Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

I doubt the UK has no operational control over them; conventional warheads could be used to destroy naval bases, airfields & planes on them.

Even if the UK had complete control of them they are not accurate enough for conventional warheads to be effective... Air fields are enormous places... an SLBM warhead coming in at 5 km/s is not going to take out every plane on the airfield... just the one it hits... not really a cost effective use of Trident really.

in the meantime, UDKs/LHA/Ds would fill the gaps- so not only the Adm. K. is used for training & real ops.

By the time these two Russian helicopter carriers are built the K and probably both of the Kirov class ships to get upgrades will all be back at sea, plus likely a few more Gorshkovs and perhaps a destroyer fitting out too...

Regardless what others say, having self respect is what matters- a nation next to 3 oceans surrounded by NATO/US fleets & bases must have at least 1 CV/TAKR with its escorts.

They also need to sort out home defence first as the top priority and they are in the process of getting Frigates and Corvettes into a decent rhythm of production... once they are being build in numbers then the other ships like destroyers and cruisers from the cold war can be used with the new helicopter carriers and the Kuz for trips away from Russian waters and production of the new destroyers and then new cruisers can begin.

If they rush it they run the risk of screwing it up... and blowing all their money on shit they can't use. The US can afford to do this all the time, but Russia cannot.

they won't go overseas- in the Black, Baltic, Med., Arctic & Okhotsk Seas the VKS will provide CAPs.

You don't need 25K ton helicopter carriers with 60 days endurance to operate in such places.... these ships are intended to operate further afield.

The USAF can mine & "carpet bomb" the Caribbean & S. Atlantic/Indian Oceans off Africa with B-1B/52s the same way VKS can E. Med. & Japan Seas with Tu-22/95/142/160s; sending CVNs there would be suicidal in a real naval war. China still has to show the USN that it also applies to the SC Sea.

Doing so would be an act of war which would result in the CVNs being meaningless because ICBMs and SLBMs will dictate the results, not some CV or CVN.

Russia is not building up her navy for WWIII, they are building up the navy so they can prosper in the future economically.

that proves the point: nothing is left the chance, after losing Cuba & Nicaragua.

It was Americas actions that cost them Cuba... Castro asked for American help first to get rid of the US Mob and colonial white people who were the problem and they said no, so he turned to the Soviet Union...

then, at least 3-4, if not 5 CVNs will be needed- will the RF economy be able to pull this weight?

2 CVNs would be fine... they want to ensure Russian access to the worlds oceans.... they are not planning to invade the entire planet...

not after the Yak-141 influenced F-35B is operational. China can give them stolen F-35 data if she didn't already.

Beginning to think the Yakovlev design bureau sold the Americans a Trojan horse... I honestly don't think a decent supersonic V/STOL fighter is possible.

they'll have Cuban, Venezuelan, Sudanese, Syrian, Iranian & S. African bases to land on.

Their primary mission is nuclear cruise missile attack against the US... how in hell could they possibly complete that mission from Venezuela or South Africa... and the US would shit bricks if you started storing nuclear armed cruise missiles in any of those countries.... and for what... what the hell is a Tu-160 going to do to defend a group of Russian ships in difficulty in the south Atlantic? Buzz them at supersonic speed and look cool?

even large UDKs won't have space for more than a few of them + helos & UAVs.

In other words they would not be able to carry a useful number... just a token number... which is worse than useless.

they may even deploy them there ahead of time, to leave nothing a chance; every station/base there has an airfield.

Rated for transport planes... not strategic bombers...

And transports don't refuel in Antarctica... they fly round trips so they don't need to use up the fuel they have down there because it is quite expensive to get it there...

it can, but it can't avoid detection for long & operate with impunity.

Anyone who watches the news can plot where it is roughly... might come as a shock mate, and I keep repeating this but you seem to ignore me.... a Russian CV or CVN has zero value during WWIII... no purpose, no use. In places like Syria or Venezuela it might be useful and even in Yemen where technically if Russia attacked it would be attacking Saudi forces and not western forces as such, but any western vessel tries to attack and they will get a first hand lesson on Onyx... with potential follow up lessons to come if they don't learn the correct lesson right away...

In peace time the US and the west will go out of their way NOT to get into a shooting war with the Russian Navy for obvious reasons and the Russian Navy will likely do the same. You might have noticed they have been doing this for quite some time now.

still, it did help the RN: 2+3=3+2.

It wasn't critical...

no, it would be better to forcefully remove them to the mainland or Belize or to the Tristan da Cunha/S. Africa like the Brits did to Diego Garcians. Let them taste their own medicine!

Hahahaha... you are quite right there... put them all on BA flights to London.... one way...

As I was saying- Russia may build something similar, faster & for le$$ than CVNs:

And end up with a pieces of crap that is fricken useless most of the time.

A real CVN with real modern fighters like a naval based Su-57 could kick arse most of the time... any warmed over Yak-141 would be slaughtered in many parts of the world today let alone in 10 years time.

