Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

According to wiki... yeah, I know... not the best source:

A typical carrier air wing can include 24–36 F/A-18E or F Super Hornets as strike fighters; two squadrons of 10–12 F/A-18C Hornets, with one of these often provided by the U.S. Marine Corps (VMFA), also as strike fighters; 4–6 EA-18G Growlers for electronic warfare; 4–6 E-2C or D Hawkeyes for airborne early warning (AEW), C-2 Greyhounds used for logistics (to be replaced by MV-22 Ospreys); and a Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron of 6–8 SH-60F and HH-60H Seahawks.

So typical would be 36 Hornets plus 12 Hornets... which is 48 hornets, plus 6 Hornets plus say 6 AWACS and transport and 8 helicopters.... which is about 68 aircraft in total... but that is typical... full load would be more fighters for various purposes... they would keep most on the deck, but would be operational...

It is one aircraft, not fighter, per kt, but it is also not exact. Is far less on the Kuznetsov, also less on the USN CVN, but it would be more in the semicatamaran designs proposed by Krylov.

Yes, one aircraft, but also US carriers carry rather less helicopters than the Russians do too...

Yes, totally, with more than 20-30 fighters in the deck you cannot really sustain operations.

Launching strike aircraft makes no sense if you are not launching fighter escorts and jammer aircraft to help them penetrate enemy air defences...

Not so much an issue for a Russian carrier because they wont be carrying strike aircraft and the fighters and AWACS are there to protect the fleet, not invade some country.

Isos wrote:Chinese nuclear subs are obsolate. Russian soviet-era subs got modernizations and are better than any chinese sub.

A single Yasen can wipe out a big part of chinese fleet, subs and ships. They are getting ten of them. Oscar and Akulas are also modernized and they are getting improved kilos in big numbers.

China can't compete.

Russia might still have an edge in submarine technology but to say that China cant compete in any way is pushing it.

Since 1995 (21 years) Russia has recivied 8 Kilos, 1 Lada, 1 Yasen, 4 Boreis for its Navy (total=15). Compare that to China with 12 Kilos, 12 Songs, 20 Yuans, 6 Jins (SSN), and 6 Shang (SSBN) (Total=56).
China has basicly replaced all of its cold war era subs with new generations, Russia is still relying mostly on Soviet era class submarines.

Does this mean that China has reached the same level as Russia in capabilities? Probobly not, but they have catched up quite a bit. Will this trend continue for 5 to 10 years i would say they have surpassed them.

Isos wrote:Chinese nuclear subs are obsolate. Russian soviet-era subs got modernizations and are better than any chinese sub.

A single Yasen can wipe out a big part of chinese fleet, subs and ships. They are getting ten of them. Oscar and Akulas are also modernized and they are getting improved kilos in big numbers.

China can't compete.

China already is competing. They are manufacturing far more ships and submarines than Russia or even the US. Re Chinese submarine technology not much is known about their sophistication. Wrong to suggest it is not cutting edge.

Does this mean that China has reached the same level as Russia in capabilities? Probobly not, but they have catched up quite a bit. Will this trend continue for 5 to 10 years i would say they have surpassed them.

What are smoking. Russia has upgraded its soviet era SSN and is building Yasen in decent number while the design bureau are working on Husky class. In 5 years the gap will be even bigger since they will get state of art Yasen M.

China already is competing. They are manufacturing far more ships and submarines than Russia or even the US. Re Chinese submarine technology not much is known about their sophistication. Wrong to suggest it is not cutting edge.

No they aren't. Lot of ships doesn't mean good navy.

Japan easily tracks their subs just like russian or US sub are tracking them unnoticed to fill their database with recordings.

Their area of deployement is mostly their port or chinese coast. Lack of training. And if they go outside their usual area of deployement they will be at disadvantage of terrain because US, Japan and Russia have mapped the sea much better than them over the years.

Isos wrote:No they aren't. Lot of ships doesn't mean good navy.

It's not about lots of ships. Obviously lots of ships do give you an advantage but technology wise too China has made great progress. They are now fielding carrier based AWACS like the KJ-600 something that till date only the US Navy managed to do. Their Type 055 destroyer is superior to most Russian destroyers.

