Should Russia build new Aircraft Carriers and Battlecruisers?

I think Aircraft carriers and Battlecruisers would be needed in the next 1-2 decades esp. Once the arctic clears a bit and becomes the new suez canal. With these awesome instruments of power, Russia can own the arctic and the north pacific near its far east. Imagine controlling a huge part of global trade, the military investment would pay for itself without even exporting something.

BTRfan wrote:

GarryB wrote:

Russia's first priority should be to equip all motorized rifle and tank divisions with adequate numbers of BMP-3s [or even a more modern IFV], the BTR-90, and the T-90 [or better].

Existing armour could do with an upgrade but they are on the verge of introducing four entirely new armoured vehicle families... they are not just replacing the BMP, the BTR, and the T-90... they are replacing the engineer vehicles, the artillery vehicles, the air defence vehicles, the command vehicles, the ambulance vehicles, the scout recon vehicles and every other vehicle within the brigade structure with four basic vehicle types.

Upgrading existing vehicles with new night vision devices so they can train at night, communications systems and battle management systems so they can practise the new tactics the next generation vehicles will allow them to use also makes sense but large scale production of existing types does not make sense right now... not when their replacements are 2-3 years from production at most.

Aircraft carriers are only useful if they intend to begin projecting power across the world or going for some sort of global empire.

Aircraft carriers mean the navy will have freedom of movement and wont have to worry about stretching  itself beyond land based aviation support.

Russian allies in the various parts of the world would be much more relaxed if they knew that in times of trouble a Russian carrier group could come and visit for a week or two, plus it makes Russian vessels in international waters much much safer.

I would suggest that first they do something to check NATO's advance which has now come right up to their very borders.

A carrier group or two would be rather more useful than more ground forces in Europe... any NATO belligerence would be met with the threat of tactical nukes rather than large armoured forces. Later conventionally armed cruise missiles will allow Russia to do to NATO what NATO has been doing to other countries.

[qutoe]They should do something to help the Serbs and resolve the situation in Kosovo.

 
The Serbs need to help themselves by voting in politicians that have a spine.
 
The issue of Kosovo will not be solved with force of arms... it will most likely be a waiting game.

I think Russia has lost a lot of credibility with its "allies" in the last five or six years, mainly by bailing on Serbia and by basically standing by and doing nothing substantial over what is happening in Syria. They also dropped the ball on Libya. Russia should deployed some submarines and destroyers off the coast of Libya and declared that they were enforcing a "non-intervention neutrality zone" and that outside interference in the civil war would be unacceptable.



On Kosovo, I agree but I also disagree... Kosovo will be solved by force of arms, but only after much waiting. The Serbs will have to wait and bide their time while America weakens from poor domestic policies. Once America is sufficiently weak there will be a great many things happening around the world that were unable to happen when America was still vibrant, the Serbs asserting themselves in Kosovo will be one such thing.[/quote]

Yeap, Russia side stepping here and there in politics has caused issues with its allies.  Serbia was kinda understandable because of the piss poor shape Russia was in, as well as...well, guess who was in power at the time?  But they still managed to send VDV units.

Libya was Medvedevs go ahead as they promoted the strikes.  What was funny in all of that, is not only did Russia lose out $10B in deals, even when they gave the go ahead, Rebels refused to deal with Russian's because they didn't "help".  Some major lobbying from the west right there.

Syria, Russia is doing half right.  Russia needs to have more ships off of the cost of Syria, which they do (Mediterranean task force), but they need more of them, as well as having a carrier off of the coast so they could provide air support if needed.  That is the main reason why Kuznetsov is not undergoing modernization at the moment.

I think, IMO, Russia needs at least 3 or 4 carriers.  1 in each major area.  Maybe 5 so that 1 can be used as a backup.  As well, they do not need a large aircraft carrier, but something that can hold 30 or so fixed wing jets, and a dozen or so helicopters.  So not power projection but at least something to provide air assets if in real need of it.  As well, ultimately, Russia should have started R&D on a jump jet (IMO) so that they could turn some shipping vessels into temporary small carriers because with jump jets, you could fit more aircraft on board.  Or go back to the Kiev class aircraft carriers with jump jets.

