Future russian aircraft carriers. #2

An advantage of double strips is you don't actually need angled deck to take off and land at the same time.

The problem with with two separate strips is... which is take off and which is landing... having one straight landing strip means a total waste of the deck because it is used for taking off or landing... and after a few cycles one side is going to have all the aircraft and the other side will have none.

The angled deck means you can have aircraft getting ready for takeoff or just being stored on deck to free up space in the hangar while landings can continue.

Remember you don't want to load bombs in the hangar so all that takes place on the deck.

Certainly with a take off deck you could use the full length to get maximum performance from your aircraft... but both sides would need catapults so you could change the landing side if needed and the takeoff side.

In fact with high performance 5th gen fighters with all internal air to air weapons and a full fuel load you could have the entire rear deck covered in deck based jet deflectors that fold up and you could have 8 planes ready to take off at a time each side... once they are launched one side could convert to landing ops while the other side keeps launching planes as needed... and then when the battle is under control you might have both sides landing aircraft with central lifts down to full width hangars so you don't end up with planes all on one side.

This angled landing is BTW one of the most difficult feats pilots execute routinely and not having to perform it would be a major improvement in terms of safety, training needs and pilot availability.

The whole point behind the angled landing strip is that if you miss the cable you can continue and fly around and have another go without having to clear the entire deck if you crash or have a problem.

Angled decks both sizes would push the size of the vessel into extreme values, since you need 300 m length at least, but double width. You would go well over 100 kT. The idea would be to use the alternative layout to make smaller ships competitive with bigger, conventional ones.

Wait what?

If you want a catamaran design then it is going to be wide anyway... in fact take an image of a current carrier and make a copy and reverse it and then overlay the two carriers where the island is and that is pretty much what you would be looking at...

With cable arresting gear you would not need the full length of the deck for landing so the front of that side could be used for other things like storing aircraft...

Don't know 100% if a turboprop could take off without catapult this way but I think it should be possible with sky jump, high lift design and run in excess of 250 m.

With the carrier sailing into the wind at 20-30 knots it should be able to manage, but cats make things easier and safer by adding extra margins for safety.

Additionally, using the full deck length with a sky jump in the end would significantly help to recover after failed landing attempts in two senses: if no cable gets caught, the speed and angle sends the aircraft airborne safely. If the braking is not sufficient, the sky jump adds its significant inclination to keep the aircraft on the deck.

The ski jump is just like throwing something up in the air... if it is not moving fast enough to generate its own lift it will just fall back down and crash.

In fact the ski jump will slow an aircraft down so if it not going fast enough to take off when it hits the ski jump that will slow it down even further below its stall speed and it will likely just drop like a rock.

It would be a major endeavour to reform CVs in such way but I think it is worth every effort. Just a (admittedly) very rough proposal:

I agree with what you are saying... the current standard design came after decades of experience and experimenting, but this is the 21st C and new technology and concepts might have created new possibilities for new designs and new ways of operating that better suit what the Navy wants from its carriers and they would be fools not to explore those options.

They'll need a new, bigger drydock for that. Or connect 3 separate hulls after they r built. Not sure if it could be done though with existing methods.

There will be quite a few places such a vessel could not operate because of its width, which is also worth looking in to too.

I was thinking of that also. A normal ship with the parking for fighters and the landing strip about 250m long that takes all the length of the ship. Another much smaller part to connect to the main ship that consist of the take off strip and the ski-jump also 250m long that could even be used by yak-44 derivated to take off because it is much longer than the K take-off strip.

By making it shorter (Kuznetsov is 305m long) but much wider it changes your options, both in design and operations... for instance it wont go through the Suez or Panama canals most likely... so long journeys for some missions...

Tsavo Lion wrote:They'll need a new, bigger drydock for that. Or connect 3 separate hulls after they r built. Not sure if it could be done though with existing methods.

Yeah, manufacturing would be a major challenge I guess. Independence Class is already 130 m long / 30 m width but in terms of displacement a CVN would be many times the size of those, which are aluminium IIRC.

Isos wrote:I was thinking of that also. A normal ship with the parking for fighters and the landing strip about 250m long that takes all the length of the ship. Another much smaller part to connect to the main ship that consist of the take off strip and the ski-jump also 250m long that could even be used by yak-44 derivated to take off because it is much longer than the K take-off strip.

That would be another option. Trimarans are very stable and fast so I think they would be better but in the end it all depends on what is found optimal during design phase. Don't know the parameters of the Yak-44 but it is indeed possible that it could take off from a strip with sky jump and 250 m length as far as its power to weight is not very inferior to the E-2 and the aerodynamics are optimized for the task.

GarryB wrote:
The problem with with two separate strips is... which is take off and which is landing... having one straight landing strip means a total waste of the deck because it is used for taking off or landing... and after a few cycles one side is going to have all the aircraft and the other side will have none.

Idea would be to have lifts at the stern and then after the landing run, to remove planes very fast from the deck. If you can handle them in any direction in the hangar with wheeled robotic skids from prow to stern you could store and service them very compact, like a manufacturing line. Nevertheless you need some spare place on the deck (central stern area i.e.) to park planes in especial cases. And also the configuration of the decks needs to be changed according to the situation in a clear way (i.e.. with red / light signalling)

GarryB wrote:The angled deck means you can have aircraft getting ready for takeoff or just being stored on deck to free up space in the hangar while landings can continue.

Yes, I agree. It is simply not that optimal IMO. A ship with more than one hull could have significantly bigger hangars apart from separate strips. Would be more organized and flexible.

GarryB wrote:Remember you don't want to load bombs in the hangar so all that takes place on the deck..

True, that is an issue. But see above. If you have a specific sequence for the planes to be received from the deck at the front of the hanger, be serviced (within the line for short procedures or outside the line for longer ones) and prepared for take-off at the end, it may be thinkable to have special, separated / protected / equipped rooms for installing weapons and starting engines.

GarryB wrote:Certainly with a take off deck you could use the full length to get maximum performance from your aircraft... but both sides would need catapults so you could change the landing side if needed and the takeoff side..

Still unclear for me regarding catapults. From the last calculations I got, they would not be needed for fighters at full A2G load if the run is close to full deck or T/W ratio is very high. On the other hand, it seems Russia is indeed researching on them. I would simply not use them if they are not mandatory since they seem to be expensive, complex and difficult to maintain. And also slower for the take-offs. But their advantages are obvious yes.

GarryB wrote:In fact with high performance 5th gen fighters with all internal air to air weapons and a full fuel load you could have the entire rear deck covered in deck based jet deflectors that fold up and you could have 8 planes ready to take off at a time each side... once they are launched one side could convert to landing ops while the other side keeps launching planes as needed... and then when the battle is under control you might have both sides landing aircraft with central lifts down to full width hangars so you don't end up with planes all on one side..

Yes, a more extreme and expensive version of the 4 parallel take-off lanes I commented. But doable since the take-off strip can be covered with planes all the length, without interfering with landings...

GarryB wrote:The whole point behind the angled landing strip is that if you miss the cable you can continue and fly around and have another go without having to clear the entire deck if you crash or have a problem..

Yes I am aware. In this double-strip layout that would not be necessary so would make landing much simpler. Could even make use of a CV feasible for AF pilots without the intensive training / practice today's navy pilots need.

GarryB wrote:Wait what?

If you want a catamaran design then it is going to be wide anyway... in fact take an image of a current carrier and make a copy and reverse it and then overlay the two carriers where the island is and that is pretty much what you would be looking at...

With cable arresting gear you would not need the full length of the deck for landing so the front of that side could be used for other things like storing aircraft....

A trimaran design would be 80-100 m wide probably, so very big indeed. But not twice a 70-80 m width conventional carrier.

With arresting cable and all you cannot put a straight landing strip and park aircraft in front of that because of safety. Rather make it 250 m long or so and try to save as much displacement as you can compared to a 300 - 330 m long CV

GarryB wrote:With the carrier sailing into the wind at 20-30 knots it should be able to manage, but cats make things easier and safer by adding extra margins for safety..

Yeah, see comment above about catapults

GarryB wrote:The ski jump is just like throwing something up in the air... if it is not moving fast enough to generate its own lift it will just fall back down and crash.

In fact the ski jump will slow an aircraft down so if it not going fast enough to take off when it hits the ski jump that will slow it down even further below its stall speed and it will likely just drop like a rock..

Depends on the scenarios you consider. I took two: first one is you fail to catch the cable. Since engines are revving 100% and you are very fast, take off would be completely safe. Second one is you catch the cable but the gearing mechanisms or any other issue prevent a successful detention of the plane. I assume a low residual speed can be neutralized by the sky jump. Of course in a pathological case in between the sky jump could do more harm than good but that should not be the most frequent situation

GarryB wrote:I agree with what you are saying... the current standard design came after decades of experience and experimenting, but this is the 21st C and new technology and concepts might have created new possibilities for new designs and new ways of operating that better suit what the Navy wants from its carriers and they would be fools not to explore those options.

That is exactly what I mean. For instance:
- Modern T/W ratio allow fully loaded fighters with a smaller deck
- Electronics allow AEW planes with a fraction of equipment's size of older AWACS
- U(C)AVS can have reasonable T/W ratios and optimized aerodynamics to perform many missions from small carriers even w/o catapults
- Cost of equipment and electronics force navies to optimize and make vessels and aircraft more multifunctional.
- Tighter budgets and modern AShM make smaller escorts and more self-reliant ships necessary

I was very surprised that a scientific head of a major design bureau acknowledged that radical changes in the hull design where a real possibility, so many decades after the CV layout has been essentially frozen in most militaries.

Idea would be to have lifts at the stern and then after the landing run, to remove planes very fast from the deck.

Having them at the stern is a bad idea because that is where you will be landing and taking off with planes...

Often lifts have been placed on the outer edge of the deck up the side, but I suspect up the centre in front of the island would be the best place... it is close to where landed aircraft would end up anyway and lowering them in the centre means you could put them in the left or right side hangar no matter which side they landed on. It would also be useful to have aircraft coming up there because that would be near where your fighters launch from for quick launches (ie urgent launches during surprise attacks).

Yes, I agree. It is simply not that optimal IMO. A ship with more than one hull could have significantly bigger hangars apart from separate strips. Would be more organized and flexible.

The point of the angled deck is to allow landings on a deck but to allow setting up other aircraft for launch on that same deck.

If you just use a straight landing on one deck then you are using up way to much deck for that landing... the aircraft will either catch the cable and land in a quarter of the deck length or it will miss... if it misses there still wont be enough room to land anyway so they will land with full thrust and if they catch the cable shut down the engines... if they miss they will hit AB and lift the nose and reduce flap from landing settings to take off settings and take off again.

They don't need an entire deck for that... the angled deck design means you can land planes and have then sitting waiting to be positioned for launch on the landing side and the take off side.

It means you can launch a large number of aircraft at once, but if you adapt the setup with lots of aircraft already in the air for both sides to recover aircraft then you can land planes faster too.

If you use the double deck design to launch 2-3 aircraft from each side that is getting a lot of aircraft in the air very quickly... being able to recover them two at a time... one on each deck will be important for getting them back on deck.

it may be thinkable to have special, separated / protected / equipped rooms for installing weapons and starting engines.

You don't arm or load weapons under deck, and why run engines under the deck?

All that has to happen above deck where there is fresh air and the ability to shunt things off the deck into the sea if there is a problem...

Still unclear for me regarding catapults. From the last calculations I got, they would not be needed for fighters at full A2G load if the run is close to full deck or T/W ratio is very high.

They wont be needed for fighters with an A2A load... full A2G loads are much higher and might require assistance, though the long run on the K and therefore also this cat ship would mean EM cats would not be that valuable.

The critical thing however is your AEW or AWACS platform... even 250m is not enough without a catapult system.

Having a big powerful radar in the air is critical to effective carrier operations... you only get by without it if it is not an option.

Ka-31 is nice but a medium size fixed wing light transport aircraft that could also act as an inflight refuelling/cargo carrying model would also be very valuable.

(Note I don't mean AWACS and inflight refuelling and cargo all at once... a platform with AWACS gear and another aircraft of the same type that could either carry cargo or fuel for inflight refuelling duties.)

Having a fixed wing aircraft that can see 360 degrees with a big powerful radar antenna that sees high altitude to sea level that can fly at 600km+ away from the ship and still detect targets and pass data to ships and other aircraft without revealing the position of those ships or aircraft is invaluable.

If there were AWACS aircraft and F-14s operating near the USS Liberty when the Israelis attacked... they would not have attacked.

If the AEGIS class cruiser in Iranian waters had asked the local carrier to determine the correct ID of the F-14 that was flying towards them it would have told them it was an Airbus and hundreds of people would not have been murdered.

If a real attack was taking place they would have been able to identify it as an attack several minutes before the ship worked it out itself... and minutes of warning during war are of infinite value.

Also the EM cats means that AWACS airframe can have an inflight refuelling model, so that when all the defending fighters are launched you can launch the inflight refuelling aircraft so that on their way back to the carrier to reload they can top up so the ring of aircraft waiting to land don't run out of fuel and ditch... if you have a problem on deck you can deal with it properly... if you can't fix it you can ferry the aircraft to a land base... and you can keep your AWACS platform operating longer and further from the carrier so the enemy can't just find your AEW aircraft and quickly work out where your carrier is... Ka-31s can't operate enormous distances from their carriers...