Isos wrote:Japan easily tracks their subs just like russian or US sub are tracking them unnoticed to fill their database with recordings.

Similarly, China is also tracking Japanese, Russian and American subs.

Isos wrote:And if they go outside their usual area of deployement they will be at disadvantage of terrain because US, Japan and Russia have mapped the sea much better than them over the years.

Why would you think that China is not doing the same? They have enough time on hand to achieve terrain mapping. Moreover, their allies in Asia and Africa like Pakistan, Iran, Dijibouti are allowing them to create Naval bases apart from providing them with real time information.

As you can see Japan,Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines are all struggling against the Chinese. India was recently defeated.

China already is competing. They are manufacturing far more ships and submarines than Russia or even the US. Re Chinese submarine technology not much is known about their sophistication. Wrong to suggest it is not cutting edge.

They still need to prove to be good plateforms. SAA isn't happy with chinese radars at all. Their j-15 isn't better than su-33 even if its newer.

They proved nothing against Indians.

US, Japan, Russia knows everything about their subs. Thry track them easily which means they are shitty.

Similarly, China is also tracking Japanese, Russian and American subs.

No. There is no proof of tgat. Since Japan tracks their subs easily they know how to evade them with their own subs.

Why would you think that China is not doing the same? They have enough time on hand to achieve terrain mapping. Moreover, their allies in Asia and Africa like Pakistan, Iran, Dijibouti are allowing them to create Naval bases apart from providing them with real time information.

They aren't. Western media reports russian or chinese military ship mouvement near their waters. Have you ever seen an article about their ships sailing in Atlantic or around US coast ?

They operate mainly at port. Paper tigr navy.

As you can see Japan,Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines are all struggling against the Chinese. India was recently defeated.

No they are not. Japan answers to all their moves and make fun of their subs by chassing them away with a helicopter carrier.

India has no problem facing chinese navy which never comes close to India anyway.

Isos wrote:

What are smoking. Russia has upgraded its soviet era SSN and is building Yasen in decent number while the design bureau are working on Husky class. In 5 years the gap will be even bigger since they will get state of art Yasen M.


No they aren't. Lot of ships doesn't mean good navy.

Japan easily tracks their subs just like russian or US sub are tracking them unnoticed to fill their database with recordings.

Their area of deployement is mostly their port or chinese coast. Lack of training. And if they go outside their usual area of deployement they will be at disadvantage of terrain because US, Japan and Russia have mapped the sea much better than them over the years.

Well,well,well: such a thing would open a lot of possibilities of collaboration between Russia and China, one got expertise, the other productive capacity.

Well,well,well: such a thing would open a lot of possibilities of collaboration between Russia and China, one got expertise, the other productive capacity.

No it opens nothing.

Why would they give all the job to China. They have their own shipyards and workers.

They already made the mistakes to give them sukhois and air defence systems. Now they are copying everything and try yo sell them on export.

GarryB wrote:Not so much an issue for a Russian carrier because they wont be carrying strike aircraft and the fighters and AWACS are there to protect the fleet, not invade some country.

Certainly not a problem for VMF. It is amazing to what level the USN has taken their bizarre focus on land attack to the point of conditioning every aspect of the carriers operations, carrier size and design, weapons, size and characteristics of the air wing etc. For VMF a far smaller air wing with fighters of better A2A capacities and good AShM would be the right thing, at a fraction of the cost and with much smaller vulnerability than the USN approach. This US doctrinal distortion is the reason for the rejection of carriers by so many people.

LMFS wrote:

GarryB wrote:Not so much an issue for a Russian carrier because they wont be carrying strike aircraft and the fighters and AWACS are there to protect the fleet, not invade some country.

Certainly not a problem for VMF. It is amazing to what level the USN has taken their bizarre focus on land attack to the point of conditioning every aspect of the carriers operations, carrier size and design, weapons, size and characteristics of the air wing etc. For VMF a far smaller air wing with fighters of better A2A capacities and good AShM would be the right thing, at a fraction of the cost and with much smaller vulnerability than the USN approach. This US doctrinal distortion is the reason for the rejection of carriers by so many people.

