Sure they wanted the Mistral but the mistral's did not have Anti ship, Anti-air or Anti- sub missiles and it could only launch choppers because at this time Russian does not have a functional VTOL to put on it.
They didn't design the Mistral... if they did it would have had a UKSK launcher and probably much more substantial anti air/sub/ship capabilities. (note UKSK launchers allow land attack, anti ship, and anti sub options in one launcher).
It was a helicopter carrier and was never intended for STOVL use... at 20,000 tons it was never intended as a fixed wing aircraft carrier.
And again not really multi-role, they could not really kill surface ships, they could not use their aircraft offensively well, the best thing the Kiev could do was have the planes pot shot at the Carrier group. The Kiev's planes had no airbrone radar they would have been slaughtered by a Carriers fighters which would have had more than enough time to sortie them against the Yak's of that era. They had a couple of Anti ship missiles not enough to threaten anything really that had AA defenses.
The last Kiev class ship had 16 Supersonic Shipwreck anti ship missiles which would have seriously challenged the defences of any 1970s carrier group.
I mean in 1982 exocet was sinking british ships armed with seawolf and sea dart... on paper both of those were able to defeat subsonic anti ship missiles... when an American AEGIS class cruiser shot down a civilian airliner from Iranian waters it took them 90 seconds to launch their STANDARD SAM because of a fault... if it had been a real aggressor... just one... they would have been in serious trouble.
The Kiev was built to protect the subs and act has air cover.
Same as the Kuznetsov and the new CVN they are talking about.
Mistral is a landing vessel for humanitarian disaster relief and also landing operations... it would operate with a fixed wing carrier supporting it like the Kuznetsov.
Multi-role vessel does not mean strapping everything under the sun onto ONE SHIP. You are blind, I am talking in facts and I am trying to be nice and educate you, that the design you propose will not work, again you CANNOT strap everything onto one hull and expect it to work well they would have to make the helio carriers hull MASSIVe to accommodate for all of that we are talking well excess of 80k tons and then nevermind all the mechanical issues it would suffer.
Perhaps you should listen more and preach less then.
I am not suggesting making the Mistral a super multirole do everything... I am suggesting that a Mistral class vessel has lots of sensors and helicopters and is a command centre but could also perform humanitarian missions with its 200 bed hospital and its transport helos and land vehicles (trucks and the like) as well as the landing vessels to deliver said trucks and vehicles... it would be handy in island groups like Indonesia or Fiji or coastal africa, asia, or central or south america.
A converted Delta class SSBN with 150 tubes of cruise missiles and another Delta class SSBN with 150 tubes for large SAMs able to carry quad or larger loads of smaller missiles in each tube, could operate with that helicopter carrier... the helicopter carrier provides the sensors and command and communications role, while the two subs provide the fire power for both attack and defence... for hundreds of anti aircraft missiles and hundreds of land attack cruise missiles or anti ship missiles or anti sub missiles...
The Gorsh frigate is considered Multi-role for them THAT is a multi-role ship, one that can attack land, sea, air, subs and other ships.
It is merely the presence of UKSK launchers and medium and long range SAM launch tubes that makes it so... the combination of sonar on the subs and radar on the Mistral means all it needs is to remove those SLBMs and replace them with UKSK and SAMs to get something multirole and mobile.
Yasen are purpose built SSGNs, there is no rationale converting old, relatively noisy and with little to no life spared in the hulls like the Deltas to such a role.
The Delta IVs are hardly old boats... and who cares if they are noisy... in land attack mode you could launch 150 x 5,500km range land attack cruise missiles from the south atlantic at Europe or the US... or from the south pacific with 150 x nuclear powered unlimited range cruise missiles...
A single Delta IV, as a bench test, could be converted when and if being phased out there shall still life left in the hull.
Why just a single hull?
This is a new thing... but it does not need an expensive new super quiet sub to base it around... hell you could probably do it to a Sierra sub or an Oscar if you wanted.
That assuming SSBNs total numbers won't need to be increased by then.
8 x SSBNs are plenty... they wont need any more for a while unless they want to massively increase their warhead numbers.
The new start treaty doesn't last forever and so when it has expired they can have as many warheads as they want... I suspect they will expand their arsenal, but only to try to force the US to include all nuclear armed powers in the limitations agreement.
And when such SSBN will have less than a decade left of life in its hull, and would be helplessly outdated, it will be a waste of time and money.
The alteration costs will be minimal... it will be useless as an SSBN, but perfectly adequate for an SSGN with the mission of land attack.
Soviet and Russian SSGNs in the past were purely anti carrier, and nothing else... by having a few arsenal ships they can retain that anti ship focus... perhaps with a couple of land attack missiles just for shits and giggles.
The whole of Delta IVs won't be far better than the IIIs: it would be good to pick one to experiment with it, but such a conversion needs modern hulls, modern equipment, a long lasting logistic support.
What are you talking about?
All they need is lots of room... check
Lots of endurance... check
the ability to sail off to far away places and lurk for long periods... check
communications systems to receive orders for launch at a moments notice... check
The vertical launch tubes are sealed and would not need maintainence or attention during the voyage so they would need less crew than an SLBM.
It would be a case of "go to this area" and Lurk for 2 months and then go here and lurk for another 2 months and then go here for 2 more months and then come home and change the crew...
For the west it will be a nightmare trying to keep tabs on where they are at any given time and keeping forces that can track them tracking them all the time... most western anti sub forces are not all nuclear powered so they can't continuously follow something for 6 months without break into the southern oceans... it will cost the west a fortune in new anti sub vessels and monitoring... ironically for Russia the western arsenal ships/subs just means they have to keep more of a look out for low flying subsonic cruise missiles in larger bunches... they don't need to care about the southern oceans because SLCMs couldn't reach them from there... the new nuclear powered cruise missiles the Russians now have can...
