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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.
Russia has spend time and money investing in all the technologies that go into building modern military ships and subs... no reason to hand production to China.
This US doctrinal distortion is the reason for the rejection of carriers by so many people.
Yes, an imperial tool to keep the lower orders in line... Russia does not need that.
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.
No they didn't... that number advantage had to cover the whole planet, and the various different heavy anti ship weapon the Soviets deployed very few had counters that would work against them on the US side.
All the rest could be anhilated by their f-18 and harpoons.
In Syria the Syrian air defences were not coordinated and were rather weak... in comparison a Soviet naval surface group has a very potent air defence network and against low flying subsonic missile attack they likely would have been able to shoot down all Harpoons fired at them...
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.
The US Navy never sailed close to anything that could touch them. Leading to rather skewed results.
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.
Why little fear of attack?
They would be easily torpedoed and sunk.
Cheap and they do not need many of the super expensive computers as the data can be processed on the command ship.
Two way data communication would give away the location of both platforms.... Zircon for both.
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.
Torpedo would still sink it.
I don't understand how you protect the fleet by not carrying strike aircraft.
That is the problem... you think the Russian Navy will get CVNs and then change tactics and doctrine and immediately become the US Navy.
After all you will need to attack carriers, cruisers, destroyers, subs and frigates no?
Russian surface groups already attack carriers and cruisers and destroyers and subs and frigates... ship and sub launched missiles can continue to perform those roles.
The SU-57 is a superb multirole fighter with a growing array of air to surface weapons,
Russian ships will have hypersonic missiles reaching hundreds or thousands of kilometres already... why use a mach 1.7 aircraft when you can use a mach 10 missile that wont need support or assistance.
and the only time the Kuz has been used in battle is for strike.
They were testing new capabilities but the primary role of the carrier was generating combat experience. Against some targets an aircraft might be used but against most targets a cruise missile would have been launched to hit the target instead... how many carrier launched aircraft can hit targets 5,000km away.
If they have LPDs you can bet the carrier will go along if they are landing troops and the carrier will launch strikes.
The helicopter carriers they are making at the moment have transport helicopters and also Ka-52 attack helicopters directly related to the land based Ka-52 recon helicopters... I would say there is a very good probability that the recon attack helicopters will find targets and call in strikes from naval gun support rather than fixed wing aircraft.
And China will stop develop new submarine classes you mean?
What access do they have to the latest technology going in to Russian or American subs that will allow them to do better in 5 years time?
Half the technology used in Russian subs have no foreign analogs.
The F-14 was aready quite useless for air superiority.
The F-14 was their only aircraft with any chance of stopping a Backfire attack from succeeding.
It has poor manuverability,
Its job was to shoot down heavy aircraft like Backfires and Bears and also any anti ship missile already launched... its ability to manoeuvre is meaningless... much like the MIG-31s lack of manoeuvrability and for the same reasons.
As the range of AShMs grew it kinda became irrelevant.
The Kh-22M and Kh-32 were specifically designed to bypass the missiles the Tomcat carried...
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.
It is also faster... in terms of interception flight speed and missile range are the critical factors and the F-14 beats the F-18 on both counts.
Also a very expensive platform to operate.
So they said, but both the Super Hornet and the F-35 have made it seem rather cheap in comparison.... the land based F-35 costs 70K US dollars an hour to operate... the Tomcat cost a fraction of that despite being bigger and faster and longer ranged...
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.
Funny you say that because at the end of its life it was the only US aircraft that could operate over Afghanistan from carriers so it was actually performing air to ground duties using LANTIRN III pods because the Hornets didn't have the range or endurance...
By now f-14 would have had a radar like Irbis E to spot them 500km away and a phoenix with 400-500km range.
They didn't even upgrade the F-14 to carry AMRAAM because they were afraid it would risk scuttling more expensive replacements like the Super Hornet and the F-35....
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?
Backfire and Blackjack...
The F-15E requires all sorts of trickery to fly fast and low and can give an eyeball shattering ride... the Su-34 uses canards to try to smooth out the ride but it is still potentially rather rough but at least you can stand up and go to the toilet and cook something in the microwave.
The Su-24 on the other hand is much better at low and fast, yet in Syria it has been bombing from safe altitudes of 10km so even better rides there...
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?
Not enormously. Their CIWS are optimise to deal with targets detected at close range... in land based systems TOR can shoot down targets not spotted till the very last few seconds, and the gun mounts are the same. Improved optics and radar and elevation drives means they are getting much more precise and accurate in dealing with targets.
Sea skimming missiles are always a problem but Ka-31s can be operated from any Russian ship able to carry Helix class helicopters... which is most of them... so dealing with a low flying missile attack should be fine.
The introduction of the new S-350 missiles should make it even better defended against mass attacks.
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?
Ka-31 is already in service and operational...
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, 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
Old missiles with narrow field of view radars pretty much had to start looking for the target with the target right in front of it, so an accurate picture of where everything was was critical to hitting a target.
Modern active radar homing surface to air missiles and modern anti ship missiles have excellent radar sets in comparison so target information does not have to be as precise or as accurate.
Since the 1980s satellite target information together with large missiles that could communicate with each other and share targets amongst themselves meant initial target data didn't need to be super precise.
For some of the early missiles the helicopter basically controlled the missile on its way towards the target area as a sort of surrogate autopilot till the missile was close enough to the target to use its own radar for homing.
Not needed for some time now.
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.
Who told you that?
Most of their anti ship missiles had backup anti radiation functions... against a fighter sized target it would be useless but against a large slow aircraft it would probably be rather effective at turning off the lights.
Aircraft carriers approaching Russian territory would be met by MiG-25s with R-40TDs and later MiG-31s with R-33s... Hawkeyes didn't only operate directly above the carrier... that would give away its position anyway... they could wander hundreds of kms away from the group they are protecting depending on where they thought the threats would come from.
Next gen Russian long range AAMs might be more of a cluster weapon to engage multiple targets at extended ranges...
LMFS