He is of the same opinion as me:
In the same month, Sivkov announced that a pair of Project 23900 (Priboy) universal amphibious assault ships (UDC), which was laid down in July, worth 100 billion rubles, more meet the tasks of the Russian Navy than the French Mistral, but it does not need it at all. In his opinion, the UDC "will turn out to be expensive but useless toys" and "it would be much more useful to turn them into light aircraft carriers.

The problem is that carriers become useless toys when they are made too small to operate effective fighters and AWACS platforms, so even if you pay 10% of what a real CVN would cost it is a false saving because you get 2% of the performance which is worse than no CVN at all.

The Soviet Kiev class TAKRs carried more helos than planes.

Because it essentially replaced a helicopter carrier and was intended to be anti sub... for which Yak-38 forgers were worse than useless.

With 20 helos, they will be "helicopter carriers" that later could be adopted for fixed wings, just like these

With 20 helos they can do exactly what they were designed to do. Later it might carry slightly less helos so it can carry more drones...

Russia has them, & works on a better plane:

That is the lightweight twin engined fighter MiG are developing as the new light 5th gen fighter.

They do not need 20 when each fighter can launch a 2 or more Zirkons, they do however need supercarriers because a carrier without the ability to launch AWACS or heavily armed fighters is rather a waste of money, manpower, time and rescorces.

The point is that the worlds best air defences include air borne radar and air borne fighter planes... HATO air defences solely depend on that. Russian Air Defences include air borne radar and fighters and interceptors to add depth... the Russian Navy would be stupid not to want the same for their surface fleet.

Light carriers are a joke built by small countries that want to pretend that they actually have a proper fleet, a destroyer is a whole lot better than a light carrier and a missile cruiser is likewise better than a medium carrier.

Totally agree, a light carrier would be more of a target than the ships it was trying to defend and would be less value for money than a cargo ship modified to have an enormous AESA radar stack with four enormous AESA radar panels facing all directions allowing electronic scanning and loaded up with thousands of SAM launch tubes from short range self defence missiles to super long range missiles to shoot down ballistic missiles and satellites in space.

Well as I was saying Russia would not need more than 5 supercarriers to outmatch the pindos.

They don't need carriers to face the US... sub launched anti ship missiles would obliterate them easily enough, Russia needs carriers for peace time to ensure their ships are protected away from Russia based air power... they would not need more than two more CVNs...

Their Corvettes and Frigates can protect and control the sea around Russia together with land based air power... so some new destroyers and cruisers and two CVNs is pretty much all they need.... in addition to the support ships and naval port expansions needed to operate from of course... they have plenty of time for that anyway.

Awacs were good in the 70s-00s. Now fighters have radars with 400km range and datalinks that makes everyone see what only one scan with its radar. They also have very long range missiles that will make AWACS easy targets.

AWACs have a 360 degree view and can carry bigger radars that can see further... and the new AWACS planes can carry missiles to defeat incoming missiles.... remember these AWACS are not in the middle of nowhere on their own like HATO AWACS... they will be flying above some very heavily armed cruisers and destroyers equipped with enormous numbers of SAMs and radars and sensors etc... not to mention fighter escort...

Also carrier based AWACS are not as good as bigger ones like A-100.

It's good to have them but not critical. A OTH radar can be set up on the carrier so that you see everything 1500km away which is enough.

OTH radar often have a gap as big as 300km in close where they can't see properly... personally I think the best solution is an AWACS airship with a radar antenna 100m long in an airship that can operate at 40km altitude...

Why ever would future Russian AWACS imitate the performance of obsolete pindostanki examples, they would need to be able to detect enemy vessels over 1000 km away in order to make full use of their Zircons.

If the targets are US ships then detection wont be an issue. If it is anyone elses ships then they have satellites for that these days...

About technology, Russia uses US electronics in their hardware even in S-400. US stuff isn't obsolete and they lead in awacs technology.

Their space tracking radars are actually quite ordinary... and Russia doesn't use US electronics any more... they don't have access to it...

BTW I guess that means the SR-71 and F-35s are Soviet and Russian products respectively because they used Soviet and Russian titanium to make them...

That's not the same. First 400km radar for fighter is the irbis on su-35 and it need the powerfull su-35's engines which no carrier based awacs has.

The energy available to power a radar on an aircraft depends on the generators used.... there were jammer versions of the Tu-22M3 and the Il-76 that were tested and they chose the Il-76 with its 4 x 14 ton thrust engines over the 2 x 25 ton thrust engines on the bomber because the Il-76 had more power to run through the jammers... on paper the difference is minor... 56 tons for the Il-76 and 50 tons for the bomber, but in actual fact the difference was enormous because the Il-76
was able to take a lot more power off four engines than the Bomber was able to take off two.

But that doesn't mean russian radars are better since US invest much more in airborne radars than Russia.

If US radars were better than Russian radars then why would Russia bother with the Su-57 and PAK DA?

Russia was working on shooting down small RCS targets in the late 1970s.... because ballistic missile warheads are physically small...

Even modern Russian radars still have to focus tons of power in small areas to detect let alone lock onto a modern Stealth craft, Russian radars are good but they have to be focused which narrows down their coverage severely to find such aircraft and track them.

