Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #1

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

I GOT IT.

"Admiral Kuznecov Ka-27 CSAR crews performing with an excellence".

KoTeMoRe wrote:

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

There's nothing to defend here, the Kuznetsov isn't suited at those birds, and there is no denying it. And hell it will not be suited even if it gets a catapult.
Massive PR failure.

Also they doubled the operational cost for december already. I guess there's only two things to do now, get the ship back and out, and try with an actual adapted carrier instead of this.

Well i said at the start, Kuz is there on PR mission which liked we it or not is failing. Well i dont know if there is going to be much point in it, as they said they would just overhaul and modernise existing layout and systems, there wont be any major concept changes so...

Militarov wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

There's nothing to defend here, the Kuznetsov isn't suited at those birds, and there is no denying it. And hell it will not be suited even if it gets a catapult.
Massive PR failure.

Also they doubled the operational cost for december already. I guess there's only two things to do now, get the ship back and out, and try with an actual adapted carrier instead of this.

Well i said at the start, Kuz is there on PR mission which liked we it or not is failing. Well i dont know if there is going to be much point in it, as they said they would just overhaul and modernise existing layout and systems, there wont be any major concept changes so...

Which is logical there's no point starting by these designs, if they want a carrier they will have to go the US way. It's as easy as that.
Also we are in total agreement, it's a nightmare PR disaster. But what scares me the most is that they have managed to play it nice for many weeks, although I suspect there have been a lot more hairy situations. So Holy F*** why do they keep doing this.

Eastern Europeans just don't know the boundary between brave and irresponsibly stupid.

KoTeMoRe wrote:
Eastern Europeans just don't know the boundary between brave and irresponsibly stupid.

That is why they won second world war, and now they don't speak German....

Ned86 wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:
Eastern Europeans just don't know the boundary between brave and irresponsibly stupid.

That is why they won second world war, and now they don't speak German....

... You're talking to an Eastern European...

What is good for SHTF situations is disastrous for care-taking situations. Basically it's always switch mode. Only extremes.

I don't think that doing the same old is helping anyone here.

KoTeMoRe wrote:

Militarov wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

There's nothing to defend here, the Kuznetsov isn't suited at those birds, and there is no denying it. And hell it will not be suited even if it gets a catapult.
Massive PR failure.

Also they doubled the operational cost for december already. I guess there's only two things to do now, get the ship back and out, and try with an actual adapted carrier instead of this.

Well i said at the start, Kuz is there on PR mission which liked we it or not is failing. Well i dont know if there is going to be much point in it, as they said they would just overhaul and modernise existing layout and systems, there wont be any major concept changes so...

Which is logical there's no point starting by these designs, if they want a carrier they will have to go the US way. It's as easy as that.
Also we are in total agreement, it's a nightmare PR disaster. But what scares me the most is that they have managed to play it nice for many weeks, although I suspect there have been a lot more hairy situations. So Holy F*** why do they keep doing this.

Eastern Europeans just don't know the boundary between brave and irresponsibly stupid.

Well i can only imagine how many "danger close" situations they had...

KoTeMoRe wrote:

... You're talking to an Eastern European...

What is good for SHTF situations is disastrous for care-taking situations. Basically it's always switch mode. Only extremes.

I don't think that doing the same old is helping anyone here.

Particular Accident happened right after they replaced cable with "new" one. Probably crew haven't done it properly or cable was in bad condition or something else.....we will know soon....

So this was surprising even for Russian navy....
anyway accident happens...
There is no need that because of stupid cable, or broken mechanism offend all eastern Europeans.

Ned86 wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:

... You're talking to an Eastern European...

What is good for SHTF situations is disastrous for care-taking situations. Basically it's always switch mode. Only extremes.

I don't think that doing the same old is helping anyone here.

Accident happened right after they replace cable with "new" one. Probably crew haven't done it properly or cable was in bad condition or something else.....we will know soon....

So this was surprising even for Russian navy....
anyway accident happens...
There is no need that because of stupid cable, or broken mechanism offend all eastern Europeans.

Once again, I'd be offending myself. Second the fact that they are having known issues bite back, is no mistake, it's lack of foresight. Third this is the typical "let's do it and see how it pans out improvisation" I've been witnessing all my life, including personal choices, like my own.