On the other hand, it seems Russia is indeed researching on them. I would simply not use them if they are not mandatory since they seem to be expensive, complex and difficult to maintain. And also slower for the take-offs. But their advantages are obvious yes.

The technology they use is exactly the same as monorail maglev trains... why would developing that sort of technology be a waste of money?

EM propulsion technology can be used in a range of weapons including artillery. A maglev system on the moon would be a really cheap way of sending minerals and material back to earth... there is no air so no air friction... have a flat rail along the ground to accelerate the material above the 2km/s or so needed to escape the moons gravity... is moves along the ground but because it is moving at escape velocity... there is no air to slow it down so instead of falling around the moon it keeps going straight as the surface of the moon curves away and out into space into orbit... rendevous with an orbital station and send it back to earth...

Maglev trains all over the place in russia would be a good thing.

Powerful magnets are really cool BTW.

Yes I am aware. In this double-strip layout that would not be necessary so would make landing much simpler.

It would be necessary... if you are going to line up twice as many planes for take off you need to be able to land more than just one plane at a time or you will find you have some trouble.

Could even make use of a CV feasible for AF pilots without the intensive training / practice today's navy pilots need.

The Soviets had some amazing software and systems for automatically landing VSTOL aircraft... I really think they will be automating a lot of the landing skill required... remember 5th gen fighters are already highly automated to make operations easier...

A trimaran design would be 80-100 m wide probably, so very big indeed. But not twice a 70-80 m width conventional carrier.

A three hull ship the same with as a normal single hull carrier... is that what you are saying?

Why?

I thought the whole point was the extra width makes alternative options possible...

Depends on the scenarios you consider. I took two: first one is you fail to catch the cable. Since engines are revving 100% and you are very fast, take off would be completely safe. Second one is you catch the cable but the gearing mechanisms or any other issue prevent a successful detention of the plane. I assume a low residual speed can be neutralized by the sky jump. Of course in a pathological case in between the sky jump could do more harm than good but that should not be the most frequent situation

The two scenarios are also dealt with using an angled deck design... and leave the front of the deck for normal operations because as the aircraft landing are landing at an angle even if they flight right through they would never fly into things on the front of the deck... that is the purpose of the angle.

Missing the cable is very common, but cable system failure is rare and no really worth changing the entire design for.

Angled deck makes the most sense even with two separate landing strips.

That is exactly what I mean. For instance:
- Modern T/W ratio allow fully loaded fighters with a smaller deck
- Electronics allow AEW planes with a fraction of equipment's size of older AWACS
- U(C)AVS can have reasonable T/W ratios and optimized aerodynamics to perform many missions from small carriers even w/o catapults
- Cost of equipment and electronics force navies to optimize and make vessels and aircraft more multifunctional.
- Tighter budgets and modern AShM make smaller escorts and more self-reliant ships necessary

I was very surprised that a scientific head of a major design bureau acknowledged that radical changes in the hull design where a real possibility, so many decades after the CV layout has been essentially frozen in most militaries.

Personally I think a ship the size of the K or slightly bigger is fine and to get AWACS support an airship with a tether would be the simplest and cheapest option... you could tether it to the carrier or a much smaller vessel... it could provide power and collect all the data and process it and then transmit it via the airship so no one could tell what it is tethered to. In fact the vessel it is tethered to could be filled with lots of SAMs so anyone tries to attack the airship itself will have an enormous AESA array of such power as to melt the tiny little radar brain of any missile sent to destroy it, and dozens of cruise missiles could be launched at the air base the aircraft that fired the missile at the airship to deal with that sort of threat, or anti ship missiles if the missile was launched from an aircraft and of course plenty of S-400 and S-500 based naval missiles on the tether ship can knock down any other aircraft threatening the airship.

A collapsible semi rigid design could be stored on most Russian ships above a certain size in case an attack is successful.

Of course EM cats would be useful... AWACS aircraft of that size would be a good export earner and would make airforces much more capable of filling holes in their ground network of radar, and most high altitude long range UAVs have small low power fuel efficient engines so they would not have the thrust to weight ratio of getting off even a 250m deck without assistance... once airborne their low thrust would allow them to loiter for days instead of hours.

(Note forget the Hindenberg... with modern composite materials light strong fire resistant structures, and fuel cells able to turn hydrogen from lifting gas to ballast water means changing the weight would be much less wasteful and much easier to manage. To climb you could simply put an electric current through the fuel cell and convert some ballast water into lifting hydrogen. To descend simply put the hydrogen through the fuel cell and collect the water and generate electricity... with the tether you have as much electricity as you need as well as fibre optic connections from the AESA radar antennas covering the airship down to the computers in the ship to process all that data and then send communications information back up to the airship to transmit via its enormous antenna... the airship is already scanning with radar so it is hardly invisible...) Of course being an AESA you could manage those transmissions to make it look like noise...

GarryB wrote:

Idea would be to have lifts at the stern and then after the landing run, to remove planes very fast from the deck.

Having them at the stern is a bad idea because that is where you will be landing and taking off with planes...

Stern lifts would be used for taking plane to the deck before take-off. So no landing would be happening on that strip at that time. Will make a sketch when I have time.

GarryB wrote:
Often lifts have been placed on the outer edge of the deck up the side, but I suspect up the centre in front of the island would be the best place... it is close to where landed aircraft would end up anyway and lowering them in the centre means you could put them in the left or right side hangar no matter which side they landed on. It would also be useful to have aircraft coming up there because that would be near where your fighters launch from for quick launches (ie urgent launches during surprise attacks).

Yes this is not a bad option. Had considered two front lifts, one on each side, because the hangars I consider operate linearly, transferring planes backwards after their landing to save space, even when transfer from left to right needs to be possible. But that is only a rough idea and I admit lacking the deep deck-operations knowledge needed for addressing every detail.

GarryB wrote:
The point of the angled deck is to allow landings on a deck but to allow setting up other aircraft for launch on that same deck.

If you just use a straight landing on one deck then you are using up way to much deck for that landing... the aircraft will either catch the cable and land in a quarter of the deck length or it will miss... if it misses there still wont be enough room to land anyway so they will land with full thrust and if they catch the cable shut down the engines... if they miss they will hit AB and lift the nose and reduce flap from landing settings to take off settings and take off again.

They don't need an entire deck for that... the angled deck design means you can land planes and have then sitting waiting to be positioned for launch on the landing side and the take off side.

It means you can launch a large number of aircraft at once, but if you adapt the setup with lots of aircraft already in the air for both sides to recover aircraft then you can land planes faster too.

If you use the double deck design to launch 2-3 aircraft from each side that is getting a lot of aircraft in the air very quickly... being able to recover them two at a time... one on each deck will be important for getting them back on deck.

Agree almost on everything. But it is not accurate that the landing can be done in a fraction of the deck. If you take a look at current carriers, landing strip is more than 200 m, actually close to 250. Reason is the position of the cables and the fact that you aim for the second or third for a safe landing (almost 100 m of deck gone by the moment the cable is caught) . If you try to make the carrier shorter (in order to save displacement) you are not going to have space enough and landing strip needs to be used exclusively for landing.

GarryB wrote:

it may be thinkable to have special, separated / protected / equipped rooms for installing weapons and starting engines.

You don't arm or load weapons under deck, and why run engines under the deck?

All that has to happen above deck where there is fresh air and the ability to shunt things off the deck into the sea if there is a problem...

Until now yes, because the hangars are relatively small, crammed and not ready for such operations. But who know if this could be done differently, once the aircraft flow inside the hangar is organized and automated? Special rooms could have fresh air, fire extinction means and designed to contain or direct fire and explosions to the outside safely. A fire or explosion on the deck is far from being safe as we know very well from the past...

Since the idea is to have a small carrier operating efficiently, it would be good to have a deck as small as possible and therefore keep aircraft in other place for as long as possible. This is the motivation to start engines or load weapons under the deck, but I admit I am far from knowing all the possible issues this may entail.

Still unclear for me regarding catapults. From the last calculations I got, they would not be needed for fighters at full A2G load if the run is close to full deck or T/W ratio is very high.

They wont be needed for fighters with an A2A load... full A2G loads are much higher and might require assistance, though the long run on the K and therefore also this cat ship would mean EM cats would not be that valuable.

You may want to check this out:

http://cppcms.com/files/skijump/


Full load means full A2G and full fuel. Just play around and try with the parameters from 2nd stage PAK-FA for instance, you may be surprised!

The critical thing however is your AEW or AWACS platform... even 250m is not enough without a catapult system.

Having a big powerful radar in the air is critical to effective carrier operations... you only get by without it if it is not an option.

Ka-31 is nice but a medium size fixed wing light transport aircraft that could also act as an inflight refuelling/cargo carrying model would also be very valuable.

(Note I don't mean AWACS and inflight refuelling and cargo all at once... a platform with AWACS gear and another aircraft of the same type that could either carry cargo or fuel for inflight refuelling duties.)

Having a fixed wing aircraft that can see 360 degrees with a big powerful radar antenna that sees high altitude to sea level that can fly at 600km+ away from the ship and still detect targets and pass data to ships and other aircraft without revealing the position of those ships or aircraft is invaluable.

With the same simulation tool above I tried with the parameters of E-2. Sadly did not found the aerodynamic data needed and used the ones from F-18 instead (not correct, I know), but with a slight increase of L/D it could take off with a 250 m run.


I am not so sure the fully-fledged AWACS plane is needed and I am even less sure it is wise to have such slow, high value targets floating around. A modified fighter would be much more survivable, an UAV would be less valuable. Even a helicopter with the new high-speed designs could be a reasonable option.

If there were AWACS aircraft and F-14s operating near the USS Liberty when the Israelis attacked... they would not have attacked.

If the AEGIS class cruiser in Iranian waters had asked the local carrier to determine the correct ID of the F-14 that was flying towards them it would have told them it was an Airbus and hundreds of people would not have been murdered.

If a real attack was taking place they would have been able to identify it as an attack several minutes before the ship worked it out itself... and minutes of warning during war are of infinite value.

Well those cases show bad will rather than equipment shortcomings... it is like the planes of 11S not being disturbed by US AD. Beyond ridiculous.

Also the EM cats means that AWACS airframe can have an inflight refuelling model, so that when all the defending fighters are launched you can launch the inflight refuelling aircraft so that on their way back to the carrier to reload they can top up so the ring of aircraft waiting to land don't run out of fuel and ditch... if you have a problem on deck you can deal with it properly... if you can't fix it you can ferry the aircraft to a land base... and you can keep your AWACS platform operating longer and further from the carrier so the enemy can't just find your AEW aircraft and quickly work out where your carrier is... Ka-31s can't operate enormous distances from their carriers...

What amount of fuel would those tanker planes carry? MTOW of E-2 is like 24 tonnes, so they are not airliner-sized tankers. The high internal fuel capacity of a UCAV along the lines of X-47B / Okhotnik would be IMO almost equivalent. A PAK-FA can carry >10 tons fuel as well.

On the other hand, it seems Russia is indeed researching on them. I would simply not use them if they are not mandatory since they seem to be expensive, complex and difficult to maintain. And also slower for the take-offs. But their advantages are obvious yes.

The technology they use is exactly the same as monorail maglev trains... why would developing that sort of technology be a waste of money?

The technology is never a waste and as you say this field has hundreds of interesting applications, but the deployment of an expensive, complex system can mean you need much more people for the CV operations, some of them highly qualified, big and complex pieces as spare, additional failure sources and stops due to maintenance. You would never buy those problems I f there is not a relevant need for the system right?

Yes I am aware. In this double-strip layout that would not be necessary so would make landing much simpler.

It would be necessary... if you are going to line up twice as many planes for take off you need to be able to land more than just one plane at a time or you will find you have some trouble.

Once you send all planes in the air, you set both strips for landing. No problem!

Could even make use of a CV feasible for AF pilots without the intensive training / practice today's navy pilots need.

The Soviets had some amazing software and systems for automatically landing VSTOL aircraft... I really think they will be automating a lot of the landing skill required... remember 5th gen fighters are already highly automated to make operations easier...

Here you have a point, since I don't believe automatic landing is not only possible but easier than manual one. But I guess the pilots don't want to be erased that easily and also the possibility to land when the automatic system fails is an easy to defend argument. In future it will be different probably.

A trimaran design would be 80-100 m wide probably, so very big indeed. But not twice a 70-80 m width conventional carrier.

A three hull ship the same with as a normal single hull carrier... is that what you are saying?

Why?

I thought the whole point was the extra width makes alternative options possible...

The whole point after my proposal and also what the Krilov guy mentioned was to use a radical redesign of the hull to compensate for size difference. If you take a super carrier and make it twice the size or more then it will be more capable of course but also impossibly expensive and complex. The challenge I see is to have a small, relatively affordable vessel matching big CVNs and not to design a huge one to beat them all. This is way more in line with traditions of Russian military and with real possibilities of any navy based on real world economics.


Due to the restrictions of the conventional single hull design with max 40 m water line width and also max height due to stability issues, the hangars and available space below deck are very restricted. In a trimaran design you could easily reach 60 or 70 m width below the deck without the width at the water line being excessive. You can have massive hangars, cargo holds for expeditionary forces and a big structure in the middle of the ship for helicopters and VLS cells. All in ca. 250 m length.