All radars use narrow beams to track targets... otherwise you are just wasting power.

That's the same for any radar really, bigger radars don't mean.

Bigger radar means better precision and discrimination performance.

Mind you such radars trying to find and track stealth aircraft will be generating tons of power which will give their positions way and make them targets.

In a network one radar might scan while all the rest listen for signals and returns can be collected together and analysed....

Targeting such radars is not actually that easy because they will be defended by several layers of SAMs... and aircraft.

The point of stealth aircraft isn't to hide forever from the radars its to get close enough and remain hidden long enough to destroy the AD and the radars.

The point of a stealth fighter is to be able to fly into enemy airspace and start cleaning up their airfields and aircraft before their HQs and comms centres and radars and major SAMs have been taken down by cruise missiles and also those stealth fighters using stand off munitions.

Problem is that it does not seem to work in all third world countries like Syria... so it might struggle in other places too.

A lot of work goes into finding, establishing a track, a lock on and then keeping that lock against stealth aircraft.

Just knowing it is present takes away a lot of its power... and for the F-35 so much effort and money has gone into its stealthiness and not into its general flight performance it is going to find itself in trouble more often than not if anything gets too close.

They have more money. They spend it to test any idea they have without thinking about it a lot.

They are also vastly more wasteful of money... like the people paying for the work didn't have to work to earn that money...

I would say the Russian navy is for both the economy and WWIII.

The Russian Navy will be of zero value during WWIII... Russia is developing doomsday devices like Posiedon and the unlimited flight range nuclear armed cruise missile... which by the way they could get away with bypassing the US demanding it being included in the strategic weapons and therefore limited by new START right now and any future agreements by fitting it with retractable undercarriage and giving it multiple nuclear warheads that can be dropped in flight and call it a UCAV which are not regulated...

The Russian Navy would be recalled back to home ports in times of serious tension and would try to patrol potential launch areas looking for HATO SSBNs, but it wont be prowling the worlds oceans... its fire power and capabilities would be best used destroying anything approaching Russia... any US carrier groups will be dealt with using MiG-31 and later MiG-41 launched missiles of increasing speed and range... and their land based land launched equivalents.

Well finally someone who else can see this, I was getting rather sick of hearing retarded nonsense such as "they should build LHDs with VTOL fighters" and "missiles cruisers are a waste of money".

They need a balanced force, with Frigates and Corvettes that can operate from home ports and provide close in security for Russia under the air umbrella that ground based aircraft can provide, but they also need larger ships with the endurance to go places and remain there for months, and those groups of ships warrant an aircraft carrier to provide vision and reach so they can't be surprise attacked, and can defend themselves from reasonably powerful enemies.

Russia doesn't have a huge navy, but they do have very good submarines and missiles that will sink any type of ship... Having aircraft means they get the warning of attacks in time to use their missiles to defend themselves and also attack the sources of those attacks.

Israel attacks Syria with standoff weapons because only the standoff weapons are in danger... so there is nothing to lose and everything to gain if one slips through and you get lucky. If they were hitting Russian targets then Russia could simply start shooting down the Israeli aircraft and after losing a few they would either escalate or stop... and I rather suspect stop would be their choice.

My point was more about how much better a Russian carrier would be due to the equipment available to the Russian navy.

Personally I think they should look at making the carrier rather bigger than they need... That multi hull carrier they were talking about that was very wide is actually rather good for a carrier because it means wider deck and bigger internal volume for hangars and stores... even a CVN has to carry thousands of tons of aviation fuel for its aircraft to operate... if they could make a 60K ton multi hull carrier with the capacity of a 90K ton conventional carrier that could carry 96 fighters and say 8 AWACS type aircraft (including both ones fitted with radar and ones fitted out for inflight refuelling or cargo transport) and say 30 helicopters... that would be ideal... but in normal operations they might only carry say 32 fighters and 3 AWACS planes with 2 Inflight refuelling planes as well, and maybe 12-16 helicopters, but full fuel and weapons and provisions. That would mean a normal endurance of say 90 days of operations could be expanded to perhaps 160 days of operations, but if needed you could put extra fighters and helicopters onto a transport ship and ship them to where ever they are needed.

I would think a Russian CVN would not be the same as a US one because the Russian model will likely have S-500 and S-400 and S-350 missiles and also UKSK-M launchers with anti sub missiles at the very least and probably also a few long range land attack cruise missiles too.

The Kalibr land attack missiles they currently use are 6m long and 533mm calibre so they can be launched from torpedo tubes, but even the UKSK launch tubes can take 750mm weapons that are 10m long so they could take missiles bigger than the Kh-101 which have a range of 5,000km which are only 7.4m long and have a body diameter of 750mm. So adding 2.6m to its length would add a huge space for extra fuel if necessary...

Of course, and US backtracking in their early narrative of such planes doing the work solo inside advanced IADS is the proof. The appearance of Konteiner type radars in RF that can track thousands of so called stealth targets already when they are heading down the runway as far as the Netherlands (and soon enough monitor the western approaches to Europe including the GIUK gap) means game, set and match for Russia in the event of an air conflict with NATO in the European theatre. Current generation of stealth technology is inconsequential to such kind of radars.

