Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

hello,
if I am just there is still no air carrier chapter in russian doctrine.(?)
so this project is perhaps a call for a cooperation ( with india ?) Russians dont develop alone an emal air carrier.
deck too short, speed too slow, plane to heavy...

arbataach wrote:hello,
if I am just there is still no air carrier chapter in russian doctrine.(?)
so this project is perhaps a call for a cooperation ( with india ?) Russians dont develop alone an emal air carrier.
deck too short, speed too slow, plane to heavy...

You need to introduce yourself in the good thread before posting.

As far as we know russian navy isn't still planing a carrier.

All those projects are just made by the design bureaus by themselves to show what they can do. If the russian navy starts a projects they will first give specification and design bureau will create a design according to that.

This project looks like french charles de gaulles with  a modern design. It lacks weapons but also the catapults are on the landing zone which makes impossible catapulting and recovery at the same time. It is also a small carrier, they could have gone for 300m at least to give it some freedom. However it seems to be cheap and easy to build. If they can make one for them I guess they will have some export clients for it.

GarryB wrote:

But I think they use triangulation so you need at least 3 ships. 9 max interacting ships connected.

Or they could simply move and track it while moving... and take signals over time from slightly different locations to get a fix...

This new ship design looks unarmed... terrible.

Also the single tower design would be a problem as the tower functions to sail the ship but also to manage the air group (ie control tower at an air port as well as a ships bridge). A control tower works better from the rear (on a normal airfield the direction the aircraft land from depends on the wind direction, but on a carrier it is always from behind so moving the tower rearward makes sense). Sailing the ship from the bridge is normally done from the front...

It look unarmed and devoid of any sensors... it looks like a western carrier design.

BTW the lack of a ski jump suggests catapult launch only so no VSTOL fighters for this carrier... having a ski jump deck design is ideal for VSTOL aircraft to get airborne with the most possible weight...

Those are specifics and could be legit concerns. When I say I like it , I mostly mean the concept. The size and scope mostly. A small carrier with a catapult. Which is something the British used to do.

It seems like they are focusing on automation too. To reduce the size of the crew. Which is something the Russians focus on in their submarines. Russian subs have more automation and smaller crews than even the most modern US subs

There are aspects of automation that indeed could make sense, like handling the plane sin the hangar, servicing, maybe even fuelling and arming could be done to a certain extent in automated stations, there was a crazy multihull proposal I made couple of years ago that would handle planes a bit like a production line.

Has Nevskoe's proposal anything to do with that, o what is the automation they are thinking about?

If the carrier is going to be nuclear powered, why not just make it as large as possible. It really sucks that Russians are trying to make their icebreakers bigger but not their carriers. Small carriers have repeatedly proven to be of very limited worth in combat capability and their price is still to high for what its worth. This was proven by both the royal and US navies in the cold war. This isn't WW2.

Isos wrote:

arbataach wrote:hello,
if I am just there is still no air carrier chapter in russian doctrine.(?)
so this project is perhaps a call for a cooperation ( with india ?) Russians dont develop alone an emal air carrier.
deck too short, speed too slow, plane to heavy...

You need to introduce yourself in the good thread before posting.

As far as we know russian navy isn't still planing a carrier.

All those projects are just made by the design bureaus by themselves to show what they can do. If the russian navy starts a projects they will first give specification and design bureau will create a design according to that.

This project looks like french charles de gaulles with  a modern design. It lacks weapons but also the catapults are on the landing zone which makes impossible catapulting and recovery at the same time. It is also a small carrier, they could have gone for 300m at least to give it some freedom. However it seems to be cheap and easy to build. If they can make one for them I guess they will have some export clients for it.

thanks for your response

so i am arbataach from France, my interest is the miltary arabic world and since the come back of russia in syria, égypt, libya, soudan my interest for russian military affairs is growing.

GarryB wrote:...This new ship design looks unarmed... terrible....

Escorts are supposed to carry weapons

Aircraft carriers are supposed to carry aircraft

GarryB wrote:...Also the single tower design would be a problem as the tower functions to sail the ship but also to manage the air group...

French have zero problems with it at the same spot and this is just slightly longer than on protected cruiser aircraft carrier Kuznetsov

GarryB wrote:...It look unarmed and devoid of any sensors...

This is a concept plus you can see the radar mast on top

Even without sensors it would still be superior to concrete slabs that were installed on Kuznetsov instead of radar

GarryB wrote:... it looks like a western carrier design....

Good, this means that someone has finally decided to stop trying to build another Kuznetsov


Every single carrier design proposed in Russia has been just another rehash of Kuznetsov with all it's numerous design flaws carefully preserved and enhanced

This is first one to make a clean break:

- Nuclear powerplant

- Catapults

- Maximised deck space

- Elevators on opposite sides

- Balanced deck, tower is offset by angled deck on other side

- Carries same number of aircraft as Kuz even though it's 50m shorter and 10k tons lighter

And it actually looks like something that could realistically be built in reasonable time without bankrupting them, if this is the way they want to do carriers then I can get behind it


Only possible downside is that one catapult is located on lading zone but in case of emergency all pilot needs to do is to taxi the plane 30 meters to the side and they are good to go (plus other catapult is in the clear at all times)

LMFS wrote:There are aspects of automation that indeed could make sense, like handling the plane sin the hangar, servicing, maybe even fuelling and arming could be done to a certain extent in automated stations, there was a crazy multihull proposal I made couple of years ago that would handle planes a bit like a production line.

