As a military concept an Aircraft Carrier is only a sea airfield, with its oun military protection inside (air defense, anti-ship, anti-submarine,...).
Few modern militaries would operate without air power or air cover... even the Russian Military uses Army Aviation with CAS aircraft and attack helos.
Air power is useful for support (ie transport), for detection and early warning (AWACS), and for rapid strike at short, medium and long ranges, as well as an extra ring layer of defence.
It is just as important for a Navy as it is for an Army.
On sea, the philosophy must be the same. Is the aircraft what determines the lenght of the airfield, and as consecuence the lenght and size of the Aircraft Carriers.
Not really. Carriers are made as small as practical to keep costs down.
In the future UAVs and UCAVs will significantly effect the size of modern carriers.
OK, first...
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Second...
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And Il-96s modified with AAMs and laser guided bombs with inflight refuelling could do the job of dozens of Flankers from one or two bases in Russia.
Tu-160s could replace all Russian submarines.
The reality is that coast based aircraft can't support Russian Naval operations anywhere in the world... even with inflight refuelling.
And they will have plenty of anti ship and land attack cruise missiles with them so they don't need any land attack capability as much as they need the ability to protect the fleet from enemy air power and anti ship and anti sub weapons.
As you can see, the only reason why Uncle Sam keeps 10 supercarriers plus 8 smaller carriers in his fleet is to support its constantly warfighting land/marine forces around the globe.
It is not about projecting power, though it can do that.
If you look at the air defence of Russia... you look at all the radar and other sensors and the integrated airdefence network with fighters and interceptors and SAMs of all sorts and even space based sensors all working together.
The dangers to surface and subsurface vessels is no less potent and air craft contribute quite a lot in terms of detection of attacks as they happen in real time and the ability to deal with mass attacks.
An extra layer of defensive missiles, but more importantly a much larger view of the whole battlefield extending enormous distances and giving much better warning times.
Modern naval fleets are going to be expensive so why not spend a little more to make them much much strong in both defence and attack.
I don't understand how some people here came to a conclusion that Russia has money to develop, build at then maintain full-scale AC.
The cost of a 60K ton carrier is peanuts to what they are spending on Nukes and air defences.
And in this situation you expect them to throw in billions in developing and building ACs + air wings + helos? Not to mention that we currently have technological and professional (workers, engineers) problems with building much smaller, less complex ships.
They have already spent the money developing the MiG-29K2 and the Ka-52K.
Do you think they will only build Corvettes?
They have plans for producing Cruisers... a carrier will compliment and make rather more effective and more powerful any surface action group.
From USSR era carriers were considered vulnerable. I think this is the factor that they are referred as costly. Too much money for sth vulnerable during war. Unless Russia wants to assume a role as a global policeman like US, thus participating in enabling by force UN resolutions for example
Their anti missile capabilities have vastly improved... and the best defence from a sophisticated missile attack is with air power detecting the attack early and the ability to fire both surface and air launched missiles.
Note that the doctrine explicitly mentions more than one aircraft carrier and serial production of aircraft carriers.
They are not going to build ten 100Kt super carriers, but they are going to make the navy strong.
The superpowers of recent history have become superpowers because of their strong navies... they did not become strong and then build a strong navy... they build strong navies first and that made them global powers.
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