Depends on the scenarios you consider. I took two: first one is you fail to catch the cable. Since engines are revving 100% and you are very fast, take off would be completely safe. Second one is you catch the cable but the gearing mechanisms or any other issue prevent a successful detention of the plane. I assume a low residual speed can be neutralized by the sky jump. Of course in a pathological case in between the sky jump could do more harm than good but that should not be the most frequent situation

The two scenarios are also dealt with using an angled deck design... and leave the front of the deck for normal operations because as the aircraft landing are landing at an angle even if they flight right through they would never fly into things on the front of the deck... that is the purpose of the angle.

Missing the cable is very common, but cable system failure is rare and no really worth changing the entire design for.

Angled deck makes the most sense even with two separate landing strips.

The angled deck only deals with the first scenario, which I agree is the biggest problem (or at least should be, unlike in the last deployment of the K in Syria). The sky jump at the end of the landing strip is an improvement in both situations so I see it as a superior configuration.

Personally I think a ship the size of the K or slightly bigger is fine and to get AWACS support an airship with a tether would be the simplest and cheapest option... you could tether it to the carrier or a much smaller vessel... it could provide power and collect all the data and process it and then transmit it via the airship so no one could tell what it is tethered to. In fact the vessel it is tethered to could be filled with lots of SAMs so anyone tries to attack the airship itself will have an enormous AESA array of such power as to melt the tiny little radar brain of any missile sent to destroy it, and dozens of cruise missiles could be launched at the air base the aircraft that fired the missile at the airship to deal with that sort of threat, or anti ship missiles if the missile was launched from an aircraft and of course plenty of S-400 and S-500 based naval missiles on the tether ship can knock down any other aircraft threatening the airship.

A collapsible semi rigid design could be stored on most Russian ships above a certain size in case an attack is successful.

Agree. In this draft idea there is place above the rear hangar for such an airship. The combination of the airship and other radars on AEW aircraft could be very interesting and difficult to avoid for any aggressor.

The Jak-44 could start without catapult. 40 tons MTOW. Propfans D-227 with 2,5 times the power of the E-2.

Stern lifts would be used for taking plane to the deck before take-off. So no landing would be happening on that strip at that time. Will make a sketch when I have time.

Which means no aircraft can be brought up during landings or during takeoffs...

It would not make sense to put a car park in the middle of a highway.

Deck lifts out of the way in the centre in front of the island and perhaps even behind would allow aircraft to be brought up or taken down to the hangars no matter what is taking off or landing at the time.

If you try to make the carrier shorter (in order to save displacement) you are not going to have space enough and landing strip needs to be used exclusively for landing.

By angling the landing run you maximise its length while taking the rest of the deck out of the danger area if there is a problem landing.

Until now yes, because the hangars are relatively small, crammed and not ready for such operations.

Umm... no... it is because an explosion inside a hanger would destroy or set fire to all your aircraft and in a contained space would be vastly more destructive than a mere explosion or fire on deck.

Second ordinance is never kept... armed or unarmed... anywhere near aircraft or fuel... it is kept in an armoured bunker separated from the aircraft and is not armed till it is mounted on the deck on the aircraft and even then not until just before take off.

The British and Americans learned that the hard way.

A fire or explosion on the deck is far from being safe as we know very well from the past...

Vastly safer than even just a fire below deck.

Since the idea is to have a small carrier operating efficiently,

No.

Small carriers are crap.

If you are going to spend a billion on a ship then spend 3 billion and get a decent one that does everything you want... don't scrimp on important things and make it bloody useless.

it would be good to have a deck as small as possible and therefore keep aircraft in other place for as long as possible.

The opposite of this.

Smaller is not better with carriers.

This is the motivation to start engines or load weapons under the deck, but I admit I am far from knowing all the possible issues this may entail.

Thousands of people successfully commit suicide every year by running a car engine inside their garage... some of them are not meaning to kill themselves but they die just the same... Running engines and loading weapons in the hangar offers no real benefits even in the rain, but incurs enormous potential risks.

Full load means full A2G and full fuel. Just play around and try with the parameters from 2nd stage PAK-FA for instance, you may be surprised!

Not surprised at all.

Russian carrier aircraft are not primarily intended for air to ground roles... their primary role is air to air defence of the ships.

The only aircraft that requires a cat is AWACS and inflight refuelling aircraft, plus potentially some UAVs they might operate.

Russian stealth and MiG-29KR aircraft would also have advantages of thrust vectoring engines to further help them get airborne too.

I am not so sure the fully-fledged AWACS plane is needed and I am even less sure it is wise to have such slow, high value targets floating around. A modified fighter would be much more survivable, an UAV would be less valuable. Even a helicopter with the new high-speed designs could be a reasonable option.

Having a high speed aircraft with an enormous radar able to look 360 degrees in seconds that can operate at medium to high altitudes for hours if not days.

Well let me say that ships operating their radars will reveal their position to the enemy, yet wont reveal attacking forces approaching below the radar horizon... a single AWACS platform can scan hundreds of kms in every direction from near space down to the sea surface and transmit that data to all the ships and aircraft of the fleet, so they have information but are not emitting anything.

As for vulnerability, how safe would an A-50 be operating above what is the equivalent of about 30-40 S-400 batteries and 6-8 S-500 batteries and perhaps 20-30 S-350 batteries... and that is not including the Su-57s there to defend them too... I think the AWACS would be the safest thing around.

Without that AWACS however an incoming blip on a radar might only appear as it crosses the radar horizon... and it could be a single missile or a coordinated missile attack against all your ships that were detected because they were using their radar to spot enemy forces and threats...

Well those cases show bad will rather than equipment shortcomings..

There were F-14s nearby during the Iranian airbus incident, but the carrier group commander pulled them back because the commander of the vessel that ended up shooting down the airbus sounded like he was out of control and looking for a fight... (carrier commanders words, not mine).

Had they been used the mistake would have been immediately recognised and nobody would have died.

It was actually a system design fault... the airfield the airbus took off from was a joint military and civilian airfield so when an F-14 squawked an IFF code the operator on the cruiser put his cursor over the airfield. When the airbus took off from the airfield the cursor on the screen followed the aircraft but was actually returning information from where the actual cursor was... on the airfield. So when the IFF system checked the cursor appeared to be on the incoming aircraft but was reading as an F-14 sitting on the runway on the airfield. The IFF signal was therefore not the signal coming from the Airbus, which was transmitting properly the civilian code.

The same psychological mentality that makes hunters think other hunters are deer resulted in the operators claiming the target was descending in an attack flight profile, when examination of the recorded sensor readings show a steady climb to a normal flight altitude... they wanted to see an F-14 and that is what they saw.

it is like the planes of 11S not being disturbed by US AD. Beyond ridiculous.

?

What amount of fuel would those tanker planes carry? MTOW of E-2 is like 24 tonnes, so they are not airliner-sized tankers. The high internal fuel capacity of a UCAV along the lines of X-47B / Okhotnik would be IMO almost equivalent. A PAK-FA can carry >10 tons fuel as well.

I am not suggesting they are to be used to fuel the planes for strikes on the US, but an extra ton of fuel to 6-8 planes, and topping up the AWACS aircraft would mean less landing and takeoff cycles for the smaller aircraft.

The technology is never a waste and as you say this field has hundreds of interesting applications, but the deployment of an expensive, complex system can mean you need much more people for the CV operations, some of them highly qualified, big and complex pieces as spare, additional failure sources and stops due to maintenance. You would never buy those problems I f there is not a relevant need for the system right?

Just the addition of AWACS platforms makes it worth it. And adding a monorail system on a ship is not a huge deal... the technology will be valuable in a range of areas... trains as mentioned, superconductors, super magnets, EM guns, there would not be hundreds of people needed to support these systems... and 99% of the time if there is a problem... just use fighters while you sail home and get the problem sorted.... 5th gen fighters will likely get surface mounted radar antennas that will enable a lot more airspace to be searched than standard radars.

Once you send all planes in the air, you set both strips for landing. No problem!

Even in combat you would never have all your aircraft in the air...

Life at sea is a complex dance of juggling... planes in the air and planes that need to be in the air with planes on the deck going up or going away...

The challenge I see is to have a small, relatively affordable vessel matching big CVNs and not to design a huge one to beat them all. This is way more in line with traditions of Russian military and with real possibilities of any navy based on real world economics.

The Russians have had helicopter carriers (Moskva), and they have had small VSTOL carriers (Kiev Class). The general consensus was that VSTOL carriers had weak ineffective aircraft and while much cheaper than a bigger carrier were not actually cheap and not actually much use for anything, so in that sense were rather too expensive for what you got. A Yak-38 was very ordinary and not very useful for anything... except testing ejection seats.

The sky jump at the end of the landing strip is an improvement in both situations so I see it as a superior configuration.

But it isn't.

In Syria they lost two aircraft.

If the ski jump made any difference at all then they could have cleared the entire deck and had a straight on landing run down the entire length of the deck ending in the ski jump. The fact that they didn't even try suggests there was no point... the extra few dozen or so metres of the ski jump would just mean the plane will hit the water going slightly slower...

I remember older British and American planes had barriers for planes to run into if there were problems but that was with much slower propeller driven aircraft and they often got seriously damaged anyway.

The Jak-44 could start without catapult. 40 tons MTOW. Propfans D-227 with 2,5 times the power of the E-2.

The D-27 prop fans are Ukrainian.

Besides they can build a much lighter and better aircraft by now I am sure...

They need to make a good aircraft as it would be a valuable little plane that could be widely used that is rather cheaper and more affordable than A-50 and A-100 aircraft types.

Look at the improvement to the An-2, with an all composite structure.

A Cat will make operations safer and easier.

The high MTOW is due to a large fuel supply. Range and endurance of the Yak-44 would have been much larger as for the E-2.

GarryB wrote:

Stern lifts would be used for taking plane to the deck before take-off. So no landing would be happening on that strip at that time. Will make a sketch when I have time.

Which means no aircraft can be brought up during landings or during takeoffs...

No, not at all. During landings the landing strip can take planes down to the hangars
During take-offs, corresponding strip can have aircraft lifted from the hangars.

It would not make sense to put a car park in the middle of a highway.

Deck lifts out of the way in the centre in front of the island and perhaps even behind would allow aircraft to be brought up or taken down to the hangars no matter what is taking off or landing at the time.

Not disputing that possibility, it depends on size, layout and requirements.

If you try to make the carrier shorter (in order to save displacement) you are not going to have space enough and landing strip needs to be used exclusively for landing.

By angling the landing run you maximise its length while taking the rest of the deck out of the danger area if there is a problem landing.

This is understood but the landing run is still more than 200 m. Take off run is 100 at least.  So you have a 2 x 300 m carrier in the end. We do not seem to dispute what is best but what is possible you know?

Until now yes, because the hangars are relatively small, crammed and not ready for such operations.

Umm... no... it is because an explosion inside a hanger would destroy or set fire to all your aircraft and in a contained space would be vastly more destructive than a mere explosion or fire on deck.

Second ordinance is never kept... armed or unarmed... anywhere near aircraft or fuel... it is kept in an armoured bunker separated from the aircraft and is not armed till it is mounted on the deck on the aircraft and even then not until just before take off.

The British and Americans learned that the hard way.

Agreed. Not making a vital point of this way of preparing aircraft for take-off, but as said you would not have many planes in the same room, and it would not be a contained space. Only the unit(s) about to take off would be there.

Since the idea is to have a small carrier operating efficiently,

No.

Small carriers are crap.

If you are going to spend a billion on a ship then spend 3 billion and get a decent one that does everything you want... don't scrimp on important things and make it bloody useless.

See comparison with K below, in order to have the same understanding of "small" and "big". I doubt such unit with triple hull would be much smaller in displacement than the K. About that size should be ok and hopefully cheaper than a 100 kT CVN

Basically all the topics we discuss in this forum are affected by the availability of funds. It is therefore essential to design with the costs in mind or the projects fail. This is especially important with carriers being so cost intensive and needed in numbers of at least three or four for the Russian navy. Better to build some more units of a smaller ship that is reasonably capable than one or two of a design which is too big and expensive

Full load means full A2G and full fuel. Just play around and try with the parameters from 2nd stage PAK-FA for instance, you may be surprised!

Not surprised at all.

Russian carrier aircraft are not primarily intended for air to ground roles... their primary role is air to air defence of the ships.

The only aircraft that requires a cat is AWACS and inflight refuelling aircraft, plus potentially some UAVs they might operate.

Russian stealth and MiG-29KR aircraft would also have advantages of thrust vectoring engines to further help them get airborne too.

Well, all operational use of the K was spent doing essentially A2G in Syria, so real use of future CVs can very well go in that direction. But as said A2G or A2A plays no role with the T/W ratio true 5G planes should be capable of. Full load from the short runs is no problem, and also from the long run on dry setting BTW...

I am not so sure the fully-fledged AWACS plane is needed and I am even less sure it is wise to have such slow, high value targets floating around. A modified fighter would be much more survivable, an UAV would be less valuable. Even a helicopter with the new high-speed designs could be a reasonable option.

Having a high speed aircraft with an enormous radar able to look 360 degrees in seconds that can operate at medium to high altitudes for hours if not days.

Well let me say that ships operating their radars will reveal their position to the enemy, yet wont reveal attacking forces approaching below the radar horizon... a single AWACS platform can scan hundreds of kms in every direction from near space down to the sea surface and transmit that data to all the ships and aircraft of the fleet, so they have information but are not emitting anything.