They have a huge number advantage that they didn't need to spend more on defence. Untill yesterday only Russia with kh-22 had a chance against them.

All the rest could be anhilated by their f-18 and harpoons.

Now lot of countries are developing long range missiles and are buying multi role fighters that can do anti shiping and anti air missions.

Old mig-29A/B or the few mirage that were sold to 3rd world countries couldn't do anything against them. Neither missile boats could get close to their navy.

Backman wrote:

mnztr wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:

Yes, it's definately not bad. But having family in military in Canada, where they are paid more and have better benefits, in the end, majority barely has a dollar to spend on at the end.

I know a few who used the years they were in the army to buy a house. Which to that I salute them for their money management skills.  So there is that.

If they were smart, most would invest that money in the stock market, like in dividends in national banks that never fail.

Some have, walked out rather wealthy.  But anyone can do that with even small amount of money.

Canada promotes very quickly and has the highest percentage of officers in any military. I once inquired about joning the pilot program and you start at around 60K a year and are making 90 within a year if you have a university education. Problem with being a pilot in Canada is all bases are in places you would not want to live...except maybe Comox BC.

Im from Vancouver but had an oilfield career in Edmonton. Edmonton isn't as bad as it looks. I loved it there.

90k is great except taxes. You'd be paying 20- 25% income tax all in. Russia's income tax is a flat 13%. 9% for business owners.

You get a lot of tax free perqs when based overseas only fighter bases are in Cold Lake and Bagotville. Both a long drive to civilization. 75 K net is super when you are in a rural area, and get food and accomodation while on base. All the bases are rural unlike the USA.

LMFS wrote:

In general I don't see any combat capability of the unmanned ships that manned don't have, and in fact they appear to be a cheap approach to military capacities, since there will be no one to repair potential failures or combat damage. They will be more compact for sure, but steel is not the most expensive component of ships. All navies will adopt unmanned vehicles

Unmanned ships are perfect for flotilla use, a small 500T ship with 1 or 2 USKS and a remote 30 mm gun turret with a radar that can send data to the command ship for processing. You can put those way out there with little fear of attack. Cheap and they do not need many of the super expensive computers as the data can be processed on the command ship. All they send is raw data and video. For sea handling the ship can be semi submersible and completely airtight with snorkel intakes for the engine. Maybe even smaller is possible 200T or so.

GarryB wrote:
Launching strike aircraft makes no sense if you are not launching fighter escorts and jammer aircraft to help them penetrate enemy air defences...

Not so much an issue for a Russian carrier because they wont be carrying strike aircraft and the fighters and AWACS are there to protect the fleet, not invade some country.

I don't understand how you protect the fleet by not carrying strike aircraft. After all you will need to attack carriers, cruisers, destroyers, subs and frigates no? The SU-57 is a superb multirole fighter with a growing array of air to surface weapons, and the only time the Kuz has been used in battle is for strike. If they have LPDs you can bet the carrier will go along if they are landing troops and the carrier will launch strikes. I say arm the carrier with Mig-29K first and augment then replace with SU-57.

Isos wrote:

Does this mean that China has reached the same level as Russia in capabilities? Probobly not, but they have catched up quite a bit. Will this trend continue for 5 to 10 years i would say they have surpassed them.

What are smoking. Russia has upgraded its soviet era SSN and is building Yasen in decent number while the design bureau are working on Husky class. In 5 years the gap will be even bigger since they will get state of art Yasen M.

Their area of deployement is mostly their port or chinese coast. Lack of training. And if they go outside their usual area of deployement they will be at disadvantage of terrain because US, Japan and Russia have mapped the sea much better than them over the years.

And China will stop develop new submarine classes you mean? The type 095 and 096 is in the pipeline and should be an even better improvement.

The difference is also that when Chinas military leaders are happy with the result the Chines leaders can throw money on the construction and pump the subs out in a fast pase. That what we seen in all other naval classes, the type-052D destroyer, the type 054A frigate, the type 071 transport dock, the Type 041 Yuan SSK and so on.

