Shipbucket

Well IMO its not weird, its actually far more practical than the western system. I mean take frigate for example...hardly accurate definition of any modern day warship for just for its word.

Anyways the project 11540 was classified as SKR or 'storozhevoy korabl' which means guard ship. The term is also bit missleading and has its roots in the history but it was used in similar way frigates in western since, albeit the two terms are not comparable in every cases.

Interestingly enough the Project 11540 was the sole Soviet warship class that could be properly descriped as a frigate for its function and role. During its development the designers were aware of the global trend of new multipurpose warships, smaller than destroyers but more capable than previous escort ships were emerging. The project 1154 had its roots in the 70's as a more effective and lighter weight variant of the project 1124 (NATO: Grisha class) small anti-submarine ships with new weapons and systems. However the design grow in size as new tasks and operational requirements were issued for the design. At some point it was decided to add a helicopter capability and when the design had grown to over 2000t displacement, it was decided that completely new type of warship displacing 3000-4000t were to be designed to replace the larger project 1135 (NATO: Krivak) SKR in production.

Very interesting Golly. Thank you for your detailed response.