As for vulnerability, how safe would an A-50 be operating above what is the equivalent of about 30-40 S-400 batteries and 6-8 S-500 batteries and perhaps 20-30 S-350 batteries... and that is not including the Su-57s there to defend them too... I think the AWACS would be the safest thing around.

Without that AWACS however an incoming blip on a radar might only appear as it crosses the radar horizon... and it could be a single missile or a coordinated missile attack against all your ships that were detected because they were using their radar to spot enemy forces and threats...

Not disputing relevance of airborne early warning, at all. Simply the means needed for achieving it. For instance, a AEW UAV would probably have bigger range and persistence than a current AWACS and be much more affordable.

You refer an AD force defending the own AWACS, it corresponds to what naval force composition?

Well those cases show bad will rather than equipment shortcomings..

There were F-14s nearby during the Iranian airbus incident, but the carrier group commander pulled them back because the commander of the vessel that ended up shooting down the airbus sounded like he was out of control and looking for a fight... (carrier commanders words, not mine).

Had they been used the mistake would have been immediately recognised and nobody would have died.

It was actually a system design fault... the airfield the airbus took off from was a joint military and civilian airfield so when an F-14 squawked an IFF code the operator on the cruiser put his cursor over the airfield. When the airbus took off from the airfield the cursor on the screen followed the aircraft but was actually returning information from where the actual cursor was... on the airfield. So when the IFF system checked the cursor appeared to be on the incoming aircraft but was reading as an F-14 sitting on the runway on the airfield. The IFF signal was therefore not the signal coming from the Airbus, which was transmitting properly the civilian code.

The same psychological mentality that makes hunters think other hunters are deer resulted in the operators claiming the target was descending in an attack flight profile, when examination of the recorded sensor readings show a steady climb to a normal flight altitude... they wanted to see an F-14 and that is what they saw.

 it is like the planes of 11S not being disturbed by US AD. Beyond ridiculous.

?

I meant that you don't shoot down unidentified planes in a foreign country unless you have that in your agenda. Said Iranian Airbus. Liberty in turn was a flagrant false flag. For these cases you always will find an excuse why none of the systems worked that day. Who is such a dick as to pull the F-14s back because some subordinate wanted a fight, instead of getting a positive identification of a target in peace time? This is a crime and not a system failure sorry.

What amount of fuel would those tanker planes carry? MTOW of E-2 is like 24 tonnes, so they are not airliner-sized tankers. The high internal fuel capacity of a UCAV along the lines of X-47B / Okhotnik would be IMO almost equivalent. A PAK-FA can carry >10 tons fuel as well.

I am not suggesting they are to be used to fuel the planes for strikes on the US, but an extra ton of fuel to 6-8 planes, and topping up the AWACS aircraft would mean less landing and takeoff cycles for the smaller aircraft.

Agree. This is doable with buddy refuelling or big UAVs. Since US is not going to bigger tankers at the moment, Russia would not be forced to do either, especially if Su-57s with their huge range were navalized.

The technology is never a waste and as you say this field has hundreds of interesting applications, but the deployment of an expensive, complex system can mean you need much more people for the CV operations, some of them highly qualified, big and complex pieces as spare, additional failure sources and stops due to maintenance. You would never buy those problems I f there is not a relevant need for the system right?

... and 99% of the time if there is a problem... just use fighters while you sail home and get the problem sorted.... 5th gen fighters will likely get surface mounted radar antennas that will enable a lot more airspace to be searched than standard radars.

Well, this is what I mean. Modern technology will allow smaller radars that can be carried in other aircraft and still reasonably cover AEW role.

Once you send all planes in the air, you set both strips for landing. No problem!

Even in combat you would never have all your aircraft in the air...

Life at sea is a complex dance of juggling... planes in the air and planes that need to be in the air with planes on the deck going up or going away...

We do not need to overcomplicate. A conventional carrier is also limited to one landing at a time and people manage to live with that limitation. In fact the alternative configuration is superior in many ways.

The challenge I see is to have a small, relatively affordable vessel matching big CVNs and not to design a huge one to beat them all. This is way more in line with traditions of Russian military and with real possibilities of any navy based on real world economics.

The Russians have had helicopter carriers (Moskva), and they have had small VSTOL carriers (Kiev Class). The general consensus was that VSTOL carriers had weak ineffective aircraft and while much cheaper than a bigger carrier were not actually cheap and not actually much use for anything, so in that sense were rather too expensive for what you got. A Yak-38 was very ordinary and not very useful for anything... except testing ejection seats.

What about sending Su-57s in the air faster than super carrier sends F-18s? This is no low performance configuration for STOVL aircraft!

The sky jump at the end of the landing strip is an improvement in both situations so I see it as a superior configuration.

But it isn't.

In Syria they lost two aircraft.

If the ski jump made any difference at all then they could have cleared the entire deck and had a straight on landing run down the entire length of the deck ending in the ski jump. The fact that they didn't even try suggests there was no point... the extra few dozen or so metres of the ski jump would just mean the plane will hit the water going slightly slower...

I remember older British and American planes had barriers for planes to run into if there were problems but that was with much slower propeller driven aircraft and they often got seriously damaged anyway.

Well, as far as I know they were not trying to see whether the aircraft would crash or not, in case of serious doubt about the operation of the arresting cables they would have sent the planes to Hmeimim immediately. Besides, you cannot go straight on an angled deck with purpose-built arresting cables.

A sky jump is close to 7-10 m high, 50 m long so you need some momentum to climb it. But in any case this is just a small help, not making a huge deal out of it.

The Jak-44 could start without catapult. 40 tons MTOW. Propfans D-227 with 2,5 times the power of the E-2.

The D-27 prop fans are Ukrainian.

Besides they can build a much lighter and better aircraft by now I am sure...

Agree...

The Point is that you can launch a heavy aircraft (which means a lot of fuel) with the help of a sky jump. No need for catapults, when you got enough engine power.

No, not at all. During landings the landing strip can take planes down to the hangars
During take-offs, corresponding strip can have aircraft lifted from the hangars.

So how are you going to arrange the hangars?

The aircraft coming in on one side at the rear of the hangar... needs to be serviced and checked... but what if it needs to take off again....

Plus you have the entire front deck for takeoffs, so four planes at a time taking off but one side for landing, but one rear lift bringing aircraft up on deck and one taking on landing aircraft and putting them down in the hangar at one end... sounds like a real pain in the ass to be honest... the hangars are generally rather long but relatively narrow things so having lifts on the outer side is popular... even having one enormous through hangar, it would be a real pain in the ass to have the entry and exit at the rear end. Having it down the middle reduces the max distance everything needs to move... remember it is not just an hangar... there will be workshop areas for disassembly and reassembly and minor repairs and maintenence of several different aircraft types.

This is understood but the landing run is still more than 200 m. Take off run is 100 at least. So you have a 2 x 300 m carrier in the end. We do not seem to dispute what is best but what is possible you know?

The aircraft coming down while the ship is going up and down means the very rear of the deck would not be available for anything else on the landing side... when aircraft land they end up a long way from the rear when they stop so it makes rather more sense to have the lifts taking them down somewhere there rather than having to stop landing and drag the aircraft to the back of the ship to lower it to the hangar.

Deck lifts are not super fast... it is not a lift in a shop, so that deck lift will be tied up for at least 3 minutes getting the aircraft on it and clearing the edges on deck and in the hangar and then lowering the aircraft and then getting it off for the next aircraft to get down. With four aircraft taking off at a time that can cause problems when they all start running low on fuel.

Agreed. Not making a vital point of this way of preparing aircraft for take-off, but as said you would not have many planes in the same room, and it would not be a contained space. Only the unit(s) about to take off would be there.

Screw up with only one plane carrying four 500kg HE bombs... do you think the other aircraft on the ship would be unaffected?

Even the most heavily armoured room would be in serious trouble.

And that is ignoring the 5-10 tons of fuel on board the one plane... no isolating one aircraft at a time in a room makes no difference.

See comparison with K below, in order to have the same understanding of "small" and "big". I doubt such unit with triple hull would be much smaller in displacement than the K. About that size should be ok and hopefully cheaper than a 100 kT CVN

If you are using that image as a basis then it is a total waste of time... with a straight landing strip instead of the traditional angled landing strip, then you only get to launch two aircraft on the takeoff side. On the landing side you need the entire length in case the plane does not catch the wires or indeed the cable or hook break and the aircraft crashes.

The whole point of the angled deck is to separate the deck into two independent parts where landing and take off operations can continue together at the same time.

Your example also shows a layout where you could add take off positions all down the take off deck so with 4 or 5 rows you could get aircraft in pairs of 8 to 10 aircraft ready to take off... with deck mounted shields protecting aircraft behind from jet wash that fold down when the aircraft takes off... the problem is that even if you use both sides to recover aircraft you are only ever going to be able to land two aircraft at a time... that is too much of a bottleneck.

Also considering its deck is twice the size of the K it has half the parking space...

Well, all operational use of the K was spent doing essentially A2G in Syria, so real use of future CVs can very well go in that direction. But as said A2G or A2A plays no role with the T/W ratio true 5G planes should be capable of. Full load from the short runs is no problem, and also from the long run on dry setting BTW...

Well the operation in Syria for the K was all about testing the new MiG-29KR and the upgrades to the Su-33... I would suggest in normal operations that the main role would be air defence and threat/target spotting via AWACS/AEW platforms if present...

For instance, a AEW UAV would probably have bigger range and persistence than a current AWACS and be much more affordable.

Yeah... people kept saying that about all the UAVs and they seem to have a very high attrition rate and not really be that effective, except in unopposed airspace murdering people in Pakistan and Yemen and other places.

If you have an AWACS platform like a Yak-44 then you also have a Yak-44 that can be lunched to deliver more fuel to that Yak-44AEW aircraft to further extend its operational performance as much as you want.

You refer an AD force defending the own AWACS, it corresponds to what naval force composition?

A carrier will have its own SAMs including S-500, and the Cruisers and Destroyers that operate with it will also be rather well equipped with such systems.

The carrier adds human eyes and extended radar coverage.

In the middle of the ocean a radar contact creates a problem... what is it? It wont tell you what it is. Sending a ship to have a look would take too long and leave that ship vulnerable to ambush... and would give away the fact that there is a fleet of ships there.
Launching a missile could create an international incident and actually start a war.

Sending a plane... something you can call back if 50 targets appear around the first target and start closing on on your fleet (50 targets you wouldn't see without air borne radar due to the curve of the earth)

Of course if it is 51 anti ship missiles you can keep that aircraft out there... it can engage a couple of missiles but its radar can be used to direct s-350s launched from ships with their ARH at 140km range.

Without the aircraft you would not know there were 51 missiles on the way until they came over the sea horizon.

Having more time to repel an attack is always better.

Who is such a dick as to pull the F-14s back because some subordinate wanted a fight, instead of getting a positive identification of a target in peace time? This is a crime and not a system failure sorry.

The commander of the AEGIS cruiser had chased Iranian navy boats into Iranian waters... the carrier commander should have ordered that dick to leave too.

The whole situation was a crime... that is why they gave out medals.

Who is such a dick as to pull the F-14s back because some subordinate wanted a fight, instead of getting a positive identification of a target in peace time? This is a crime and not a system failure sorry.

Israel had made agreements with the US regarding conflicts, and was breaking those agreements... Liberty was in a position to record those violations, so it became a threat and they tried to deal with it by intentionally murdering their allies... but money and intel from captured systems made the boo boo all better...

Well, this is what I mean. Modern technology will allow smaller radars that can be carried in other aircraft and still reasonably cover AEW role.

Not just smaller, but vastly more capable... stealth might become meaningless if these claims for new radar technology is accurate...

We do not need to overcomplicate. A conventional carrier is also limited to one landing at a time and people manage to live with that limitation. In fact the alternative configuration is superior in many ways.

The design you suggest vastly increases the potential take off rate, yet still offers one plane landing at one time... it will create an enormous bottleneck.

What about sending Su-57s in the air faster than super carrier sends F-18s? This is no low performance configuration for STOVL aircraft!

There is no comparison between the Yak-38 and Su-57... both have high thrust to weight ratios and both have vectored thrust engines, but from there the difference is enormous. The Sukhoi has an enormous high lift wing and zero drag from ordinance most of the time. It has a modern capable fire control system with modern radar and missiles and other weapons. The Yak had a tiny wing to allow transonic flight... which was totally pointless, a very limited payload and performance. Both have very good ejection systems.

The Yak could operate from smaller carriers, but its value is so low that there is more benefit in spending more on a real carrier and getting real planes.

Well, as far as I know they were not trying to see whether the aircraft would crash or not, in case of serious doubt about the operation of the arresting cables they would have sent the planes to Hmeimim immediately.

Well first of all they wouldn't know what the problem was... after the first few cables broke they would tell the aircraft to circle while they were quickly replaced... by the time they realised the problem was not faulty cables but was actually the actual arrester gearing that is supposed to have give in it to prevent the cables from just snapping it might have been too late.

The fact that they didn't send in a potential buddy refuelling aircraft suggests they need to change their procedure manual... which is another lesson they learned.

Besides, you cannot go straight on an angled deck with purpose-built arresting cables.