Has Nevskoe's proposal anything to do with that, o what is the automation they are thinking about?

The only other thing I could think of its the nuclear powerplant. There are procedures on the reactor that can be automated.

It would be nice to have some more info. Right now we basically have a picture and a paragraph. Hopefully something will surface from the Russian language side.

The picture is shitty quality to say so but it looks really strange.

A concept design that needs a lot of work to make it realistic most likely... it is a sales pitch.

This is the type of vessels I said years ago should be built.

The fundamental problem for the Russian Navy is the whole point of having an aircraft carrier is a bigger longer endurance AWACS platform to replace the Ka-31 or at least to use with the Ka-31, and perhaps a bigger better fighter with longer range and better flight endurance.

Small carriers offer the opposite of that.

I know... I know... small carriers are cheaper... but they are not cheap, so when they are too small to be useful they end up being more expensive than a bigger more effective ship would have been.

The British and the Russians both tried smaller VSTOL ships and they were a fucking disaster... expensive and ineffective... the Kievs had vastly better strike power than the British little carriers but that was only the heavy anti ship missiles they carried on their decks... the Yak-38s were worse than useless... slow and fragile they killed a few very good pilots... not as many as the Harrier did because of their excellent ejection system that threw the pilot out if the aircraft pitched or yawed beyond certain values during landing, but still way too many when the value of the aircraft was taken into account.... it was useless.

For some reason they thought the Yak could get supersonic if they put a big enough engine in it, but that just meant it had a tiny almost useless main wing and terrible payload and range performance.

The Yak-141 was not a whole lot better because again they wanted a supersonic plane... it was never operational and never properly worked but was only ever going to have four wing hard points and a 30mm cannon which was pathetic armament even at the time.

if I am just there is still no air carrier chapter in russian doctrine.(?)

They are operating both carrier training bases they have on their territory and the Kuznetsov is being upgraded to be put back into the water.

so this project is perhaps a call for a cooperation ( with india ?) Russians dont develop alone an emal air carrier.

They have mentioned a type of catapult system for the upgraded Kuznetsov, but they have been working on an EMALS type cat system for a while now.

Expertise and development in that area would be very valuable in a lot of other areas including electrical work, super magnets, plasmas etc etc.

deck too short, speed too slow, plane to heavy...

Correct on all three counts, though the lack of a ski jump suggest it is fitted with an EMALS system so heavy planes should be able to launch from it, but its small size suggests very little room for all the stuff they would need to carry including ordinance and fuel to keep those aircraft operating...

As far as we know russian navy isn't still planing a carrier.

There is no indication they are planning a mini carrier like this.

They seem to think the Kuznetsov is worth keeping for the time being and upgrades to cruisers suggest they remain interested in operational use of ships around the world...

This project looks like french charles de gaulles with a modern design. It lacks weapons but also the catapults are on the landing zone which makes impossible catapulting and recovery at the same time. It is also a small carrier, they could have gone for 300m at least to give it some freedom. However it seems to be cheap and easy to build. If they can make one for them I guess they will have some export clients for it.

I suspect they are going for the super mini carrier idea... cats making heavier aircraft able to get airborne, but obviously the problem is a smaller carrier still needs the same size distance for landing so the landing strip stays the same size and everything else gets smaller.

Those are specifics and could be legit concerns. When I say I like it , I mostly mean the concept. The size and scope mostly. A small carrier with a catapult. Which is something the British used to do.

The British and the Soviets have experience with mini carriers and currently both are looking at carriers between 50K and 80K in size.

You don't save an enormous amount of money making a 30-40K ton carrier and the money you do save doesn't cover the cost of the ships you will be losing because the small carrier doesn't have a decent AWACS and therefore needs to sit back because it can't watch the air and the sea and the undersea all at once because there is not enough room for sub hunting helos in decent numbers as well as long range fighters and AWACS platforms, so sitting back some of your ships are vulnerable to getting sniped... the whole purpose of a carrier was to defend the ships...

It seems like they are focusing on automation too. To reduce the size of the crew. Which is something the Russians focus on in their submarines. Russian subs have more automation and smaller crews than even the most modern US subs

Very true, but having big good long range AWACS with excellent endurance is the focus.

You could have a 200m long airship that operates with this ship acting as AWACS and this little ship could have drones and helicopters and 12 Su-57s with EMALS cats to get them air borne but even then the small size of the ship means it will need to be constantly resupplied with fuel for the aircraft and weapons for the aircraft and it seems to have no actual weapons of its own which would be terribly limiting too...

