Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

Apparently they do which is why they should go with LHD conversion like Japanese

But Japan didn't spend a cent developing VSTOL fighters... they knew the Americans were making one and that as a vassal state they would be forced to buy one or make a copy that was 3 times more expensive.

STOVL aircraft can operate from big ships too.

Money will be going down the shitter so might as well choose option where smallest amount of money would be going down the shitter

Yeah... that does not make sense.

You can either spend half a million dollars and buy an expensive super car if you want to show off but spending $50K on a blinged up skateboard that looks cool an might go fast for very short periods is a waste of 50K.

Given the choice of spending 4 billion on a big capable carrier or 2.5 billion on a ship to small to be useful the real choices are go big or go home... the big carrier or no carrier.

The UK has come to the same conclusion with its carriers being similar in size and weight to Russian carriers and Soviet carrier projects.

Vtol program has already started. 40kt heli carrier is also an indication they will be used with not only helicopters.

They had three VTOL programmes only one of which got an aircraft in to service and it was worse than useless by all reasonable parameters.

A 40K ton helicopter carrier shows bigger is better... the French equivalent is 20K ton... the extra weight is not for fixed wing aircraft capacity... it is for extra armoured vehicles and helicopters and things the carrier is supposed to do... not screwing around pretending to be an airfield for 4 fighter planes...

I disagree. Having planes above your fleet with a good radar and datalink will make your fleet tens of times more survivable. Even if it is a VTOL.

If that is all you want then why make them high speed fighters... subsonic drones could be designed and made on the cheap with AESA radars and AAMs that could fly above the ships and provide early warning and extra missile rails to defend the ships... building a VSTOL 5th gen fighter will be too expensive to justify... a drone wont need to be stealthy and can be much much cheaper and easier to deploy... you could design them to stack like pallets when not in use...

They can be armed with air to air missiles to attack enemy planes or missiles but also with anti ship missiles.

They will have thousand km range hypersonic anti ship missiles on all their ships and subs... why would they need planes to do that?

A carrier with su-57 and AWACS is better but more expensive and not planned (navy chief said that when they exposed the last modek of carrier at an expo).

Vtol is not as good as normal fighter but certainly better than helicopters.

And when the new VTOL fighter proves less capable than the MiG-29KR already in use they will revert to common sense and make a proper carrier with a real fighter. Modification of the Su-57 to carrier based fighter is already being worked on and will be the cheapest and most sensible option... when you can't have a lot of fighters it makes sense to have the best.

Moreover, they have the yak 141 engine configuration and su-57 work (radar, stealth, missiles...). Now they just need to integrate both in one design. Lot of the work is already done. F-35 was made from 0.

The Yak was a failure and was cancelled. Why reduce the performance of the Su-57... for carrier use they should be increasing it... besides as you say if it is just a datalink and airborne radar then the Su-57 is better than the Yak-141 was ever going to be...

Not necessarily, a 20 kt UDK is still very limited in terms of helicopters and landing forces that it can carry. If you want to be able to land a substantial fighting force you need a big vessel or rather several of them, therefore a big UDK is simply more efficient. The flight deck is not going to grow very much from 20 to 40 kt, but the internal space for equipment, marines and crews will do, substantially.

Exactly, which I why I think cramming a UDK with the stuff to be a CV or CVN is stupid... bigger carriers with more space cost more but they are worth it.

You can buy a cheap Chinese AK for a few hundred dollars, but they were made with minimum cost in mind so they are often awful... for a civilian shooter who cares, but for a military professional it will get you killed.... isn't a better quality weapon worth the extra cost?

Of course it is. I am not suggesting gold plated shit that costs more because of the profit margin... a $1,000 Russian AK makes sense but a $50K French super AR-15 knockoff is just being silly.... like a MiG-35 vs Rafale...

Maybe concrete plans with TTZ, budget and schedule is not, but the VMF has said many times they will get carriers and even have said they will be nuclear with 70 kt.

And mention of some experimental cat system for the Kuznetsov which would only be necessary if they are operating heavier aircraft like AWACS, which suggests they will do the same with a bigger carrier too.

Russia spent entire Cold War and modern day era trying to make carriers obsolete and now when they finally succeeded they are going to go full retard and waste a fortune on supercarrier?

Carriers will never be obsolete, air power is potent over land and over sea and over land no level of air defence systems operated by the Russian Army will make the Russian Air Force unnecessary... and the same is true for the Russian Navy... but the Russian Air Force can't go where the Russian Navy goes so the Russian Navy needs to take its own air force with it where ever it goes... and that means carriers.

Any fixed wing aircraft carrier that Russia might end up building will be used for 3 things and 3 things alone:

1) Naval recon

2) Bombing cavemen in some shithole

3) Dick waiving

Ensuring Russia can access different areas of the worlds oceans and ensuring other navies cannot intimidate allies and trade partners into breaking ties with Russia... which wont be done with carriers, but carriers will support the surface ships that do it.

For this 40k is already overkill and overspend

40K is a landing ship... in terms of air defence carrier it probably could not defend itself and would need to sit back and hide... rendering its air defence next to useless as the Brits found in the Falklands where they lost a few ships to enemy airpower because the tiny little Harrier carrying ships were too vulnerable to 3rd gen fighters...

And let's not forget that supercarriers also need escorts which is another pointless expense

US carriers do. Russian carriers are part of an integrated air defence network that will be radically enhanced by the dozens of jet fighters and AWACS aircraft and likely hundreds of short range air defence missiles they add to the mix. They provide early warning of attack and an extra layer of air defence with their aircraft and air to air and air to surface missiles.

Big ships are still build very slowly. Carrier of 70kt aren't for soon that's for sure.

They already have one carrier and are likely to want to test new upgrades and equipment before planning their CVNs. They will also need Destroyers in production at the very least before considering operating more carriers.

All this talk about a Russian super carrier, how long is it taking just to overhaul the one they have, and its not even an especially deep overhaul.

All this talk about dinky little VSTOL take off carriers... why haven't they scrapped the Kuznetsov which has an entirely different design and operational philosophy?

The USA takes 5-7 years to build a supercarrier and they have a steady and refined process and skill base to do so. So Russia would take what?

The US has wheels to grease and favours to call in... Russia is not building a Ford class ship so the comparison means nothing.

15 years for the first and maybe 8 years for the second?

Ridiculous estimates... but even if we pretend they are true... so what?

4 billion dollars over 15 years is less than what they are spending on making Corvettes...

If you accept that Russia is not gonna be in any major naval battles, I don't understand why a 40K hybrid carrier is a joke?

Because in tank terms we are comparing a T-26 with a T-34... a T-26 had powerful armament for any sized vehicle at the start of WWII... the 45mm gun it used was very potent and effective... but the thin armour and lack of crew numbers and poor visibility meant it was not a good vehicle and despite having literally tens of thousands of them they were cut down like wheat.

Making them bigger and heavier with a larger crew and better optics and a radio for coordination could have transformed them into amazing vehicles... isn't hindsight wonderful.

The purpose of Russian carriers is to provide air support away from Russian airspace. Making it small and cheap and limiting its capability just makes it less effective and we are talking less effective in the role of protecting your other ships. The cost for getting this wrong can be seen in the Falklands war... the bean counters won and VSTOL fighters were adopted so they could have tiny and cheaper aircraft carriers... the result is that the mission hung on the flight of Vulcan bombers down to the area to take out the airfield on the islands because otherwise the British fleet would not have even been able to approach the islands to begin with. Then the carriers had to sit off from the conflict so the carriers were not attacked which meant the air defence they provided to the other ships in the task group was pathetic and lots of ships were lost.

In comparison spending a little more money on the previous generation British carriers they had Buccaneers and AWACS planes... the former could have easily taken out the airfields on the Falklands without a long range strike with the Vulcan (which was seriously risky and likely rather expensive). They could have had Phantoms on the ship as well which could have shot down Argentine aircraft at BVR and been in an ideal position to launch missile attacks in coordination with AWACs aircraft from the carrier... they should have been able to shoot down Argentine aircraft carrying exocets almost before they launched and probably the missiles themselves too. They would not have lost three ships, and the Argentines didn't have that many Exocets... against a better armed enemy they would have been in very serious trouble... to save some money spent on British shipyards building carriers for Britain...

Would anyone dare to challange a USN group with a Wasp class in the center with F-35 VTOLs? I doubt it.

If that was the problem the Soviets would never have bothered making most of their better anti ship missiles... even subsonic anti ship missiles would do the job...

If you put an EMALS on and can do 70 sorties/day, how many airforces in the world can challange you from land let alone in the mid ocean?

So what you are saying is that a pistol can kill people... why not save money and issue your soldiers with pistols and SMG because it is cheaper and your flak jackets and radios and communication as well as your tactics are so much better than any third world country could muster that bigger heavier weapons are not needed... think of the money you will save... except no matter what the size Russia is never going to buy 20 CVNs... if they buy big ones... 70-90K ton they will probably get 2 or three at most... and the irony is that if they want 40K ton mini carriers they will probably need 3-4 to do the same job as one big CVN so two CVNs at perhaps 10 billion for the two (Russians don't make expensive stuff), or 2 billion each for 6 or more mini carriers... wow... yeah... I really see that ten billion dollars on two capable CVNs big enough to carry actually useful aircraft in actually useful numbers is so expensive while 12 billion dollars plus the 20 odd billion dollars to develop a STVOL fifth gen fighter to operate from it is going to be much cheaper with smaller lighter much less capable fighters with shorter range and lower flight performance...