You can if the cables just break so you are not using them anyway... The MiG-29KR and Su-33 don't have break parachutes or airbrakes AFAIK, so they would be pushing sht uphill literally...

Agree...

Would also expect the electronics would be much lighter and smaller today too, though performance expectations would be greater too.

The Point is that you can launch a heavy aircraft (which means a lot of fuel) with the help of a sky jump. No need for catapults, when you got enough engine power.

No you can't.

It is a question of G forces... a heavy plane wont put up with high horizontal and vertical g forces on takeoff...

When was construction of new reactor completed and what is name of submarine it was installed on?

It is likely the reactors developed for the Destroyers they will start building soon, but also used on Submarines too.

GarryB wrote:So how are you going to arrange the hangars?

The aircraft coming in on one side at the rear of the hangar... needs to be serviced and checked... but what if it needs to take off again....

Plus you have the entire front deck for takeoffs, so four planes at a time taking off but one side for landing, but one rear lift bringing aircraft up on deck and one taking on landing aircraft and putting them down in the hangar at one end... sounds like a real pain in the ass to be honest... the hangars are generally rather long but relatively narrow things so having lifts on the outer side is popular... even having one enormous through hangar, it would be a real pain in the ass to have the entry and exit at the rear end. Having it down the middle reduces the max distance everything needs to move... remember it is not just an hangar... there will be workshop areas for disassembly and reassembly and minor repairs and maintenence of several different aircraft types.

Maybe misunderstanding here, see attached rough drawing.




I do not know what exact position would be best for lifts (length of ship and runs involved on this as well as many other considerations), but possible positions would be represented by the red rectangles. Planes taken down by lifts closer to the bow, brought up by the rear ones. Planes that do not need deep inspections or repairs are kept in the flow rearwards with the help of rolling skids that could be automated and could clamp to the floor to fix the planes safely. The ones needing repairs go to the workshop area, which is more freely configurable, and are afterwards inserted back into the flow. Blue walls would mark areas where engines could be on and planes could be received from landing or prepared for take-off as an additional possibility to gain operational speed on the deck. This is ideal when you have just one kind of plane on those hangars of course! But nevertheless there is additional hangar space at the level of the deck for other kinds of aircraft in smaller numbers

This allows much more planes to be kept in the same space with much less work plus flexibility for repairs

The aircraft coming down while the ship is going up and down means the very rear of the deck would not be available for anything else on the landing side... when aircraft land they end up a long way from the rear when they stop so it makes rather more sense to have the lifts taking them down somewhere there rather than having to stop landing and drag the aircraft to the back of the ship to lower it to the hangar.

Deck lifts are not super fast... it is not a lift in a shop, so that deck lift will be tied up for at least 3 minutes getting the aircraft on it and clearing the edges on deck and in the hangar and then lowering the aircraft and then getting it off for the next aircraft to get down.  With four aircraft taking off at a time that can cause problems when they all start running low on fuel.

See above. Ideally planes after landing would be taken down outside of the landing strip to avoid interference

Screw up with only one plane carrying four 500kg HE bombs... do you think the other aircraft on the ship would be unaffected?

Even the most heavily armoured room would be in serious trouble.

And that is ignoring the 5-10 tons of fuel on board the one plane... no isolating one aircraft at a time in a room makes no difference.

Like said this would be a "nice to have" if possible. Additional space is available at the stern in the middle of the ship. Just for curiosity, do you happen to know how many HE bomb explosions have happened in CVs in modern days? I guess this is no fun whatever the configuration of the ship

If you are using that image as a basis then it is a total waste of time... with a straight landing strip instead of the traditional angled landing strip, then you only get to launch two aircraft on the takeoff side. On the landing side you need the entire length in case the plane does not catch the wires or indeed the cable or hook break and the aircraft crashes.

This matches a super CVN with a fraction of the length. How is that useless?

The whole point of the angled deck is to separate the deck into two independent parts where landing and take off operations can continue together at the same time.

Agreed, just see problems regarding the final size such configuration would lead to. Otherwise it would be of superior performance of course.

Your example also shows a layout where you could add take off positions all down the take off deck so with 4 or 5 rows you could get aircraft in pairs of 8 to 10 aircraft ready to take off... with deck mounted shields protecting aircraft behind from jet wash that fold down when the aircraft takes off... the problem is that even if you use both sides to recover aircraft you are only ever going to be able to land two aircraft at a time... that is too much of a bottleneck.

Yes, you could take off really really quick in this config which is the most important point. I don't think you really need to go beyond 4 fighters at a time, since you could make a queue of planes waiting for their positions at the bow and not loose much time between launches. For other planes there would be launch positions at the stern.

What you call bottleneck is actually twice as fast as a super CVN...  

Also considering its deck is twice the size of the K it has half the parking space...

Yes. This is done on purpose and so flow in hangars and organization of decks is changed. There is also space for helos at the rear that could operate relatively independent of the fixed wing aircraft.

Why is it a need to have lots of parking space and drive the size of the ship upwards, if you can do the same (or more!) in less area?

This thing would allow to have a expeditionary force together with reasonable air wing. Separated fixed wing and helos decks + additional space for ASW and rescue. Higher take-off and landing rates than a CVN. Smaller effort in the hangars. Incomparably higher amount of AD/ASh/land attack missiles

Well the operation in Syria for the K was all about testing the new MiG-29KR and the upgrades to the Su-33... I would suggest in normal operations that the main role would be air defence and threat/target spotting via AWACS/AEW platforms if present...

Yeah but what is the only operational use the vessel has had? Bombing some guys without air force. CVs are used like that most of the time, like it or not...

Yeah... people kept saying that about all the UAVs and they seem to have a very high attrition rate and not really be that effective, except in unopposed airspace murdering people in Pakistan and Yemen and other places.

If you have an AWACS platform like a Yak-44 then you also have a Yak-44 that can be lunched to deliver more fuel to that Yak-44AEW aircraft to further extend its operational performance as much as you want.

Let's see, but I think UVAs will gain importance for almost any role and specially high persistence and high risk ones.

The whole situation was a crime... that is why they gave out medals.

You are sadly right...

Israel had made agreements with the US regarding conflicts, and was breaking those agreements... Liberty was in a position to record those violations, so it became a threat and they tried to deal with it by intentionally murdering their allies... but money and intel from captured systems made the boo boo all better...

What is even better than a false flag? A false flag where you eliminate or discipline the guys in your own band that are pissing you off. This was apparently going to be blamed on Egypt but it didn't work out as intended...

The design you suggest vastly increases the potential take off rate, yet still offers one plane landing at one time... it will create an enormous bottleneck.

Four launch positions is AFAIK the same that a super CVN. In case you are even faster with the take-offs, well, that is only an advantage. You have to accommodate your landings to be timed according to the available landing resources, so the first planes to take-off will have some minutes time less in the air. Anyway that still means twice as much landing capability as a normal carrier!

You can if the cables just break so you are not using them anyway... The MiG-29KR and Su-33 don't have break parachutes or airbrakes AFAIK, so they would be pushing sht uphill literally...  

Yeah, maybe landing gear would need to be checked since in that case the planes would go really fast up the ramp.

This allows much more planes to be kept in the same space with much less work plus flexibility for repairs

That design might work for an assembly line in a factory but a hangar????

So with that design I presume the aircraft enter at the front after they have landed and go up via the rear.

So basically to take another aircraft down you need to move every single aircraft in the hangar one space down.

You get the plane on deck that is next in line no matter what aircraft type you actually need.

Planes have to roll sideways to move down the hangar.

BTW those hangars are tiny being only the width of a single fighter plane... so no chance at all of putting an AWACS platform in there at all...

Where will you put the dozen or more helicopters?

Just for curiosity, do you happen to know how many HE bomb explosions have happened in CVs in modern days? I guess this is no fun whatever the configuration of the ship

Very very few as far as I am aware because bombs are not fused until they are up on deck already mounted on the aircrafts wing where there is no chance of it getting bumped in handling.

This matches a super CVN with a fraction of the length. How is that useless?

If you make a ship 1/3rd shorter but twice as wide you are not making it cheaper or smaller in terms of volume and weight... it might be 100m shorter at 250m instead of 350m but it wont be lighter or smaller by volume.

By increasing the number of aircraft that can take off at one time by 4-5 times but only increasing the recovery rate by two you make flight management a nightmare and risk to losing aircraft much much higher.

Agreed, just see problems regarding the final size such configuration would lead to. Otherwise it would be of superior performance of course.

Your solution as it stands does not do a great job in my opinion.

With cable based arresting systems you don't need a full deck length for landing, so having one deck for take off and one for landing, is using two decks where at the moment one deck is already doing the job.

Talk about using the full length of the deck for takeoffs is interesting ONLY if that is needed... if you wanted MiG-21s to take off then a 250m run with EMALS cats could probably do the job... but why? Su-57s with new more powerful engines and thrust vectoring are smaller and lighter and rather more powerful than the Su-33s that currently take off from the K... with a slightly bigger 75K ship there would only be problems getting a heavy AWACS aircraft airborne... but that is what they are developing EMAL cats for.

A super wide vessel creates a lot of problems in navigation and port operations... is has to be for a very very good reason.

Yes, you could take off really really quick in this config which is the most important point. I don't think you really need to go beyond 4 fighters at a time, since you could make a queue of planes waiting for their positions at the bow and not loose much time between launches. For other planes there would be launch positions at the stern.

What you call bottleneck is actually twice as fast as a super CVN...

Looking at your design posted above you have one entire deck taking off and one for landing though the front of the landing deck you have indicated takeoff points... ie two on each deck near the front for the short take off run positions.

With the take off deck you could have at least three more take off positions (if the front short take off positions are long enough to take off then anything behind that could also be used... you just need deck mounted blast reflectors to raise up and protect the aircraft behind.

That means in the shortest take off run you have four aircraft on both decks, then the next line of two aircraft behind the two on the take off deck according to your drawing could be level with the VLS cells, and then another position level with the green arrow head on the drawing, while if you have another take off position at the very rear of the deck you could have another position between the rear and last position.

That means five takeoff points on the take off side from the very rear... which does not need engine exhaust deflectors, up to the front positions at the short take off position... each launch position has two aircraft so 5 x 2 plus the other 2 on the landing deck side, so that means 12 aircraft launches in rapid succession... the time it would take between launches is the time it takes to drop the blast shields down on the deck after the aircraft are gone... so pretty damn fast.

So you have 12 aircraft in the air and in an hours time when they are low on fuel you have 12 aircraft wanting to land... normally you can land one at a time... if you close down the take off deck you can land two at a time, but not actually simultaneously...

Bottleneck.

Why is it a need to have lots of parking space and drive the size of the ship upwards, if you can do the same (or more!) in less area?

Because in real operations there is no real protection or advantage to keeping all the planes down in the hangar... most aircraft spend their time on the deck where they are ready to use.

If you have a very small deck with little parking space you will waste an enormous amount of time using the lifts to bring up and put away aircraft, when most of the time you really want to land... refuel and rearm and relaunch.

You don't arm and fuel aircraft in the hangar... you do it with parked aircraft... it is too time consuming to do it on the launch position...

Yeah but what is the only operational use the vessel has had? Bombing some guys without air force. CVs are used like that most of the time, like it or not...

Actually no.

If the Russian navy had to engage enemy ground forces most of the attacks will come from ship launched missiles, not aircraft delivered ordinance.

Most of the testing done in Syria was not sending an Su-33 to drop an iron bomb on something... they did the full recon and mission planning, using a range of sources from satellites and drones to special forces on the ground... more often than not a Russian naval force would have then launched a cruise missile attack on an enemy force rather than send in a few Su-33s with Iron bombs... What happens if the dozen Su-33s are on a bombing mission and the enemy sends a few planes to attack the Russian Naval force?

The Su-33 and MiG-33 are for air defence of the surface ships... why send them away to attack targets they could use a cruise missile to do much safer.

Let's see, but I think UVAs will gain importance for almost any role and specially high persistence and high risk ones.

There are some missions for which UAVs are ideally suited... being small and insignicant and flying high and looking for targets and threats... they are very good at.

For doing the same and carrying a small amount of ordinance to take out one car or one building in case an important threat is discovered they are also excellent... largely misused by the US to murder people but moving along...

For things like AWACS there is potential but for decent persistence, plus a powerful and effective enough radar and all the processing that is needed... ie airborne warning and control is not just AEW or airborne early warning... ie a radar in the sky to give early warning... it is early detection, classification and also control of ground and air assets to deal with the detected threat or target.

You need people on board the AWACS platform that see the data and generate commands to direct forces on the sea and in the air... a drone can't do that.

The AWACS plane might carry jamming drones and towed decoys, but it needs a crew.

What is even better than a false flag? A false flag where you eliminate or discipline the guys in your own band that are pissing you off. This was apparently going to be blamed on Egypt but it didn't work out as intended...

Indeed the blind loyalty only seems to go one way.

Of course the problem isn't the Jews in the US with money and power... it is the evangelical christians with their stupid end of the world prophesies that involve Zion...

UK relatively tame on the propaganda as Ustinov & Severomorsk head out through English Channel post-Navy Day

Hahahahaha... how about a cruise missile up the Thames river with a warhead equipped with a real Novichok warhead to wipe out all of London and show those dicks what a real chemical attack looks like.

Hahahahaha... how about a cruise missile up the Thames river with a warhead equipped with a real Novichok warhead to wipe out all of London and show those dicks what a real chemical attack looks like.