It might work but you would probably need 2 or three to offer good coverage for any surface group... and for the price of two or three you could probably buy a 50K ton double hull carrier that is enormously wide in the hull and on deck... perhaps it rides foils at top speed like a huge cat sailing boat... give it 36 odd Su-57s and perhaps 36 MiG-35s and a 200m airship for AWACS and a dozen helicopters and perhaps 30 drones of all types... but also S-350 and S-400 and S-500 missiles and 8 Pantsir systems and perhaps 384 naval TOR missiles all ready to fire...

Escorts are supposed to carry weapons

Aircraft carriers are supposed to carry aircraft

Thank you MR America for telling us how things are in the American Navy, but in the Russian Navy the aircraft carrier is not the weapon system and the Navy the support team... I realise the US is air focussed and air power is everything... it is why their air defence systems are shit except on their ships.

In Russia the purpose of an aircraft carrier is to support the ships which carry out the mission.

Good, this means that someone has finally decided to stop trying to build another Kuznetsov
Every single carrier design proposed in Russia has been just another rehash of Kuznetsov with all it's numerous design flaws carefully preserved and enhanced

The plan was never to build another Kuznetsov... the plan was slightly bigger and with cats and was Ulyanovsk...

And it actually looks like something that could realistically be built in reasonable time without bankrupting them, if this is the way they want to do carriers then I can get behind it

It is not going to happen for the Russian fleet. A total nonstarter.

Only possible downside is that one catapult is located on lading zone but in case of emergency all pilot needs to do is to taxi the plane 30 meters to the side and they are good to go (plus other catapult is in the clear at all times)

It is tiny, and most of the aircraft are on the deck, there is not going to be internal space for anything... these planes and drones and helicopters will be operating with one tank of fuel and the weapons they have loaded on them when the ship launches... this is a joke.

It would be nice to have some more info. Right now we basically have a picture and a paragraph. Hopefully something will surface from the Russian language side.

If they are going to make a tiny carrier with cats then it would make sense to unify the design with the helicopter carriers they are currently making which are bigger than this.

I rather suspect this is a design they want to sell to a foreign country for whom a 40 or 50K ton carrier is out of the question.

With Emal Cats they can save lots of money by using conventional fighters instead of F-35 shit, but it would be such a limited vessel it would not go on long missions.... it might be the sort of thing to sell to Indonesia so they could use it as a remote landing spot for patroling their enormous number of islands without needing to build a large number of airfields around the place and maintain them.

Or for India to invade Sri Lanka perhaps...

I see that the new project has re-started the debate, so here there are my 2 cents.

Backman wrote:^Now we are talkin.

It looks like maybe VTOL aircraft on the starboard side. But those on the port side look like su 33's. Plus an su 33 is lined up for takeoff.

I support it if su 57's can fit on the deck. Just no to VTOL aircraft. Rigging up a catapult system for a powerful jet like a phase 2 su 57 has to be cheaper. WAY cheaper.

WHAT??? LOL, sorry Backman but this statement qualify as one of the biggest bestiality I have ever seen on this forum.

Way cheaper a CATAPULT??? Have you idea how much space, horsepower, project complexity and maintenance a catapult system imply

A conventional one I mean because the EMALS are like the Phoenix described by Mozart: That there it exist everyone here say, where is it no one know.



Seriously , what problem everyone seems to have with STOBAR and Sky jumps?

It work without any noticeable problem, allow the use of fighter planes even with a 40000 ton ships and with Su-57 with 2nd phase engines they would have neither the small payload limitation they actually have.

Problem with slow planes someone say?

HAVE YOU ALL FORGOT THIS PLANE???






If it could do it 30 years ago, with no particular arrangement, anything will do it now.
Above all an AEW plane that have not to carry any payload except the radar.

Said so, STOBAR carriers with same displacement are actually in service, so why reinvent the wheel?

(continue, my dog need go to a walk NOW)

Backman wrote:The only other thing I could think of its the nuclear powerplant. There are procedures on the reactor that can be automated.

It would be nice to have some more info. Right now we basically have a picture and a paragraph. Hopefully something will surface from the Russian language side.

We have seen or heard about 5 different carrier concepts in the last few years, both Krylov and Nevskoe are clearly trying to position themselves and advance their ideas for what is probably a lively discussion with VMF about what carrier concepts do make sense to conceive now, and it is good that so innovative approaches like this or Krlyov's Storm-KM and subsequent medium carrier, it would be much worse if we would just see ugly retrograde crap, QE style, coming from them.

Ideally both Krylov and Nevskoe could cooperate to have a carrier based on Krylov's 60 kT medium proposal with semicatamaran hull and electromechanical catapults. The propulsion would be proportionally much cheaper than Storm since, apart from the hull design advantages, it would not be fully nuclear but CONAG, and the proportion air wing / displacement is simply in another league compared to current designs. If Nevskoe has achieved advances in automation that could be applied too, VMF would have IMHO the by far best carrier concept at disposal.

@marcellogo

Ground launched V1 rockets used steam freaking catapults. It's old technology. I don't see why it has to cost an absolute fortune to build or run. Steam is also a natural with nuclear powered ships.