I guess using the same logic they should replace all their Su-30s and Su-35s with MiG-35s because smaller is cheaper right... and when talking about Air Force aircraft we are talking hundreds of aircraft so the savings are multiplied so it makes even more sense...

How many nations can challange a task force with De Gaulle at the center even if it only had 25 Rafales on board?

The fact that none have genuinely tried makes that a loaded question.

Perhaps a better question would be how close to Russian waters are French fleets free to sail safe in the knowledge that they are not in danger?

For Russia a surface fleet of ships would be vulnerable near any western country right now but with the support of one CVN with 90 Su-57s and full AWACS support and also the naval equivalents of hundreds of S-500 and S-400 and S-350 and Pantsir and TOR batteries... they are suddenly much much safer and probably for not much more cost than a fully armed cruiser with hundreds of launch tubes filled with attack missiles and defence missiles of all types.

What don't you understand in "they have no plan for 70kt carriers".

They are only building large helicopter carrier on which they can put VTOL jets.

A 200kt carrier would be better than a 70kt carrier too. That doesn't mean they will build it.

InterPlanetary Ballistic Missiles (IPBM) arr better than ICBMs yet they plan no missiles on Mars or on the moon.

You need to stick with reality.

GarryB wrote:
All this talk about dinky little VSTOL take off carriers... why haven't they scrapped the Kuznetsov which has an entirely different design and operational philosophy?

Because they have it, and even the 40K ships will take at least 6 years to deliver

The US has wheels to grease and favours to call in... Russia is not building a Ford class ship so the comparison means nothing.

Oh!! And Russia does not? lol. If anything they are worse. So even if they build a Nimitz class or a KuzII what will that take ..once the dock is completed.

 

Ridiculous estimates... but even if we pretend they are true... so what?

Considering the project has already started with some of the plans we have seen, by the time this ship is in service it would have taken at LEAST 15 years even if they laid it down tomorrow.

Because in tank terms we are comparing a T-26 with a T-34... a T-26 had powerful armament for any sized vehicle at the start of WWII... the 45mm gun it used was very potent and effective... but the thin armour and lack of crew numbers and poor visibility meant it was not a good vehicle and despite having literally tens of thousands of them they were cut down like wheat.

Making them bigger and heavier with a larger crew and better optics and a radio for coordination could have transformed them into amazing vehicles... isn't hindsight wonderful.

The purpose of Russian carriers is to provide air support away from Russian airspace. Making it small and cheap and limiting its capability just makes it less effective and we are talking less effective in the role of protecting your other ships. The cost for getting this wrong can be seen in the Falklands war... the bean counters won and VSTOL fighters were adopted so they could have tiny and cheaper aircraft carriers... the result is that the mission hung on the flight of Vulcan bombers down to the area to take out the airfield on the islands because otherwise the British fleet would not have even been able to approach the islands to begin with. Then the carriers had to sit off from the conflict so the carriers were not attacked which meant the air defence they provided to the other ships in the task group was pathetic and lots of ships were lost.

In comparison spending a little more money on the previous generation British carriers they had Buccaneers and AWACS planes... the former could have easily taken out the airfields on the Falklands without a long range strike with the Vulcan (which was seriously risky and likely rather expensive). They could have had Phantoms on the ship as well which could have shot down Argentine aircraft at BVR and been in an ideal position to launch missile attacks in coordination with AWACs aircraft from the carrier... they should have been able to shoot down Argentine aircraft carrying exocets almost before they launched and probably the missiles themselves too. They would not have lost three ships, and the Argentines didn't have that many Exocets... against a better armed enemy they would have been in very serious trouble...  to save some money spent on British shipyards building carriers for Britain...

If they did not have those carriers they could not have even conducteed the operation, and I think your thinking is obsolete. With UAVs the nature of naval air power will shift significantly.

Wasp class in the center with F-35 VTOLs?
If that was the problem the Soviets would never have bothered making most of their better anti ship missiles... even subsonic anti ship missiles would do the job...

I think we are long past the pretense that carriers would be useful in a Russia/USA war.

So what you are saying is that a pistol can kill people... why not save money and issue your soldiers with pistols and SMG because it is cheaper and your flak jackets and radios and communication as well as your tactics are so much better than any third world country could muster that bigger heavier weapons are not needed... think of the money you will save... except no matter what the size Russia is never going to buy 20 CVNs... if they buy big ones... 70-90K ton they will probably get 2 or three at most... and the irony is that if they want 40K ton mini carriers they will probably need 3-4 to do the same job as one big CVN so two CVNs at perhaps 10 billion for the two (Russians don't make expensive stuff), or 2 billion each for 6 or more mini carriers... wow... yeah... I really see that ten billion dollars on two capable CVNs big enough to carry actually useful aircraft in actually useful numbers is so expensive while 12 billion dollars plus the 20 odd billion dollars to develop a STVOL fifth gen fighter to operate from it is going to be much cheaper with smaller lighter much less capable fighters with shorter range and lower flight performance...

That is nonsense. Today they simply do not have the skill base and facilities to build a super carrier. They do not even have the facilties to overhaul the one sizable carrier they have. So the question is, do we wait 10-15 years for this capability or accept a significant capabilty earlier. What is the foreign policy behind this carrier? Lets face it if Russia builds 3 super carriers and goes head to head with the US 12 CVNS is game over. So who is the opposition here. If you have 25 MIG-29s on a carrier equipped with KH-31, that allows you to dominate a HUGE radius of sea and rain hellfire on weak nations from 800KM, close sea lanes or just stick the ship there and dare the USA to hit it and end the world.

How many nations can challange a task force with De Gaulle at the center even if it only had 25 Rafales on board? -

The fact that none have genuinely tried makes that a loaded question.

None have tried..hmmmm isn't that really what we are after? None have DARED.

Perhaps a better question would be how close to Russian waters are French fleets free to sail safe in the knowledge that they are not in danger?

Even the USA with its massive super carriers is not safe to sail near Russian or Chinese waters. They know full well if war breaks out both the Chinese and Russians can defeat their carriers.

For Russia a surface fleet of ships would be vulnerable near any western country right now but with the support of one CVN with 90 Su-57s and full AWACS support and also the naval equivalents of hundreds of S-500 and S-400 and S-350 and Pantsir and TOR batteries... they are suddenly much much safer and probably for not much more cost than a fully armed cruiser with hundreds of launch tubes filled with attack missiles and defence missiles of all types.

No it would not. Fact is, if anyone messed with a Russian warship they know full well Russia has the means to retaliate in a million different ways. No one today would dare touch a Russian warship unless it is to render assistance. Even the clapped out old Russian ASW ship was able to intimidate an advanced US destroyer even though the US destroyer easily outgunned it (Peter the Great gulf  incident).

What don't you understand in "they have no plan for 70kt carriers".

They do. They have talked about wanting carriers with larger aircraft capacity than the current Kuznetsov... in other words they want something bigger than 55K tons and most of their comments talk about 70-90K tons.

They are only building large helicopter carrier on which they can put VTOL jets.

No.

They are building Helicopter carriers to carry Helicopters... if they want VTOL jets then the Ka-52K with AESA radar and Air to Air missiles would be totally redundant and pointless... the naval Ka-52 would be identical to the Army model that is dedicated to engaging ground targets with secondary air to air capability for self defence.

VTOL fifth gen fighters will take longer to develop and perfect than CVNs.

A 200kt carrier would be better than a 70kt carrier too. That doesn't mean they will build it.

No it would not. There is such a thing as too big. 200Kt would be too big and too heavy and too expensive for the performance level it could achieve....

Just the same as a 110K ton carrier is not useful for Russia either... if they wanted a strike capacity that allowed them to attack countries and invade them then 100K ton plus carriers would be needed to carry the heavy strike aircraft and numbers of fighters to support fighter and bomber activity in enemy airspace.

The Russians don't need that... cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles can better penetrate enemy airspace and take down targets rather more efficiently and effectively and without support aircraft.... a Russian carrier is primarily an air defence carrier intended to defend surface groups of ships from enemy attack... surprise or otherwise.

You need to stick with reality.

Yeah, Britain wants two carriers and France wants two carriers but Russia can't afford them?

Or they can't build them because they don't know how...

Because they have it, and even the 40K ships will take at least 6 years to deliver

So the 40K ships that are helicopter carriers will take 6 years to deliver and there were plans for four with the Mistrals, so we can assume an order for two more after that 6 years so maybe four years after that they will have four 40K ton helicopter landing ships... so their 40K ton VSTOL fighter carriers will not be laid down for at least 10 years and will likely take another 6-8 years beyond that to develop assuming a VSTOL fighter is even ready by then... and creating a 5th gen VSTOL fighter in just 16 years is pretty damn short notice... especially committing to building carriers 10 years into development of the aircraft themselves... sounds a bit risky to me...

Oh!! And Russia does not? lol. If anything they are worse.

Yeah.... obviously... 65 billion a year and most MIC companies up to their eyeballs in debt to banks because of their tiny margins selling to the Russian government... they are just dripping in corruption... worse you say... really?

So even if they build a Nimitz class or a KuzII what will that take ..once the dock is completed.

Yeah, they are spending big money upgrading shipyards to build big ships and now (2020-2022) when such shipyards become available ready to produce ships they decide not to use them?

That was money well spent. Sure they will be making large 350K ton gas carriers and oil carrying ships, but I am pretty sure they could spare one slip to build a big carrier...

Considering the project has already started with some of the plans we have seen, by the time this ship is in service it would have taken at LEAST 15 years even if they laid it down tomorrow.

Aircraft carriers are neither quick to make nor cheap... but some 40K carrier can be built overnight and has ready made VSTOL fighters superior to Su-57s ready to go... NOT.