Well they normally imply that the only thing stopping that from happening is the RN escort (even when it was just an OPV because nothing else was available), this time they just said 'through the UK area of interest' and 'routine' so its much lighter on the propaganda than typical.

I've yet to discern a clear pattern to explain why sometimes they go meh 'routine' but other times 'zomg we stopped a Russkie invasion', it's clearly got nothing to do with the actual behaviour of the Russian ships & doesn't seem to particularly relate to the current level of Ru/UK political relationship since UK has been actively trying to push the Skripal 2 thing recently with latest claim that they're on the verge of demanding extradition of 'identified Russian agents'.

From recollection the previous 'we stopped a Russkie invasion' one was shortly before a Parliamentary budget debate though...
So I guess they got their budget increase? Or are still reeling from the Type 31 cancellation, maybe refusing to cooperate in Political action because of it?
Getting pretty far OT there tho

GarryB wrote:
So with that design I presume the aircraft enter at the front after they have landed and go up via the rear.

Yes

So basically to take another aircraft down you need to move every single aircraft in the hangar one space down.

Not necessarily, you can place gaps as needed, or use the workshop space to bypass one particular plane, but roughly speaking you have a FIFO hangar. Nevertheless this is only a rough idea, if this was 100% ready and better in every sense I would be talking to Krylov not here on the internet

You get the plane on deck that is next in line no matter what aircraft type you actually need.

Main hangars are for fighters or one for fighters and the other for UCAVs. Space on the deck hangars for AEW/AWACS if they were of a different type

Planes have to roll sideways to move down the hangar.

Yes, with automated skids. Imagine how much work this would save on the hangars. Look at the hangar of a LHA or a CV and tell me they are optimized as they are. They need lots of free space to move the planes back and forth that prevents them from having storage space. The technology to avoid this is available and cheap.

BTW those hangars are tiny being only the width of a single fighter plane... so no chance at all of putting an AWACS platform in there at all...

Originally the plan was to have a well close to the midline of the ship hence the hangars narrow and on the sides, but this is arguable since the multi-hull design allows also for increased height. Using planes of similar size helps in using the space better and keep the aircraft protected (i.e. in Artic conditions this is needed). As said above, there is additional place at the hangars on the deck or even additional levels of hangars if this was doable

Where will you put the dozen or more helicopters?

Here, see marked in red the deck hangars

Very very few as far as I am aware because bombs are not fused until they are up on deck already mounted on the aircrafts wing where there is no chance of it getting bumped in handling.

Thanks. This as everything is a case of risk assessment. The whole idea of having planes, bombs and fuel together in a nuclear vessel is not for people with low tolerance to risk to start with

If you make a ship 1/3rd shorter but twice as wide you are not making it cheaper or smaller in terms of volume and weight... it might be 100m shorter at 250m instead of 350m but it wont be lighter or smaller by volume.

Not twice as wide as said. It will have much more internal volume that is for sure and that is one of the main advantages. Single hulls are very limited in every axis in this regard, no way to avoid it.

By increasing the number of aircraft that can take off at one time by 4-5 times but only increasing the recovery rate by two you make flight management a nightmare and risk to losing aircraft much much higher.

No GarryB, current CVNs have four launching positions and only one landing strip, many times with is sides crammed with planes. Again, you have to schedule your operations accordingly. Carrier operations ARE a nightmare and exceedingly dangerous. Do you think landing on a moving, angled deck full of aircraft scarcely 10 meters away of your strip is remotely safe? The risk of playing bowling with parked planes is huge. And the need to move aircraft around also. Imagine the amount of work and complexity when you need 5000 people on board. You can and must reduce this number several times in order to reach a size that can be handled with a sustainable economy. To do that you need to handle planes differently, not to go for a bigger and bigger deck.

Your solution as it stands does not do a great job in my opinion.

With cable based arresting systems you don't need a full deck length for landing, so having one deck for take off and one for landing, is using two decks where at the moment one deck is already doing the job.

Just take a look at actual landing video and see the length of landing strip used. But nevertheless I am not against angled deck if it can be used while keeping the size of the ship within reasonable values, this goes well beyond my knowledge and available time.

Talk about using the full length of the deck for takeoffs is interesting ONLY if that is needed... if you wanted MiG-21s to take off then a 250m run with EMALS cats could probably do the job... but why? Su-57s with new more powerful engines and thrust vectoring are smaller and lighter and rather more powerful than the Su-33s that currently take off from the K... with a slightly bigger 75K ship there would only be problems getting a heavy AWACS aircraft airborne... but that is what they are developing EMAL cats for.

Fighters with T/W available today can take-off from a passive, simple, cheap sky-jump equipped vessel from the short runs even on full load. That is a massive step in terms of capacity, especially if you can launch from 4 positions (or more doing as you suggest with further positions down the strip). Or alternatively, have one strip full of aircraft ready to take off while the other is kept for landings. Or parallel landings when aircraft return from mission, without any other plane on the deck posing a risk. So you can configure for all take-off, all landing, mid-tempo and small fixed wing force / large helo force. You don't get this flexibility and safety with the conventional configuration.

Bigger planes, if properly designed, can take-off from the long runs. I would never install catapults if a sky jump can do the job. What happens if the catapult is broken? Cancelling of take-offs until repair. Or you install more, independent units to higher cost to at least have some spare capacity. If the problem is the catapults place on the landing strip then you may need to cancel operations straight away or loose launching capability. All these features increase the costs, maintenance, labour and operational complexity of the current CVNs to extreme levels.

A super wide vessel creates a lot of problems in navigation and port operations... is has to be for a very very good reason.

Yes, port compatibility could be a major issue. Also the ability to use Suez or Panama, I did not research that. But the advantages are huge IMHO, I have listed them already many times. With four vessels like this one you would cover both CV and amphibious assault roles for Northern and Pacific fleet with a unit covering warm seas/ME and another undergoing maintenance. And the added self defence capabilities would reduce the need for escort many times.

Looking at your design posted above you have one entire deck taking off and one for landing though the front of the landing deck you have indicated takeoff points... ie two on each deck near the front for the short take off run positions.

Yes, during operations at normal tempo this would be the deck configuration

With the take off deck you could have at least three more take off positions (if the front short take off positions are long enough to take off then anything behind that could also be used... you just need  deck mounted blast reflectors to raise up and protect the aircraft behind.

That means in the shortest take off run you have four aircraft on both decks, then the next line of two aircraft behind the two on the take off deck according to your drawing could be level with the VLS cells, and then another position level with the green arrow head on the drawing, while if you have another take off position at the very rear of the deck you could have another position between the rear and last position.

That means five takeoff points on the take off side from the very rear... which does not need engine exhaust deflectors, up to the front positions at the short take off position... each launch position has two aircraft so 5 x 2 plus the other 2 on the landing deck side, so that means 12 aircraft launches in rapid succession... the time it would take between launches is the time it takes to drop the blast shields down on the deck after the aircraft are gone... so pretty damn fast.

Yes this is possible, and you could land on the other side at the same time and operate helos from the rear...

So you have 12 aircraft in the air and in an hours time when they are low on fuel you have 12 aircraft wanting to land... normally you can land one at a time... if you close down the take off deck you can land two at a time, but not actually simultaneously...

Bottleneck.

Blessed bottleneck, twice as wide as a super CVN. Do you know any CV were this is different? In a modern CVN you launch from 4 positions and land on one...bottleneck.

The important issue is that you can send more aircraft in the air and also receive more per unit of time than a CVN.

Because in real operations there is no real protection or advantage to keeping all the planes down in the hangar... most aircraft spend their time on the deck where they are ready to use.

If you have a very small deck with little parking space you will waste an enormous amount of time using the lifts to bring up and put away aircraft, when most of the time you really want to land... refuel and rearm and relaunch.

You don't arm and fuel aircraft in the hangar... you do it with parked aircraft... it is too time consuming to do it on the launch position...

You can fill launch positions on the take-off strip and operate like you expose above without interfering with landings. There are places at the bow, middle and stern to cross from one deck to the other after landing. Additional place for parking bow and stern. Only not too much space wasted on the deck. Lifts can be made bigger as well to carry too planes and loose less time with them, but honestly we are going too far. Only to prepare a catapult launch takes a good while and this config is already so much faster.

Actually no.

If the Russian navy had to engage enemy ground forces most of the attacks will come from ship launched missiles, not aircraft delivered ordinance.

Most of the testing done in Syria was not sending an Su-33 to drop an iron bomb on something... they did the full recon and mission planning, using a range of sources from satellites and drones to special forces on the ground... more often than not a Russian naval force would have then launched a cruise missile attack on an enemy force rather than send in a few Su-33s with Iron bombs... What happens if the dozen Su-33s are on a bombing mission and the enemy sends a few planes to attack the Russian Naval force?

The Su-33 and MiG-33 are for air defence of the surface ships... why send them away to attack targets they could use a cruise missile to do much safer.

What you explain makes sense but is theory, current experience with K and other CVs in advanced phases of a conflict is to bomb on the cheap, instead of launching expensive CMs all of the time. I agree nevertheless that CMs are used each time more. But in a conflict like Syria a carrier with 3 or 4 squadrons like 100 km far from the coast could have been safer than Hmeimym in regards of militant attacks and fill the strike role on that intensity relatively easily most of the time.

The example you propose would correspond rather to an early phase of a conflict when you deal with air force and AD rather than using all you resources for bombing. In any case you need to program your forces to deal with both strike and AD roles. With a ship like proposed you could have easily 4 squadrons on board + huge SAM capacity to increase your operational effectiveness several times compared to the K.

There are some missions for which UAVs are ideally suited... being small and insignicant and flying high and looking for targets and threats... they are very good at.

For doing the same and carrying a small amount of ordinance to take out one car or one building in case an important threat is discovered they are also excellent... largely misused by the US to murder people but moving along...

For things like AWACS there is potential but for decent persistence, plus a powerful and effective enough radar and all the processing that is needed... ie airborne warning and control is not just AEW or airborne early warning... ie a radar in the sky to give early warning... it is early detection, classification and also control of ground and air assets to deal with the detected threat or target.

You need people on board the AWACS platform that see the data and generate commands to direct forces on the sea and in the air... a drone can't do that.

The AWACS plane might carry jamming drones and towed decoys, but it needs a crew.

Inefficient approach for today IMO. The ship can house the crew much more effectively and then use LPI links to AEW UVAs or fighters to relay information and commands. Conventional AWACS are dead in a high intensity conflict. In fact I think a distributed AEW capability on board of LO and/or kinetically apt planes is much better, and modern "active skins" as said can be very useful in that regard.

Yes, with automated skids. Imagine how much work this would save on the hangars.

Automated skids?

Would it not just be easier to turn them 90 degrees?

Then you could either have two side by side... or even better have some space down the entire length of the hangar so aircraft can be taken out of turn to be raised to the deck and launched?

Originally the plan was to have a well close to the midline of the ship hence the hangars narrow and on the sides, but this is arguable since the multi-hull design allows also for increased height. Using planes of similar size helps in using the space better and keep the aircraft protected (i.e. in Artic conditions this is needed). As said above, there is additional place at the hangars on the deck or even additional levels of hangars if this was doable

Actually the smaller the island is on the deck the better... the island performs two roles... tower for the airfield that is the carrier and bridge of the ship... otherwise it would be better to have as small a tower as possible.

A big island means less parking space for aircraft... (note some designs have two "towers"... one for the ships bridge and one for landing control...

Here, see marked in red the deck hangars

Barely long enough to get three in and not wide enough for more than one... how are you going to get 20 odd helos in there, let alone a workshop to support their operations...

The whole idea of having planes, bombs and fuel together in a nuclear vessel is not for people with low tolerance to risk to start with

Indeed, but experience has led to certain best practises being adopted... like fuelling and arming only on the deck... on a US carrier the people who do that wear Blue and Red respectively I think...

The risk of playing bowling with parked planes is huge.

That problem was solved with the angled landing deck.

It is the straight deck design that reintroduces that problem.

You can and must reduce this number several times in order to reach a size that can be handled with a sustainable economy. To do that you need to handle planes differently, not to go for a bigger and bigger deck.

If you can afford a sea going blue water navy then you need a carrier as a force multiplier.

Ground forces are cheaper without air force support, but are generally much more effective in attack and defence with air support.

Surface ships are cheaper without a carrier, but are much more effective in attack and defence with a carrier.

Just take a look at actual landing video and see the length of landing strip used. But nevertheless I am not against angled deck if it can be used while keeping the size of the ship within reasonable values, this goes well beyond my knowledge and available time.

The purpose of the angled deck is to allow landings without having to clear all the aircraft off the deck... it can be applied to any design including your suggestion.

Fighters with T/W available today can take-off from a passive, simple, cheap sky-jump equipped vessel from the short runs even on full load. That is a massive step in terms of capacity, especially if you can launch from 4 positions (or more doing as you suggest with further positions down the strip).

The K already has that capacity with flankers and fulcrums... the problem is lack of AWACS, which is being solved by EMALS.

A straight deck cat is no replacement for an EM cat...

I would never install catapults if a sky jump can do the job. What happens if the catapult is broken?

Heavy aircraft will never be able to use ski jump takeoffs... the sudden vertical gs would break them... the pieces would just drop into the sea.

