Russian Navy Buyan-M corvette test fired 3M-54 Kalibr anti-ship missile.

The Russian defense ministry has ordered a total of nine Project 21631 (Buyan-M) corvettes for the navy, with at least six vessels to be assigned to the Caspian Flotilla. The first two Buyan-M corvettes, the Grad Sviyazhsk and the Uglich, entered service with the flotilla earlier this year, Chirkov said.

The Zelenodolsk shipyard, based in Russia’s Tatarstan Republic, began construction of the sixth corvette in the series, the Vyshny Volochek, in August last year.

A Buyan-M corvette has a displacement of 949 tons and a maximum speed of 25 knots. It is armed with Kalibr (SS-N-27) anti-ship missiles, 100-mm and 30-mm guns, as well as Igla-1M air defense missiles.

The 3M-54 is a surface and submarine-launched anti-ship missile developed by the Novator Design Bureau. The missile is a modular system with five different variants: two anti-shipping types, one for land attack, and two with an anti-submarine role. The Russian domestic variant (3M-54) and export variants (3M-54E/3M-54TE) fly at sub-sonic speeds while achieving supersonic speed as they near their target. They are also believed to be able to perform very high angled defensive maneuvers in contrast to the common linear flight path of other anti-ship cruise missiles. To learn more, watch our coverage of the system during IMDS 2013.