The funny thing is we actually had to pay off Ukrainians working at their plant to smuggle the technical documents out of Ukraine and give them jobs building it here. How we didn't have the plans in Russia is beyond me but this actually happened. We didn't have time to make improvements, they were needed 5 years ago.
It is always amusing to hear the rats of the former eastern block tell us how bad everything was under Russian oppression (specifically Russian oppression mind you... their own countrymen were blameless) yet they all seemed to have been largely subsidised and supported by the Soviet Union... sorry to say, but cutting off that dead wood was the best thing that ever happened to Russia and the longer they can keep their distance the better for Russia... they are just leeches looking for a host to feed off.
I rather suspect changes will be made to the design, simply for the purposes of making the engines... I expect current Russian tooling is a bit better than current Ukrainian tooling and that they have more options in fabricating parts than the Orcs do. Often many innovations occur on the factory floor while things are being built, and they could certainly have a design team or two looking at the existing designs and working to make them more effective or efficient or more powerful.
If we can make a nuclear ice breaker we should be able to make a nuclear destroyer... right?
Very true, but the problem there exists too... a destroyer will need to move rather faster than an icebreaker ever needs to move, so multiple reactors will be needed even for ships of similar weight the destroyer will need more to get the better speed.
The other factor is that they might want to go for electric drive which will be complex and interesting and ultimately rather useful.
The propulsion system should already be complete if using something similar to 22220. The Redut from Gorshkov is finally ready so putting that on it should not be a problem. Once the Nakhimov tests the universal VLS should work out any bugs integrating that. I don't care if it is only a 50k tonne carrier, but it needs catapults and forget about adding ASM launch cells. It needs the hanger space.
If the UKSK-M is truly universal and includes SAMs (ie up to S-500) then I think that having them on the CVN would be worth the bother... simply because I think it will be useful to have such an anti ballistic weapon on board the ship, and also the anti sub ballistic missiles like 91ER1 that the UKSK launcher can use is a high speed response launch weapon for use against any enemy subs detected near the carrier... a mach 2 40km range weapon that can drop a torpedo within a km or so of an enemy sub is rather useful especially when the sub wont know it is under attack until the torpedo splashes into the water very close by...
Indeed cats are a must because the whole purpose is situational awareness and target detection for the surface ships and subs nearby and you only get that with a real and proper AWACS... the Ka-31/35 AEW is much better than nothing but a proper AWACS platform is what it is all about.
And it is not about having them because america and france and the uk have them, it is about giving your surface ships proper air support.
It wont win WWIII, but for the peace time use its value will be enormous in terms of information and target and threat detection.
Mach 3 is min speed for ramjet. Meteor can throtle as much as it want it will need continuous power to sustain such speeds. And needs lot of power.
Not strictly true, a ramjet will operate in a fairly wide range of speeds, though it will be more efficient at higher speeds it can still operate at very low speeds.
The I-15 polikarpov biplane was fitted with ramjet engines to test it to see what performance increase it achieved... despite the added drag of two rather large ramjets under its lower wings they boosted top speed by about 60-70km per hour from memory.
Kh-31 which is bigger and mach 3.5 which is a normal speed for ramjet and also the typical speed of french air to air missiles, doesn't have such range.
The first model Kh-31s didn't have amazing performance, the upgraded models were good to about 200-240km from memory.
The Meteor will be operating at higher altitudes where performance is much better.
Supercruise still need much more fuel than subsonic cruise.
Not really. Supercruise means travelling often twice as fast as a subsonic equivalent, without the 3 to 4 times more fuel consumption of using an afterburner.
In effect they often end up burning more fuel but getting to the destination in half the time so it burns more fuel per minute but not double the fuel burn, yet it covers ground at twice the speed so in effect probably uses less fuel and takes much less time.
2 times more according to that.
