Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #2

Podlodka77 wrote:That seems to be the case. The ship is already set up in that dock. What is striking is that it is the end of May and the snow is still on the hills. Admiral Chabanenko is on the far left.

When did the Chabanenko return from dry dock

Big_Gazza wrote:

Podlodka77 wrote:That seems to be the case. The ship is already set up in that dock. What is striking is that it is the end of May and the snow is still on the hills. Admiral Chabanenko is on the far left.

When did the Chabanenko return from dry dock

Hello, bro ....
I'm not at home and I'm on the phone so I can not post any info about that , but "650" is Admiral Chabanenko..

Podlodka77 wrote:

Big_Gazza wrote:

Podlodka77 wrote:That seems to be the case. The ship is already set up in that dock. What is striking is that it is the end of May and the snow is still on the hills. Admiral Chabanenko is on the far left.

When did the Chabanenko return from dry dock

Hello, bro ....
I'm not at home and I'm on the phone so I can not post any info about that , but "650" is Admiral Chabanenko..

Yep agreed, and my question was when did the Adm Chabanenko return to Murmansk berth from her fitting out at the Nerpa yard?  I wasn't aware that she had returned.

Previous post on her relocation back in Sep 2021:

Chabanenko transferred to Nerpa

More or less, "Admiral Kuznetsov" and "Admiral Nakhimov" will be ready at the same time. And of course, there is the mighty "Varyag".
The "Admiral Chabanenko" should be added, as well as three frigates of project 22350, which will be ready from next year; Admiral Gorshkov, Admiral Kasatonov and Admiral Golovko.
I expect that "Admiral Isakov" will be launched soon, as well as that the process of building the frigate of project 22350 will inevitably be accelerated.
It should be added that the last destroyer of the 956 project "Admiral Ushakov" is planned to be returned to service after the overhaul.

As for submarines, the situation is as follows; return of the submarine K-410 "Smolensk" (949A) and K-328 "Leopard" (971M) by the end of 2023.  
In the period 2023/24 we can expect the return of the K-154 "Tiger" (971 but not the M standard), as well as the K-461 "Wolf" (971M). At that time, a new submarine K-564 "Arkhangelsk" of the 885M project will be handed over to the Northern Fleet.

On the other hand, we will have to say goodbye to mighty "Peter the Great" for a few years, because that ship will have to go for modernization.

Big_Gazza wrote:

Podlodka77 wrote:

Big_Gazza wrote:

Podlodka77 wrote:That seems to be the case. The ship is already set up in that dock. What is striking is that it is the end of May and the snow is still on the hills. Admiral Chabanenko is on the far left.

When did the Chabanenko return from dry dock

Hello, bro ....
I'm not at home and I'm on the phone so I can not post any info about that , but "650" is Admiral Chabanenko..

Yep agreed, and my question was when did the Adm Chabanenko return to Murmansk berth from her fitting out at the Nerpa yard?  I wasn't aware that she had returned.

Previous post on her relocation back in Sep 2021:

Chabanenko transferred to Nerpa

See new photo of Chabanenko here:
https://www.russiadefence.net/t5090p625-udaloy-and-sovremennyy-destroyers#383012

Russia could also go this path. Only build a second carrier with improvements, then a significantly larger, based on the well -known design.

The new 003 carrier of China is just before the water.

Russia could also go this path. Only build a second carrier with improvements, then a significantly larger, based on the well -known design.

The problem there is that normally building two the same is economic because the second one being the same as the first means the second one can be built faster because any problems were already solved making the first one so there should be no new surprises.

Obviously if Russia builds two more carriers they have plenty of experience in the use of the Kuznetsov but the shipyard that will build the new carriers didn't build the Kuznetsov so the shipyard making the two new carriers will be making two different unique ships so no benefit of the problems being the same

Making two bigger ships on the other hand makes much more sense and would not work out to be much more expensive.

The Kuznetsov is not a bad ship... its problems are being sorted out, but it is a little too small to safely operate Su-33s, which means a bigger ship makes much more sense... especially when operating naval Su-57s.

For China it made sense to build Kuznetsov type ships, but the shipyards which upgraded and modernised the design also built the new ships so experience is accumulated, which would not be the case for the Russian shipyards making new carriers.

The new helicopter carriers will be interesting because I suspect they will want to operate their new helicopter replacement for the Helix family, and the second ship is supposed to be a drone carrier, which would be a first in the world and would make a lot of sense to have a 40K ton ship dedicated to remote operated platforms... ground and sea and air and undersea perhaps... its ability to land armour would enable unmanned patrol ships to be carried too and also subs recovered and released and of course remote controlled vehicles could be landed by ship or amphibious vehicles land themselves and indeed the deck for helicopters and drones to operate from.... it is supposed to carry 1,000 naval infantry and their armour and helicopter support for 60 days so the space on board for armour and ammo and water and food and helicopters and landing vessels would be significant... but the drone model could be a landing support vessel with suicide drones and recon drones and an enlarged hospital, plus lots of helicopters which are always useful as well as hovercraft and trucks and other things useful in a war zone or a natural disaster zone.

GarryB wrote:For China it made sense to build Kuznetsov type ships, but the shipyards which upgraded and modernised the design also built the new ships so experience is accumulated, which would not be the case for the Russian shipyards making new carriers.

This is not 100% accurate. Their second carrier, the Shandong, was built at Dalian which was where they did the refit of the Liaoning. But this carrier is being built in Shanghai. At a different shipyard.

Pictures from here:

https://vk.com/wall28509091_19840

This is not 100% accurate. Their second carrier, the Shandong, was built at Dalian which was where they did the refit of the Liaoning. But this carrier is being built in Shanghai. At a different shipyard.

