Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #2

The kuznetsov is a dangerous opponent for any navy but US navy.

Actually the Kuznetsov will be a dangerous opponent for anyone because the vessels that operate with it will include ships and subs with Onyx and Zircon.

The US Navy is huge but it is also spread around the world and of the 10 fixed wing carriers they have maybe 4 would be operational at any one time, so the threat to the Russian Navy is not 10 US carrier groups... at any one time there might be 2-3 grouped together... which is formidable, but not able to defend itself from Zircon missiles.

It provides air cover and air detection against enemy ships. And can launch stand off attacks.

It essentially provides early warning and a very mobile air defence for the ships and subs it operates with... even if its fighters don't launch any missiles it can fly above an incoming swarm of anti ship missiles and give detailed information about their location and speed so that ship based SAMs can be launched over the horizon to engage them.

Note a standard SAM for the Russian Navy is Redut which has 150km and 60km range 9M96 missiles which have active radar homing seekers so 60km away they could hit a wave top hugging target as long as there is a radar there to find it and direct that missile to a position where it can see the target for itself and use its own radar to hit.

A ship on its own would not see a wave skimming missile 150km or 60km away but a MiG-29KR can easily see such targets and pass on target data so missiles from ships can be launched at extended ranges and not wasted.

US have 10 super carrier so they outnumber the kuznetsov but near friendly shores it still adds 12 supersonic missiles and 20 aircraft.

Ten carriers that have no defence against Onyx let alone Zircon, of which probably 2 will be on the other side of the planet and four or five will be in overhaul or not in service.

If the powerplant is only to be refurbished - boilers are still very bad. Kuz needs full boiler replacement

Half the boilers were replaced when it was in dry dock before it was sent to Syria. The other half were supposed to be replaced after that deployment.

British carriers can move, launch and retrieve aircraft​ they were designed for and are not spontaneously combusting or sinking in port ergo British carriers are superior

British Carriers are not supported by cruisers, and the ships they have can't operate for long in the med because the water is too warm and their engines overheat... and the main fighters the British use are F-35s...

British carriers may be a joke compared to US ones but they still make Kuznetzov look like a joke in comparison

And you are not biased.

I feel sorry for the Royal Navy if they were ever to confront a Kuznetsov task force in any future conflict. @PD There is no ways the two British carriers can survive any conflict with a Kuznetsov task force (don't forget the Backfires and Mig31K's)

The new British destroyers... there are only 6... they couldn't afford the 12 they wanted... have 48 launch tubes for SAMs... they are a bit like Redut in that they have two missiles, a 30km range missile and a 120km range missile, but it has no ABM capability to defend itself or its carrier from high speed missile threats.

In comparison Redut has five missile types from the 15km range 9M100 CIWS missile, to the short range 60km 9M96 and the 150km 9M96 version, as well as the two versions of S-400 missile... 250km and 400km range... four of those missiles have full theatre ABM capacity...

But the Kuznetsov herself has 192 TOR missiles in the original form... replacement with current TOR would double that number to 384 missiles, and of course the 8 Kashtan systems will be replaced with Pantsir so 8 x 40 with 20km range missiles and also 8 x 2 30mm gatling guns.... the Kuznetsov on its own without its planes is probably better defended from air threats than a British Carrier and the three Destroyers they have for escorts.

But nah... Russian carrier is shit because PD says so.

I expect they will retain the Granites as they are still an effective missile against most opponents.

I seem to remember mention that attack missiles are removed... but I agree we really don't know for sure...

It won't surprise me if they start selling off a couple of these destroyers to partially fund the inevitable huge budget overruns on the Trident program.

That is their problem... I don't think anyone would buy them... they are not cheap and don't measure up well against other options.

If they keep the old su-33 it will be a shitty carrier.

They are upgrading the Su-30s to Su-35 level with Su-35 components and systems... there is no reason why they could not do the same upgrade to the Su-33.

They have already mentioned and tested upgrades to the dumb bombing capability, but in terms of its flight range and speed and performance it is not a bad fighter, certainly aerodynamically better than Rafale or Hornet or F-35, but at the moment as far as we know electronically not competitive, but they have the jamming pods and EW systems are up to date... similar systems seem to make that US ship the Cook take a nap...

With an upgrade it would be able to carry the new R-77-1 missiles and the new 200km plus range R-77M, and of course the 400km range R-37M and the new Izd 810 which is supposed to have a range increase of between 1.6 and 8 times depending on the launch conditions.

Equally we are told about new long range missiles that deliver mini missiles for intercepting large numbers of small targets like anti ship missiles... and of course various anti ship missile options.

With 20 su-57 it will be some 50 times better. With mig-29k it will be good but not that much. It capacity depend on its fighters.

Well it has the MiG-29KRs so you are saying it will be good. I rather suspect the Su-57s might go on new CVN designs further down the track, or perhaps the LMFS will be amazing and it will carry those instead.