Two times more fuel per hour but travelling twice as fast, so without the supercruise it might take 6 hours to travel 3,000km at 5 tons of fuel per hour so 5 times 6 hours means you are using 30 tons of fuel to travel 3,000km. With supercruise you use twice as much fuel per hour... which means 10 tons of fuel per hour, but you are also going twice as fast so it only takes 3 hours to travel 3,000km, so three hours at 10 tons of fuel per hour means you use... 30 tons of fuel to fly 3,000km so practically the same amount of fuel but you do it in half the time.
Most importantly in full AB you might travel even faster so it only takes 2 hours to fly 3,000km but you burn fuel at a much higher rate of 25 tons of fuel per hour... so the 3,000km flight will burn 50 tons of fuel... the aircraft might only be able to carry 40 tons so you either need to top up with inflight refuelling or you will need to land to refuel.
LCS has a 57mm gun. The one with the expensive ammunition (which will not be poduced) is Zumwalt.
It is American... I am sure they will find a way to make it expensive...
You are completely ignoring insane technological advantage that Russian adversaries have in your own admission. And the fact that even if they improve others will not be standing still and will match and exceed several fold every improvement Russians make.
Russia does not need carriers to fight France or the UK or the US or anyone else... the best way to fight those countries is with ICBMs and SLBMs, or at a tactical level with Zircon.
Russia needs a carrier to protect its surface fleet of ships and subs so they can operate anywhere around the world with a chance of operating safely... the carrier is eyes and ears and air defence expansion/extension for the navy.
Lets assume for a moment that Russia can by some miracle actually builds a CVN and by some even greater miracle they don't suffer bankruptcy, societal collapse and famine in order to pay for it (yet again).
A Russian carrier might cost 4-6 billion but that will be paid over the decade and a half it will take to get it into the water... it is a force multiplier... and not everyone can afford them but having a group of large ships operating with a carrier is effectively the equivalent of having a much larger group of large ships which wont be any cheaper or safer than buying a carrier.
- Primitive Russian radars will not be able to detect anything on either water or in the air before it's too late (or at all).
They would be much worse off without air based AWACS support.
- Obsolete Russian aircraft will be blown out of the sky by superior aircraft (Rafalle) and missiles (Meteor) before they even know enemy is there (those few that even manage to take off). Sukhois are 80s era junk, Su-35 is just repackaged 80s era junk for export and T-50 is dead on arrival as has been already pointed out.
They have 10-15 years to improve them.
- Russian escort frigates will be sunk by superior enemy missiles (Scalp) long before they can detect the enemy or launch their inaccurate missiles with oversized warheads.
If the surface group consists of only Frigates and Corvettes then it wont be a global fleet... with destroyers and cruisers the French will suffer what a frigate and corvette based Russian force would suffer.
- Those few missiles that do get launched by Russian ships will all be intercepted by superior AA missiles (Aster).
A force with larger ships will carry rather more missiles and rather more potent missiles.
An this is just playing on easy against low grade fleet like French. Facing enemy with actual navy like Japan, UK or South Korea would be infinitely worse, I don't think it could be even called combat, more like massacre (as if French scenario wasn't one already)
What makes you think any of those navies are better than the French navy?
Even something like China could mop the floor with Russian CSG.
They don't even have any aircraft for their carriers... they would fare poorly against Backfires with Kh-32s and Onyx missiles let alone MiG-31s with Kinzhals.
Out of respect for valiant men and women of USN I will not describe scenario which would involve them because to pit them (even hypothetically) against such inferior adversary would be disservice to them and to equipment they wield, one which makes everything else on the planet (UK, Japanese, French...) look like used condom.
Oh please... they couldn't even operate near Russian waters and that is without using the navy, which I would admit would not trouble them much but why would it?
Russia could certainly not face any of the worlds major navies WITHOUT A CVN. You claim it is a reason not to bother, so in effect you are saying that countries like France and the UK and South Korea will be able to dictate to Russia what happens in places where they have strength.
