraft carriers transiting the Turkish Straits, although the Soviet Navy never said so. Kuznetsov's overhaul was suspended in July 2025, and the head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation has said the ship will probably be sold or scrapped.

The Soviet Navy kept the old word for a destroyer, eskadrenny minonosets (EM, squadron torpedo ship), for its gun and missile destroyers: Project 30bis Skoryy, the 70-ship post-war class, Project 56 Kotlin, the missile destroyers 56M Kildin and 57A Kanin (begun as the 57bis Krupny), and finally Project 956 Sarych, the Sovremenny of 1980. Beside them it created a type the West had no word for, the BPK or large anti-submarine ship: Project 61, the gas-turbine Kashin of 1962, the 1134A and 1134B cruisers, and Project 1155 Fregat, the Udaloy, commissioned the same year as the Sovremenny as its anti-submarine twin. Western tables file the BPKs by size: the cruiser-sized Kara as a cruiser, the Kashin and Udaloy as destroyers. Severnoye, the Leningrad bureau founded in 1946, designed most of these ships, as well as the 1144 and 1164 cruisers and today's Project 22350 frigate.

What the West calls a Soviet frigate was an SKR, storozhevoy korabl, a guard or patrol ship: Project 50 Riga of 1954, the small Projects 159 and 35 (Petya and Mirka), and Project 1135 Burevestnik, the Krivak of 1970, 40 hulls in three versions. Its number is the root of today's frigates: Project 11356 is the Talwar built for India from 2003, Project 11356R the Russian Navy's own version, the Admiral Grigorovich class of 2016, and two of its unfinished hulls were completed for India as Tushil and Tamal in 2024–25. The Russian Navy adopted the word fregat for these ships and for Project 22350, the Admiral Gorshkov class designed by Severnoye and commissioned from July 2018, with more hulls building and the enlarged 22350M still in design.

Below the SKR came the small ships, whose codes open with M for maly, small, and the boats, whose codes end in KA for kater: MPK, small anti-submarine ship (Project 1124 Albatros, the Grisha), MRK, small missile ship (Project 1234 Ovod, the Nanuchka), RKA, missile boat (Project 205 Osa, Project 1241 Molniya, the Tarantul). The Project 1241 family shows the dot in use: 1241.1 is the Tarantul missile boat and 1241.2 the Pauk anti-submarine version of the same hull. Almaz in Leningrad designed most of them — the 1124 Grisha is a Zelenodolsk design — and it still does: the Project 20380 Steregushchiy, delivered at the end of 2007 and the class with which the Russian Navy brought the word korvet into its own classification, its 20385 and 20386 versions, and the Project 22800 Karakurt of 2018. The Zelenodolsk designs keep the old labels: Project 21630 Buyan is a small artillery ship (MAK) and Project 21631 Buyan-M a small missile ship (MRK) — three Buyan-Ms and the Gepard-class Dagestan fired the first Kalibr cruise missiles used in combat, from the Caspian Sea on 7 October 2015.

Three design bureaus drew most of the nuclear boats. Rubin (TsKB-18) in Leningrad holds the missile submarines: Project 658 Hotel, the 667 family from the Yankee of 1967 to the Delta IV, Project 941 Akula — the Typhoon, retired in 2023 — Project 949 and 949A Antey, and the Project 955 Borey, whose 955A version covers every boat since Knyaz Vladimir in 2020. Malakhit (SKB-143) holds the attack line: Project 627 Kit, the first Soviet nuclear submarine, the Project 671 Victor series (671, 671RT, 671RTM), the titanium Project 705 Lira, Project 971 Shchuka-B, and Project 885 Yasen, whose 885M Yasen-M began with Kazan in 2021. Lazurit in Gorky drew the titanium Project 945 Sierra and Project 670 Charlie. The Soviet type codes read the mission: PLARB for ballistic missiles (formally RPKSN, strategic missile submarine cruiser), PLARK for cruise missiles, PLA or MPLATRK for the multipurpose boat. Western intelligence named each class as it was sighted, without knowing the Soviet names, so the letters' alphabetical order says nothing about a class's age, and Project 971 became NATO's Akula, the Soviet name of the Typhoon.

The conventional line is Rubin's, and it is the one series where a reader meets the letters, the dot and the leading zero at once. Project 613 Whiskey of 1951 was the largest post-war submarine class, 215 boats in Soviet yards and 21 more in China; Project 641 Foxtrot followed in 1958 and Project 641B Som, the Tango, in 1972. Project 877 Paltus, the Kilo, entered service in 1980, with the 877E and 877EKM export versions sold to India, Iran, Algeria, Poland and China. Project 636 Varshavyanka, the Improved Kilo, was conceived for the Soviet fleet, released for export in 1993 and delivered first to China; the Russian Navy only ordered it in 2010 as Project 636.3 (06363), six boats for the Black Sea Fleet commissioned 2014–16 and six for the Pacific Fleet delivered from 2019. It was built because the intended successor, Project 677 Lada (NATO: St. Petersburg), spent two decades in trouble: the lead boat was commissioned in 2010 with major deficiencies, the redesigned Kronshtadt followed in January 2024 and Velikiye Luki in December 2025. The export Lada is sold as the Amur 1650.

Landing ships are ranked by size in the type code — BDK large, SDK medium, MDK small — and MDKVP is the small air-cushion landing ship, the Zubr. The Soviet BDKs were Project 1171 Tapir (NATO: Alligator) and Project 775 Ropucha, built in Poland, and Project 1174 Nosorog, the Ivan Rogov; the Russian Project 11711 Ivan Gren extends the old number. Nevskoye in Leningrad, the bureau of the carriers (1123, 1143, 11435), also drew the 1174 and 11711 landing ships; the two Project 23900 assault ships laid down at Kerch in 2020, which reuse the Ivan Rogov name, are a Zelenodolsk design. Minesweepers are MTShch (seagoing) or BTShch (base): Project 266M Akvamarin, 1265 Yakhont, 12660 Gorya, and the fibreglass-hulled Project 12700 Alexandrit of 2016. Intelligence ships sail as SSV, communications ships: Project 864 Meridian, the Vishnya, and Project 18280 Yuriy Ivanov.