Home
Latest images
Register
Log in
Ofcourse there is a risk if a single huge carrier got hit. But there are strong arguments in favour of 90k, 100k ton carriers. The US looked at more smaller carriers, but deemed it too expensive, I understand.
Nope.
The bigger a carrier is the more expensive it is... both to buy and to operate.
Having one ship carrying 100 aircraft vs 10 carriers carrying 10 each means one set of radars and sensors and air defence and electronics and propulsion etc etc and more importantly one carrier group.
Having 10 separate carriers with much smaller air wings and ten sets of radars and engines etc etc is not actually cheaper at all, though it would take a minimum of ten anti ship missiles to defeat and ten carriers can be sent in ten different directions, the problem is is ten aircraft a viable force or will you find yourself sending 4-5 carriers for every mission?
the US chose 100K ton carriers because they demanded a strike capability that the Russians didn't need or want. When you carry strike aircraft you need tankers and AWACS and support fighters... you can't get away with a 10 aircraft carrier... you need 40-80 at the very least to maintain air protection over the carrier group and to send bombers with a fighter air cover group and of course recon and jamming aircraft to deal with enemy air defences... plus of course anti sub helicopters and aircrew recovery helicopters etc etc.
In comparison the Russian carriers are air defence primarily with anti ship capability in the form of large supersonic Granit anti ship missiles under the main flight deck. (Kiev class and Kuznetsov)
And nothing is deemed too expensive for the US military...
In this scenario small carriers will be based on Leader type nuclear destroyer which will drastically lower construction and exploitation costs.
I suspect they probably mean a double hull vessel perhaps using a cat design... which would actually be rather interesting... having two separate runways and two separate landing strips with angled decks so all four processes could go on one after the other...
At the end of the day there is no such thing as a cheap aircraft carrier...
Depending of course on your strategy. Russian fleet is so far not foreseen to wage colonial wars and change not compliant governments using hr Goebbels cr@p propaganda. v
True, but there is value in being able to send a carrier group to an unstable region to assert your will... having an operational carrier group off the coast in the Kosovo conflict and being able to fly aircraft in the area and I am sure NATO would not have been nearly so cocky, and the result might not have been such a foregone conclusion.
Not suggesting new Russian carriers would have saved the day, but the west would have been rather more willing to listen I suspect and actively taking part in Libyas civil war in the earlier stages might have stopped it progressing to a bloody civil war that ISIS seems likely to win.
So no extra costs and less mission compromising to a scenarios if AC is lost. [/qutoe]
Does that really make sense?
Make the PAK FA cheap and basically rubbish so if one gets shot down it is not such a big deal??? Really?
BTW unfortunately unlikely Yak-141 will be resumed and I wonder how many PAK-FA derivatives can be based on 20-30k ship?
Likely not enough.
General rule of thumb is one aircraft per 1K ton so a 20-30K ton ship would have 20-30 aircraft.
Interesting how deep needs to be hull redesigned to make if an effective AC? Originally leader is 14-16k ton class. So they would need to make 24-30?
Or take "based on" loosely and perhaps look at double or even triple hull variations...
[qutoe]
Imo Leader is not viable platform for any type of carrier, unless maybe some kind of helicopter carrier, its simply way to small, 200m long 15ish k ton displacement. Even ill fated Kiev class was 270+ m long and it couldnt rly support anything but VTOLs.
A twin or triple hull version with EM cats could be an option but a proper large vessel makes more sense to me.
Well words about Leader based AC were of Russian admiral not mine
The question is what does he mean by based and what does he mean by carrier... are we talking as I have mentioned multihulled fixed wing carrier or are we talking single hull Mistral replacement...