As soo Deltas, all of them, will stop serving as SSBNs, their logistic support chain will disappear in a hurry.
Cannibalizing hulls, it would be possible to get one operational a little longer as an experimental unit, but even that won't last as much as a permanent conversion would require.
Except that is wrong... the Delta IIIs are not gone... they have one that was adapted into a mother ship for small submarines.
Delta IVs could remain operational for decades to come... they would not be that effective as SSBNs but in the arsenal role they are not being used as SSBNs.
You could argue that if the Delta IV is too old and crappy for continued use then the Ohio class are worse... and of course they are not.
And hulls are fine, navy chief said as much, only reason for decommission them is noise, that's it
More specifically their noise makes them no use as SSBNs... as arsenal ships they are fine as you point out in your next comment.
Noise is a problem if you want to send them attack land targets because limited range of cruise missile will mean you need to send them near the shores alone.
their longest range conventional cruise missile is the Kh-101/102 series with a 5,500km range, which should be plenty... draw a 5,500km radius around the target and most of the time there is either plenty of sea to hide in, or a country between the target and the sea which would be even better... as long as that country doesn't notice your missile.
If you want an arsenal ship in a task force better go with a big container ship with lot of uksk. Far more cheaper and easier to operate.
Sort of gives away the fact that you are about to launch lots of missiles... and probably not that much cheaper because who will let you refuel in their port... certainly not any EU or NATO port because obviously you are killing freedom fighters with those missiles...
Until now, nobody in the world, and in History, has ever favoured SSGNs over SSBNs.
Nobody never.
Russia never had precision land attack capability before from a naval missile that was not nuclear armed...
Now that they do are they going to change all their SSGNs from the anti carrier role to the land attack role?
And most of the SSGNs only have 32 launch tubes... not bad if they are armed with mach 8 Zircon anti ship missiles, but not great if the targets are all over the place in some African country... corvettes in Syria launched groups of up to 26 missiles at once... if that was a SSGN it would have to head home to reload after that one attack...
The conflict in Syria has shown Russia what a useful weapon a land attack cruise missile is, but it also shows it in some cases it will need quite a lot concentrated in one place to be useful... as more ships and subs enter service and all of them have UKSK tubes the problem will become less, but there will always be use for an arsenal ship to support attacks in a conflict especially a long way from Russia.
If they are already built in the form of an SSBN all the better because such vessels are already designed for long period missions and with reduced crew they will probably eat better too.
SSBNs no good as SSBNs anymore can be arsenal ships in peace time and in times of tension they can be loaded up with unlimited range revenge cruise missiles to greatly complicate the problems the west has... it is funny... NATO has closed in on Russias borders and Russia is half encircled, but an arsenal sub or 4 in the south pacific or south atlantic or indian ocean threatens the under belly of the west... US and Europe... and not in an expensive way either...
I would put my money on forst Boreys being, if ever it would be the case, coverted to a SSGN role only because being replaced by more modern and updated Borey B in the SSBN role.
They already have SSGNs... what they need are arsenal subs... which is not the same thing... arsenal ships are primarily loaded with land attack cruise missiles, not anti carrier missiles.
The SSGNs will be largely equipped with anti ship and anti sub missiles... with 72 missiles an upgraded oscar might have a couple of land attack missiles, but most will be anti carrier Zircons.
The US converted four Ohio, they never conceived to pick up some rusty Benjam Franklin.
Seems you don't know much about subs... Delta IVs are from the same period as Ohios... the Delta IVs built from 1981 to 1992... the Ohios... the first boat finished testing in october 1981...
If you modify a SSBN into a SSGN, it will become a SSGN, period.
Not in Russian service, because in Russian service an SSGN hunts US carrier groups and NATO surface action groups with or without carrier support.
A modified Russian SSBN fitted and loaded with land attack cruise missiles would be designated an SSGN but would be used for rather different missions with different weapon loadouts as mentioned above.
Keeping operational an old nuclear boat has costs close or even larger than those of a new boat.
Bullshit... if that were true how can they possibly afford to keep one Akula Class (Typhoon) for testing SLBMs, plus several Delta III, plus about 6 Delta IVs in service right now in addition to the Boreis as they enter service?
SSBNs are designed to operate for very long periods but improvements in technology mean they have to be replaced because the ability to hear them improves faster than the ability to upgrade them to make them quieter and eventually you have to start again with a new quieter design... hense version 4 of the Delta needs to be replaced by Borei number one and soon two.
That does not apply if you have a use for them that values their large size and long operational deployment design and does not care about a little extra noise... they could run around the planet at 20 knots making all sorts of noise for 6 months... what western ASW group could manage to keep up with that?
When it is needed... where ever... it will get a coded signal and then slow down and manouver to the place it needs to be and perform its mission... who knows where...
Does it offer any advantage to spend money to modify and operate an old SSBN into a SSGN, over either build a brand new SSGN or a SSBN, depending what is more needed between the two types?
99% of times, the answer is quite easy and straightforward: no.
A new SSBN is more use as an SSBN than as an Arsenal sub... and modern SSGNs don't really have the capacity to carry enough missiles to be really considered an arsenal sub... the only exception would be the Oscar and Oscar II classes... 72 missiles is a useful amount, but the deltas could carry rather more... ironically the oscars entered service in the early 1980s so your argument that the Delta IVs are too old should apply to the Oscars too I guess.