Whats up with the Kirov-class battlecruiser?

by toefirefire

I read a post on here that mentioned the Kirovs so I checked out the Wikipedia page. Luckily they seem to be just past the 20 year rule. I don't understand the rational behind these ships at all, but they seem really interesting. If battle cruisers are built for speed, and these ships are nuclear powered, isn't 32 knots somewhat disappointing? It seems to me that every other modern navy in the world found ways of putting lots of missiles on smaller less expensive ships, why did the Soviet Union prefer this arrangement?

Also did the Americans really try to respond to these ships by recommissioning the Iowa? It seems like an all big gun armament wouldn't work well against an all missile armament.

The use of the word battlecruiser to describe the Kirovs is somewhat of a misnomer. Historically, battlecruisers were intended to fulfil the classic cruiser roles - raiding, scouting and acting as a quick response force, while being heavy enough to defeat any smaller cruiser. The Kirovs were designed to be the centerpiece of a surface action group, operating in a role similar to a classic battleship. However, being basically a scaled up cruiser, they do fulfil that part of the battlecruiser definition.

Battlecruisers were designed for speed, yes, but that's relative. The first battlecruiser, HMS Invincible, could only make 25 knots, while HMS Hood, the RN's largest battlecruiser, could make 31 knots. A speed of 32 knots is sufficient to act in a fast surface group, while it would have been prohibitively expensive to make the ship faster.

The Kirovs were essentially designed to carry the large SS-N-19 Shipwreck anti-ship-missile. This is a large, fast, long ranged missile, designed to destroy NATO carrier groups from a range sufficient to protect the launching ship from retaliation. While capable, these weapons are very large, and to carry both them and a respectable suite of self-defense weapons. A smaller predecessor to the SS-N-19 was carried on the Slava class cruisers, and the launcher took up a lot of useful space. While the USSR did build the Kirovs, they were part of a reasonably balanced fleet, which included destroyers and frigates comparable to those used by NATO navies. The Kirovs operated as part of an SAG, accompanied by cruisers, destroyers and frigates specialising in ASW, ASuW and AAW.

The thing about modern missiles is that they don't have a great ability to penetrate armour - all modern ships are designed without it, and so adding anti-armour capabilities to a missile reduces its ability to do the job it was designed for. In comparison, modern, lightly-armoured ships are unprotected against heavy naval gunfire. Recommissioning the Iowas made sense - they could, at least in theory, survive the gauntlet of missiles, and make it into range to sink anything they could hit.