It is not the first backtrack either... I remember in the 1980s one of the roles for the B-1B was going to be flying around deep in Soviet airspace destroying their truck mounted ICBM launchers at very low altitude... but they pretty soon realised it was hopeless after Desert Storm... the B-2 was on its way and the plans were that its stealth meant it could fly over the Soviet Union invisible to Soviet air defences and just fly around bombing targets with impunity so they were pretending the B-1B was going to do it but when the B-2 was revealed they admitted that the B-1B simply didn't have the flight range to fly around the Soviet Union at low altitude and that the B-2 was going to do it.... but the Scud ruined all their plans. They didn't destroy a single Scud missile on its launcher before launch during the entire campaign even though Iraq is much smaller than Russia and they essentially had complete air control and nothing was interfering with their satellites they still couldn't track the Scud launchers before they fired with air power... There were all sorts of claims of AWACS and JSTARS tracking them and killing them with long range bombers but it simply didn't work.... so the TOPOL killer idea for a use for the B-2 disappeared from their brochures pretty quickly...

hangars, fuel/ammo storage & barracks can be hit- the # of planes destroyed there &/ denied shelter/maintenance, fuel & ammo. won't be trivial.

They are spending 200 billion pounds on Trident and you think they should use them to destroy a dozen planes on the ground?

They could probably put a few Concords back into service and use them to deliver post to the troops in Afghanistan... it will only cost a similar amount to upgrade airfields in Afghanistan and put the Concords back into fight safe configuration...

occasionally, but not routinely.

The places you mention would put them face to face with HATO or Japan.... further afield like Venezuela or Cuba for exercises would be much more valuable practise... landing forces can learn about sea voyages in books but it is something else to experience it... there were problems with sea sickness in the D Day landings... over very short distances... imagine trying to mount an operation to the Falkland Islands...

2ndary missions to protect the fleet could be performed by them as well.

Protect the fleet how? They have no capacity to shoot down enemy aircraft, and have no business trying to sink ships.... the Russian Navy has subs and ships with the weapons to do that better than the Russian Strategic component of the Air Force...

if they can accommodate fully loaded IL-76s, AN-12/22s, C-130/5/17s,

All those planes are able to land on semi prepared airstrips except the C-5 and none of them operate at anything like their max weights.... very heavy equipment sent to Antarctica goes by ship.

why can't they handle Tu-22/95/142/160s & IL-78s?

They should be able to handle Il-78s, but those other aircraft require concrete runways 3km to 5km long when operating at max weight.

They would also be very little use to a group of ships under attack.

the WWIII is already underway, & it won't evolve into WWII style total war of attrition with even 1/2, much less full, nuke exchanges.

Well if you are thinking in those terms the Cold War would be WWIII and that now they are on to WWIV... the second Cold War which is all about money and resources rather than ideology.

Besides, the anti-war movements that helped to end the war in Vietnam will prevent the repeat of another US led major war in Asia or Europe, much less the ME- recent anti-police brutality & racism protests, violence, looting & riots already showed how deeply the gov. is divided by political infighting.

But those riots are about internal problems of racism and police brutality and ignorance... most Americans support foreign wars and could not care less about the suffering it causes... as long as oil is cheap.

The anti war groups used to be the democrats but now the democrats are the Clintons and the Bidens and they want war as much as the Republicans do...

by that logic, China shouldn't have bothered with CV-16/17 STOBARs & saved $ for CVNs, & Russia can save $ by not keeping the Adm. K.

China is not in the same position as Russia... they want landing ships to recover Taiwan and to perhaps protect Hong Kong and the islands they build in the South China Sea. They can operate under the protection of land based aircraft and will enable rapid resupply and support for any troops on those islands, while allowing the landing of more troops faster in a conflict in Taiwan which will increase their chances of doing it right.

The Admiral K is big enough to be useful, and there is no point in selling it because the money they would get for it would not be significant and would not replace the value the ship provides even in an unupgraded form. With upgrades it will be rather more use to them...

Before trying to make sushi, 1 must learn how to properly cook rice & cut the fish, not to mention any other ingredients that must go there.

That is true, but you want bigger more flexible ships that can grow with your navy and expand its capabilities, not something they will use to get some experience but then outgrow and discard in time.

not only- the Yak-38s were to keep P-3s & other planes away from their subs & ships, besides hitting shore targets.

The Yak-38s had no radar and at best were armed with 7km range R-60MK AAMs for air to air.... its performance in the air was pathetic... in the air to ground role it was not a huge amount better with unguided rockets and light bombs... they were tested in Afghanistan against ground targets and were terrible... the engine wear for all three engines was magnified by dust ingestion and they were slow easy unarmoured targets that really didn't hit their ground targets very often.

incl. for EW, reducing the need for AWACS.

A Drone AWACS platform would be a useful thing... that could be made to operate from small ships and make them safer by detecting low flying threats.

which can be navalized as the MiG-29 was, & used on small carriers in sufficient #s.