They are going to replace all their big helicopters with V-22 clones too... all the talk of EMALS cats and high speed helicopters is just disinformation.

Talk of STOL aircraft just means small planes with very powerful engines... the sort you need to supercruise.... I am sure if they can manage STOVL they will give it a try, but as usual it will be more of a pain in the arse than a valuable asset as usual as it has for all other attempts at such designs and it will be dropped to prevent it becoming a Russian F-35.

If they did not have those carriers they could not have even conducteed the operation, and I think your thinking is obsolete.

That is right... even having poor air support was better than no air support at all.... but a 40K ton carrier with Ka-31s and Ka-52Ks can provide poor air support already without a single cent being wasted on VSTOL fighters, but Ka-52Ks and Ka-31s could also operate on bigger ships like the Kuznetsov and also provide similar support if all other solutions fail they can also use MiG-29KRs or upgraded MiG-35s for even better. But their plans are for EMALS cats and AWACS aircraft and Su-57s which would not only be better than helicopters for both roles, but would also be better than any VSTOL alternative.

They don't need dozens of CVNs... perhaps two more at most together with the Kuznetsov would be fine for the next 30 + years.

They might end up carrying hypersonic drones, but they will remain useful... because air power will always be useful.

I think we are long past the pretense that carriers would be useful in a Russia/USA war.

Which is why I keep wondering why you bring up the false claim that in WWIII all carriers will be dead so having more smaller cheaper carriers makes more sense than fewer bigger ones.

All ships will be dead in WWIII eventually, but in peace time two CVNs is going to be more use and cheaper than the 6 or more small carriers you would need to give you similar performance... and the difference would be compounded further as new things become available like newer smaller more compact catapults, and drones that offer AWACS level performance from fighter sized airframes etc.

Today they simply do not have the skill base and facilities to build a super carrier.

So the Zvezda shipyard in the Far East designed to build military and civilian conventional and nuclear powered ships up to 350K ton weight and 400m in length is not facilities to build an aircraft carrier?

Do you think the British and French and Americans and Chinese have some magic secrets that allow them to make large carriers that Russia does not understand and cannot develop for themselves?

They do not even have the facilties to overhaul the one sizable carrier they have.

But they have... they said it will be back in the water on schedule... 2022 or 23 or something...

So the question is, do we wait 10-15 years for this capability or accept a significant capabilty earlier.

What capability earlier?

Where is this VSTOL 5th gen fighter coming from... and what magic is going to get the yards currently building helicopter landing ships to magically be able to make air defence carriers... wont they need to learn new magic?

What is the foreign policy behind this carrier?

The foreign policy is that the west has rejected Russia and will willfully act against Russia every chance it gets so if Russia wants to foster good relations and trade with countries around the world then they will need a military presence around the world to back that up. Military presence without air support is always weaker than with air support.

Or do you think the west will be nice and let Russia create good trade relations with countries around the world without imposing sanctions like they did in Venezuela?

What country is going to trade with Russia at the risk of Washington initiated coup threats...

The US and the west want to isolate Russia to break her... Russia needs her own independent access to the world... and that is what a carrier does.

Lets face it if Russia builds 3 super carriers and goes head to head with the US 12 CVNS is game over.

Russia does not build any carriers or ships bigger than a frigate and the west will put sanctions and trade embargoes against any customer that dares trade with Russia and Russia suffocates and dies.

So who is the opposition here. If you have 25 MIG-29s on a carrier equipped with KH-31, that allows you to dominate a HUGE radius of sea and rain hellfire on weak nations from 800KM, close sea lanes or just stick the ship there and dare the USA to hit it and end the world.

Get WWIII out of your head.... Russia does not need carriers to fight WWIII Russia will fuck the US with ICBMS, SLBMs, air launched cruise missiles, unlimited range nuclear powered cruise missiles... nuclear powered nuclear armed underwater drones... carriers will be irrelevant in WWIII... Russia already has anti ship missiles to deal with US carriers for WWIII, but no amount of anti ship missiles will protect a surface group of Russian ships anywhere on the planet.

Sailing through international waters a dozen blips appear on the radar heading towards the Russian ships and are closing... what does the Russian commander do?

Send a ship? That would take hours. Wait till the blips get within visual range... pretty damn risky... send out a helicopter... that would take almost as long as the ship and be much more vulnerable... send a flight of four Su-57s at mach 1.6 in supercruise fully armed with AAMs to investigate...

Hmmm... which one will stop a civilian airliner being shot down in error... or that twitchy commander can just try to guess what to do...

A group of Yachts, some formation of drones being used for some civilian purpose, a group of small aircraft on a sight seeing trip, a group of fishing vessels... catamarans practising for the Americas cup...

But if it is a group of subsonic anti ship missiles the greater distance you can detect and confirm what they are the greater distance you can start shooting them down.... meaning orders of magnitude more missiles will be needed to defeat your force... but you want to save a few dollars...

None have tried..hmmmm isn't that really what we are after? None have DARED.

Which is what you get with carrier support, but the French are really pushing the limit with the CdG, it is going to struggle in the future against 5th gen aircraft.

From a Russian perspective a Rafale is essentially a MIG-35... if they could use Su-57s they would and they can with a bigger ship.

Even the USA with its massive super carriers is not safe to sail near Russian or Chinese waters.

That is right, though I would argue that they would be much safer off the coasts of western countries because western countries don't have the land based air defence capacity that Russia does.

I keep telling you Russia does not need aircraft carriers for WWIII or to invade or approach the US coast or the EU... they are for peace time use to assure the protection and improve the performance of Russian surface ships. Nukes will deal with the west...

They know full well if war breaks out both the Chinese and Russians can defeat their carriers.

They have never used their carriers against Russia and are unlikely to ever try in the future... does that mean their carriers are useless?

The US has a self appointed mission of being the world police so having 10-12 carriers and carrier groups positioned around the world is critical to them being able to get anywhere fast to bully and murder.

Russia does not need that, which means smaller carriers will do, but better aircraft are needed, to ensure the best protection of Russian ships.

You complain it will be 15 years... it will be 15 years before they have enough cruisers and destroyers to operate with new CVNs anyway.

No it would not. Fact is, if anyone messed with a Russian warship they know full well Russia has the means to retaliate in a million different ways.

Promises mean nothing... Israeli forces attacked a barely armed US ship pretending they didn't know it was American because it was a spy ship and could detect they were violating their agreement with the US... they kept pretending they did not recognise the ship until they intercepted the call saying F-14 tomcats had gotten their mayday and were inbound... if those F-14s were not there it is likely a lot more US sailors would have died that day... murdered by an ally...

Now there are no Russian Navy ships that only have two heavy machine guns for self defence... they are not idiots... but even still a ship on its own is vulnerable and the response time for an aircraft is always much much better than for any ship or sub.

Having said that if it was a Russian Navy spy ship the only response would be for a nearby cruiser to launch an S-400 and shoot down the aircraft that was attacking the Russian ship and to launch a long range anti ship missile to take out the small boat that torpedoed the ship... so in this example the alternative would have killed Israelis... but then better tactics should have seen the ship operating in what was a war zone with a proper escort so the "mistake" would never have happened.

No one today would dare touch a Russian warship unless it is to render assistance.

Really? Does that apply to Su-24s killing terrorists too?

Even the clapped out old Russian ASW ship was able to intimidate an advanced US destroyer even though the US destroyer easily outgunned it (Peter the Great gulf incident).

I believe it is called BMNB syndrome... (Big Mouth, No Balls)

Of course the fact that they sailed two kilometres into Russian waters suggests your claims don't hold water.

GarryB wrote:Just the same as a 110K ton carrier is not useful for Russia either... if they wanted a strike capacity that allowed them to attack countries and invade them then 100K ton plus carriers would be needed to carry the heavy strike aircraft and numbers of fighters to support fighter and bomber activity in enemy airspace.

The discussion is a lost cause, while people do not bother reading a bit about naval doctrine and understanding what carriers are actually for...

The Russians don't need that... cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles can better penetrate enemy airspace and take down targets rather more efficiently and effectively and without support aircraft.... a Russian carrier is primarily an air defence carrier intended to defend surface groups of ships from enemy attack... surprise or otherwise.

Exactly, and for that mission you do not need thousands of tons in bombs, but rather some dozens advanced AShMs that can penetrate the AD of the enemy fleet and long ranged fighters that can deliver them wherever needed.

Yeah, Britain wants two carriers and France wants two carriers but Russia can't afford them?

Too much time reading Western yapping about the imminent collapse of Russia, but no real calculation to show that a crumbling country like UK is being far more wasteful than Russia would be building their carriers and for no logical reason beyond phantom imperial pain... for Russia it is an imperative question of being able to develop as a world power to the point natural for its resources, both natural and human.

Yeah.... obviously... 65 billion a year and most MIC companies up to their eyeballs in debt to banks because of their tiny margins selling to the Russian government... they are just dripping in corruption... worse you say...  really?

People need to realize that such companies have been finally relieved of that unbearable burden of toxic debts, with the consequences that can have on the development of the navy.

GarryB wrote:
The Russians don't need that... cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles can better penetrate enemy airspace and take down targets rather more efficiently and effectively and without support aircraft.... a Russian carrier is primarily an air defence carrier intended to defend surface groups of ships from enemy attack... surprise or otherwise.


Yeah.... obviously... 65 billion a year and most MIC companies up to their eyeballs in debt to banks because of their tiny margins selling to the Russian government... they are just dripping in corruption... worse you say...  really?