Isos wrote:They have a huge number advantage that they didn't need to spend more on defence. Untill yesterday only Russia with kh-22 had a chance against them.

All the rest could be anhilated by their f-18 and harpoons.

Now lot of countries are developing long range missiles and are buying multi role fighters that can do anti shiping and anti air missions.

Old mig-29A/B or the few mirage that were sold to 3rd world countries couldn't do anything against them. Neither missile boats could get close to their navy.

It was absurd then and it is absurd now to focus on land attack missions, before they killed the F-14 at least they had a proper air superiority plane, now they must be praying for Russia to be fool enough to not take advantage with Su-57K

LMFS wrote:

It was absurd then and it is absurd now to focus on land attack missions, before they killed the F-14 at least they had a proper air superiority plane, now they must be praying for Russia to be fool enough to not take advantage with Su-57K

The F-14 was aready quite useless for air superiority. IMHO its a plane that has a much higher reputation then its ability. It has poor manuverability, it has a good (for the time) radar and decent LR missiles. As the range of AShMs grew it kinda became irrelevant. USA has decided the Carriers will not be useful against Russia so just equip them with trucks to dump on weak countries.

mnztr wrote:The F-14 was aready quite useless for air superiority. IMHO its a plane that has a much higher reputation then its ability. It has poor manuverability, it has a good (for the time) radar and decent LR missiles. As the range of AShMs grew it kinda became irrelevant. USA has decided the Carriers will not be useful against Russia so just equip them with trucks to dump on weak countries.

Not really, the F-14 was excellent in terms of payload and range, so it was a great bomb truck too, with the advantage that it had the type of airframe needed for exactly the same roles NGAD is being proposed, barring the stealth element, whose effectiveness is far from easy to judge. Destroying the tooling for the F-14 was an abject fuckup or worse open treason.



Not to talk about many modern variants that were proposed and that would have allowed to preserve air superiority for the USN instead of losing it miserably.




The carriers, again, are not useful against the territories of powerful enemies, but for keeping open ways of sea communication to places of interest for the country and to deploy / protect forces far from the homeland.

The sad reality for US nowadays and for the foreseeable future is that a potential Russian naval group comprising a modern carrier with 3 sqd Su-57K and their escort could contain almost any number of forces the USN could realistically throw at it. So they have spent big time in numbers but surrendered the qualitative element, giving Russia the opportunity in the coming years to offset the huge quantitative advantage of the USN for relatively little money.

It has combat range of about 200km more then then F-18 but much lower payload. (6.6T vs 8T) it is also a significantly larger plane. Also a very expensive platform to operate. At the end it was not really even used as an air to air platform. It is ancient tech, no one is building swing wing planes anymore.

mnztr wrote:It has combat range of about 200km more then then F-18 but much lower payload. (6.6T vs 8T) it is also a significantly larger plane.  Also a very expensive platform to operate. At the end it was not really even used as an air to air platform. It is ancient tech, no one is building swing wing planes anymore.

Maybe you want to read about the advanced variants.

Swing wings have very nice advantages and are actually smart for a naval fighter. There have been also modern proposals with such geometry

And China will stop develop new submarine classes you mean? The type 095 and 096 is in the pipeline and should be an even better improvement.

The difference is also that when Chinas military leaders are happy with the result the Chines leaders can throw money on the construction and pump the subs out in a fast pase. That what we seen in all other naval classes, the type-052D destroyer, the type 054A frigate, the type 071 transport dock, the Type 041 Yuan SSK and so on.

It's not because they are build today that they will be good.

Yasen or Virginia are the achivement of 70 yeard of R&D and tests and what not.

China is barely starting. Building a SSN isn't the same as taking an Iphone and making a copy. They will need quite a long time before catching up.

In terms of numbers they already have more ships than US. Yet they rule on nothing. They can't even rule on south china sea. Building more ships won't help. They suck.