I can list at least a dozen cases (starting by my marriage and my migration out of the Balkans). We're always facing situations we know are hairy, ill-thought, half planned, irrationally designed, and we go on with them. And guess what, most of the time we have to devote twice the work to make them run. That's the definition of inefficiency. And that's how it is in Eastern Europe. Don't take me wrong, I wouldn't change my life, my opinions, my experience with anything else in this world, but let's not pretend we're super accurate and super brainiac people when it comes to life or death choices. That's why we usually compensate with bravery and(or) hard work.

I ain't defending anything here, they clearly suck, but a few things to consider:

- This is first time in it's history that Russian Navy is doing carrier ops in actual war. First time that non-NATO navy is doing it since end of Cold War in fact.

- The are doing it with only vessel of the type, that was never good from the get go and that was supposed to be in overhaul ATM.

- They never stopped carrier operation like some suggested after MiG-29 splash.

- PR aspect is overblown because after ''aborted invasion of UK'' month ago nobody is even reporting on this and when it does get reported is is quickly replaced with next big thing 6 hours later. Last time I checked, Mordor is still winning this war so that particular PR will be way more important down the road.

- As long as nobody is killed they might as well chuck all the birds overboard Saigon-style, it doesn't matter as long as the data is collected.

- If they stayed in port then there would be no embarrassment but they would also have zero clue about what specific areas they suck at.

- Cable snapped twice. So they suck at all things cable related. But this also means that pilots did not fuck up and that aircraft operate properly. Hell, other than cable you can say that even that ship operates properly (for now that is...).

- Russian carrier ops suck. They suck so hard. But how much exactly? They will finally know after this. And it is better to learn those things in BS excuse for war like Syria than at some later war that might actually be relevant unlike this one.  

Or should they start designing and building next AC platform under assumption that they know all this, that they are super awesome at AC ops, and that they just need to keep doing the same thing as before?


Keep flying, keep splashing if you have to, keep not dying and most important of all, keep gathering data.



Additional tip: Someone should really look into that cable thingy...  

If somehow it is found the cables are "reconditioned" from Soviet stocks, heads will roll.

KoTeMoRe wrote:If somehow it is found the cables are "reconditioned" from Soviet stocks, heads will roll.

I somehow highly doubt they made new arresting cables like... ever.

Its not like arrestor cable snapping is especially rare, there is plenty of footage of US arrestor wires snapping on Youtube.

Twice in a short time is not good though, could be systematic but could just be bad luck.

Apparently the Mig-29K lands faster than Su-33 so could be overstressing the design, though haven't heard of India having arrestor issues.
Maybe a batch of cables below spec?
Also if it was out of order waiting for parts then possibly something temp-fixed re-broke?

Aside from the pilots surviving it's somewhat impressive there are no reports of injury or death to deck crew.

hoom wrote:Its not like arrestor cable snapping is especially rare, there is plenty of footage of US arrestor wires snapping on Youtube.

Twice in a short time is not good though, could be systematic but could just be bad luck.

Apparently the Mig-29K lands faster than Su-33 so could be overstressing the design, though haven't heard of India having arrestor issues.
Maybe a batch of cables below spec?
Also if it was out of order waiting for parts then possibly something temp-fixed re-broke?

Aside from the pilots surviving it's somewhat impressive there are no reports of injury or death to deck crew.

When we are at it, my favourite snap

hoom wrote:.............

Aside from the pilots surviving it's somewhat impressive there are no reports of injury or death to deck crew.

About that, I noticed that there are barely any crew on the deck during takeoffs and landings, so that is one upside to whatever approach they seem to be using on Kuz.

Militarov wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:If somehow it is found the cables are "reconditioned" from Soviet stocks, heads will roll.

I somehow highly doubt they made new arresting cables like... ever.

... the worst part is that I'm not even doubting this.

(Posting for the first time in a while, but anyway...)

Yeah, a PR disaster for sure, but it also could have been worse. Pilots are OK and the ship is still afloat and operational. It also seems that it's not the fault of the aircraft, or pilot training, or even crew training (atleast for the most part...). But man... they must have been aware of the issues, really risky.

The negative PR is countered by the fact that most people, who obviously don't know much about military matters or follow the Syrian conflict regularly, are probably not too aware of the scale of casualties that a country is "supposed" to suffer during an intervention. Sure, they kinda know that for Murica they have been low overall since the Gulf War, but they don't know the exact numbers. So a few aircraft here and there... doesn't matter in one way or another, and they're of course right. And in general the Russian casualties have been low. If this ends up being the last loss for Kuznetsov (and to be honest, it really should be), then who will remember it even a few years down the line?

