Peter the Great Update: Guns, guns, guns

Gist: The nuclear missile cruiser Peter the Great repelled an enemy attack. True, it was a notional enemy. The ship carried out a practice firing. Sailors say that the Atlantic is not just a unique firing range. It is priceless training - on land, there isn't the kind of rocking like there is here.

On board the TRKR Peter the Great in the Atlantic Ocean. These shots are from the ship's helo. It is searching for submarines in the area around the cruiser. It lowers the hydrophone and that which is normally hidden is visible to the operator on the monitor. The radius of operation for the device is dozens of kilometers.

The crew is performing the mission along a designated route and reports back to the ship, either on the air or after returning to the ship, about any surface contacts gained.

Coordinates of unfriendlies are relayed to the ship. This is the Marine zone. They are also conducting training. The reliable AK-47 isn't the main Marine weapon. They also have a machine gun. It weighs 45 kg and fires 600 rounds a minute at a range of 3.5 km. It can even be used as an anti-aircraft weapon.

You can know the feeling of a powerful Russian weapon because its a large caiber weapon.

The enemy survived even after large caliber machine gun fire. Two shots from a grenade launcher dealt a shock. The enemy was destroyed, but a new enemy appeared on the horizon. The main universal gun mount will deal with that one.

The AK-130 is the most powerful weapon in its class. It has a 22km range. That means that the enemy could even be beyond the horizon and not visible. It takes a few seconds to transmit the coordinates of the target from the Peter the Great's radar to her guns and only a few seconds more to send a 70kg shell. When this gun is fired, all the external hatches on the ship are secured and to stand as close to the gun as I am now is deadly. Sixty tons of metal and explosives fly from the barrels of this gun in a minute. It can destroy anything.

Small, fast moving surface targets or fixed, unseen land-based targets. Also low-flying missiles, the most threatening kind of missile. They can also be repelled.

The deck on the Peter the Great shakes when the AK-130 fires. The 27,000 ton ship recoils a bit.

The "metal-cutter" is in operation. That is what the sailors call the anti-air Kortik system, which fires 6000 rounds/second.

This kind of training will go on for almost the entire week on the way across the Atlantic to the shores of Latin America.