Their economy could sustain their needs. But now they are becoming a rich country. Population wants more money, producing in China is just as expensive as in the west, western firms will go away and they will be hit by an economic crisis. A growth of less than 10% is already a crisis for them. They won't be able to sustain such big army. Statistics also say their population will drop to 700-800 million in 2100.

Their future isn't as bright as it seems. All these ships will rust at port soon.

It has combat range of about 200km more then then F-18 but much lower payload. (6.6T vs 8T) it is also a significantly larger plane. Also a very expensive platform to operate. At the end it was not really even used as an air to air platform. It is ancient tech, no one is building swing wing planes anymore.

But the advantage against USSR is that its speed and Phoenix missiles gave them a chance to hunt Tupolevs which was the main enemy for their carriers. F-18 has no chance to intercept a tu-22M launching its kh-32 from 1000km away.

By now f-14 would have had a radar like Irbis E to spot them 500km away and a phoenix with 400-500km range.

LMFS wrote:

mnztr wrote:It has combat range of about 200km more then then F-18 but much lower payload. (6.6T vs 8T) it is also a significantly larger plane.  Also a very expensive platform to operate. At the end it was not really even used as an air to air platform. It is ancient tech, no one is building swing wing planes anymore.

Maybe you want to read about the advanced variants.

Swing wings have very nice advantages and are actually smart for a naval fighter. There have been also modern proposals with such geometry

Hmm I had no idea swing wings still had some sort of relavance. The Panavia Tornado was IMHO probably the most successful swing wing design IMHO. I thought modern aerodesign made them obsolete?

mnztr wrote:Hmm I had no idea swing wings still had some sort of relavance. The Panavia Tornado was IMHO probably the most successful swing wing design IMHO. I thought modern aerodesign made them obsolete?

I am not sure, but I guess it depends on the application and what other options there are. Naval fighters normally have foldable wings and overload tolerances between 7 and 8 g, the Tomcat had 7.5 g so the same as the F/A-18E/F, despite the bearing of the wing being certainly a part under high stress. The wing in minimum sweep is great for low stall speed (carrier TO and landing) and good L/D at cruising speeds, at maximum it gives small footprint at the carrier and very low drag / high speed, so it has some appealing indeed.

Is the russian navy hampered in detecting subsonic sea skimming AShMs(especially stealthy ones like the kongsberg NSM, LRASM and storm shadow) over the horizon by lacking naval AWACS like the E2?

I'm more worried about russian naval groups detecting massed missiles salvos too late. Would it be possible to just build a light carrier that carries unmanned AWACS drones with long loitering capability?

kvs wrote:

limb wrote:Is the russian navy hampered in detecting subsonic sea skimming AShMs(especially stealthy ones like the kongsberg NSM, LRASM and storm shadow) over the horizon by lacking naval AWACS like the E2?

I'm more worried about russian naval groups detecting massed missiles salvos too late. Would it be possible to just build a light carrier that carries unmanned AWACS drones with long loitering capability?

That does not add up.   They would be aware long ago of any such detection gap.   And this is not 1994 where they have no money for
anything and are being sold down the river by a stooge in the Kremlin.  

AWACS will be the first things to be dropped in any serious conflict.   So that leaves alternative means.   Frankly, the nondetectability of sea surface
skimming missiles is something that follows from simplistic approaches dating back to the 1950s with monochrome radar systems.   No-line of sight,
hence no return signal.   But that is not all there is to it.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a381980.pdf

High frequency over horizon ship-based radars are possible and the real challenge is signal processing to extract the information needed.
Modern computing and high gain radar elements enable practical deployment of such detection systems.   Hypersonic missiles are actually
a way to deal with such detection.   NATzO subsonic AShMs are not a big threat to Russia's navy.

Correct me if I'm wrong I thought that its a matter of physical laws that OTH radar is inherently less accurate than direct LOS radar as one found on an AWACS which can detect missiles by flying high, something about the athmosphere scattering radar waves. Why did the russians use their helicopters' for early warning and guidance of missiles then? I assume they don't do it now since OTH radars have advanced sufficiently

Russia cannot destroy E2s since they operate close to the carrier group and they have no long ranged carrier born fighters that can come into range.