Now the question is: are they going to actually continue operations or are they going to send the carrier back home? If they keep this up, they might lose a third jet, which would be... well, really bad and arguably a much worse PR disaster than just giving up carrier operations in Syria altogether. If losing a single Mig-29K wasn't a huge deal (and it wasn't), then this was 10x more embarrassing, but still sort of manageable... losing a third one would be 100x or worse. Idk...

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

There is no need to defend anything. Incidents, accidents and f**k-ups can happen and do happen to anybody anytime.

Let the nay-saying, CDG aircraft carrier loving, A-Burke worshipping crew have a field day on these minor incidents where no one got hurt (apart from egos).

You want major incidents on aircraft carrier? Here are the biggest ones I remember:

USS Forrestal: 134 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

USS Enterprise: 28 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire

KoTeMoRe wrote:

Militarov wrote:

KoTeMoRe wrote:If somehow it is found the cables are "reconditioned" from Soviet stocks, heads will roll.

I somehow highly doubt they made new arresting cables like... ever.

... the worst part is that I'm not even doubting this.

Well see, i look at it like this. They probably made certain amount of spare wires at the time when carrier was made, probobably more than one set was on the carrier itself... so... they didnt launch many aircraft anyways so wear and tear was like minimal...

Chances are wires that are used atm are sozdane v SSSR.

In the meantime they might fire up those Ka-52s and give them some mileage. Hermes missile testing is still on the menu right?

TheArmenian wrote:

Militarov wrote:Yeah... where is Admiral Kuz defence panel to post something encouraging coz i have nothing...

There is no need to defend anything. Incidents, accidents and f**k-ups can happen and do happen to anybody anytime.

Let the nay-saying, CDG aircraft carrier loving, A-Burke worshipping crew have a field day on these minor incidents where no one got hurt (apart from egos).

You want major incidents on aircraft carrier? Here are the biggest ones I remember:

USS Forrestal: 134 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

USS Enterprise: 28 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire

I wouldnt call this minor incident. Minor incident is when you have 400 deck fighters and you lose two a year due to accidents. When you have 20 and you lose two in 2 weeks.. that is just very bad sign. NATO lost two aircraft due to non-combat causes in 1999. too, but it was a pilot error and they launched like almost 40.000 sorties.

Well yeah, agreed, however USN at that point had like what 25 active carriers? When you operate alot and many, accidents are to happen. Its like you have two taxi companies and you have 10 in one and 100 cars in second one.

PapaDragon wrote:
In the meantime they might fire up those Ka-52s and give them some mileage. Hermes missile testing is still on the menu right?

We havent seen them, Ka-52Ks have been flying but just around the carrier as of now.

The Liaoning has a barricade & it was tested with J-15, but it's unbelievable that Adm. K, her sister ship, doesn't have 1! Just that alone would be a good reason not to go to Med. before adding the rigging for it!
If the arresting gear is broken, it would be such a recovery even if the jet itself has no problems. Not all pilots had enough training prior to their 1st deployment with MiG-29K- NITKA in Crimea was still being rebuilt/upgraded & the 1 in Yeisk was completed only about a year ago.
http://www.vz.ru/politics/2016/12/5/666349.print.html
Perhaps the pilot didn't have the option to cut 1 engine off to save fuel & buy time to recover with 1 remaining, either due to lack of training or plane's/carrier operational limitations at the time?
http://gordonua.com/publications/admiral-kuznecov-zachem-rossiya-ispolzuet-avianosec-v-sirii-162053.html

kvs wrote:Bring on the negative PR.  Those that need to consume their hate fantasies projected on Russia can lap it up.
Probably the only reason the Kuznetsov was deployed was to test for failures.  As noted above, it likely never got
new arrestor cables.   There are probably other dead rats which are the legacy of the good old 1990s which
we have not seen yet or know about.  

Some heads will roll from this exercise.   And Russia haters can not bank on these "failures" being there when it counts.

They could do all that without going to Syria. Despite common belief, deck operations do not differ much between wartime and peacetime, except pace of the launches and amount of warload you deal with. And they have far more other shit to sort before those two.

So yeah, this was bad idea to start with.

"There was no issue with an aircraft or pilot. This new cable was just installed on the deck and it was the first landing of the aircraft on this new cable. And most likely the crash is to be blamed on the quality of the cable. Its still required to determine year of manufacture for the cable and the quality of its installation". - Gazeta.ru