I suspect that will be the plan.

Actually I was thinking... one of the main reasons the F-35 is a dog is because it is a fighter plane based on the F-16.

The F-16 is a narrow fighter with a single engine and with good shaping it is agile and a capable fighter for its time... much like the MiG-21 before it.

The thing is that needing a large lift fan means the F-35 is fatter than it should be but that extra width increases drag like the extra engine of the MiG-29 but it does not get the added benefit of an extra engine and body lift like the MiG-29 does.

The core problem with the Yak-141 is the three engines it needs to operate as a VSTOL... unlike a normal multi engined fighter, this actually detracts from safety because it triples the chance of an engine surge or failure so rather than making it more safe it actually makes it less safe.

The Yak idea of an engine driven fan lift engine is clever because it means cold air is being blown down under the front of the aircraft instead of hot air with some of the oxygen removed like the twin lift jets on the 141.... it means if that air goes in the front air intakes the engine wont stall on the hot oxygen depleted air, and it means less heat damage to the underneath of the aircraft and the runway.

Having a twin jet engine aircraft powering a lift fan with full 90 degrees TVC engine nozzles and with the front fan able to move say 30 degrees in any direction could eliminate the need for puffer jets at the wingtips and the tail and the nose of the aircraft... greatly simplifying the internal design, and making it less vulnerable to battle damage and breaks.

Having a wider front fuselage is not a problem for a MiG-35 or Su-57 type aircraft shape... which means it could remain stealthy...

The real problem that at the end of the day it is just more complication for an ability it might never actually need... simpler TVC with two engines and a large wing area means it should be able to get airborne fairly easily... new construction designs to make the structure lighter but stronger and new materials and new engines... they were talking about two 11 ton thrust engines in a plane that might have a dry weight of perhaps 10 tons... it really doesn't need a lift fan...

The article details the apparent contradictions in the time line of the program, there is no time to develop the technical project, they in a very brief time announce an unexpected design bureau, show some layout and start building without even having the technical details, few weeks after starting "building" (what do you build without a finished project?) they say it is not 25 kt (which had been announced only shortly before) but "more than 30 kt".

Presumably there have been projects like this for decades... and probably several competing Russian projects that lost to the French Mistral carriers purely based on the fact that the French carriers were "proven" and could be built to a known schedule... which they were.... but if I was producing a competing design would I just give up and roll over? New ideas from access to the Mistral design as well as looking at other options from other countries should offer plenty of further solutions to the many problems of ship design... and of course over time internal information about new helicopter plans and new armour plans and new landing ships etc etc would all effect design as well as knowledge of what was wrong with the Mistral designs that were modified for Russian requirements could also be applied to their proposals too.

I would think before a ship is laid down there are plenty of changes to the design that could be made... from fairly small changes like locations and weapons systems, though propulsion and other significant things... I mean you start by building the shell body of the ship, which on a helicopter carrier is enormous... of course changes are going to be made... look at the Kiev class ship the Gorshkov for India...

If you don't even know the size of the ship you cannot plan commissioning dates, much less when they are as close as 2025 for a lead ship you have never built or tested. It looks definitely messy from a program management perspective, I may be saying this as an outsider but not as a layman. The author apparently graduated in the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute. Now anyone can think what they want.

Who cares about commission dates? Only fanboys on the interweb care about that crap... haven't you noticed a trend of Russian systems... when it is ready...

Sometimes there are real spanners thrown into the works and big delays happen but most of the time they are OK.

I completely agree they need to get moving and if this was the best option to do it, then it is ok. It just means program may be longer, more difficult or produce something less effective than if it was set up in another way, but sometimes you don't have the option to set up projects in the best way.

Their best choice and first choice is operating under the Egyptian flag right now... this is plan B.

It really depends who the enemy is. Just like the US does not build carriers to fight Russia, why would you build carriers to fight NATO. Its a non-starter (or quick ending).

The US builds carriers to deal with everyone... air power is their go to solution for dealing with any problem.

I don't think Russia should build carriers to take on HATO, but honestly HATO would struggle against Russian Corvettes and Frigates... Carriers means Destroyers and Cruisers, which would mean HATO would struggle against a Russian surface force even away from Russian support... with just Frigates and Corvettes they could be overwhelmed with air power beyond the reach of Russian land based air power.

What I am saying is that Russia should not buy Carriers for WWIII but if they did make them they would come out of WWIII much better off.

What it would do is give them the power and reach to trade around the world without needing permission. They could assert themselves around the world... not against small countries... against the wishes of the imperial/colonial HATO countries... where they would otherwise have no say.

Look at the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia... imagine a Japanese invasion of the Kurilles... effectively the western media will be against them so if they want justice or for things to go their way they need to be able to make it happen for themselves and surface ships and air power make that easier and much more likely.

Of course the US has more than 10 carrier groups but was powerless in Georgia to support their homicidal ally, so it wont make Russia all powerful, but it will give them a say where normally they otherwise would not get any say and can protect their interests.