Sure sometimes that is inevidible... I mean even in georgia in 2008 even the mighty all powerful USN was reduced to using strong language simply because it was not in a position to effect the outcome in any way.
If it was Venezuela we were talking about even now the Russians are not in a position to send a surface group to scare the Americans off, but that is the eventual goal because if they don't bother then the US will just dictate terms and bully anyone who wants to cooperate with Russia and Russia will be isolated and cornered... China isn't going to help and neither will Japan or UK or France... Russian needs to do it themselves... and the boost in international trade will pay for it all and more.
If Russia wants to expand its capabilities... plasma TVs for instance... they wont sell any in the US or Europe and Asia has the market all sewn up, but in Africa and central and south america where the love value of the ruble, they can buy a cheap Russian TV for a fraction of the cost of a European one and even cheaper than an Asian one... use the money earned to improve quality and technology and performance and pretty soon you will be competing with the best anywhere and the value of the ruble means you can undercut any western maker... the only thing that would stop you is that the country you sell them to has just been overthrown by the CIA so they can sell their mineral wealth to the US companies... what are you going to do about it?
There is no catching up to technological advantage you described and that Russian adversaries posses, one which will keep growing ever larger as time goes by.
Of course... you can't win so don't even bother.... you are whipped boy... how sad...
Russia does not need to match the US in numbers, and if the US needs to concentrate more forces to match Russia that just means more targets.
Two CVNs along with the Kuznetsov means a minimum of two carriers should be available at any one time... sometimes all three will be there.
Instead of crappy F-35s they can go for Su-57Ks... they wont make a huge number of carrier based fighters so they should be the best they can make.
In this situation any further investment in Russian surface fleet is criminal negligence and ordering Russian sailors to board and operate surface vessels would be mass murder and high treason.
Best course of action would be to immediately disband the surface navy, scrap all vessels and redirect all funds to branches of military that could be at least theoretically capable of
actually fighting the enemy even if winning remains hopelessly out of reach.
Did you quote directly from the US State Department leaflet on WWIII with Russia, or did you paraphrase it?
I didn't post it for the simulated combat, I posted it for the range graph. It is an official marketing material that MBDA claims can go 300km. Whether you believe it is propaganda or not isn't debatable as you are the only one that can decide what you believe. I just state the facts.
If the CVN fighter is an Su-57K model then it will have the R-37M at the very least but in 10-15 years it will probably have a scramjet powered missile with much much better performance.
Note the advantage of scramjet over ramjet is a bit like supercruise... very similar fuel burn rate but operating at more than twice the speed... a mach 9 AAM would be a rather potent weapon as it would leave the target very little time to respond... I mean moving at about 3km per second we are talking about a minute and a half to fly 270km...
Vlad what was the point of banning everyone? You are even more critical than they are ! In your own words Russia will be obliterated by one carrier group and there is no chance, everything will be in flames and done for.
He is talking about pitting the French navy against a frigate and corvette based green navy for Russia. He is suggesting that large ships like destroyers and cruisers and aircraft carriers are worth the enormous cost.
And I agree with him.
Or are you suggesting that the Russian Army and the Strategic missile forces can defend Russia and so the cost of the Russian Air force and Aerospace Defence forces is just an expensive waste of time and effort and money.
If the meteor is so perfect why aren't only buying that instead of Mica ?
A ramjet powered AAM is a good idea, but a scramjet powered one would be even better...
If the French carrier is 1000km+ off of our coast, what suicide drone would we use to attack it? How would it be better than supersonic AShMs? The French have several Mistral launchers on their carriers, they are really good at shooting down drones in the air or on the sea. I think it would be better to have super long range torpedo drones that you could drop from an aircraft that would bug out and ride them to the target.
Well now that the INF treaty is being deep sixed, they could develop 3-4 thousand km range ground launched missiles with scramjet propulsion that could be adapted to fit into their new UKSK-M launch tubes... it would be very useful...