Reacting to the Forbes publication, the former first deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Igor Kasatonov said that the lack of construction of new aircraft carriers in Russia is due to the fact that there is no need for this, and not because the country is unable to create such ships.
That is perfectly normal and fine... Russia has the Kuznetsov and has upgraded cruisers and destroyers being upgraded to frigates as well as new production corvettes and frigates... the Russian Navy is not ready right now for two brand new CVNs, and certainly will not be for another few years yet because new build destroyers and eventually new cruisers will be needed to make the new carriers necessary and useful.
most of those with jobs get paid less than they should, even if/when regularly; quality medical services, drugs & education r expensive & most can't afford them.
Foreign medications are unnecessarily expensive and hard to get for a lot of countries that do not behave the way the US and west demands... a good reason for Russia to move forward and develop and produce its own medicine for local and international consumption. With state funding the goals can be cures rather than more lucrative treatments.
BTW most jobs pay less than they should anywhere... especially at levels where you deal with customers or do something that makes that company money... it is the higher ups that are overpaid that is the main problem, but that is hard to fix.
IMO, they could also navalize the old Su-24 which is similar in size & function with F-111 /14 ; if successful , its future modernized multi-role variants with better performance could be produced instead of, or in addition to, Su-57s.
In many ways the multi role Su-57 is already better than an upgraded Su-24 could become... certainly already a better strike aircraft than the F-111 and a better fighter than an F-14 could be upgraded to.
I don't think it really matters that much how many CBG US brings, in the foreseeable future they could not operate longer ranged or more capable planes than Su-57K, and they would not be armed with better AShM.
You are missing the point. I don't mean Russias two new CVNs should carry 90 fighters each so they can take on multiple US aircraft carriers at a time.
I am saying a ship with enormous capacity for more fighters than you normally carry means you wont end up like a force with a helicopter carrier with 6 fighters that can barely defend itself let alone a large group of ships which is what it is supposed to be doing.
Smart solutions to maximise the number of available aircraft on the ship make it a better carrier and more capable and useful.
And odds are the Su-57K will be on the ship but likely not the only aircraft... think of it along the lines of Redut... you can carry long range 9M96 missiles (150km) or medium range 9M96 missiles (60km), or you can carry four 9M100 short range missiles per tube... would you agree that no matter what the ship and no matter what its role and no matter how many tubes it has it will always carry a mix of different missiles to cater for a mix of roles and targets and requirements.
I have already mentioned that I would expect the Su-57 and S-70 and LMFS would be carried as standard on the new CVNs... with all Su-57s they might only fit 60 fighters, but with reduced numbers of Su-57 (say 24) they might be able to fit three squadrons of LMFS (36) so that would be 60 aircraft, plus another 30 S-70 drones that they might be able to roll onto some sort of wheeled frame that could jack them up to sit vertically on a platform you could then roll onto the lift and take down into the hangar and store them stacked like ammo... when you need some lower one down on its wheels and take it up in the lift to the deck like a normal aircraft, or in a more emergency situation take the whole frame of drones up to the deck and lower them and launch them to get them airborne much faster...
Conventional deterrence is based not in that eventually you would come on top after a terrible fight, but mainly in that you cannot ensure the safety of your forces. I don't think anyone in its right mind would expect F-35C + F/A-18E/F armed with Harpoons or JASSM, in almost any realistic quantity, to overpower 3x sqd of Su-57 with hypersonic AShM and long range AAM. Exchange ratios would not look nice for USN, as far as VMF would have decent airspace control
The fact that you see the mission of these new carriers in fighting US carrier groups is part of the fundamental problem... Su-57s can certainly hold their own against any western aircraft currently in service or projected for the next few years simply because they will be operating above an IADS with S-500, S-400, S-350, BUK, TOR, Pantsir, Verba, plus 30mm and 57mm and larger calibre guns designed to engage air targets too, with radar and optical sensors and equipment small countries can only dream of.