In Russia's best interest right now, is developing more heavily armed frigates and Corvettes, with few "destroyers" here and there in order to not only provide protection for its coast, but modern Frigates have pretty decent endurance. With propulsion systems and automated systems ever so increasing in the Russian military, they could increase endurance easily.

I think Russia has lost a lot of credibility with its "allies" in the last five or six years, mainly by bailing on Serbia and by basically standing by and doing nothing substantial over what is happening in Syria.

With Serbia the Russians were in no better position to offer assistance than the US was with Georgia in 2008.

Syria was in the middle of sucking up to the west, and while they were a buyer of Russian weapons... they didn't actually buy all that much... very similar to Syria and Iran.

Perhaps if they had upgraded their military with purchases of Russian equipment they might have been able to defend themselves better... certainly Syrian Yakhont units will make a Naval action against them VERY unlikely... an earlier purchase of Mig-29SMTs and lots of S-300s would have cemented their sovereignty.

Equally Iran could have bought 200 Su-27s to replace their F-14s and F-4s with a contract for domestic production of Su-27SMs and they would be rather more safe from western intervention and embargo too... but the reality is that Iran doesn't trust Russia very much either and Syria and Libya wanted better relations with the west too.

They didn't take notice of how quickly the west can turn on its dictators...

Or go back to the Kiev class aircraft carriers with jump jets.

VSTOL aircraft are expensive and limited in performance... in many ways an armed helo would be more useful like the Ka-52 with AESA and R-77s.

I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

You should also add UKSKs for antisubmarine missiles, Medvedka-2, and Paket-Eh/NK.

I suspect the 160 Zirconium Missiles are in UKSK launchers... 20 of them.

The thing is that the Naval industry is having trouble completing Frigates and you want uber cruisers with twice the number of UKSK launchers as will likely be fitted to upgraded Kirovs...

The facts are that supported ground forces are effective... rather more effective than air power alone.

These Mistral carriers will be very useful to the Russian Navy and there is no way France will try to hurt Russia by paying millions of Euros in penalties anyway.

France has covered its a$$ by drawing a line where Russia probably wouldn't cross anyway... Russia wants calm in the Ukraine... only the coup leaders benefit from violence and chaos.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

I was thinking in doing something similar.. lol
But my artistic abilities in 3d graphics not good enough. Will be nice if you use a real design ,not just a fake one..
For example take the design of Admiral Gorshov Frigate and scale it to the size of a kirov cruser.and check how many weapons it could carry.

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

This:


I took these with a webcam bc I dont have a camera.
edit:I noticed the main guns are out of proportion. Soryy about that.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

This:


I took these with a webcam bc I dont have a camera.
edit:I noticed the main guns are out of proportion. Soryy about that.

very nice drawing!!!
would be awesome if the RU navy is getting something like that!!  

If France refuses to sell Mistrals it would be better to get all the money back and penalties than keep half a boat.

@KomissarBojanchev

Nice... but very narrow. I would suggest making it 1.5-2 times wider... which would greatly increase internal volume for a range of other systems.

Down each side I would even consider a runway surface for UCAVs to take off and land perhaps with a hangar in the centre... one strip for takeoff and one for landing so there is less chance of a collision...

GarryB wrote:If France refuses to sell Mistrals it would be better to get all the money back and penalties than keep half a boat.

@KomissarBojanchev

Nice... but very narrow. I would suggest making it 1.5-2 times wider... which would greatly increase internal volume for a range of other systems.

Down each side I would even consider a runway surface for UCAVs to take off and land perhaps with a hangar in the centre... one strip for takeoff and one for landing so there is less chance of a collision...

VTOL UCAV, Garry.

fck VTOLs, any high-performance UCAV needs to shave as much needless weight- hover equipment useful only for takeoff and landing is best example.

medo wrote:Half of Sevastopol Mistral is still in Russia. If France cancel this contract, Russia could still build the other half and finish this ship.