If the US invaded Venezuela and installed a puppet government using money how could Russia stop them?

It is not Russias job to save countries from the US but if Russia wants to trade with countries around the world then of course the US is going to interfere and Russia needs carriers and a decent surface fleet to deal with that.

The shortening of range and lack of a proper interceptor on USN carriers is an acknowledgement that starting with the KH-22, the layered defence approach had been rendered irrelevant by Russian anti-ship missile.

It was an internal stupidity that came from pork barrel profits making better solutions a conflict that risks worse solutions with bigger profit margins.

The Harrier was about the only aircraft the F-35 was going to replace where it offered better performance, but you would never replace the F-18 or F-14 with a Harrier... that is just stupid.

The Kh-22M moves at about mach 3 and shouldn't be unstoppable... flying at about 22km altitude it is essentially an SR-71 so most long range decent SAMs should be able to deal with it.

The Kh-32 the mach 4.5 missile becomes a problem when it approaches at 40km altitude... but as I said their solutions are going backwards... if they had super long range SAMs and long range land attack missiles and didn't need to do what they do to keep their empire going, they might be able to get away with it but with their model their choices have broken the whole system.

In comparison the Russian surface ships dealing with enormous numbers of incoming subsonic anti ship missiles... well how does Russia deal with such problems.... SAMs AA guns, radars and sensors and aircraft in the form of interceptors and airborne radars to detect incoming threats so you can see what is coming and can allocate available resources to deal with the problems as they appear... an IADS with layers of fighters and interceptors and long, medium, short and very short range missiles and guns... they have that on ships but they don't have the aircraft to detect low flying targets sneaking up on them and fighter aircraft can make things rather more flexible in peace time and in war... so you don't have to shoot down every dot on the screen.

Managing forces and controlling things is much easier when you have better information...

That said the F-35 VTOL is still a useful tool to beat up on the weak, paramilitary groups, etc etc

The Harrier was always rather vulnerable to MANPADS... honestly I don't think the F-35 would go that great against a real enemy that shoots back...

a single KH 22 was never the problem. There was never going to be just one, therein lies the problem. You get 15-20 TU-22's unloading from different directions in a complex ECM environment and the problem becomes unsolvable. In 1982, the British could not even prevent their ships from being hit by dumb bombs, let alone Mach 3 missiles.

They were overconfident... the Argentinians only had Exocet and the British had the same missile in service too so they thought their Seawolf missiles would keep them safe... and on paper they should have but the real world is rather different to on paper... to defend yourself you need to know when you are under attack and if you only know you are under attack is when a missile comes over the sea horizon 30 seconds away, then if your SAM system is not turned on it takes 3-4 minutes to turn the thing on and power up all the systems... not all systems can be run continuously... a good example was during Desert Storm the Patriot missile systems were kept running for very long periods and over time their systems lost accuracy so directing missiles to intercept incoming targets became impossible...

You can be darn sure MoD does

I am sure if the Russians said to India.... hey, we have cracked open this Kiev class carrier we are upgrading and selling to you and the wiring and piping is in a terrible state and the engines are a bit screwed... we can add a billion dollars to the cost and fix it, which means a year or two delay, or we can paint over the problems and deliver a dog that will give you problems over its entire operational life... I am sure they will say... you promised to deliver it on this day... not one day more... because they have that date in their diaries and their suits are going to be pressed and everything... they can't do it any other day... it is all about what is important...

The US started building carriers to deal with everyone, and Russia followed by China has been developing weapons to deal with the carriers. Today we realise the best defence a US carrier has is how the US might react if one was sunk or badly hit. There is serious doubt they can even prevent Iran from hitting one and an acceptance that its not a very useful weapon against Russia.

Away from Russian waters US Carrier groups are as potent as they have ever been and significantly boost the air defence capacity of US surface groups.


Removing the US aircraft carrier from their surface ship groups does not make them better protected from Russian attack... it makes them orders of magnitude weaker and easier to defeat.

I do not see how Russia comes out any better from WWIII if they have carriers to be honest. Carriers are only a useful weapon against the weak and for the savage wars of peacetime.

You problem is that you only see US carriers and think Russia wants those and for the same purposes.

Russia wants air defence carriers to provide mobile air power for Russian forces around the world.

The purpose of a Russian carrier is not to invade or attack countries, but to defend Russian ships from enemy attack.

the US does rely on airpower and its base network and massive tanker fleet support this. But these are things that can be picked away. Can they defend all those bases? Is a nuclear attack against a US base something that would result in a full on nuclear response? After all its not the US homeland. I think smaller carriers that can act as a logistics hub and deliver decent air support capacity are much better then nada. And who knows if Russia will EVER construct anothe r large carrier.

It is pretty clear the US will over react to anything and everything... Russia getting aircraft carriers has nothing to do with eliminating the US as a threat during WWIII... they have other tools to do that. Russia getting aircraft carriers is about Russian surface ships operating anywhere around the world in safety and not vulnerable to sneak attack or being easily overwhelmed.