Most of the time these carriers will be ensuring Russian ships are not interfered with by other nations or pirates, so surprise missile attack, or sneaky stuff like explosives filled speed boat, but most of the time it will just be air superiority and situational awareness around the ships underwater, in the air down to sea level and the space above the ships.
They might be delivering cheap medication to a dozen countries in the central or south of America against the wishes of the greedy western governments supporting their greedy pharma companies that put profit before human lives... they might be delivering food, or they might be building something that the west does not approve of... when the sanctions don't work and they start sending ships and subs and aircraft to the area you need to be able to respond...
That is the capability gap USN needs to address asap, it is not about those ludicrous scenarios the fancy depicting themselves in, facing land based Russian or Chinese forces that would wipe them out in a matter of minutes, but actual capability to compete with the naval forces of other rivals in the not so distant future, say from 2030 onwards.
Their talk of smaller carriers is only going to make them individually weaker and easier to take on, but fundamentally their main failing has been focus on the ships and their weight... instead of the aircraft they carry... which is really what they are all about...
Always put your best aircraft on your carriers... it is just basic common sense.
You are never going to have thousands of carrier based fighters so the only way to make them cheaper is to standardise them with land based equivalents, but being carrier capable will make them expensive anyway, but having the best fighters makes sense in any conflict where you can't assure numbers.
Even in bad weather there might be a limit as to how many aircraft you can put up in the air... no point putting up huge numbers of aircraft just before a storm if you can't recover them and they run out of fuel and crash into the sea.
You would need an impossibly big carrier for that amount of aircraft.
I don't mean 90 Su-57s. And I am talking about wide deck and wide hangar ships...
You say that because they don't have vertical tails? But how do you expect to handle planes like that? I mean, similar approaches could be used with manned planes already, why are thy not?
They already have four strong points on their fuselage.... three wheels and the tail hook. The wheels would need to be attached to a cat system for launch so attach it to a frame that the drone can be locked into via the two main wheels and the tail hook and the nose wheel, and then rotate it to a nose vertical position. Then roll the next drone in and do the same... once four or five are vertically aligned you could manually crank the mechanism to bring all the vertically aligned drones closer together till they are almost touching... you could then roll the thing around like a trailer... put it on a lift and take it down to the hangar and park it in a corner and tie it down so it does not move.
The S-70 might be too big for such a system, but for smaller 2 ton or 5 ton drones it might work fine.
Or do you think because America does not do that that it can't be done...
The human on board does not place the main burden to the acceleration on a cat
I would say a lot of things on most aircraft have acceleration issues, but are not hardened to allow higher g tolerance because there is no point making everything on a manned aircraft tolerant to 20 g acceleration on launch if the pilot is asleep or dead if you did take off at such force.
With a dedicated cat for unmanned platforms that are designed from the outset to defend ships... perhaps with super high g flight performance to shoot down drones and munitions and enemy aircraft, or to be disposable because they carry jammers and decoys and if that works would attract enemy fire away from ships and other aircraft then being able to pull a 30g turn as the enemy munitions approach might enable it to keep decoying for longer.
In such cases a 40g launch should mean a short distance launch that might be angled sideways or off the rear of the ship... a 40g launch for a drone that weighs 2 to 5 tons could just as equally be used to launch depth charges or conventional bombs towards nearby land targets if you are clever and the technology matures well.
The numbers I did some time ago did not indicate that a plane like a Su-57 would probably need a cat for a launch from the sort TO runs.
On a very large ship I would agree... even with a full fuel load and full AA loadout, but who knows... with some special large partially externally carried hypersonic anti ship or land attack missile it might benefit from a cat launch.
Yes, that means a more complex gearbox and a shaft all along the tail of the helo hat could eventually be substituted with an electric motor directly at the rotor. And that would still be a strethc, by current level of technology...
I don't agree. The current gearbox in a Helix is big and complex and as heavy as they come. In comparison a main rotor tail rotor design has a much smaller lighter simpler arrangement because the power going through the tail rotor is tiny compared with that going through the main rotor.