Oh yes!! The oligarchs have been robbing them blind, they know they will get bailed out .

Yeah, they are spending big money upgrading shipyards to build big ships and now (2020-2022) when such shipyards become available ready to produce ships they decide not to use them?

That was money well spent.  Sure they will be making large 350K ton gas carriers and oil carrying ships, but I am pretty sure they could spare one slip to build a big carrier...

As you say for gas carriers but those are about 80-100K tons. Maybe they will build a larger carrier, but that does not mean they may do something interesting with these ships so they can get naval avaiation running faster. They take as much as 7 years to build a corvette from keel to commision, a nuclear carrier will take a looooooooong time. Especially since its the first one in decades. Once the Mistral deal was cancelled, it took years to actually get the Russian ships designed and laid down. 6 years pretty much. Now at least a 6 year buildout. (that is optimistic considering how they build corvettes and destroyters let alone nuclear subs. )

Aircraft carriers are neither quick to make nor cheap... but some 40K carrier can be built overnight and has ready made VSTOL fighters superior to Su-57s ready to go... NOT

I am not in the VTOL camp, it will take too long, too risky and too expensive. I do not rule out EMALS as it is doable, and requires tech the Russians have been working on for a very long time and need to perfect for the future. I would not also rule out a JATO type cat. that adds 100K thrust at takeoff.

That is right... even having poor air support was better than no air support at all.... but a 40K ton carrier with Ka-31s and Ka-52Ks can provide poor air support already without a single cent being wasted on VSTOL fighters, but Ka-52Ks and Ka-31s could also operate on bigger ships like the Kuznetsov and also provide similar support if all other solutions fail they can also use MiG-29KRs or upgraded MiG-35s for even better. But their plans are for EMALS cats and AWACS aircraft and Su-57s which would not only be better than helicopters for both roles, but would also be better than any VSTOL alternative.

I am not in the VSTOL camp, I think its not a good investment, there is no reason they cannot operate an SU-57 from a 40K ton carrier.

They might end up carrying hypersonic drones, but they will remain useful... because air power will always be useful.

Drones are the future, manned planes are gonna be dogmeat in very short order

Which is why I keep wondering why you bring up the false claim that in WWIII all carriers will be dead so having more smaller cheaper carriers makes more sense than fewer bigger ones.

Small carriers are perfect for fleet defence and air support ops, fact is, weak countries will be much more dangerous in terms of being able to attack ships with small subs, unmanned water and seabased drones. Large carriers are nice but  mid size are perfectly fine. France is operating AWACS from its 40K ton carrier. To keep one carrier available you need 3, so from that perspective smaller carriers make sense.

So the Zvezda shipyard in the Far East designed to build military and civilian conventional and nuclear powered ships up to 350K ton weight and 400m in length is not facilities to build an aircraft carrier?

Do you think the British and French and Americans and Chinese have some magic secrets that allow them to make large carriers that Russia does not understand and cannot develop for themselves?

The French YES they build massive cruise ships and things like Mistral and have the finest drydock on the effin planet with mild weather. The Americans YES they have been consistanly been building super carriers for 80 years!!!  The Brits kept their skill base with some smaller ships, but even they had problems. The Russians skill base is now in a foreign country, so they have to reconsitute this and it will take a long time and be painful. A carrier is not the same as an LNG ship and those are not exactly flying off the dock even with the help of the Koreans.

But they have... they said it will be back in the water on schedule... 2022 or 23 or something...

Assuming the dock is ready on time...we shall see.

What capability earlier?

Where is this VSTOL 5th gen fighter coming from... and what magic is going to get the yards currently building helicopter landing ships to magically be able to make air defence carriers... wont they need to learn new magic?

Operate fighters from the 40K ton carrier.

Russia does not build any carriers or ships bigger than a frigate and the west will put sanctions and trade embargoes against any customer that dares trade with Russia and Russia suffocates and dies.

Russia has China and India and the eurasian continent. It will be fine.

So who is the opposition here. If you have 25 MIG-29s on a carrier equipped with KH-31, that allows you to dominate a HUGE radius of sea and rain hellfire on weak nations from 800KM, close sea lanes or just stick the ship there and dare the USA to hit it and end the world.



Sailing through international waters a dozen blips appear on the radar heading towards the Russian ships and are closing... what does the Russian commander do?

Send a ship? That would take hours. Wait till the blips get within visual range... pretty damn risky... send out a helicopter... that would take almost as long as the ship and be much more vulnerable... send a flight of four Su-57s at mach 1.6 in supercruise fully armed with AAMs to investigate...

Hmmm... which one will stop a civilian airliner being shot down in error... or that twitchy commander can just try to guess what to do...

A group of Yachts, some formation of drones being used for some civilian purpose, a group of small aircraft on a sight seeing trip, a group of fishing vessels... catamarans practising for the Americas cup...

But if it is a group of subsonic anti ship missiles the greater distance you can detect and confirm what they are the greater distance you can start shooting them down.... meaning orders of magnitude more missiles will be needed to defeat your force... but you want to save a few dollars...

A Russian commander will have his ships deployed in a wide area and will have radar pickets with drones.

Which is what you get with carrier support, but the French are really pushing the limit with the CdG, it is going to struggle in the future against 5th gen aircraft.

From a Russian perspective a Rafale is essentially a MIG-35... if they could use Su-57s they would and they can with a bigger ship.

They don't need a much larger ship to use SU-57s, a 40K ton ship can do it, just fewer then Mig-35s.

Promises mean nothing... Israeli forces attacked a barely armed US ship pretending they didn't know it was American because it was a spy ship and could detect they were violating their agreement with the US... they kept pretending they did not recognise the ship until they intercepted the call saying F-14 tomcats had gotten their mayday and were inbound... if those F-14s were not there it is likely a lot more US sailors would have died that day... murdered by an ally...

That was then, Russian spy ships probably have some pretty nasty weapons these days. A koronet with Themobaric warhead will ruin anyones day.

Really?  Does that apply to Su-24s killing terrorists too?

The Turkish AF is full of dissidents, which is why there was a massive purge after the coup. And Turkey was quickly brought to heel.

Of course the fact that they sailed two kilometres into Russian waters suggests your claims don't hold water.

Just a calling card, poke the bear, poke the eagle. The Americans were never gonna risk a shooting engagement.

Oh yes!! The oligarchs have been robbing them blind, they know they will get bailed out .

What oligarchs?

The Russian MIC is largely state owned so the only oligarchs that could possibly make any money out of them are the ones that own banks that the MIC companies borrow from to produce their weapons.

The profit markup on Russian weapons is strictly managed at about 4-5%... there is no room for graft or grease...

As you say for gas carriers but those are about 80-100K tons.

The ones the Russians intend to build will be ice capable so will likely be slightly heavier than existing types so they can sail them through their North Sea Route to deliver to the Pacific or Atlantic.

Maybe they will build a larger carrier, but that does not mean they may do something interesting with these ships so they can get naval avaiation running faster.

350K tons is the max weight they can build... I would suggest 99% of the ships they ever build there will not be 350K ton ships... they will be much smaller and all sorts of lengths and weights...

They take as much as 7 years to build a corvette from keel to commision,

They have never made a corvette like that before... it is a fully multi role vessel able to attack ship, sub and land based targets with its primary weapons... they have never had any ships at all with such capabilities... they have never had a conventional land strike capability with missiles before.

These Corvettes have an electronics system comparable to AEGIS and are just as complex... but once they get it right they can mass produce them in numbers because of their modular design and construction. Even more valuable is that larger ships like Frigates and Destroyers and even Cruisers use the same multirole electronics... they will use the same weapon launchers... just carried in much greater numbers and of course larger calibre guns (ie 152mm guns) and of course their sensors will be based on much bigger sensor arrays like radar and sonar and EO systems.

Experience in making Corvettes directly helps with larger vessels, though the scaled up weapons and enlarged sensors like the huge AESA radars they will carry on their Cruisers to allow them to use S-500 SAMs against Satellites and ballistic missiles will need to be developed and tested too but most of the basic ground work has been done with the Corvettes.

Before they were put on these corvettes they have not had AESA radars on ships and UKSK launchers on surface ships... it was all new and ground breaking and needed thorough testing.

More importantly these ships need to operate in every fleet in the Russian navy so the Caspian Sea, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Pacific Ocean, and Northern Fleet and at different times of the year too... so they have more than one type of Corvette, but should be able to get away with one Frigate and one Destroyer and one Cruiser design...

Perhaps if the US Navy were as thorough then their Ford class carriers and Zumwalt class destroyers and LCS class frigates would actually be useful and working right now.

The thing is that once these designs are working the Russians can simply make as many as they need, which should be straight forward with their modular design and sharing weapon and sensors across all the types of vessels.

a nuclear carrier will take a looooooooong time.

Of course it will, but they already have the Kuznetsov in the mean time and they can learn from production of probably four 40K ton Helicopter landing ships and the destroyers they will need to build to escort any global reach ships like helicopter carriers, destroyers and cruisers.

Especially since its the first one in decades.

Not as big a problem as you might think... they don't make new ships the same way they used to and the new Zvezda shipyard was made by the South Koreans which are expert ship builders too, though China is starting to out pace them in terms of military vessels and numbers.

Once the Mistral deal was cancelled, it took years to actually get the Russian ships designed and laid down.

The Mistrals took billions and years to design and get right.... that is why Russia ordered them because the ground work had already been done and full scale ships had already been built and tested.

The French bailing on the deal means they got their money back, they learned a thing or two about building Helicopter landing craft and they got to sell stuff to Egypt in the form of most of the electronics and equipment they were going to use themselves which has now been fitted to the Egyptian Mistrals... including the helicopters...