Right now any country that decides to trade with Russia... the US and the west can start colour revolutions and regime change operations... short of immediately building Russian bases and moving Russian troops into countries around the world the second best option is being able to send a couple of large ships and a carrier for "exercises" and training...

Otherwise what country in its right mind will trade with Russia no matter what the terms are?

Who wants to commit political suicide?

Russia needs to have global reach and global power to support its interests... it doesn't need to be able to invade or attack anyone... but it does need to be able to apply pressure and assert its rights beyond the range of Russian land based air power.

Threatening to launch ICBMs or SLBMs wont cut it... having some Russian Naval Infantry training with local forces supported by air power is ideal.

Russians have said they want US-style carriers....these words come from their own mouths. I do not understand why you are spreading a lie claiming the opposite of what they said.

When?

They have said the Kuznetsov is not big enough, which is understandable... it was never big enough... the plan was a slightly larger carrier with catapults that could operate AWACS aircraft and fighter aircraft... called the Ulyanovsk... but with modern designs like that multi hull model perhaps they could get that capacity without having to build a larger ship... perhaps a 40K ton ship could be built that has that performance and capacity... in which case that would be excellent.

All the carriers their shipyards show designs are literally based on our supercarriers minus the ski-jump ramp part.

The models show AWACS aircraft and fighters but no strike aircraft...

Anytime their admirals talk about what they want from a carrier it is a supercarrier just like we operate.

Bull. They talk about the air cover and air protection from the carrier, not that it will allow them to start a Regime Change campaign in central and south America...

So keep lying about the truth, I guess.

Of course... I am from the west and my lips are moving, so I can understand why you immediately jump to that conclusion... but I am not trying to sell anyone anything...

Exocet? they could not even stop Skyhawks with dumb bombs!!! And the Argies only had 6 exocets.

They had different variants of Exocet, and they had more than 6.

An exocet missile is a smaller target than an Skyhawk and they both move at the same speed so the Exocet is the harder target for air defences.

But as you say they failed in a lot of ways... but after the war it is OK they said because the Soviets don't have any sea skimming missiles.... hahahahahaha...

Russia can rain ASMs on a carrier group.

They can, but so what?

They can rain ballistic missiles on Europe should Europe stop wasting its time with big huge airfields and SAMs too because they are just sitting ducks and they are expensive too...

The US carrier group is only powerful against very weak foes.

A US surface ship group without aircraft carriers is vulnerable to much weaker threats than Russia... aircraft carriers don't make the USN weaker... right now they just don't make them strong enough...

Those are becoming increasingly rare as missile tech and drones keep improving. waterborne drones will also be a HUGE threat to carriers in the not too distant future.I think carriers yes, but smaller ones.

Smaller carriers will be less useful and less capable than bigger carriers... so they will increases costs but wont increase protection...

Look at the Falklands war... if it had happened in the mid 70s and the Brits still had the HMS Eagle and upgraded it to operate Phantom fighters and Buccaneer strike aircraft and proper ship based AEW aircraft the Argentines would have had no chance and the Brits probably would not have lost any ships.

By having slow weak short ranged fighters they had to keep their carrier back and safe from attack which rendered it even more of a token than it would otherwise have been...

Any attack on a Russian ship implies the same penalties as attacking a US carrier. If a Russian ship was attacked by US planes, there would be a) either some very tense talk of b) Russia would attack a US base or ship.

But you are missing the point... having an aircraft carrier nearby will stop any "accidental" attack... it was a radio call from a nearby aircraft carrier in the Middle East to say F-14 Tomcats were inbound that stopped the Israelis hammering the USS Liberty and trying to sink her...

It's not bull at all go do research, you are crossing how a carrier is designed verse how someone uses it.

So if the Russians wanted US type carriers, please tell me which aircraft were the strike planes? They had Su-33s and Su-25s on board but all the Su-25s were unarmed and were only two seaters with no weapon pylons and were used for training to land on the carrier. The Su-33 had no air to ground weapons capability except for dumb bombs and unguided rockets.

If they wanted a strike carrier then the MiG-33 would have been a much better choice... being fully multirole... but they rejected it.

Etc a gun is built the same way but it can be used in different applications

Of course, but it will be best suited to the applications it was designed for... a 9mm Makarov pistol can be used as a squad support weapon... but not very effectively.

A Corvette with a Helicopter pad could carry a Ka-52K helicopter and be used as an aircraft carrier.... but not very effectively either.

Which I find funny because US carriers are designed to protect air power and provide air cover to a battleground, not to overthrow a government.

How does an aircraft carrier protect air power? What air power does it protect... the only air power in the area of a carrier is embarked on that carrier... but if the carrier protects itself then why the AEGIS class cruisers?

The aircraft carrier has fighters for CAP and also strike aircraft for deep strike missions into enemy airspace... the fighters protect the ships but are also there to protect the strike aircraft. The AEGIS class cruisers are there to protect the carriers and the other ships.

You really need to chill on your Anti-US rants for when its actually makes sense to do em

Oh please... if anything I am too nice to America...

Russian wants US-style carriers, they have said so. So you are lying end of story.