But yeah I agree about the ski jumps. They are underrated. But since Russia had one and the US didn't for the last 30 years , it's been drummed into everyone that ski jumps are useless

Maybe there should be both. For basic operations and training , use the ski jump. But train and operate the catapult more infrequently

Rather than starting a carrier from scratch, what Russia can do is buy carriers from China. By the 2030s China will be fielding at least 10 carriers. By then, China will have the capacity to build carriers for Russian navy.

^^Weren't you banned for your China trolls in the past? Looks like you haven't learned yet.

Backman wrote:@marcellogo

Ground launched V1 rockets used steam freaking catapults. It's old technology. I don't see why it has to cost an absolute fortune to build or run. Steam is also a natural with nuclear powered ships.

But yeah I agree about the ski jumps. They are underrated. But since Russia had one and the US didn't for the last 30 years , it's been drummed into everyone that ski jumps are useless

Maybe there should be both. For basic operations and training , use the ski jump. But train and operate the catapult more infrequently

Fighters on a A2A loadout and full fuel should be better used from the ramp, and we see here another misconception caused by the US doctrinal aberrations. For them the bombs payload on board of strike fighters of not very high TWR is very relevant, so it is normal that they find the catapults necessary. For Russian role as defence of the fleet I don't think it is so necessary, and in fact the skyjump has two important advantages:

> Allows planes still to be operated in case of failure of the catapults
> It is actually faster since there is no need for preparing and checking the mechanisms before every launch.

So dismissing a carrier for not having catapults comes, again, from not understanding what carriers are supposed to do.

I liked the layout where the TO positions at the front of the landing strip are equipped with catapults, very useful for very loaded planes, tankers, AWACS or U(C)AVS of lower TWR, as well as for surge operations, and normal skyjump at the bow to be used by fighters normally without interference with landing operations. New engines like eventual AL-41F1S on the Su-33 and specially izd. 30 on Su-57 would have a very big impact on the max. acceptable TOW of those planes, even from the short positions. Anyone wanting to actually check the influence of thrust in this type of take-off can use an online skyjump simulator and see for themselves what difference a couple tf per engine do.

GarryB wrote:In Russia the purpose of an aircraft carrier is to support the ships which carry out the mission.

In Russia purpose of the carrier is little more than to clog the pier, it did little other than that

GarryB wrote:The plan was never to build another Kuznetsov... the plan was slightly bigger and with cats and was Ulyanovsk...

That was Soviet plan

All previous Russian plans involved another version of Kuznetsov

GarryB wrote:It is tiny, and most of the aircraft are on the deck, there is not going to be internal space for anything...

If you direct your look to the hull you will notice that it's very wide from bow to stern unlike certain other vessel which was tryon to set the record for thinnest hull proportionate to displacement

Way cheaper a CATAPULT??? affraid Have you idea how much space, horsepower, project complexity and maintenance a catapult system imply

They invested in an EMALS system for the last decade or more... money invested in an electrical catapult system like this is useful in a variety of areas in new technology... it will be vastly more useful than getting a supersonic fighter plane to hover above the ground or sea.

A conventional one I mean because the EMALS are like the Phoenix described by Mozart: That there it exist everyone here say, where is it no one know.

Hypersonic missiles were expensive and complex and will require powerful fuels and maintenance too, but they are also worth the investment because scramjet technology will be useful in a lot of areas too... including artillery ammunition and even Surface to Air Missiles and Air to Air Missiles.

Seriously , what problem everyone seems to have with STOBAR and Sky jumps?

In this particular case the ship in question is much much much too small for ski jumps to work... most of the deck will have aircraft sitting on it most of the time because there wont be enough space under the deck to store all those aircraft that are visible in the picture shown.

Operationally some of those aircraft will be stored below deck but some will always have to remain above deck because there simply wont be room for it all to go below deck. Having to swap aircraft so aircraft needing maintenance in the hangar would be a mind numbing game of Tetris to shift other aircraft around to allow it... one of the other problems of really small carriers.

Problem with slow planes someone say?

HAVE YOU ALL FORGOT THIS PLANE???

Problem for heavy planes... slow planes get airborne at lower speeds and are not the problem.

An An-2 could operate from the K without problems and land without cables, but a Yak-44 could not take off and would probably struggle to land too because of its weight.

If it could do it 30 years ago, with no particular arrangement, anything will do it now.
Above all an AEW plane that have not to carry any payload except the radar.

AEW will be carrying as much fuel as possible and wont be light. The Su-25 is a light combat air support aircraft... without armour and without a combat load it is a relatively light aircraft that was only ever used as a trainer aircraft for practising landing and takeoffs on carriers. The standard fighter was the Su-33 which did not have a two seat version. MiG-29KR is single and twin seat convertable... you could make all your MiGs twin seat planes if you wanted, so the Su-25 is now redundant.

Said so, STOBAR carriers with same displacement are actually in service, so why reinvent the wheel?

This plan for a ship is much smaller than the K and short take off is not an option so cats make flight possible instead.