Nah.. Russia should give away the mistral totally.. take not a single one.

and use the money to build new stealth nuclear super cruisers to replace their kirov class. with state of the art warships.

You guys are drunk if you think "stealth nuclear cruisers" the size of the 1144s will be built for the Mistral sum.

It will cost far, far more. And no it wont be happening.

Russia isn't building ships of that size any time soon- and what is the point? Nakhimov is being modernized, and Peter the Great eventually as well.

The sensible thing to do with this money is to convert another shipyard to 22350 production.

You guys are drunk if you think "stealth nuclear cruisers" the size of the 1144s will be built for the Mistral sum.

You are quite right... a new from scratch battle cruiser would not be so cheap and could not be built any time soon.

VTOL UCAV, Garry.

I remember a biplane design from a Soviet designer that when the aircraft took off as the wheels folded up they took the lower wing of the biplane arrangement and folded it up into the upper wing for high speed flight. This meant for takeoff and landing it was a biplane with lots of lift and excellent low speed handling, but for normal flight it was low drag higher speed monowing design.

this sort of innovative design is the sort of stuff they should be working on.

A Hovercraft with a wing so it can land on any surface as a hovercraft but accelerate to flight speed and take off using a wing like an aeroplane...

Nah.. Russia should give away the mistral totally.. take not a single one.

and use the money to build new stealth nuclear super cruisers to replace their kirov class. with state of the art warships.

Two helicopter carriers would be far more useful to Russia than any stealth battle cruiser.

GarryB wrote:

You guys are drunk if you think "stealth nuclear cruisers" the size of the 1144s will be built for the Mistral sum.

You are quite right... a new from scratch battle cruiser would not be so cheap and could not be built any time soon.

VTOL UCAV, Garry.

I remember a biplane design from a Soviet designer that when the aircraft took off as the wheels folded up they took the lower wing of the biplane arrangement and folded it up into the upper wing for high speed flight. This meant for takeoff and landing it was a biplane with lots of lift and excellent low speed handling, but for normal flight it was low drag higher speed monowing design.

this sort of innovative design is the sort of stuff they should be working on.

A Hovercraft with a wing so it can land on any surface as a hovercraft but accelerate to flight speed and take off using a wing like an aeroplane...

Nah.. Russia should give away the mistral totally.. take not a single one.

and use the money to build new stealth nuclear super cruisers to replace their kirov class. with state of the art warships.

Two helicopter carriers would be far more useful to Russia than any stealth battle cruiser.

The designer you're talkinga bout was Nikitin with the IS-1 and 2 but they were obsolete from the moment they were designed since any kinds of biplanes became unacceptable by that time and the IS-1 was basically an I-15 with your mentioned wing configuration.

The designer you're talkinga bout was Nikitin with the IS-1 and 2 but they were obsolete from the moment they were designed since any kinds of biplanes became unacceptable by that time and the IS-1 was basically an I-15 with your mentioned wing configuration.

What made them obsolete was the fact that engine power increased dramatically.

To get airborne with a low power engine you need a lot of lift and biplanes of the day provided that lift. Designing a biplane was no good because in combat it had too much drag and was too slow. the key however was that these planes were only slow biplanes during takeoff and landing which made takeoff and landing much safer because the speeds were lower and the landing strip could be much much shorter.

the design allowed a short takeoff and landing roll while allowing low drag high speed flight... but like the swing wing the cost was complication and weight.

there was no obvious reason why such an arrangement could not have worked and it too would have benefited from the more powerful engines too.


the main problem is that you want lots of lift to fly high but you don't want long wings on a boat... perhaps a design where the wings fold but the aircraft can takeoff with the wings vertically where they can twist to force them horizontal once they are clear of the ship with the natural air flow and then twist back up to generate lift to avoid hitting the sea...

recovery could be lowered skirt for hovercraft air pocket in the belly to land on water and then attach to a crane to lift it aboard the vessel and wings fold as it is lifted...

Nah I think biplane is better with lots of lift for low speed takeoff and landing with mono plane config for high speed flight... or an airship.