What happens if the catapult is broken? Cancelling of take-offs until repair. Or you install more, independent units to higher cost to at least have some spare capacity. If the problem is the catapults place on the landing strip then you may need to cancel operations straight away or loose launching capability. All these features increase the costs, maintenance, labour and operational complexity of the current CVNs to extreme levels.

That is just silly. What if the breaking mechanism for your cable landing system breaks, like it did for the K in Syria... they don't carry replacement gear systems... they carry spare cables, but with the gear broken every cable will snap every time... if they didn't why would you bother with gears for landing in the first place.

If the problem is that the EM catapult system has failed that means the heavy aircraft are grounded so you can only operate fighters... big deal.

When the EM system is working you get vastly superior operational performance than you will ever get with just ski jumps (ie no AWACS heavy aircraft).

Yes, port compatibility could be a major issue. Also the ability to use Suez or Panama, I did not research that. But the advantages are huge IMHO, I have listed them already many times. With four vessels like this one you would cover both CV and amphibious assault roles for Northern and Pacific fleet with a unit covering warm seas/ME and another undergoing maintenance. And the added self defence capabilities would reduce the need for escort many times.

A 100m shorter but double width vessel is not going to be light or cheap and there are going to be a lot of places these ships simply cannot go.

These carriers are going to be 60K ton plus... there is simply no way they could possibly be any lighter than the K and in my opinion will likely be actually very very heavy... 90K ton plus... you are not going to save any money using these ships for both fixed wing carrier and landing ships... they are likely to build new ships very much influenced but different from the Mistrals and at most they will be 30-35K ton each and much much cheaper than any cat carrier.

Blessed bottleneck, twice as wide as a super CVN. Do you know any CV were this is different? In a modern CVN you launch from 4 positions and land on one...bottleneck.

On a super carrier one of those aircraft in the air is an AWACS aircraft that can be up for a very long time. It can also launch tanker aircraft to other aircraft in the air getting low on fuel can remain in the air longer.

A modern CVN can launch from 4 positions, but that does not mean that it does.

[quote]
The important issue is that you can send more aircraft in the air and also receive more per unit of time than a CVN. [/qutoe]

You can launch 5 times more but only recover them twice as fast as a standard carrier.

Only not too much space wasted on the deck.

By using a straight deck you are wasting much more deck than a standard CVN.

Only to prepare a catapult launch takes a good while and this config is already so much faster.

It does not take that long to hook the plane into a cat and launch it... it takes rather more time to fuel and arm it.

What you explain makes sense but is theory, current experience with K and other CVs in advanced phases of a conflict is to bomb on the cheap, instead of launching expensive CMs all of the time.

Most conflicts Russia will be using a surface fleet intervention for would be in places where there is no question of air control on land, or during an air attack on the Russian surface fleet. In the former an Su-33 at 10km altitude with dumb bombs has proven effective given accurate target information. In the latter the Su-33 and MiG-33 should be enough to blunt any attack on the ships... deployed well forward to deal with a mass anti ship missile attack, by taking on the aircraft delivering the missiles and the missiles themselves, or deployed a few hundred kms in front of the ships in case of an aircraft attack where ship launched long range SAM missiles can be used against incoming aircraft and missiles.

Improvements in missile technology suggest dogfighting should not be a problem, but given the choice of a MiG-33 or Su-33 against an F-18 or naval F-35 my money would be on the Russians...

The example you propose would correspond rather to an early phase of a conflict when you deal with air force and AD rather than using all you resources for bombing. In any case you need to program your forces to deal with both strike and AD roles. With a ship like proposed you could have easily 4 squadrons on board + huge SAM capacity to increase your operational effectiveness several times compared to the K.

The purpose of a Russian carrier is to defend Russian ships from enemy air power... land based or sea based.

It is not intended to invade the US or EU, it is intended to protect Russian interests world wide.

Inefficient approach for today IMO. The ship can house the crew much more effectively and then use LPI links to AEW UVAs or fighters to relay information and commands.

It is all about dataflow... if you have a big radar... whether it is in a UAV or AWACS or even a blimp, then to actually gather useful information you need to transmit radiation... radiated signals that can be detected at more than twice the distance they can actually gather information to...

That is going to reveal its position... that is a given... the amount of communications signals and data will be enormous... even more so for an AEW like a UAV because it doesn't process the information it just beams it to nearby ships, who process the information... so what does that ship do?

It will need to send commands to the UAV to tell it where to scan and to perhaps take a better look in one direction or another because of the data it sent before... it will also need to send its information to other ships and any aircraft already in the air to deal with any threats or targets that might have been detected.

From an enemies perspective a huge signal has appeared in the air a few thousand kms off their shores... then despite being over the horizon they detect electronic traffic with at least one ship... those two objects become targets... Tomahawks can be fired immediately against the ship and aircraft can be sent to engage the aircraft.... the tomahawks would be detected early, but all those ships will be lighting up their SAMs and the radars they need to detect and engage incoming missiles... the Falklands conflict showed missiles jammed by military ships re-targeted civilian ships used as troop transports and support vessels... so I doubt any military ship will remain blind with its radar off when under attack... anti ship missiles after the emitting ship could easily come across other radar and radio silent vessels and attack them anyway...

In comparison a proper AWACS aircraft will also be detected but its transmissions will be LPI radar scans and burst transmissions of commands to ships and aircraft that wont reply... so there is this plane off your coast that seems to be scanning, and occasionally sending short range burst transmissions.

A simple scaled up K with EM cats and an AWACS platform and naval Su-63s (Su-27 = naval Su-33, so Su-57 = naval Su-63) can do everything they need... no need for huge exotic catamaran carriers... no matter how interesting they could be... just look up catamaran aircraft carrier in Yandex or Google...

@GarryB:

As said this is only a suggestion in order to think about the possible advantages of changing the hull shape. IMHO this is still very promising in many aspects (only the increased take-off and landing capabilities and increased internal space would be enough to make it a superior weapon) despite some drawbacks and, speaking more broadly, the opportunities to modify many aspects of current paradigms in CV use exist. Russia should make use of these possibilities to develop their own carrier concept since conventional CV design and doctrine are not really optimal for them. Neither a single Kuznetsov, nor some Lavinas plus Shtorms or small carriers for STOVL aircraft are an optimal answer considering needs and available resources. Russia needs ships as cheap and small as possible, as versatile as possible and with very high defensive capabilities. If the answer to these requirements was clear and undisputed Russia would already have several units, instead what they have are endless discussions.

I agree Russia should keep an open mind and remain aware that a new design might be made possible with new propulsion, new materials, and new technology, but the current angle deck carrier took decades to develop and was developed for sound reasons, and to just ignore all that to be cool or modern looking is very foolish... if only for the reasons that there will likely be some very harsh and painful lessons to be learned before it becomes mature capable technology.

Instead of going for a 70K ton plus fixed wing CVN, perhaps make a Mistral sized amphibious assault carrier from a multi hull design... such a vessel would certainly benefit from having an enormous armour deck, with lots of space in the hangar and on deck for all sorts of things.

Hell... if you wanted to you could use one side for helicopter operations and the other side could have Grad batteries and Tornado batteries and Smerch batteries to support the landing with ground to ground artillery fire... a SERNA landing vessel, which could do 30 KNTs could have a Coalition artillery gun on board but instead of landing it could zip up and down the coastline firing 152mm shells up to 70kms inland with a CEP of 10m... The lack of stability of the gun platform in the open ocean shouldn't matter with the guided shells... when it has fired off all its ammo it can return to the ship and while reloading the SERNA can land an armoured vehicle and come back and pick up another Coalition to continue to support the troops landing.

Think outside the square...

GarryB:
Believe me, I do not give a f*ck about weapons systems looking modern or cool... sound functional requirements result by themselves in harmonious and good-looking weapons almost without exception.

Agree the deviation from canonical CV design would mean learning painful lessons. Maybe Russia is more conservative and prefers Americans doing the heavy lifting? It is a time-proven strategy

In regards of the amphibious support options, on-board artillery is indeed an option (at least one cannon is almost mandatory) but would rely on deep magazines of CMs for the first attacks and planes / high speed helos in the next ones. You don't necessarily want your vessel in range of enemy artillery too...

As a sideline, do you remember our old discussion about the UAV for take-off assistance? It is just a matter of time

https://twitter.com/TheWoracle/status/1028802986506702849

Agree the deviation from canonical CV design would mean learning painful lessons. Maybe Russia is more conservative and prefers Americans doing the heavy lifting? It is a time-proven strategy

There might be a new design that ticks all the boxes and solves existing problems but makes new systems or a new way of doing things better possible, but it is not the case that alternative designs have not been considered before or tested before... it is like the problem of replacing a modern assault rifle... it is not simply the case of needing to be better... it needs to be so much better that it offers things current models cannot be adapted to do... and for the moment it does not look realistic... especially considering their might be hidden problems that make it less useful than a conventional design.

It is like the design of the tank... there was no set design for quite some time... it was a dual purpose gun and heavy armour that rendered multi turret tanks obsolete... but with remote weapon positions with automatic target tracking you might end up with a future APC with multiple machine gun turrets able to cover angles on their own.

The whole point of a big carrier is a big AWACS platform and they can only be launched with a catapult system... ski jump ramps would break what is basically a light transport aircraft with a big radar on its back filled with electronics...

Ski jumps are very good for light fighters and even heavy fighters, but no good for heavy planes like inflight refuelling tankers or AWACS aircraft.

And no, Russia could never expect any assistance from the US or NATO... they would probably end up killing more Russian soldiers than they save anyway.

In regards of the amphibious support options, on-board artillery is indeed an option (at least one cannon is almost mandatory) but would rely on deep magazines of CMs for the first attacks and planes / high speed helos in the next ones. You don't necessarily want your vessel in range of enemy artillery too...

Smerch has a range of almost 100km... if you are landing things you don't want to be thousands of kms from the beach... sometimes you have to take some risks... but a 203mm gun should be able to fire a significant distance... perhaps 120km or so with guided shells.

SERNA landing ships could bring them closer to the beach to fire too.

As a sideline, do you remember our old discussion about the UAV for take-off assistance? It is just a matter of time

Such designs are intended to allow for smaller carriers... a smaller carrier has less endurance, less capacity, and is more weakly armed and equipped to defend itself.

Carrier are never cheap... a carrier group is expensive to operate in itself and saving some cash by making them less well protected and less mobile is very short sighted... spending a little more money to be able to launch much more capable heavy aircraft is worth every rouble.... because some small little half assed UAV used to look for threats might not spot a real threat early enough to make a difference.

Equally planes not powerful enough to get airborne on their own would be too underpowered to be effective in combat...

Such designs will be pushed by countries too cheap to continue using cats... they will also suggest VSTOL aircraft are a good idea too, but the reality is that this option is being forced on them because they are too cheap to buy a good sized carrier.

If VSTOLS were all that why did the UK and France build the QE and the Charles De Gaul? They could have simply built Mistral sized ships and built 5 times as many

GarryB wrote:
There might be a new design that ticks all the boxes and solves existing problems but makes new systems or a new way of doing things better possible, but it is not the case that alternative designs have not been considered before or tested before... it is like the problem of replacing a modern assault rifle... it is not simply the case of needing to be better... it needs to be so much better that it offers things current models cannot be adapted to do... and for the moment it does not look realistic... especially considering their might be hidden problems that make it less useful than a conventional design.

It is like the design of the tank... there was no set design for quite some time... it was a dual purpose gun and heavy armour that rendered multi turret tanks obsolete... but with remote weapon positions with automatic target tracking you might end up with a future APC with multiple machine gun turrets able to cover angles on their own.

Broadly agree. In the case of a carrier, the design is IMHO rather dated and far from being optimal in many regards, but given the cost, size and length of developmental cycles involved, the risk of going a different direction and screwing it is simply massive. Probably this is the reason CVs have evolved so little since the 50's
BTW, Russia just revolutionized the tank design with the T-14 like 100 years after its invention, so never say never.

The whole point of a big carrier is a big AWACS platform and they can only be launched with a catapult system... ski jump ramps would break what is basically a light transport aircraft with a big radar on its back filled with electronics...

Ski jumps are very good for light fighters and even heavy fighters, but no good for heavy planes like inflight refuelling tankers or AWACS aircraft.

Have to disagree both that a full blown AWACS is needed and also that sky jump would necessarily break it if designed properly. Shock during landing is many times stronger than going up the ramp, just look at the compression of the shock struts in any deck operation video. Search for mishaps or accidents and look the impacts the aircraft handle before breaking, they are massive.

And no, Russia could never expect any assistance from the US or NATO... they would probably end up killing more Russian soldiers than they save anyway.

I meant, let them do the expenses for developing new kinds of CVs (the discussion is on also in US due to exorbitant prices of CVNs and increasing vulnerabilities even against modest militaries). Then learn from their problems and only take the valid solutions, as done so many times in the past.

Smerch has a range of almost 100km... if you are landing things you don't want to be thousands of kms from the beach... sometimes you have to take some risks... but a 203mm gun should be able to fire a significant distance... perhaps 120km or so with guided shells.

SERNA landing ships could bring them closer to the beach to fire too.

Well, that is unconventional but if the conditions call for it, why not? It wouldn't be incompatible with the proposed design. A deck full of Smerch opening fire would be a thing to be seen!

Such designs are intended to allow for smaller carriers... a smaller carrier has less endurance, less capacity, and is more weakly armed and equipped to defend itself.