As the ships get smaller the landing stretch can't be reduced so the takeoff run has to be made shorter instead and the only way to make that work is with cats.

The Ford class carrier has EMAL cats... they just don't work. We don't know why... The Russians and Chinese have been working on the problems for a while, I have no reason to think they can't make it work...

my dog need go to a walk NOW)

Hahahaha... I know that look...

Ideally both Krylov and Nevskoe could cooperate to have a carrier based on Krylov's 60 kT medium proposal with semicatamaran hull and electromechanical catapults. The propulsion would be proportionally much cheaper than Storm since, apart from the hull design advantages, it would not be fully nuclear but CONAG, and the proportion air wing / displacement is simply in another league compared to current designs. If Nevskoe has achieved advances in automation that could be applied too, VMF would have IMHO the by far best carrier concept at disposal.

The new reactors they are making for their new ships remain fuelled for 30 years, so in terms of operation and time out of service being refuelled or whatever, these new reactors should be very low operational costs, but likely not cheap to buy.

They might think the lower maintenance and extra power from a bigger reactor might be worth it... especially if it can be split into two separate systems to improve resistance to battle damage.

Ground launched V1 rockets used steam freaking catapults. It's old technology. I don't see why it has to cost an absolute fortune to build or run. Steam is also a natural with nuclear powered ships.

Super conducting magnets, power banks, and sophisticated electrical systems as well as plasma based systems will be more value in developing and investing in that steam based systems of yesteryear.

An EMALS system has already been in the works for quite some time and was planned for use on future carriers... why dump that because the Americans fucked up their programme. If that is the case then dump the Gorshkov Frigates because of the LCS disaster, and don't even think about laying down any Zumwalts... which might become a euphemism where Zumwalt means chocolate logs.

But yeah I agree about the ski jumps. They are underrated. But since Russia had one and the US didn't for the last 30 years , it's been drummed into everyone that ski jumps are useless

On a tiny carrier like this they are useless because a fighter like a MiG-29KR with light fuel and no external weapons probably couldn't get airborne on such a small ship even with ski jumps... it needs a catapult system to get airborne.

On a better sized ship like a 50-80K ton ship the skijump would mean you could rapidly launch your fighters with an air to air load and full fuel because they have a high power to weight ratio and you can sail into the wind at speed to help them... with a ski jump and if they have vectored thrust jet engines they should be able to get airborne easily... it will be the AWACS aircraft that need the cats or a big plane like an Su-33 or Su-57 with a strike load that needs cat launches, but the ski jump will still be useful.

Rather than starting a carrier from scratch, what Russia can do is buy carriers from China. By the 2030s China will be fielding at least 10 carriers. By then, China will have the capacity to build carriers for Russian navy.

Russia has plenty of time to decide what sort of carrier they want and what aircraft will operate from it. The number of carriers china will be operating is not important for Russia. Russia will likely complete the two helicopter carriers and probably follow them up with two more so it can base two in the northern fleet and two in the pacific fleet, but in terms of full sized fixed wing carriers they probably only need about 2 CVNs.

Anyone wanting to actually check the influence of thrust in this type of take-off can use an online skyjump simulator and see for themselves what difference a couple tf per engine do.

Part of its influence is to angle the aircraft in a nose up attitude so the engines provide both forward thrust and lift at the same time.

A modern fighter with full thrust vectoring could probably mimic that, but the ski jump also adds an upward component to movement... a jump in fact that TVC engines can't really match.

As you can imagine for a big heavy low thrust to weight ratio aircraft like an AWACS platform having to climb an angle slows the aircraft down which is the opposite of what you want to do when trying to take off with forward speed.

In Russia purpose of the carrier is little more than to clog the pier, it did little other than that

Yeah thanks for that opinion Vann... the purpose of a carrier is to perform air defence roles beyond the range of Russian land based air power.... most people can appreciate that, except you it seems.

All previous Russian plans involved another version of Kuznetsov

The thing is that there are Russian plans and Russian plans.

Companies that make ships can come up with all sorts of querky plans and ideas and show them in drawing or even model form, but things like hearing that the Russian military is working on EMALS cats and also on a naval version of the Su-57 suggest otherwise don't they?

After their evaluation of the Kuznetsov in Syria they stated they wanted something bigger with more planes and more endurance and more storage... but I understand in your ears it means either all carriers are obsolete and Russia just needs lots of corvettes, or tiny ships with VSTOL fighters are the solution... even though they never have been before.

GarryB wrote:The new reactors they are making for their new ships remain fuelled for 30 years, so in terms of operation and time out of service being refuelled or whatever, these new reactors should be very low operational costs, but likely not cheap to buy.

The reactor with long cycle for naval applications are using specially enriched fuel and a design that compensates for its progressive depletion, I am not sure they are much more expensive but of course they are a special design.

Part of its influence is to angle the aircraft in a nose up attitude so the engines provide both forward thrust and lift at the same time.

A modern fighter with full thrust vectoring could probably mimic that, but the ski jump also adds an upward component to movement... a jump in fact that TVC engines can't really match.