GarryB wrote:
I remember a biplane design from a Soviet designer that when the aircraft took off as the wheels folded up they took the lower wing of the biplane arrangement and folded it up into the upper wing for high speed flight. This meant for takeoff and landing it was a biplane with lots of lift and excellent low speed handling, but for normal flight it was low drag higher speed monowing design.

Those were IS-1, IS-2, IS-3, IS-4, ... by Nikitin and Shevchenko.

Here’s a picture of IS-1.

Any configuration that a person can imagine has been built by the Russians, including AC with aircushion landing gear.

Also look at VVA-14 VTOL and 14M1P. Pictures will follow some day.

Any configuration that a person can imagine has been built by the Russians, including AC with aircushion landing gear.

I know... but now the design bureaus themselves have supercomputers to test hundreds of designs at a time... they should start looking at the creative talent like Bartini and plenty of other designers.

Sometimes a new technology is all that is needed to overcome the barriers that prevented good ideas getting into service all those years ago.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

This:


I took these with a webcam bc I dont have a camera.
edit:I noticed the main guns are out of proportion. Soryy about that.

That's an excellent design, Komissar.

At the same time I should mention that from an structural and certain hydrodynamic stability points of view a smaller length to beam ratio is somewhat advantageous.

From a system design point of view I should add that the Russians have different classes of antisurface missiles. There is the class that includes missile systems like Granit and Bazal't; there is the medium sized missile systems like Moskit and Malakhit; and there is the class that includes Oniks and Termit. There are other classes too.

Your concept design shows a large ship. The Russian capabilities and requirements would never allow for such a ship to rely on an Oniks class missile as its main antisurface missile. You should go to a larger missile class.

To think for a femtosecond that the "current" versions of these larger classes don't exist is identical to thinking that the Russians didn't have T-34-76, T-34-85, ..., KV-1, KV-2, ..., IS-1, IS-2, IS-3, IS-4, ... tanks during "WWII" and that they fought that "war" with only the BT-5 tanks.

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I made a drawing of a stealth cruiser design for russia and will soon upload it. Its specifications:3x2 Koalition turrets, 8x pantsyrs, 160 zirkon ASMs, 32 S-500, 160 S-400 in redut.
Proper number for them :4
names:
Chapayev
Maxim Gorkiy
Kalinin
Chkalov

Let's see it then.

How about calling one of them Крым and another Севастополь.

This:


I took these with a webcam bc I dont have a camera.
edit:I noticed the main guns are out of proportion. Soryy about that.

That's an excellent design, Komissar.

At the same time I should mention that from an structural and certain hydrodynamic stability points of view a smaller length to beam ratio is somewhat advantageous.

From a system design point of view I should add that the Russians have different classes of antisurface missiles. There is the class that includes missile systems like Granit and Bazal't; there is the medium sized missile systems like Moskit and Malakhit; and there is the class that includes Oniks and Termit. There are other classes too.

Your concept design shows a large ship. The Russian capabilities and requirements would never allow for such a ship to rely on an Oniks class missile as its main antisurface missile. You should go to a larger missile class.

To think for a femtosecond that the "current" versions of these larger classes don't exist is identical to thinking that the Russians didn't have T-34-76, T-34-85, ..., KV-1, KV-2, ..., IS-1, IS-2, IS-3, IS-4, ... tanks during "WWII" and that they fought that "war" with only the BT-5 tanks.

Yup I did make it a bit too long since I'm not very good at making overhead drawings. What do you mean the onyx/zirkon isn't a big missile? The granit doesn't have a future this is it since it will have maybe 600-700 km range and hypersonic speed not to mention a warhead bigger than the klub. I don't see how that wouldn't be acceptable for a large ship since all NATO counterparts have much shittier ASMs on them yet they're still claimed to be exceptional.

Your concept design shows a large ship. The Russian capabilities and requirements would never allow for such a ship to rely on an Oniks class missile as its main antisurface missile. You should go to a larger missile class.