This particular example is for airliners, so they can be optimized for cruise and not for take off. It is the same approach I submitted: put the characteristics you need for take off in some vehicle you actually only use for take off. Don't put the burden on the plane you need optimized for fighting as it happens in STOVL.

Carrier are never cheap... a carrier group is expensive to operate in itself and saving some cash by making them less well protected and less mobile is very short sighted... spending a little more money to be able to launch much more capable heavy aircraft is worth every rouble.... because some small little half assed UAV used to look for threats might not spot a real threat early enough to make a difference.

UCAVs are not half arsed aircraft. X-47B or Okhotnik are 20+ ton with huge fuel reserves, payload and endurance. And AI will make them exceedingly capable before any Russian carrier gets built. I would not rule out that they can be performing full AWACS role almost autonomously in 10 to 15 years. Machines do not need man-machine interface you know, so they are many orders of magnitude faster handling and relaying information that an operator... they will learn in parallel and not need training. Human obsolescence is coming fast man.

Radar arrays can be placed at the leading / trailing edges like in a previous Soviet proposal, eliminating he need of the bulky dorsal antenna and going further to GaN devices the size will decrease manifold, this is not too far away. Not even talking about rofar. Processing equipment could be included as payload in the weapon bays so the aircraft could be used in other ways if needed, avoiding the need to multiply resources on board.

Equally planes not powerful enough to get airborne on their own would be too underpowered to be effective in combat...

Such designs will be pushed by countries too cheap to continue using cats... they will also suggest VSTOL aircraft are a good idea too, but the reality is that this option is being forced on them because they are too cheap to buy a good sized carrier.

If VSTOLS were all that why did the UK and France build the QE and the Charles De Gaul? They could have simply built Mistral sized ships and built 5 times as many

QE is for STOVL right? Charles de Gaule remains if I am not wrong the only non-US carrier with catapults, until the Chinese finish developing their EMALS system. The US is apparently still struggling badly with their own one. This suggest to me that this thing (be it steam or electromagnetic) is a real pain in the ass. Why only US using them practically, when they are so powerful? This is the intriguing question for me. And of course, they loose every time more and more relevance since modern engines allow fighters to take off full load on a sky jump, modern electronics allow smaller planes to cover AWACS role and high-speed helicopters are about to appear. All this calls for a revision of paradigms.

Have to agree that STOVL aircraft and carriers is a half-arsed solution though!

Broadly agree. In the case of a carrier, the design is IMHO rather dated and far from being optimal in many regards, but given the cost, size and length of developmental cycles involved, the risk of going a different direction and screwing it is simply massive. Probably this is the reason CVs have evolved so little since the 50's
BTW, Russia just revolutionized the tank design with the T-14 like 100 years after its invention, so never say never.

The angled landing deck carrier design works... and you can really only call it outdated when something proven to actually work and be superior gets into service.

The T-14 will revolutionise armoured vehicle design, because it is an entire vehicle family, but to be honest there are places throughout Russia where a T-90 is good enough and will be for decades to come. (Note with the addition of ARENA-2, old model vehicles will have rather good protection even against current threats).

Have to disagree both that a full blown AWACS is needed and also that sky jump would necessarily break it if designed properly.

If full blown AWACS is not needed then Russia can just build two more Kuznetsov class carriers and use Ka-31 AEW aircraft.

The fact is that while much better than nothing, a proper AWACS platform is much better.

If you are going to have hundreds then a half arsed design is OK because it has numbers on its side... but they can't afford hundreds because that would eat in to the number of real fighters on board. UAVs are interesting but flaky and no one has an operational AWACS UAV... noone.

Do you think more risk is OK?

Landing stresses is taken by the undercarriage... getting thrust upwards at the point of launch is taken by the wings... wings already near max weights because of fuel load... there is a reason no AWACS aircraft take off via a ski jump.

I meant, let them do the expenses for developing new kinds of CVs (the discussion is on also in US due to exorbitant prices of CVNs and increasing vulnerabilities even against modest militaries). Then learn from their problems and only take the valid solutions, as done so many times in the past.

I agree, but any new design that is of course going to be unproven is going to attract costs and there wont ever be a cheap carrier option... trust me... the Brits invented 99% of all carrier related technology and they went to the extreme of VSTOL carriers... which had enormous potential for failure... they were very lucky in the Falklands war to come away as well as they did...

This particular example is for airliners, so they can be optimized for cruise and not for take off. It is the same approach I submitted: put the characteristics you need for take off in some vehicle you actually only use for take off. Don't put the burden on the plane you need optimized for fighting as it happens in STOVL.

But you hit on your own problem... if you are going to use an assisted take off system so aircraft don't need such big powerful engines to operate on a carrier... to improve performance once they are airborne.. That is fine for a transport or AWACS platform, but that is death to a fighter plane... low power to weight ratio and fuel efficiency was never a good feature of a fighter.

If you only want the assisted take off option for heavy slow aircraft then... that is what EMALS is all about.

EMALS is being developed and will create a lot of very useful technologies as a byproduct... I don't understand why you are so set against it.

UCAVs are not half arsed aircraft. X-47B or Okhotnik are 20+ ton with huge fuel reserves, payload and endurance. And AI will make them exceedingly capable before any Russian carrier gets built. I would not rule out that they can be performing full AWACS role almost autonomously in 10 to 15 years. Machines do not need man-machine interface you know, so they are many orders of magnitude faster handling and relaying information that an operator... they will learn in parallel and not need training. Human obsolescence is coming fast man.

With the nuclear jet engines they are using in their unlimited range cruise missiles they could make a large UAV with unlimited range and onboard electrical power that never lands and just flys around with carrier groups or just surface groups to support operations... but the point is that to operate from a carrier a big heavy aircraft carrying a radar... with people on board it is far more autonomous and capable... people on the aircraft looking at the data processed by onboard computers can direct aircraft and ships and subs... AI might get to that level at some time but for now it needs humans.

Claiming Russia could build an AI AWACS to replace human based alternatives suggests there is something ready for that role... and AFAIK there is not.

Radar arrays can be placed at the leading / trailing edges like in a previous Soviet proposal, eliminating he need of the bulky dorsal antenna and going further to GaN devices the size will decrease manifold, this is not too far away. Not even talking about rofar. Processing equipment could be included as payload in the weapon bays so the aircraft could be used in other ways if needed, avoiding the need to multiply resources on board.

That would apply to both manned and unmanned aircraft... and I would suggest new technology systems would be worth waiting for... the suggestions of performance are eye watering.

The US is apparently still struggling badly with their own one.

The US is struggling with all its new super ships... Zumwalt.. and LCS... it is all about making the money disappear...

This suggest to me that this thing (be it steam or electromagnetic) is a real pain in the ass. Why only US using them practically, when they are so powerful? This is the intriguing question for me.

The British are too cheap to spend the money on large carriers... the bean counters are in charge... the money they waste on half planes like VSTOL F-35 would be better spent on EMALS.

The technology is new, so of course there will be problems... problems that need new technology and materials for the solution... research and development in EMALS would be broadly applied to a wide range of fields and would be generally beneficial for the Russians... unlike VSTOL technology... they already have helicopters...

And of course, they loose every time more and more relevance since modern engines allow fighters to take off full load on a sky jump, modern electronics allow smaller planes to cover AWACS role and high-speed helicopters are about to appear. All this calls for a revision of paradigms.

The Ka-31 is a 12 ton helicopter and it only carries the antenna array... no computer processing of data... as you mentioned yourself a fighter is not an AWACS platform... it does not have the endurance... plenty of speed and performance but that is not important with an AWACS platform.

How about a tethered airship... or one with nuclear cruise missile engines to manouver...

Have to agree that STOVL aircraft and carriers is a half-arsed solution though!

If the British had a proper carrier with AWACS and fighters with BVR missile capability it would have been much more one sided.

Of course if the Argentines had MiG-23s with BVR missiles and with swing wing performance to take off from the islands themselves instead of operating from the mainland things could have been totally different.

The only runway on Falklands was bombed by the RAF Vulcan. The AAF/N was expecting more raids on it & moved all their fighters to the mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

If Russia is going to develop her own manned tilt rotors eventually, & I think they will, they could have AWACS & tankers based on them, saving on the CAT system & the Yak-44. They still have enough time to do it before the planned start of their 1st CVN construction.

This would make an ideal carrier borne AEW aircraft, like the E-2 Hawkeye or a COD (Cargo On Deck) aircraft like the C-2 Greyhound, albeit an expensive alternative!
This would suit the carriers of the Royal Navy or the French navy, given the smaller stature of their ships compared to the United States. https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/01/osprey-capabilty-versus-cost-is-it-really-worth-it/

https://www.military.com/defensetech/2012/07/09/ospreys-next-jobs-tanker-or-awacs

By the same token, it would suit the smaller RuN CVNs as well!

The only reason the US & France didn't yet is because they already have the E-2 AWACS & the CAT, with EMALS on the CVN-78:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gerald_R._Ford#Operational_and_major_system_testing

Preparations "for ocean warfare when the ship deploys in 2022" r also underway: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/07/18/navys-uss-ford-set-for-upgraded-ship-defense-weapons.html

GarryB wrote:
The angled landing deck carrier design works... and you can really only call it outdated when something proven to actually work and be superior gets into service.

I am referring to the concept itself, not to the angled deck which is a single feature that can be good or bad depending on the implementation

UAVs are interesting but flaky and no one has an operational AWACS UAV... noone.

Do you think more risk is OK?

Russian carriers are a long term project. Air wing needs to be conceived considering prospective solutions, not only existing ones. Especially if this is going to mean important compromises like size, use of catapults and other defining considerations

Landing stresses is taken by the undercarriage... getting thrust upwards at the point of launch is taken by the wings... wings already near max weights because of fuel load... there is a reason no AWACS aircraft take off via a ski jump.

Landing is absorbed by the undercarriage... and airframe. Conversely, any marked g loading at the ramp would be absorbed by the landing gear as well! Check mark 9:26 in this video to see how smooth take-off is compared to a landing (from minute 10 onwards, with interesting shots of the arresting damper in operation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpwsGPG_sN8

The Greyhounds are going to be substituted by the MV-22 because they cannot handle the landings with high weight so even with catapults an alternative was necessary for those old pieces of junk.  
And remember, you need to be able to land at any take-off weight (discounted consumed fuel of course) in case of emergency. So landing remains the limiting value for those planes it seems...

BTW, stall speed of E-2 is extremely low, look at the mark 0:40  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGPTRiD3Ig

This would allow for remarkably slow take-offs. In any case as said, there are other options than legacy transport planes for this role.

With the nuclear jet engines they are using in their unlimited range cruise missiles they could make a large UAV with unlimited range and onboard electrical power that never lands and just flys around with carrier groups or just surface groups to support operations...

That would be a great idea, if the engine is not a source of radiation. This is dubious given the restricted use it has, at least until now.

but the point is that to operate from a carrier a big heavy aircraft carrying a radar... with people on board it is far more autonomous and capable... people on the aircraft looking at the data processed by onboard computers can direct aircraft and ships and subs... AI might get to that level at some time but for now it needs humans.

In case of intense jamming or enemy air attack the AWACS can be isolated, silenced or pulled back. An isolated fighter has some level of use and autonomy by being manned, an isolated AWACs has no use apart from being an easy, high value target for the enemy. Technology allows to distribute this role among more numerous, less costly and more survivable platforms and this is what will probably happen in future IMHO. In fact is already happening with planes like F-35 and its intelligence and communication capabilities

The British are too cheap to spend the money on large carriers... the bean counters are in charge... the money they waste on half planes like VSTOL F-35 would be better spent on EMALS.

The technology is new, so of course there will be problems... problems that need new technology and materials for the solution... research and development in EMALS would be broadly applied to a wide range of fields and would be generally beneficial for the Russians... unlike VSTOL technology... they already have helicopters...

Garry, you are dodging the answer you know? There are many carrier operators but very few of them operate catapults. Why?

How about a tethered airship... or one with nuclear cruise missile engines to manouver...

Yes, this remains an interesting option. I have not seen any suggestion that industry is exploring it so I remain cautious but if applicable would open many excellent options as discussed.

Tsavo Lion wrote:The only runway on Falklands was bombed by the RAF Vulcan. The AAF/N was expecting more raids on it & moved all their fighters to the mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

If Russia is going to develop her own manned tilt rotors eventually, & I think they will, they could have AWACS & tankers based on them, saving on the CAT system & the Yak-44. They still have enough time to do it before the planned start of their 1st CVN construction.
The only reason US & France didn't is because they already have the E-2 AWACS & the CAT, with EMALS now being tested on the CVN-78.

Good info about Malvinas thanks! Seems some of the merit goes to the old ugly bombers even when STOVL took the credit for the successful campaign

Regarding the US as said the MV-22 is already taking over for transport role, even with cats for the reasons explained.

As to Russian tiltrotors, it is an option but I think they seem to be very complex and maintenance intensive. And Russians have long-ongoing programs to develop high speed helos with similar characteristics. So I would not see the need for one additional headache and would instead concentrate on the helos, with maybe one version of the Ka-52 (which is asking loud to get one propeller on the tail) and one big fat multirole model for ASW / transport / rescue and maybe AEW with speed, range and payload. That would fill the needed roles quite effectively I would say.