Its hard to say what this really means. It could mean a) the fire and drydock incidents cause the delays b) the lack of a drydock is the delay or c) the refurb has become more ambitious and extensive. Maybe they decided t put 4 caliber missile in each silo to replace Granit which would be a withering 48 cruise missiles. Imagine the ship launches 48 missiles and then its air wing as a second wave...OMG!!!
To be honest I think it would be better use of the space on the ship where the 12 Granits were located to fill it with Aviation fuel so they could operate their aircraft for longer patrols... most of the ships the K will be operating with will have Zircon which will be much more capable at a fraction of the size and weight... a tiny corvette could use its small size and high speed to zoom up and launch from closer range and then zip back under the air protection provided by the K to get away safe.
It just means that they will keep throwing money on this white elephant
It is their only working fixed wing aircraft carrier and will be for the next decade... its aircraft can get airborne from her deck even in port... can't say the same about the Ford class helicopter carrier.
air wing (which never worked to begin with, Yak-38s had vastly more reliable track record)
Stop being silly.... the Yak-38 has a war load on four weapon pylons of two gun pods and two R-60 AAMs, or two 32 shot 57mm rocket pods and two gun pods. Its most potent air to air payload was four R-60s. It could carry two AS-7 command guided missiles but they were not particularly accurate or effective.
The Yak-38M had more powerful engines but was still subsonic which effectively meant it had a much shorter range because of the increased thrust but couldn't fly any faster...
The Su-25 model aircraft on the Kuznetsov has no capacity to carry weapons but has better flight range and speed than the Yak-38M... put the 30mm gun back on it and it would fly rings around the old plane.
The MiG-29KR and Su-33 are orders of magnitude better than any model Yak VSTOL fighter ever designed and made... which is why they are gone and the MiG and Su-33 are in service.
Only OMG is that this disaster still hasn't been cut up for scrap while several air squadrons and enough crewmen for fleet of frigates wastes away on it
Yeah.... wasn't that long ago you were demanding the same for the Ivan Gren.... now you want more built... do you not think it is possible that with its problems sorted out that having the Kuznetsov is much better than not having any fixed wing naval aircraft carrier for the next decade?
By ur logic, the US need to scrap the Ford CVN instead of fixing it.
They need to take the major problems seriously and fix them ASAP...
than the Su-33 or MiG-29K? Compared to them, it lacked range, war load & was a widowmaker worse than the Harrier.
The Yak-38 and Yak-38M were terrible aircraft... much worse than the Harrier, and a lot more Yaks crashed than Harriers even when you take in to account the Harriers went in to war zones and they only tested a couple of Yaks in Afghanistan... but the Yaks were not widow makers... lots more crashed and were destroyed than with Harriers but far fewer pilots and crew died in them because of their automated ejection system.
Forc is brand new, has decades of use left in it and it can be fixed
Ford is brand new and fundamentally does not work... it does not perform the function required of carrying about fixed wing aircraft for their deployment world wide... fixed wing aircraft cannot operate from the Ford... certainly not the fixed wing aircraft they currently carry.
Kuznetzov is ancient and was useless even when it wasn't broken
It was built in the 1980s... if you put it in the US Navy it would fit inn the upper part of the Nimitz class... there would be 6 American Nimitz class carriers older than it and 4 launched after it...
How many patrols did Kuznetzov complete in it's existence?
Why do you think the previous number of patrols during a long period or economic turmoil, has anything to do with Russias future need for air power at sea?
You do know that before the US built aircraft carriers they didn't have any... so why build them because they never used them before?
And was able to fly off the ship and do the job it was designed for
How many times Su-33 or MiG-29K did the same?
A hell of a lot more often than the Yak-38 or Yak-38M ever did...
Numbers disagree
It crashed a lot more than the Harrier did, but did not kill as many crew, but it could still fairly be called a widow maker, because it was not made or used in large numbers but there were a lot of crashes.
You could argue that the auto ejection system doomed the aircraft to a crash in situations the pilot might have managed to recover from, but I doubt the number of aircraft that would have saved would compensate for the extra lives that would have been lost in the process of trying to save the aircraft.
the VMF shouldn't be complaining of not having Yak-38s anymore.
Ignore PD, the VMF chose to replace the useless Yak-38s with Su-33s.
When they got the chance to buy MiG-29KRs they took that opportunity too.
They gonna keep it as a short time frame need for training and what not. Over time they will just phase it out when a new jump jet is made and we already know they are working on one.
No. They were mentioning the obscure possibility that a new aircraft that can take off vertically might be considered... I would not bet my house on that though.
Unless there is an amazing breakthrough a VSTOL fighter is terribly inefficient and weak as an asset.
Once it's out, new ideas for carriers will be made.
The purpose of an aircraft carrier for Russia is to provide air support for surface ship groupings... it does not need to strike land targets or sink enemy ships.... they are working on long range cruise and anti ship and land attack missiles to do all that... all they need is a CAP component to protect the ships from attack.
I suspect their first CVN will include a lot of drone technology and other exotic and clever ideas... they are not limited by the western rigid ideology regarding Nimitz type 100K ton carriers.
Remember that... the Russian aircraft carrier is merely to bring land based air power support for ships along for the ride no matter where they go.... not a huge priority at the moment because they are not sending large groups of ships on long duration voyages... in 5-10 years time however they will want to start to roam and find new customers and partners... for which an aircraft carrier would be useful.
If Russian aircraft carriers were only for fighting HATO and the US then I would agree they are pointless... for WWIII they will make little to no difference in the result... but for peace time use and for use in small conflicts that go on all the time they are USEFUL.
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Big_Gazza
Rebuilding them would be far more expensive than building brand new ships, and would, quite frankly, be rather humiliating. If Russia was really needing a new carrier in the next decade they could simply order a "next-gen" Kuznetsov from the Chinese.