There were things with the Mistrals they didn't like but didn't want a complete redesign, so they just would have used them as is... this way they can redesign the ships to exactly what they want... and later on could sell the design to other countries too no doubt.

I rather suspect if there are no serious faults they will build the four they intended to buy from France... two in the Northern Fleet and two in the Pacific Fleet... to cover the Atlantic and Pacific and the North Sea Route in between.

6 years pretty much. Now at least a 6 year buildout. (that is optimistic considering how they build corvettes and destroyters let alone nuclear subs. )

It is going to take 6 years to get decent Destroyers into production and probably another 4-5 years to get them right so they can start producing them in decent numbers for all the fleets so taking 10-12 years to build a CVN is a good thing... get it right and then make a second one later on too.

They have to set up the infrastructure to take the CVNs and their escorts which will also take time and money.

What they need is a ship that can operate away from Russia for several years... that can carry large numbers of aircraft... even though most of the time it wont... the extra space from not carrying a full compliment of aircraft means longer endurance and performance.

They could be clever with the design and perhaps make a 50K ton ship with double hull that is super wide with enormous hangars that can run at very high speeds and carry enormous loads of stores and aircraft... it doesn't have to be a 100K ton ship... but it needs to operate big planes like Yak-44s and Su-57s or their equivalent and carry enough fuel and weapons stores to actually be useful.

I am not in the VTOL camp, it will take too long, too risky and too expensive.

Glad to hear that... I am old enough to have heard all the promises and I know the results... the MiG-29 was better than the Yak-141 and the Su-33 was even better. The Yak-141 was a flawed fragile aircraft that would have a very high attrition rate and be flaky and not be faster or longer ranged than a much more conventional model.

Being able to operate from small carriers dooms you to be restricted and limited to weak tiny carriers that the UK has already rejected and the Soviet Union did too.

Modern 5th gen fighters have supercruise which means astounding levels of dry thrust jet engines... which should mean with after burner they should already be no external stores low drag in air to air configuration... they wont need cats to get airborne... it will only be AWACS platforms that do... whether they are Yak-44s or some drone based aircraft... I don't care... the purpose of a Russian carrier is 360 degree long range radar that will detect sneak attacks from low flying missiles and fighter planes that can investigate and intercept in peace time without needing to shoot targets down like a SAM requires.

I do not rule out EMALS as it is doable, and requires tech the Russians have been working on for a very long time and need to perfect for the future.

They have been working on it for some time now and I would rate the Russians to be better able to solve the problems than the Chinese... no disrespect meant... and it sounds like the Chinese have systems ready for testing.

The article somewhere about the Kuznetsov upgrades talk about mobile cat launch systems though it is not very specific.

Rocket assisted takeoffs are expensive and dangerous to other things on the deck and you are limited by how many rockets you can carry as to what can take off, but in the case of the Kuznetsov the MiG and teh Sukhoi should be able to take off normally... it would only be a much heavier aircraft that would require assistance so I am hoping to see a new fixed wing AWACS platform they are testing that needs cat launches.

I am not in the VSTOL camp, I think its not a good investment, there is no reason they cannot operate an SU-57 from a 40K ton carrier.

That 350 metre cat hull design they showed looked rather interesting... with cats heavier aircraft could operate from smaller vessels, but I think these helicopter carriers will be too small for normal aircraft operations... they already have Ka-52K "fighters" which would be very limited in terms of actually fighting but probably good enough to launch missiles as needed... and spot low flying threats.

Drones are the future, manned planes are gonna be dogmeat in very short order

Agree, but only in the longer term... for now there are no operational drones that are fighters.

To keep one carrier available you need 3, so from that perspective smaller carriers make sense.

With smaller carriers you need more carriers to offer the same number of fighters and AWACS...

It is like saying Corvettes are little cruisers so instead of having cruisers you could just make thousands of corvettes and link them together... but corvettes are small and have limited armament and sensors and even if you link them together in a network they wont be as effective as bigger vessels.

Smaller ships make sense near home waters and indeed corvettes and frigates are home water destroyers and cruisers, but you need a bigger ship for further afield.

For air cover for Corvettes in Russian waters I would think you would agree land based MiG-31s with Kinzhals offer much better protection against any enemy surface ship than any small carrier and would be much cheaper too.

For air cover for destroyers and cruisers 10,000km away from Russia a big carrier could do the job of two or three smaller carriers because it could carry big fighters and big AWACS aircraft with long range radar, and it could carry large sensor arrays and long range missiles like S-500 to defend itself from hypersonic missiles... and the huge cruisers that operate with it can shoot down air threats with high power lasers while still carrying hundreds of SAMs and land attack missiles and anti sub and anti ship weapons to defend itself and the ships around it.

A proper fleet like this will enable Russia to trade with anyone which will help the Russian economy grow and develop and the countries they trade with to grow and develop too.

The Russians skill base is now in a foreign country, so they have to reconsitute this and it will take a long time and be painful.

The Russians paid the South Koreans to build their shipyards and to train their workers to make ships in new modern ways... they have spent the money and produced the parts of the mistral to spec and on time too with no problem.

When there is no delay in engines or problems with new guns (I might add a 100mm gun the size and weight of a 76mm gun but the range and performance of a 100mm gun) and also new missiles (Redut) a brand new SAM system that is only just entering service on land (S-350) then there are no production problems.

A carrier is not the same as an LNG ship and those are not exactly flying off the dock even with the help of the Koreans.

They will not be building two every three years like the Chinese are, but they don't need to either.

They have an aircraft carrier that will be back in the water next year probably or the year after and they are working on producing corvettes and Frigates and will soon be working on destroyer and are upgrading a few old destroyers and cruisers too.

They have two helicopter carriers in production and will likely follow them with two more of the same.

They don't have the infrastructure for two CVNs any time soon so it is good that they will take time to design and build... they will learn a lot from the Helicopter carriers they are building and even more with larger radar and sonar arrays for destroyers and later cruisers.

The nuclear power plants for the bigger ships also need testing and will likely get testing in Destroyers and then Cruisers before being used in carriers... but for all we know these helicopter carriers might be nukes.

Assuming the dock is ready on time...we shall see.

What dock... the work that needed to be done on that floating dock was done already.

Operate fighters from the 40K ton carrier.

They are too small and being helicopter carriers they wont have ski jumps or cats so conventional fighters wont be able to operate from them...

Should be fine to operate all sorts of drones from though.

VTO drones could be used... they make sense...

Russia has China and India and the eurasian continent. It will be fine.

Russia needs to trade with the world... it can't limit itself to just China and India as both those countries are trying to develop too and wont need a lot of products that Russia produces... Russia will need to find markets for those other products if they wish to keep making them.

The alternative is to give in to the west and stop making things and just sell oil and gas and raw materials like a good little poodle.

A Russian commander will have his ships deployed in a wide area and will have radar pickets with drones.

Radar picket ships give away their position with their radar... drones carry tiny radars that are not good for detecting other drones or low RCS targets at useful ranges. Having a decent big radar on a fixed wing aircraft at altitude flying orbits gives its position away to the enemy but being an AWACS platform it transmits to aircraft and ships all the target information they need.... the planes and ships don't need to respond... giving away their position but receiving that information from the AWACS that is spewing out radar signals anyway means the enemy sees one target but does not see all the radar and radio silent ships and aircraft operating with it. The airborne radar means even sea skimming missiles can be seen from enormous distances... using the A-100 technology in the AWACs means the AWACS aircraft itself could find and lock incoming targets and ships and planes can launch missiles using target data from the AWACS only so without emitting an S-400 missile or R-77 or RVV-BD missile could be launched at targets 400km or 220km or 300km away and engaged with only the AWACS revealing its position.

MiG-29KRs operating closer to the target could use IRST passively to also gather target information to share with the group too... and of course the ships could be fitted with all sorts of OTH radar systems of the new types being introduced in Russia these days.

They don't need a much larger ship to use SU-57s, a 40K ton ship can do it, just fewer then Mig-35s.

A 40k ton helicopter carrier would need cats to operate MiGs and Sukhois... the Russians have already said the Kuznetsov is too small and the Ulyanovsk is bigger and with cats for that very reason...

A newer design obviously makes sense but not a smaller one.

That was then, Russian spy ships probably have some pretty nasty weapons these days. A koronet with Themobaric warhead will ruin anyones day.

Russian ships are always better armed, and they don't ignore the experience of rivals... after UK experience in the Falklands where rifle calibre machine guns fired from ships were found to put off incoming fighters with bombs the Soviets introduced 12.7mm HMGs on the bridges of most of their ships to boost firepower against all types of targets including small boats in the water and sea mines as well as aircraft.

And Turkey was quickly brought to heel.

I wouldn't say they were brought to heel.... the Russians never tried to shame them... but Turkey soon realised what sort of friend the US is when it wont sell them Patriot missiles to defend themselves and then bans them from the F-35 programme they were part of when they bought S-400s instead... not to mention supporting a coup to overthrow Erdogan... always an eye opener.

Just a calling card, poke the bear, poke the eagle. The Americans were never gonna risk a shooting engagement.

Testing their resolve and surprise surprise they defended themselves... a bit like sanctions really... thinking maybe this time they might fold and do as they are told... but the never seem to do that... odd really. Odd that Americans are that dumb.

If they can make heli carriers of 40kt then they can make this 40kt carrier too with nuk reactors taken from Borei or icebreakers programs.

They can add a catapult for AWACS.

Small but effective and possible.