As you can imagine for a big heavy low thrust to weight ratio aircraft like an AWACS platform having to climb an angle slows the aircraft down which is the opposite of what you want to do when trying to take off with forward speed.

The wings and lifting surfaces in general have optimal Cl at around 15 deg AoA, therefore the minimum TO speed is decreased a lot by the ramp. It gives also an additional height margin above the sea surface a the expense of some speed, it is a matter of compromise but in general it vastly improves the TO performance of naval planes.

TVC operates behind the CoG so its contribution is to turn the plane (rotation) pointing the nozzles up, which as discussed before results in overall negative lift, unless there is some source of lift ahead of the CoG that compensates for a TVC generated lift in the tail (nozzles pointing down), creating overall positive lift. In general I doubt the effect of the ramp, which is to ensure fast rotation, can be substituted by TVC.

Climbing the ramp would normally not reduce speed unless TWR is very low (less than 1/4), but of course it will work against the acceleration needed for taking off. The space save to rotate the plane compensates for this due to the lift gain.

Backman wrote:@marcellogo

Ground launched V1 rockets used steam freaking catapults. It's old technology. I don't see why it has to cost an absolute fortune to build or run. Steam is also a natural with nuclear powered ships.

But yeah I agree about the ski jumps. They are underrated. But since Russia had one and the US didn't for the last 30 years , it's been drummed into everyone that ski jumps are useless

Maybe there should be both. For basic operations and training , use the ski jump. But train and operate the catapult more infrequently

It's actually the contrary: everyone around use or have used sky jumps: UK, Italy, Spain, THAILAND, Russia, india, China, now Korea and Japan will follow, even the same USN has put a trampoline before their own catapult to improve payload.

And actual CATOBAR require an huge investment to allow a steady launch rate.

The fact that STOVL/STOBAR didn't require a steam generating powerplant is IMHO a great vantage in itself, that we will appreciate fully when Vikrant would became operative.

The reactor with long cycle for naval applications are using specially enriched fuel and a design that compensates for its progressive depletion, I am not sure they are much more expensive but of course they are a special design.

AFAIK it is something they have not used before so will probably need extra development work and testing.

Hey, if they only replaced half the boilers in the K why not replace the other half with a test reactor and give it a proper full scale test for the next 10 years.

They have a couple of Kirov class cruisers they could test them on too...

The thing is that they have these older ships that they want to continue using while they complete development on brand new designs, but you can reduce the risk by using the current old vessels as test vessels for the new technology you want to use in the new ships.

Zumwalt and Ford were disasters because they were testing all new technology all at once, and while I bag the shit out of them I do respect them for at least trying to get new technology into service... they could have easily just fudged things and used polished up old stuff that had nothing really new on it at all... low risk.

They have huge fleets of existing ships they could have taken an older carrier and put their new EMALS cat on it and tested it to their hearts content and get it right on a ship they can remodel and change as much as they like... once they have teased out the bugs and sorted out the issues because that should be the only thing on the ship that is new so there wont be 1,000 different problems you are working on at the same time with 50 different new systems each of which might be causing problems with other things at the same time.... it simplifies problem solving and debugging.

Obviously once it is working properly you then have to put it in a ship with all the other new stuff...

But for the Russians they will have huge radar and sonar arrays they are developing for their new cruisers that might benefit from being tested on a Kirov or Kuznetsov to see how it performs and work out any bugs or problems before it goes into a real ship.

There are lots of ways you could put reactors and radars and sonars in a ship... in their new designs they will have to make a choice as to where to put them and with no operational experience in test beds they will have to make an uninformed choice that could be wrong... making the first new ships take longer to debug and follow on ships requiring expensive redesigns before mass production can start.

Being familiar with the new power systems and sensors and weapon systems means more informed choices when designing the ships they are going to be fitted to.

Hopefully over the next few years production of corvettes and frigates will accelerate and start filling out the fleets, and destroyer designs start getting laid down and cruisers too.

but in general it vastly improves the TO performance of naval planes.

I would agree that a plane that was going to get airborne, this makes it easier and safer, but a plane going too slow and not going to make it this wont help at all.

There might be a few marginal aircraft that may or may not have made it on a flat deck, where a ski jump helps make them get airborne....

But the fundamental thing is that ski ramps are used on ships with no cats, or the cats are angled off the flat landing strip part of the front and not angled up the sk jump ramp.

An An-2 is probably too slow to benefit from a ski jump ramp... but honestly sailing the ship into the wind you would probably have to tie the An-2 down to stop it getting airborne...

TVC operates behind the CoG so its contribution is to turn the plane (rotation) pointing the nozzles up, which as discussed before results in overall negative lift, unless there is some source of lift ahead of the CoG that compensates for a TVC generated lift in the tail (nozzles pointing down), creating overall positive lift. In general I doubt the effect of the ramp, which is to ensure fast rotation, can be substituted by TVC.