There are lots of reasons for doing things different ways and logic can be applied to all of them to make sense.

Building a second carrier in a different yard might make sense because the original yard is busy making other things, or they might want more than one yard to be making carriers and have carrier making experience... it just means the first of a type of ship made in a particular yard will have extra problems that a yard serially producing something they have already made wont need to deal with for each ship made of a type they have already made.

I think they changed yards for political reasons.
The previous head of the shipyard at Dalian was arrested in Xi's anti-corruption drive.

I might be wrong however. It would not be the first time the government split orders between both yards.

The source called the timing of the start of dock repair of the aircraft-carrying cruiser "Admiral Kuznetsov"

From the dry dock at the 35th shipyard in Murmansk, where the aircraft-carrying cruiser "Admiral Kuznetsov" was placed, the water was pumped out, the ship stood on the cages. This was reported by a source in the Russian defense industry.

The only Russian aircraft-carrying cruiser "Admiral Kuznetsov" is moving to the dock repair stage. Back in May of this year, the aircraft carrier was put into dry dock at the 35th shipyard in Murmansk, after which work began on restoring the bridge and pumping out water. The thing is that the batoport for the dock has not yet been made, it will be installed only next year, so the jumper had to be made temporary, after which the water should be pumped out. It took almost two months for everything about everything, and now the ship stood up on special devices designed to keep it in dry dock (cells - approx.). Dock repair of the cruiser will begin in the coming days.

The other day, being in the dock of the 35th plant, the aircraft carrier stood on the cages. This paves the way for the start of her dock repairs, tentatively within the next week.

- leads TASS source words.

As already reported, work in the dock with the ship should be completed before September, after which the "Admiral Kuznetsov" will be taken out of the dock and put back to the outfitting wall. As stated, all work on the cruiser is going according to plan.

Earlier, another source in the defense industry reported that the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser "Admiral Kuznetsov" fleet will return no earlier than 2024, since the scope of work on the ship has increased significantly, in the course of the work carried out on the ship, previously undetected defects were revealed.

https://en.topwar.ru/199217-istochnik-nazval-sroki-nachala-dokovogo-remonta-avianesuschego-krejsera-admiral-kuznecov.html

Hole wrote:These sheds in the right corner of the pic should be painted in another colour.

They might be portable toilet blocks. Yellow and blue would be appropriate in such a case

To start the dock repair of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, the dock of the 35th SRZ was drained

In the coming days, work will begin on the cruiser, the source said.
MOSCOW, July 28. /tass/. The dock of the Murmansk 35th Ship Repair Plant (SRZ, a branch of the Zvezdochka Ship Repair Center, part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation) has been drained to start repairing the heavy aircraft carrier Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov, work will begin in the coming days. This was reported to TASS by a source in the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation.

"There are no obstacles to the start of dock repairs of the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. The dock at the plant is drained, " the source said, adding that work on the cruiser will begin in the coming days.

The press service of the Zvezdochka Ship Repair Center did not comment on the source's information to TASS.

On July 19, a TASS source reported that while in the dock of the 35th SRZ, the aircraft carrier stood on the cages (devices on the bottom of the dock on which the ship's hull is installed-approx. TASS).

The aircraft carrier was docked in mid-May. It was assumed that then it would take two months to restore the bridge and pump out water. It was also reported that the Severodvinsk plant " Sevmash "in 2022 will build a batoport as part of the technical re-equipment of the dry dock at the Murmansk 35th SRZ, which will undergo dock repairs of the cruiser"Admiral Kuznetsov". This was announced to TASS by the company's General Director Mikhail Budnichenko on the occasion of the Submariner's Day, which was celebrated in Russia on March 19. The batoport will replace a temporary bridge in the dock.

Admiral Kuznetsov is the largest ship of the Russian Navy and the only aircraft carrier capable of carrying horizontal take-off and landing aircraft. It is part of the Northern Fleet, the flagship of the Russian Navy.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/15328609

Some pics of the dry dock after draining:

So they started using the drydock before it was even finished?

Yes, obviously... you don't pull a 400 m dry dock out of your anus as if nothing

Would it kill them to splash some concrete down there?

Wouldn't make much difference... they still need to spread the weight of the ship over the same sort of area to stop it from sinking and it would not be much different whether it was rock or concrete.

They appear to retain the old TOR system, the launch tubes at the corner of where the takeoff ramp and the landing strip are... those 6 big white circles are based on the original TOR with 8 missile tubes in a rotary launcher. Each of those represents a single land based TOR from the 1980s, so 6 vehicles with 8 missiles each on each corner of the ship.

It should be fairly straight forward to replace those with the newer smaller missiles in a fixed grid array of 16 missiles each to double the TOR missile load from 192 to 384 missiles without using any extra space.

Of course fixed grid vertical launch tubes would take rather less space than an 8 round rotary launcher so you could get a lot more in than that really.

Shipboard TOR is not a TOR, but KINZHAL. Do not mix up with new hypersonic air to surface missile.

That is why I call it TOR, and it is not even the current land based TOR with 16 missiles ready to fire, it only has 8 missiles in a rotary arrangement.

Upgrading to the current TOR missiles would allow double the missiles carried in the same space... the new reduced sized anti drone models are even smaller and so a mix of the two new types would allow a lot more ready to fire rounds and versatility against a range of target types too.

Eight round revolving underdeck launcher is the standard firing unit of shipboard Kinzhal. Eight-round launchers are usually grouped in a group of three or four in various combinations. Although modular, it is rather bulky and heavy.