@Mindstorm

Do you think that Russia should build new Aircraft carriers, or with the actual technology in building them, and with the future American hypersonic cruise missiles (2030's), it's useless to have one? Can they bring something against advanced enemy's or they are a liability?

dino00 wrote:@Mindstorm

Do you  think that Russia should build new Aircraft carriers, or with the actual technology in building them, and with the future American hypersonic cruise missiles (2030's), it's useless to have one? Can they bring something against advanced enemy's or they are a liability?

Hypersonic missiles are not invicible. They will come up with defences against them like micro waves to freeze their electronics or laser to burn them.

A russian carrier will never fight a US carrier. That would escalate in a nuk war in the next hours as soon as it starts. But a russian carrier will help their friends for local wars or be used to deny an area to other nations.

Isos wrote:If they can make heli carriers of 40kt then they can make this 40kt carrier too with nuk reactors taken from Borei or icebreakers programs.

They can add a catapult for AWACS.

Small but effective and possible.

I agree, 40K ton does not really define the size of the deck, you can still have a pretty large deck, and almost as long as Kuz

The deck of this one is way bigger than on Kuznetsov. But lacks space inside which can be solved by using light hangars/protection on the deck.

What has this discussion got to do with this thread???

There are indication they want to use their heli carriers with vtol jets so it's apropriate to talk about light carriers if they can make 40kt heli carriers.

JohninMK wrote:What has this discussion got to do with this thread???

This carrier yes/no big/little discussion seems to be some kind of ghostly plague that spreads.

Thats the point of the thread isn't it? There is a lack of info from the Russians so they are intentionally being coy here. First the ship is 20K...oops now its 40K our bad lol. LPD? Oh actually CVN our bad...Point is, why should they tell anyone until its obvious. Why give anyone time to react? this ship will take shape over the next 4-5 years and until then we will have to read the tea leaves.

I think UDK have enough substance to be discussed without turning them into carriers, but we are a democratic forum

dino00 wrote:@Mindstorm

Do you  think that Russia should build new Aircraft carriers, or with the actual technology in building them, and with the future American hypersonic cruise missiles (2030's), it's useless to have one? Can they bring something against advanced enemy's or they are a liability?

There is a long discussion with him in the naval doctrine thread about that issue, IIRC he said there he prefers a distributed fleet rather that one built around carriers.

LMFS wrote:I think UDK have enough substance to be discussed without turning them into carriers, but we are a democratic forum

The thread was quote dead until they announced the displacement increase then kaboom. But I agree a lot of this should be in the deck aviation thread, and this thread should be specific to what we KNOW about this project, which is not very much lol

GarryB wrote:
What oligarchs?

The Russian MIC is largely state owned so the only oligarchs that could possibly make any money out of them are the ones that own banks that the MIC companies borrow from to produce their weapons.

The profit markup on Russian weapons is strictly managed at about 4-5%... there is no room for graft or grease...

Ok so govt owned entities are 100% free of graft and fraud lol. The Russian MIC relies on a VAST ecosystem of suppliers and contracts. Like the MIC in all nations, these are owned by politically connected individuals... and so all the same stuff happens.

The ones the Russians intend to build will be ice capable so will likely be slightly heavier than existing types so they can sail them through their North Sea Route to deliver to the Pacific or Atlantic.

Yes I know about the Yamal gas project, still not carriers.

They have never made a corvette like that before... it is a fully multi role vessel able to attack ship, sub and land based targets with its primary weapons... they have never had any ships at all with such capabilities... they have never had a conventional land strike capability with missiles before.

I agree the Russian corvettes are very powerful little ships, but so far, like you, I have been very disappointed at their build rate. The one private yard seems quite fast however, able to spit  one out in just over 2 years.

Of course it will, but they already have the Kuznetsov in the mean time and they can learn from production of probably four 40K ton Helicopter landing ships and the destroyers they will need to build to escort any global reach ships like helicopter carriers, destroyers and cruisers.

I contradict myself here a bit, these 40K ships can easily be built as nuclear powered as the Russians have easy access to the Arktika propulsion that can work quite nicely

Not as big a problem as you might think... they don't make new ships the same way they used to and the new Zvezda shipyard was made by the South Koreans which are expert ship builders too, though China is starting to out pace them in terms of military vessels and numbers.

This project will be very telling to see what they have learned, as it should incorporate a lot of the methods of Mistral. If they can get the hull in the water in under 2 years the I am a beliver.

It is going to take 6 years to get decent Destroyers into production and probably another 4-5 years to get them right so they can start producing them in decent numbers for all the fleets so taking 10-12 years to build a CVN is a good thing... get it right and then make a second one later on too.6 years pretty much.

This needs to speed up if not you end up producing obsolete ships, yes I know Russia has had to reconstitute whole industries and frankly they have done a really impressive job. Staggering really. Equal to when they moved factories out of the reach of the Nazi. In fact this is probably harder as whole new sub industries need to be established.

What they need is a ship that can operate away from Russia for several years... that can carry large numbers of aircraft... even though most of the time it wont... the extra space from not carrying a full compliment of aircraft means longer endurance and performance.

They could be clever with the design and perhaps make a 50K ton ship with double hull that is super wide with enormous hangars that can run at very high speeds and carry enormous loads of stores and aircraft... it doesn't have to be a 100K ton ship... but it needs to operate big planes like Yak-44s and Su-57s or their equivalent and carry enough fuel and weapons stores to actually be useful.

This is not really likely, even the USA rarely send their carriers out for more then 3 months at a time. I would argue if  this is your goal you need a MASSIVE ship, at least 200K tons with its own harbour. Perhaps they should consider an oil rig type structure so they can semi permenantly base it at various locations using jacks?

Rocket assisted takeoffs are expensive and dangerous to other things on the deck and you are limited by how many rockets you can carry as to what can take off, but in the case of the Kuznetsov the MiG and teh Sukhoi should be able to take off normally... it would only be a much heavier aircraft that would require assistance so I am hoping to see a new fixed wing AWACS platform they are testing that needs cat launches.

Yes I know but what *if* they have a vehicle on rail (like a rocket sled) but powered by say 2x 50K lb turbofans, this vehicle hooks up to the arrestor hook of the plane (in the opposite way) when the plane is launched it has an extra 100K lbs of thrust, in the last 1/3 distance they deploy thrust reversers that push the plane and brake the sled then it brakes using its own arrestor cables with redundancy. Kinda ghetto but it would likely work.

With smaller carriers you need more carriers to offer the same number of fighters and AWACS...

It is like saying Corvettes are little cruisers so instead of having cruisers you could just make thousands of corvettes and link them together... but corvettes are small and have limited armament and sensors and even if you link them together in a network they wont be as effective as bigger vessels.

AWACS should already be a drone, there is no need to send out a whole bunch of guys on scopes when the data can be fed down. A dedicated heavy drone can easily do this

Smaller ships make sense near home waters and indeed corvettes and frigates are home water destroyers and cruisers, but you need a bigger ship for further afield.

I don't entirely agree with this, I think the idea of a corvette needs to be altered to be a submersible ship, not a sub, just a ship that can go deep enough to avoid heavy seas and pull along a pod for visuals. If need be it can surface to launch or launch from just below the surface.

A proper fleet like this will enable Russia to trade with anyone which will help the Russian economy grow and develop and the countries they trade with to grow and develop too.

I don't think shipping is the issue. No one would dare to physically intercept a Russian flagged ship, I think the last time that happened was the Cuban missile crisis or Vietnam war. if a country attacks a Russian ship, their ships will be attacked everywhere, including their warships. Sanctions are the new tool, and direct trading systems are the mechanism.

The Russians paid the South Koreans to build their shipyards and to train their workers to make ships in new modern ways... they have spent the money and produced the parts of the mistral to spec and on time too with no problem.

When there is no delay in engines or problems with new guns (I might add a 100mm gun the size and weight of a 76mm gun but the range and performance of a 100mm gun) and also new missiles (Redut) a brand new SAM system that is only just entering service on land (S-350) then there are no production problems.

A lot of this still remains to be seen, yes a lot of Russian weapons are very impressive.

They will not be building two every three years like the Chinese are, but they don't need to either.

They have an aircraft carrier that will be back in the water next year probably or the year after and they are working on producing corvettes and Frigates and will soon be working on destroyer and are upgrading a few old destroyers and cruisers too.

They need a drydock to put the props back on Kuz, they are building one since the floating dock sank. Hard to take Russian timetables seriously.

Radar picket ships give away their position with their radar... drones carry tiny radars that are not good for detecting other drones or low RCS targets at useful ranges. Having a decent big radar on a fixed wing aircraft at altitude flying orbits gives its position away to the enemy but being an AWACS platform it transmits to aircraft and ships all the target information they need.... the planes and ships don't need to respond... giving away their position but receiving that information from the AWACS that is spewing out radar signals anyway means the enemy sees one target but does not see all the radar and radio silent ships and aircraft operating with it. The airborne radar means even sea skimming missiles can be seen from enormous distances... using the A-100 technology in the AWACs means the AWACS aircraft itself could find and lock incoming targets and ships and planes can launch missiles using target data from the AWACS only so without emitting an S-400 missile or R-77 or RVV-BD missile could be launched at targets 400km or 220km or 300km away and engaged with only the AWACS revealing its position.

There is no reason a drone cannot loft a radar from an SU-35 for example, yes Radar pickets do give their position away, you can also use a radar helo it is a high threat zone. A drone can also carry IRST very easily and send the data to the ship.

A 40k ton helicopter carrier would need cats to operate MiGs and Sukhois... the Russians have already said the Kuznetsov is too small and the Ulyanovsk is bigger and with cats for that very reason...