Regarding TVC I would see its role on a flat deck as being where the aircraft clears the deck and starts to drop the TVC would angle the engine nozzles up to rotate the aircraft around its cg to angle the nose of the aircraft upwards to get extra angle of attack lift. Once that has been achieved I am not sure as to whether the nozzles would remain angled slightly up... because with the aircraft now at a higher AOA the upward pointing engine nozzles would now be angled horizontally and be accelerating the aircraft into the oncoming airflow, or whether the nozzles would then return to neutral and therefore be angled down generating both forward speed and a force upwards to try to help gain height.

The aircraft with the increased AOA should already be starting to recover height so the horizontal engine angle increasing speed might be more efficient... I would think that would be something interesting to experiment with...

Climbing the ramp would normally not reduce speed unless TWR is very low (less than 1/4), but of course it will work against the acceleration needed for taking off. The space save to rotate the plane compensates for this due to the lift gain.

Climbing the ramp would reduce acceleration because you are essentially using momentum and engine power to push a 20 plus ton aircraft up a small hill... for a high power aircraft like a MiG-29 I would think the upward jump and angle of attack change make up for a slight reduction in acceleration for a fraction of a second.

Ok...I waited a little too much so the discussion piled up...

Although I contested the use of a catapult in such a frame I appreciated the large flight deck and the minimal dimension of the command bridge.of the new design.

Nuclear propulsion on such a small ship could be appreciable but still a CATOBAR of such dimensions would be too much to handle as the experience of Charles de Gaulle clearly show.

About the affirmation of Garry B. that the experience of UK and Russia with small carriers proved them useless, I beg to differ.

Invincible and Hermes  allowed UK to retake the Falklands while the Baku once transformed into the true carrier Vikramaditya proved to be an effective asset.

As a counter evidence I can use our own experience with the Garibaldi, it was not just little, it was absolutely tiny but it proved itself a priceless asset for our Navy.

Problem probably lies in the difference between ambitions and real possibilities of a nation.

Garibaldi but also the way more larger Cavour and Trieste, even when taken all together, fill perfectly both our needs then our bills while Charles the Gaulle and even more Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales end up ruining their respective Navies' inner balance (I am meaning it in sense of weight and counterweight, not of money here).

Probably the real watershed is exactly there: when the balance flip between the Carriers being just an asset in service of the Fleet and it reverse into right  the contrary you know you have done something REALLY wrong.
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GarryB wrote:The thing is that they have these older ships that they want to continue using while they complete development on brand new designs, but you can reduce the risk by using the current old vessels as test vessels for the new technology you want to use in the new ships.

Well to change a carrier from boilers to NPP is quite wild and you don't want to turn your only carrier in a test lab, but in general I am sure they sue every opportunity to test anything before deploying it. Actual experience and specially combat experience are revered in Russian military and any opportunity is used to get them almost without exception.

I would agree that a plane that was going to get airborne, this makes it easier and safer, but a plane going too slow and not going to make it this wont help at all.

Too slow is relative here. What I mean is that a plane that would crash at a given speed and AoA will actually take off perfectly at an appropriate, higher angle, because lift generated will be much bigger.

But the fundamental thing is that ski ramps are used on ships with no cats, or the cats are angled off the flat landing strip part of the front and not angled up the sk  jump ramp.

I still don't know if it is fundamentally impossible to combine the ramp and the catapult, but I have not seen them combined in any real vessel...

An An-2 is probably too slow to benefit from a ski jump ramp... but honestly sailing the ship into the wind you would probably have to tie the An-2 down to stop it getting airborne...

Yeah, such a plane in AWACS configuration would have no problem taking of without catapults.

Regarding TVC I would see its role on a flat deck as being where the aircraft clears the deck and starts to drop the TVC would angle the engine nozzles up to rotate the aircraft around its cg to angle the nose of the aircraft upwards to get extra angle of attack lift.

If you watch carrier take offs, you will notice the aircraft deflect the tail negatively from the beginning, to help with the rotation as you say. The advantage with TVC is that it could allow doing that already when the plane is too slow for the tail to make a difference and hence speeding up rotation and therefore reducing min. TO speed and length of the needed run. In case of CATOBAR, the bar at the nose gear prevents the plane from rotating before leaving the deck, on an unassisted TO I assume this may not be necessarily the case.

Once that has been achieved I am not sure as to whether the nozzles would remain angled slightly up... because with the aircraft now at a higher AOA the upward pointing engine nozzles would now be angled horizontally and be accelerating the aircraft into the oncoming airflow, or whether the nozzles would then return to neutral and therefore be angled down generating both forward speed and a force upwards to try to help gain height.

Once the rotation is completed and optimal AoA is reached, it makes no sense to point the nozzles up and create negative lift / keep rotating the plane, the logical thing would be actually to deflect them down to create lift, but only if a comparable lift device at the front can prevent the nose from pitching down as a result. I assume such maneuvers could reasonably lower the min TO and landing  speed of naval fighters.

Climbing the ramp would reduce acceleration because you are essentially using momentum and engine power to push a 20 plus ton aircraft up a small hill... for a high power aircraft like a MiG-29 I would think the upward jump and angle of attack change make up for a slight reduction in acceleration for a fraction of a second.