Yeah... America is the pinnacle so any country that wants better has to copy America... except if they did want US style aircraft carriers they would be talking about 100K ton ships with strike aircraft and more fighters to protect them... instead they are talking about 70-90K ton carriers...

I don't think the VMF would want CVNs optimized only "for land attack or for naval strike and fleet air defence"- they'll prefer them "modular"- i.e. flexible platforms capable of all of the above, regardless of their size. It all will depend on the composition of AWs & ordinance carried.

The VMF are navy, they want any attack or strike to be navy ship based... not aircraft based.... by the time these CVNs hit the water they will likely have drones that could perform strike missions and then return to refuel and rearm... Sending manned planes into enemy airspace means SEAD missions and fighter top cover... in other words for every single bomber you send you have to add inflight refuelling planes and fighters and jammers and enemy air defence suppression aircraft... pretty soon you have dozens of aircraft in the air and the cost even if you don't lose any will be a large fraction of the cost of a cruise missile which will be much stealthier or faster and therefore much more likely to get to the target and destroy it.

Russia has such ships too-

Large flat topped ships that aircraft can land on are no substitute for an aircraft carrier... you need to carry troops and fuel and ammo for the helicopters... and just normal civilian ships are horribly vulnerable to military action.

In the Falklands war several civilian support ships were sunk because a group of ships was attacked... the military ships popped smoke and decoys and jammers, but the civilian ships were sitting ducks... the military ships decoyed the missiles away from them but the civilian ships had no decoys or EW kit and they were hit. But then military ships were also hit too...

What I am trying to say is that trying to do it on the cheap leaves you with poor capabilities and a fragile ship that is easily sunk... in comparison something like Kuznetsov has 192 naval TOR missiles ready to fire, and about 8 Kashtan gun/missile systems and AK-630 gun turrets... not as individual systems but as a network all working together to protect the ship using the main search radars to detect threats and also the information from any Ka-31 helicopters that might be airborne too. It also has chaff and flare launchers and jammers and smoke rounds and EW systems too... and also fighter aircraft...

Land attack by the navy has little future altogether, it doesn't matter if you use aircraft or missiles, at least against any country which is not badly underdeveloped. Any land based ASBM has more range and much more punch and speed than the sea launched equivalent. And even San Marino has enough space for hundreds of them...

If anti ship ballistic missiles which I think you are alluding to with ASBM... which would be anti sub ballistic missile in Navy speak... AShBM would be best defeated with early warning and very large ships able to carry S-500 level air defence systems and missiles... so effectively the countries best able to defeat countries with such weapons would be the navies with real Carriers and not small half arse helicopter carriers with a few F-35s on board.

I think he means "power projection".

And that is the difference.... the US uses carriers for power projection, while the Russians use surface ships for power projection... with the US the aircraft are the power and deliver the bombs and shoot down the enemies planes while all their ships protect the carrier and the landing ships, whereas the Russian ships will be projecting the power and the carrier is there to protect the ships from enemy action and counter attack.

A style isn't a direct copy of anything. The French CVN, although much smaller, but still is a US style flattop with catapults & angled deck. China will also have smaller flattops with catapults & angled deck.

If you are going to call it a style then it would have to be British Style because most of the things used in modern carriers they invented and developed including the angled deck and the mirror based landing system and the catapults...

Large bulk carriers/tankers can be modified to carry to carry troops and fuel and ammo below the flight deck. They can free space on smaller UDK/TAKR/CV/Ns; together they can act as a CB/SG.

They could but they will be the first ships to be lost... the British had most of their heavy helicopters for landing and moving cargo (as opposed to naval helicopters designed for SAR and anti sub duties) on a transport ship called the Atlantic Conveyer... and when it was sunk it was a huge blow to the operation because it meant there were never enough helicopters so everything took longer and was much harder to achieve... as I said if they had a real aircraft carrier like the Eagle and swapped the 14 Buccaneers for say 6 Buccs and 8 Phantoms they would have wiped the floor with the Argentinians... the extra speed and range of the fighters and the ability to launch BVR missiles at extended ranges even with a low PK meant the Argentinian pilots would not have even gotten close to the ships with bomb loads or anti ship missile loads.... they would have dumped their weapons to evade the Sparrows... or in this case the Sky Flash missiles... whether they hit them or not it would be a mission kill. The AEW aircraft would offer much better warning and the carrier could come in close with the other ships and offer much better protection from low flying fast targets.

The Skyhawks with bombs were a danger for ships operating near the islands themselves they would come in low and fast from the land side hiding amongst the radar returns from the land so the ships radar would not spot them.

It is interesting that one of the things they found was that even rifle calibre machine gun fire could upset the accuracy of the enemy pilots... it was not long after that war that Soviet ships were seen to have 12.7mm HMGs mounted all over them on the sides near the bridges and other places too... they were clearly paying attention and I am sure they got a huge laugh out of the British Navy saying sea skimming missiles were a problem they couldn't deal with but it was OK because the Soviets didn't have any.... note the 3M80 Sunburn entered operational service in 1980 and was being deployed on ships by about the end of the Falklands war...