A newer design obviously makes sense but not a smaller one.

They maybe be able to get it off with ramp, but of course cats would be more ideal.

Russian ships are always better armed, and they don't ignore the experience of rivals... after UK experience in the Falklands where rifle calibre machine guns fired from ships were found to put off incoming fighters with bombs the Soviets introduced 12.7mm HMGs on the bridges of most of their ships to boost firepower against all types of targets including small boats in the water and sea mines as well as aircraft.

The 12.7 is a BEAST, the Kornet has 10,000 m range I doubt anyone would screw with a Russian spy ship. In fact I would wager the Israelis would be more willing to mess with a US ship then a Russian ship as the Russians have a reputation of taking revenge in the most brutal manner.

Testing their resolve and surprise surprise they defended themselves... a bit like sanctions really... thinking maybe this time they might fold and do as they are told... but the never seem to do that... odd really. Odd that Americans are that dumb.

They had it there own way for 15 years after the USSR collapsed. Its hard to change.

dino00 wrote:@Mindstorm

Do you  think that Russia should build new Aircraft carriers, or with the actual technology in building them, and with the future American hypersonic cruise missiles (2030's), it's useless to have one? Can they bring something against advanced enemy's or they are a liability?

Russia should build one to show it can. A new carrier decked with su 57's would project power. Regardless of how useful it is in WW3. Its a waste not to. They spend that much on the best submarines anyway.

And I think they will. Putin wants a carrier.

Backman wrote:
Russia should build one to show it can. A new carrier decked with su 57's would project power. Regardless of how useful it is in WW3. Its a waste not to. They spend that much on the best submarines anyway.

And I think they will. Putin wants a carrier.

The VMF wants it. The naval experts want it. The design bureaus say openly any surface fleet in the world ocean without air cover is dead meat. Every country wants it. It is what it is.

BTW carriers have nothing to do with WWIII in a hot, nuclear phase or any other when the territories of the US and RF are already directly involved. They play a role in the current phase of the undeclared war (well it is declared but yet not turned kinetic as they say), when every country is fighting tooth and nail for influence and the US is trying to isolate and contain Russia without any restrain. The influence outside of the immediate surroundings of Russia is dependent on navies, and those depend on air power among others, as any other fighting force.

Thats the point of the thread isn't it? There is a lack of info from the Russians so they are intentionally being coy here. First the ship is 20K...oops now its 40K our bad lol. LPD? Oh actually CVN our bad...Point is, why should they tell anyone until its obvious. Why give anyone time to react? this ship will take shape over the next 4-5 years and until then we will have to read the tea leaves.

First it was 20K because it was Mistral or going to be four... and lets be honest if it had been Mistral then they would never have made more than four so this idea of a mini CVN would not be possible.

Because the Mistral is no longer and option they had to design their own and they took advantage of this to redesign and respec it to something more useful for them as a Helicopter landing craft.

I have read a few interviews with the maker of the new ships saying hospital ships and mini fixed wing fighter carriers are possible but this is the ship maker talking not the Russian Navy, which prefers bigger ships with larger capacity.

Ok so govt owned entities are 100% free of graft and fraud lol.

Of course not but with only 65 billion in the pot and having to actually come up with hardware proven to work with no committees made up of generals and admirals looking for cushy consultancy work after they retire from the military the blatant corruption and graft in the US simply does not work in Russia.

The Russian MIC relies on a VAST ecosystem of suppliers and contracts. Like the MIC in all nations, these are owned by politically connected individuals... and so all the same stuff happens.

Of course, that is why the Russians are so backward and behind and everyone thinks they are a joke because nothing works... or are you projecting Americas problems on Russia... I would say there is corruption, but compared with the US you can't even call it corruption... America could only dream to have the MIC that Russia has in terms of cost effectiveness.

Yes I know about the Yamal gas project, still not carriers.

Russia is not the US... Russia does not need a huge shipyard to exclusively pump out aircraft carriers for their evil imperial goals of world domination... having a shipyard that can build a couple of CVNs when they are READY TO, is investing money wisely, because until they are ready to start making some CVNs they can make all sorts of civilian vessels that can earn them money and benefit their economy.

40 years ago they had a shipyard for building carriers... it is now in the Ukraine. Zvezda in the far east is their newly built replacement for that shipyard so they have the capacity but they aren't 15 year old little school girls that want CVNs right away so they can boast on the internet about them... they need to finalise the designs and make sure they have a fleet that can use CVNs first.

I agree the Russian corvettes are very powerful little ships, but so far, like you, I have been very disappointed at their build rate.

Send them a Memo... I am sure they will pull finger and impress you because obviously that is written in their charter to impress people on the internet.

What they don't need to care about is testing these small vessels in all their fleets in all potential weather conditions to make sure they know which is suitable and which is not... a ship that is bloody useless in the Caspian but great in the black or baltic or northern or pacific might be made in numbers that allow it to be used in those four fleets but a different design might be needed for the Caspian... their fleets are so different and weather conditions so different they might need two or three different types of Corvette which is also something they need to work out too... the point is that the designs use standard modular weapons and sensors and systems so one might have UKSK and another might have Uran and a third type might have both, but once they finalise each design it wont take long to start producing them in volume and in the numbers they want.

It will be the same with the Frigates and then with the destroyers and cruisers and CVNs.

The one private yard seems quite fast however, able to spit  one out in just over 2 years.

Maybe they pay their bribes on time and with extra bonuses... I mean it can only be corruption right?

I contradict myself here a bit, these 40K ships can easily be built as nuclear powered as the Russians have easy access to the Arktika propulsion that can work quite nicely

These 40K ships are designed to carry around a brigade of Naval Infantry forces for about a month with their armour and helicopter support and of course landing ships and vessels to get them ashore... we have no idea what propulsion they might be using AFAIK.

This project will be very telling to see what they have learned, as it should incorporate a lot of the methods of Mistral. If they can get the hull in the water in under 2 years the I am a beliver.

Under 2 years... would you like them to cure cancer while they are at it? Why would they even want them that fast... it would take more than 2 years to get the compliment of helicopters and armoured vehicles and landing vessels that would operate from these ships anyway.

This needs to speed up if not you end up producing obsolete ships, yes I know Russia has had to reconstitute whole industries and frankly they have done a really impressive job.

That is just silly. Electronics probably change radically every 5-6 years, but to suggest a ship will ever become obsolete is just naive... they will get upgrades and overhauls through out their operational lives as a matter of course.

This is not really likely, even the USA rarely send their carriers out for more then 3 months at a time. I would argue if  this is your goal you need a MASSIVE ship, at least 200K tons with its own harbour.

Massive ships would be pointless... a large ship would need regular resupply no matter where it was... whether tied up in port or on the other side of the world... the new Russian CVNs will be no different.

Perhaps they should consider an oil rig type structure so they can semi permenantly base it at various locations using jacks?

A fixed structure is called an airfield and are already located around the world on land. The purpose of aircraft carriers is being able to move with the ships they are protecting... a fixed structure would be useless and easy to target.

Yes I know but what *if* they have a vehicle on rail (like a rocket sled) but powered by say 2x 50K lb turbofans, this vehicle hooks up to the arrestor hook of the plane (in the opposite way) when the plane is launched it has an extra 100K lbs of thrust, in the last 1/3 distance they deploy thrust reversers that push the plane and brake the sled then it brakes using its own arrestor cables with redundancy. Kinda ghetto but it would likely work.

Because rockets are relatively inefficient and also expensive and dangerous for people on the deck... steam cats and EMALS are much more energy efficient and have a lot more control. An EMAL launcher could detect the acceleration of the thing it is connected to and boost energy to get the object airborne if needed.

AWACS should already be a drone, there is no need to send out a whole bunch of guys on scopes when the data can be fed down. A dedicated heavy drone can easily do this

And yet despite pictures and concept drawings nothing like that exists anywhere AFAIK...

I don't entirely agree with this, I think the idea of a corvette needs to be altered to be a submersible ship, not a sub, just a ship that can go deep enough to avoid heavy seas and pull along a pod for visuals. If need be it can surface to launch or launch from just below the surface.

You think an entire fleet of mini subs would be safer than surface ships... well their radars would be useless so any aircraft could easily sneak up on them, and being submerged or semi submerged their ability to defend themselves would be pathetic... a few depth charges and they would be toast... against a conventional Russian corvette they would be easy meat... Otvet would sink them easy.... but most of the time without radar their situational awareness will be poor, but with radar they will be easy to locate...

Not to mention expensive.

No one would dare to physically intercept a Russian flagged ship, I think the last time that happened was the Cuban missile crisis or Vietnam war. if a country attacks a Russian ship, their ships will be attacked everywhere, including their warships.

So that footage of Somali pirates and all those Russian ships that were attacked was just made up?

How long before EU ships start trying to confiscate Russian flagged ships at sea to recover the 50 billion owed to ex oligarchs over Gasprom issues?

Sanctions are the new tool, and direct trading systems are the mechanism.

And in 10 years time when no one accepts US dollars because they are just printed monopoly money do you think US policy will change at all?

The west is failing... who knows what will happen in 5 years time.

Russia can certainly not rely even now on the west doing the right thing and keeping things fair and free...

A lot of this still remains to be seen, yes a lot of Russian weapons are very impressive.

They are not fitting proven old Soviet technology on their new ships... this is all brand new state of the art and largely untested so it has to be properly tested before committing to large scale production.... imagine of the US thought of that with the F-35 or LCS or Zumwalt...

They need a drydock to put the props back on Kuz, they are building one since the floating dock sank. Hard to take Russian timetables seriously.