Sure for any plane it will mean a reduction of the acceleration. If you check the weight that the thrust will be compensating via components parallel and orthogonal to the ramp, you see it is not that much since the angle is very moderate (10-15 deg) so just a fraction of the thrust is lost to compensate for it.

Ok...I waited a little too much so the discussion piled up...

Yup, that can happen.

Although I contested the use of a catapult in such a frame I appreciated the large flight deck and the minimal dimension of the command bridge.of the new design.

I have printed out the image above and an image of the K, and while I agree the new design has a much smaller island it really does not have a huge deck... the deck itself could have been made rather wider to give more space on deck for moving things around and more simultaneous takeoffs...

This design appears to have two launch positions... and there is no space on the deck for anything else at all...

This is a small carrier.

Invincible and Hermes allowed UK to retake the Falklands

These mini carriers make what should have been a walk in the park into a serious ordeal where ships were lost and bombers had to make 12,000km flights at huge risk.

If the Argentines had a fighter with BVR air to air missiles the Brits would have been in serious trouble.

Problem probably lies in the difference between ambitions and real possibilities of a nation.

Tiny carriers are better than nothing... but not a huge amount better, and they are nothing like as cheap as some claim... especially when you include the cost of ships lost because of their inadequate protection.

For Russia I think a decent sized carrier with a real fighter (Su-57) and full capacity AWACS support (ie not a helicopter based system) is worth the slight increase in costs.

The ship based AWACS could be sold to existing customers who can't afford a full sized A-100 model, but still want improved performance and coordination for their fighters. A Yak-44 type aircraft managing a small area would massively improve communication and cooperation in a combat situation like the one in India, where communication between different aircraft types seems to be rather poor.

then our bills while Charles the Gaulle and even more Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales end up ruining their respective Navies' inner balance (I am meaning it in sense of weight and counterweight, not of money here).

The british are screwing themselves... they made a carrier design not big enough for the job because they wanted to save money and by having to buy two of the damn things they can't now afford the support ships to protect one carrier let alone two. They should have built one carrier that was good enough to do the job and spent the money they spend on the second carrier on support ships to operate with their first carrier.

When the Falklands situation erupted they didn't send carriers there overnight... they had to form up a task force which included converting civilian ships to carry troops and equipment... even if they only had one carrier they could have guaranteed it would have been ready to go, and if it was a decent full sized carrier with Phantoms and Buccs and a proper AWACS platform instead of a helicopter based AEW system they could have attacked the island themselves with Buccs instead of needing Vulcans, and the Phantoms would have been much more effective patrolling the air space and using BVR skyflash missiles and sidewinders (they could still have pinched the new Sidewinders from HATO stocks like they did) and they could have operated the carrier closer to the other ships and offered much better protection from enemy attack... they might not have lost any ships at all and probably would have shot down a lot more Argentine planes... not to mention the Buccs would have been much more use supporting the troops on the ground.

Probably the real watershed is exactly there: when the balance flip between the Carriers being just an asset in service of the Fleet and it reverse into right the contrary you know you have done something REALLY wrong.

The purpose of the carriers in the Russian fleet is to provide air protection for the ships and any landing forces... they need a group of fighters and some AWACS platforms and that is all.

Strike missions can be performed as they are today with cruise missiles launched from ships and subs... a million a shot sounds expensive, but a flight of 10 aircraft at 100 million dollars each entering enemy air space and risking getting shot down is not cheaper.

Well to change a carrier from boilers to NPP is quite wild and you don't want to turn your only carrier in a test lab, but in general I am sure they sue every opportunity to test anything before deploying it. Actual experience and specially combat experience are revered in Russian military and any opportunity is used to get them almost without exception.

Swapping the old nuke reactor in a Kirov class cruiser for a new one then... maybe even swapping out the entire complex propulsion arrangement of the Kirov for 2 or more new reactors might be interesting too...

Too slow is relative here. What I mean is that a plane that would crash at a given speed and AoA will actually take off perfectly at an appropriate, higher angle, because lift generated will be much bigger.

I agree, but extra lift also means extra drag so if it was close to its stall speed then flicking the nose up might be like applying an air brake and forcing the stall.... very close to the water.

The An-2 is actually stall proof... if you are flying along and your engine cuts out you just pull back hard on the stick apparently... this raises the nose and as you get slower and slower the aircraft just naturally descends till your wheels hit the ground... or water.

The MiG-8 was essentially stall proof too but for different reasons... essentially the nose mounted canards stalled first and the result of the nose canards stalling was that the nose dropped which increased speed and cost altitude but recovered from the stall. Commonly on a conventional aircraft it is the tail that stalls, resulting in the nose pitching up and further slowing of the aircraft leading to the main wing stalling and the aircraft falling out of the sky uncontrolled.

I still don't know if it is fundamentally impossible to combine the ramp and the catapult, but I have not seen them combined in any real vessel...

A ski ramp is not compatible with heavy slow aircraft... they just can't take a high g push up on launch... their wings would break... otherwise all US carriers would have ski jumps... but they don't... even the carriers that operate Harriers.