That depends on the datalink used by the fighters. You don't launch missiles at coordinates given by radio. You need constant tracking by radar even for ARH missiles. The active part is only for the few last seconds the flight.

The MiG-29K and upgraded Su-33 are intended for target detection and net centricity... targets detected can be fired upon without constant tracking... every few seconds it will check to see the target is where it is supposed to be and any changes will be transmitted to the missile in flight to correct its course to a more suitable trajectory.

The A-100 does the same for S-350 and S-400 batteries...

I've never seen this being tested by russian navy. But who knows they are the most advanced in terms of AD and guiding other plateform's missiles from a second plateform is the logical continuation of AD and is possible since the datalinks are used (80s-90s).

In the early 1990s they used it to test the first R-37 against a target with a missile flight range of 300km. The MiG-31 used for the test didn't have the upgraded Zaslon-M radar so it launched its missile based on data from an Su-30M flying much closer to the target. The target information was used to shape the trajectory of the missile so that when it turned on its radar the target was directly in front of it... probably about 10-15km away... it had a range of about 25km... being a rather big missile.

Guiding them from the air when they are launched from the surface is a step ahead in AD since it overcomes the worst drawback of surface AD, the radar horizon.

That is exactly right, and while for ground defences it becomes expensive needing aircraft flying around looking for low flying threats... ie Saudi Arabia can't afford it... so they use OTH radar to look out thousands of kms beyond their borders for incoming threats so they can get their aircraft up early, with carrier based forces an aircraft group or two is almost always airborne offering that layer of defence and visibility to avoid being surprised.

I guess they already tought and work on that since then and are hiding their real capacity. Their engineer did't just made the S-400 to be a copy of s-300 with updated electronics. That's technically possible since the 90s and we are in 2020.

Ironically with the old track via missile guidance of the S-300 it could see what the missile saw, but you still needed a radar over the horizon to find the target in the first place. With new solid state active radar missiles it can find its own targets... even small low flying ones.

[quoet]
Actually they have. If you add the range of their f-18 with their missiles and inflight refueling thry can hit first.[/quote]

F-18s would not last long against S-400 SAMs and there Harpoons lack the range to be stand off launched missiles.

In fact the inflight refuelling aircraft would be nice targets for R-37Ms carried by the MiGs.

And since kuznetsov has only few su-33 onboard they can carry only antiship missiles and overwhelm russian ships.

So you expect the Russian ships to turn off their air defence systems and not fire SAMs...

And in a global crisis they can use all the ten carriers. In one place.

Never happened before and not likely to happen..... just think of the logistics of supporting 10 carrier groups all operating at once... those supply ships would be juicy targets for Yasen...

Right now most of their carriers are sitting in home port doing nothing at all because having them all at sea is enormously expensive and difficult to manage.

In fact this is what they are doing:



The bottom 6 are not doing very much of anything... two are in dry dock and three of the ten are actually doing something... though of course the non operational Ford Class is not listed...

It's russia that will struggle to bring all its ships atvone place. Black sea ships can't leave in the mediteranean.

Having all its ships in one place would be of zero value to either force... have you not heard of putting all your eggs in one basket... if they did manage to put 10 carrier groups in one place the Russians would be stupid not to nuke them.

I still think that the Ru navy would first use cruise missiles to hit the ships. Subs may strike if the ships aren't hit by a tiship missiles. If the ships make it closer to Russian shores, bet your ass that kilos would be out in force.

OTH radars would detect ships and aircraft within 6,000km of Russian borders and a surface action group would be quicker and easier to meet with Kinzhal and X-32 than other platforms.

Sinking and damaging a few ships and they will leave... problem solved.

Even this pro-NATO defence youtuber admits NATO logistic centers are very vulnerable due to lack of NATO IADS.

Having an aircraft based IADS is a serious weakness for HATO, but most third world countries lack decent SAMs and air defence networks to exploit that... but that is obviously why the US is so afraid of S-400 and Su-35.

I don't believe I've seen such training though as of late (last 10 years).

Didn't they talk about a new refuelling truck that can refuel about 24 aircraft at once...

Those Su-33 can likely be easily upgraded to something similar to the Su-27SM3 level. That would add air to ground and anti-ship capability.
I think that is what they are planning to do with them.

I think the added flight range of the Su-33 would be useful in some situations, so having a couple of them on board as well as their main aircraft the MiG-29KR would be useful.

Remember the MiG is in two and single seat models so it effectively replaces some Su-33s in the fighter role, but eliminates the Su-25 in the training role.

Note the carrier based Su-25s did not have weapon pylons and were not armed so they were only landing and takeoff training aircraft.

They might have been able to carry aerial targets in a target towing system too but the MiGs could do that as well.

They already said the Su-33s had upgrades to allow high altitude bombing with decent accuracy to be performed which would require significant upgrades to an aircraft that was essentially an Su-27 with no ground mapping/targeting capacity...