Hard to take you seriously... perhaps it is corruption?

There is no reason a drone cannot loft a radar from an SU-35 for example

No reason at all... and with a pack of four or five AA batteries I am sure it will be fine in terms of powering that... I mean drone based AWACSs are already in use in.... where exactly...

yes Radar pickets do give their position away, you can also use a radar helo it is a high threat zone. A drone can also carry IRST very easily and send the data to the ship.

IRSTs are clever and capable but don't really offer the same performance...

They maybe be able to get it off with ramp, but of course cats would be more ideal.

A ship the size of the 40K ton helicopter carriers they are building would need cats to get conventional aircraft airborne with no margin for error.

The 12.7 is a BEAST, the Kornet has 10,000 m range I doubt anyone would screw with a Russian spy ship. In fact I would wager the Israelis would be more willing to mess with a US ship then a Russian ship as the Russians have a reputation of taking revenge in the most brutal manner.

Russian spy ships have 30mm gatlings and MANPADS at a minimum in addition to small arms and HMGS...

For goodness sake, there is a carrier thread!

I know, but some members are convinced carriers are obsolete but that if you have to have a carrier then your best option is to take a helicopter carrier or small carrier and try to use it as a big fixed wing carrier... you know... the way the US doesn't... and the UK doesn't... and France doesn't... but some tiny countries with small navies think they can with F-35s and helicopter landing ships.

If they can make heli carriers of 40kt then they can make this 40kt carrier too with nuk reactors taken from Borei or icebreakers programs.

They can add a catapult for AWACS.

Small but effective and possible.

Yeah, you see what has happened there is that someone has taken the deck of the Kuznetsov and made it much bigger, and they have taken the hull and made it much wider and deeper, and then what they have done is called this 90K ton carrier design a 40K ton design.

Not small, not effective, not possible and not cheap either.

The Russians have only ever talked about this new helicopter landing ship as being a helicopter landing ship... if they wanted it to also replace the Kuznetsov then they would likely make it a 50K ton design with a much longer deck.

The French can get away with a CdG sized carrier because catapults allow aircraft to get airborne from a distance even with a ski jump they would not be able to get airborne from except only with the lightest loads making them useless.

To get catapults on these helicopter carriers would be tricky and would be much easier on a bigger ship like the Kuznetsov or larger which would also make it a much more viable ship.

I am going to move this to a future Russian carriers thread...

LMFS wrote:The design bureaus say openly any surface fleet in the world ocean without air cover is dead meat. Every country wants it. It is what it is.

Surface fleet can be protected with unmanned surface combatants even in the absence of air power.

The U.S Navy is already deploying Unmanned Surface Combatants.

Our Navy wants to acquire these large UVs as part of an effort to shift the Navy to a more distributed fleet architecture. Compared to the current fleet architecture, this more distributed architecture is to include proportionately fewer large surface combatants (i.e., cruisers and destroyers), proportionately more small surface combatants (i.e., frigates and Littoral Combat Ships), and the addition of significant numbers of large UVs.

https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20437261-navy-large-unmanned-surface-and-undersea-vehicles-background-and-issues-for-congress-dec-23-2020

You can also...like if I have finite missiles and I need to salvo them to get a good hit/kill at range, I really want to save those for a worthy target like a carrier. If I have to swarm and overcome the unmanned VLS ships first, that's going to dilute my killing blows and give a lot more advanced warning at the absolute worst to the human filled ships.

Now China is following the U.S Navy's concept of Unmanned Ships.

GarryB wrote:

Of course not but with only 65 billion in the pot and having to actually come up with hardware proven to work with no committees made up of generals and admirals looking for cushy consultancy work after they retire from the military the blatant corruption and graft in the US simply does not work in Russia.

You don't understand the US MIC, of that 800B budget only about 65-75B/year actually goes to capital spending. (repairs, new machinery and weapons etc) after all they are using the M2 machine gun from 1928!!! The VAST majority goes to legacy costs and salaries. Pensions, healthcare transports and bases. Russia pays poorly, conscripts, has terrible pensions and mediocre healthcare.

Of course, that is why the Russians are so backward and behind and everyone thinks they are a joke because nothing works... or are you projecting Americas problems on Russia... I would say there is corruption, but compared with the US you can't even call it corruption... America could only dream to have the MIC that Russia has in terms of cost effectiveness.

There is a lot of corruption in the US and the West, but the pie is so much bigger, the regular folk still get enough to finance their huge trucks and TVs.

Russia is not the US... Russia does not need a huge shipyard to exclusively pump out aircraft carriers for their evil imperial goals of world domination... having a shipyard that can build a couple of CVNs when they are READY TO, is investing money wisely, because until they are ready to start making some CVNs they can make all sorts of civilian vessels that can earn them money and benefit their economy.

Ok lets not pretend Russia is some sort of white knight here, the Russian people have a great history and are a great people, but they are as self interested as anyone.

Send them a Memo... I am sure they will pull finger and impress you because obviously that is written in their charter to impress people on the internet.

I am sure my memo will carry less weight then the ones from Putin.

Maybe they pay their bribes on time and with extra bonuses... I mean it can only be corruption right?

Someone seems to be able to do it, why not learn?

These 40K ships are designed to carry around a brigade of Naval Infantry forces for about a month with their armour and helicopter support and of course landing ships and vessels to get them ashore... we have no idea what propulsion they might be using AFAIK.

Yes we have no idea about what their propulsion is, or in fact, what their configuration and capabilities are. In fact the Russians have been more cagey about these ships then they normally are about any other ship. No mockups or models etc.

Under 2 years... would you like them to cure cancer while they are at it? Why would they even want them that fast... it would take more than 2 years to get the compliment of helicopters and armoured vehicles and landing vessels that would operate from these ships anyway.

Hull in the water, not commissioned. Chinese were able to launch 3 of these things (1 commissioned and 2nd on sea trials) in less then 2 years!! Yes I know they are the gold standard in shipbuilding speed now. But 2 years in the water and 18-24 months outfitting is not unreasonable.

That is just silly. Electronics probably change radically every 5-6 years, but to suggest a ship will ever become obsolete is just naive... they will get upgrades and overhauls through out their operational lives as a matter of course.

If they are taking 6 years to work out the bugs, guess what? By the time they ramp up production all the CPUS and parts are not even available!!!

Massive ships would be pointless... a large ship would need regular resupply no matter where it was... whether tied up in port or on the other side of the world... the new Russian CVNs will be no different.T

What is the problem with resupply?

A fixed structure is called an airfield and are already located around the world on land. The purpose of aircraft carriers is being able to move with the ships they are protecting... a fixed structure would be useless and easy to target.

Its not fixed, it can move on its own or park. During high threat times it can be underway, or it can park for longer stints.

Because rockets are relatively inefficient and also expensive and dangerous for people on the deck... steam cats and EMALS are much more energy efficient and have a lot more control. An EMAL launcher could detect the acceleration of the thing it is connected to and boost energy to get the object airborne if needed.

Actually steam is terribly inefficient, about 6% efficiency for cats. EMALS OTOH is about 86% effficient.

And yet despite pictures and concept drawings nothing like that exists anywhere AFAIK...

Yes but Russia does not have a carrier based AWACs so why would they go with an obsolete concept when they have a clean sheet of paper?

You think an entire fleet of mini subs would be safer than surface ships... well their radars would be useless so any aircraft could easily sneak up on them, and being submerged or semi submerged their ability to defend themselves would be pathetic... a few depth charges and they would be toast... against a conventional Russian corvette they would be easy meat... Otvet would sink them easy.... but most of the time without radar their situational awareness will be poor, but with radar they will be easy to locate...

Not to mention expensive.

The ship would operate with the superstructure above water most of the time, the ability to submerge is to handle heavy seas, which small ships struggle with. Before submerging they can launch a drone and keep a small antenna on the surface to receive data from the drone. Yes the initial concept would be expensive, but I think if the plan is to only allow 10-15M of submergence the cost to build will not be that high. Most ships are already NBC  protected, they can also snorkel. This ship can sneak up on targets pretty nicely as well.  

So that footage of Somali pirates and all those Russian ships that were attacked was just made up?

Non state actors, when dried up dead bodies of the pirates washed up I am sure the pirates got the message. No incidents since then as far as I can tell.

How long before EU ships start trying to confiscate Russian flagged ships at sea to recover the 50 billion owed to ex oligarchs over Gasprom issues?

No need, Russia has massive commercial interests in Europe, this will be handled in tghe courts.

And in 10 years time when no one accepts US dollars because they are just printed monopoly money do you think US policy will change at all?

The west is failing... who knows what will happen in 5 years time.

Russia can certainly not rely even now on the west doing the right thing and keeping things fair and free...

All money is printed monopoly money

No reason at all... and with a pack of four or five AA batteries I am sure it will be fine in terms of powering that... I mean drone based AWACSs are already in use in.... where exactly...

The SU-35 radar is 20 kw peak, that is not a great deal of extra power to put on a drone. We are talking about 250HP to power the whole thing.

A ship the size of the 40K ton helicopter carriers they are building would need cats to get conventional aircraft airborne with no margin for error.

All cats have no margin for error, any failure during launch is a crash.

To get catapults on these helicopter carriers would be tricky and would be much easier on a bigger ship like the Kuznetsov or larger which would also make it a much more viable ship.

Depends if they go EMALS or not. If they can, its not that hard, if steam, its incredibly difficult. Pneumatic is another option, but not sure about cycle time. Mechanical is also another option but hard to control. They can use rotary motors with cables as well, that would be quite easy, compact and all the tech exists.