The standard future land attack, anti ship, and anti sub Russian Navy missile will be carried in the UKSK launch system.

that means that future land attack missiles to replace the Kalibr and Klub family, the future anti ship missiles (ie brahmos II/ Zirconium) that will replace Onyx, and the future anti sub missile will also be designed to fit in the UKSK launcher.

With scramjet propulsion the new Russian missiles will get much faster but wont get much bigger.

It means the loadout can be decided at port so for example with 20 UKSK launch systems each with 8 tubes you can carry 160 missiles, but depending on the mission they might be a mix of anti ship, land attack and anti sub weapons, and if you meet an ammo tender ship at sea you could change your load out or rearm to suit.

Komissar and Garry,

I had somehow missed your responses. The intention, of course, wasn’t to be rude and to ignore them.

Here are my responses.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:What do you mean the onyx/zirkon isn't a big missile?

Other than implying that you behold an incorrect notion, what kind of response is this?

I am aware of three distinct weight-groups of Russian antiship cruise missiles that are heavier than Oniks. I mentioned two of the weight groups in my previous post.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:The granit doesn't have a future this is it since it will have maybe 600-700 km range and hypersonic speed not to mention a warhead bigger than the klub.

I really didn’t understand what you were trying to say. Please elaborate.

I’ll make a guess about what you were trying to say anyway:

One thing that should be kept in mind is that the performance figures for Russian nonexportable systems, and sometimes the exportable ones too, are always substantially higher than the wikipedia-type figures, sometimes by over an order of magnitude.

In addition, the Russian requirements for antiship missiles with warhead masses of around 1 ton and antiship ballistic missiles have not gone away.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:I don't see how that wouldn't be acceptable for a  large ship since all NATO counterparts have much shittier ASMs on them yet they're still claimed to be exceptional.

What were you expecting of the “US/NATO” systems?

An editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships (can’t remember which one) once said something to the effect that, in comparison to Russian warships, the “US”/”NATO” “warships” are armed only with popguns. The reality is even much more extreme than this metaphorical assessment by Jane's editor.

The Russians have never strived for mere superiority; extreme supremacy has always been one of their basic requirements. Why do you think that they have weapons like Kh-22? Because, Kh-22’s purpose is absolute supremacy. Even the Russian have admitted that Kh-22B can reach a speed of over Mach 6 and an altitude of over 70 km (due to technical reasons, the real figures are substantially higher).

Again, the fact that PPSh-41 is a better weapon than M16 doesn’t mean that the Russians are sticking with the PPSh-41 and have never introduced AK-47, AN-94, or XY-mn.

You want to guess what XY-mn is? It stands for all the assault rifles that Russia has employed without you having heard of them.

GarryB wrote:The standard future land attack, anti ship, and anti sub Russian Navy missile will be carried in the UKSK launch system.

Why do you make that assertion? Give a reason.

In my previous post, I have already made an analogy with the “WWII” situation. In 1941, experts with viewpoints similar to what you just stated were stating that the best tanks that the Russians had where the likes of BT-7 and T-26.

BT-7 and T-26 were very good tanks, but in comparison to the list I gave in my previous post, they were nothing; they were strategic decoys.

Similar arguments have been made over the decades about very similar issues. I have participated in many of those debates. This is just the latest round.

GarryB wrote:that means that future land attack missiles to replace the Kalibr and Klub family, the future anti ship missiles (ie brahmos II/ Zirconium) that will replace Onyx, and the future anti sub missile will also be designed to fit in the UKSK launcher.

With scramjet propulsion the new Russian missiles will get much faster but wont get much bigger.

It means the loadout can be decided at port so for example with 20 UKSK launch systems each with 8 tubes you can carry 160 missiles, but depending on the mission they might be a mix of anti ship, land attack and anti sub weapons, and if you meet an ammo tender ship at sea you could change your load out or rearm to suit.

This is all a copy of material spoken on forums and the like, and I think, for now, I have said enough.

In conclusion, I should add something as a bit of food for thought:

Here is a picture of proekt 12347 with Oniks missile. The first time I saw a picture of this ship with Oniks launchers was about 30 years ago.