I would say a turboprop or turbojet engine in the tail as a pusher engine that also generates electricity would be ideal because that electricity could then be used to power the two sets of main rotors without a need for a complex and heavy gearbox... just two electric motors, with one turning each main rotor...powered by the tail mounted engine/s.
With the azipod the propulsion is outside of the hull, and it has a rotative mechanism attaching it to the hull which can be damaged or jammed.
The propeller and rudder of any system can be damaged or jammed.
The engines and gearboxes in vessels with shafts is protected well inside the hull.
The engines and gearboxes in the pod are also protected.
The ship would only ever travel forward at any speed so the area in front of the pod could have fins and structures that will bounce any hard objects that might damage the pod at high forward speeds.
In ten years time when electric motors are twice as powerful and half the weight and size, you can easily swap them out... maybe with a double propeller in a push pull arrangement so that anything about to hit the pod is shredded by the propeller.
The Azipods on icebreakers are designed to allow the ship to sail backwards into the ice when it is too thick for the weight of the ship to break with the propellers faced forward and cutting the ice directly with its edges... these things are not that fragile...
Damaging the shaft is of course a concern, but they are extremely massive and strong. I don't have a totally formed opinion on what is better, but I do see some issues with the azipod, in terms of resistance against battle damage.
Having four located around the bottom of the ship limits the chance of one mine explosion or homing torpedo taking out all propulsion with one hit.
Those massive and strong drive shafts are thousands of tons in weight and take up a lot of space... and can still be damaged.
We are talking about 60-70 kT...
Yes, we are... do you think hydrodynamics stops working above a certain weight?
Yes I don't see any technical issue, just that making a naval plane in extremely small series is already expensive enough for wanting to make even another one. But we will see.
The secret is to make all your new land based aircraft able to operate on a carrier deck. You could try to do that by making them VSTOL fighters, but even VSTOL fighters need folding wings and surfaces.
Designing a conventional land based fighter to have strong undercarriage means it can be used on rough air strips... designing it to have an alternative wing for naval operations that is bigger and allows safe lower speed flight that fold for fitting in a hangar on a ship could allow land based hangars to contain more aircraft which also saves money too. And a tail hook can be used on land as well... there are truck based cable landing systems you could deploy to a conventional airfield to allow aircraft to land after the runway has been attacked and damaged.... laying landing cables attached to trucks with the mechanism to slow down aircraft between the holes in the runway could allow tailhook equipped aircraft to land safely despite the damaged runway.
It seems having lighter cheaper aircraft like the MiG-35 makes sense, so having the same for stealthy aircraft might have some merit... if they can make a stealthy aircraft that is genuinely cheaper to operate and cheaper to buy in numbers then why not make it with a folding wing and tailhook and reinforced undercarriage etc etc and corrosion resistance too...
It might not have the flight range or payload performance of the Su-57, but not all CAP over the Russian ships needs to be 1,000km away from the carrier... and having smaller lighter cheaper but modern and capable fighters makes sense for export and domestic use.
I don't see the crucial need for it either, but they seemed keen on it, I wonder what is the reason. In any case an UDK where small STOVL fighters are available is more capable than if only helos are present.
They were keen on the idea of the Yak-141 till they got to testing and realised it was more expensive yet in many ways less capable than a MiG-29/33.
If they are planning a VSTOL fighter then the Ka-52K is redundant. The fact that they are spending money on the Ka-52K suggests to me they don't have a lot of confidence in a new VSTOL deck fighter.
Say a big UDK with 24 helos or even more, if the displacement really reaches 40 kT, could carry relatively easily 6x STOVL planes if the mission calls for it, with improved A2A and deterring capability, and still have more than enough helos for the other missions. Not saying this alone is usable in high intensity conflicts, but most of the deployments are not of that type. I don't think it is a bad thing.
So say they buy four of these ships and maybe operate one or two as mini fixed wing carriers... so the total production run they need to make would be 12 aircraft... how could they possibly justify such a design... they would challenge the F-35 for cost per aircraft because they would each essentially be hand made planes... and still no guarantee they would be any good.
I would say JATO launched S-70s would be more use.
And probably cheaper... despite essentially being disposable...
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