Russia's naval doctrine and strategy

GarryB wrote:I like the concept, but the execution doesn't work... they have already said the K is not really big enough... they need more capacity... more fighters and capacity for AWACS aircraft too... which are going to take up significant space... if they could come up with a multihull design that has a very wide body for enormous hangars but structurally was light so they could have 70 fighters plus AWACS in a 50K ton ship that would be perfect.... but equip it properly... it will have S-500 missiles, it will have large numbers of SAMs and will have some UKSK launchers too, because that is what a Russian carrier is....

The multihull part I agree wholeheartedly, the part about making it a cruiser like the Kuznetsov not so much. I don't see evidence that Russians are thinking like that this time over. The guy from Nevskoe said the old ones were done like cruiser because of Montreaux, but newer designs both from them and from Krylov and their statements point clearly towards much purer carrier concepts. The reason is that the added value of the carrier is its air wing, the rest can be done by other vessels, so it is only logical to maximize their capacity to carry aircraft and their fuel and weapons. OF course Russian military coming from where they come they will demand it at least to de a SAM fortress and I think that makes sense, but missiles for surface and land attack roles are IMHO clearly out of scope.

But they will have the problem that the 9M100 missile is intended as a self defence weapon against incoming missiles... and Soviet SAMs since BUK and TOR were designed to shoot down HARMs and other standoff weapons... so it comes down to trading numbers... except Russian hypersonic missiles are much more likely to get through...

I was referring to US weaponry because that is how the original scenario was proposed. Of course Russian AShM will have more chances than US ones and I would tend to trust their AD also quite a bit more. HARMS are dangerous weapons, US is even testing the SM-6 in AShM role, they know speed helps a lot to go through the defences.

I appreciate what you are trying to say, but what you are suggesting is the equivalent of saying to the Army that attack helicopters can go much further and faster than tanks and can kill from much greater distances so why don't you forget about this driving around in armoured vehicles and just replace tanks with Helicopters...

I am making it the center of my message that force composition must be balanced. Air power can attack and defend with great advantage because of mobility and altitude, but it cannot take and hold the position. Land and surface forces are a must.

A ship with a 57mm gun could... once the 57mm AA gun systems and ammo is further developed offer all the protection they might need from any sort of drone or subsonic anti ship missile. Soon only very high speed missiles are going to be a problem... and lets be honest... the US is going to run out of money building long range anti ship missiles before the Russians run out of the SAMs they have now let alone will continue to produce...

Of course, and adding long range SAMs to the picture only forces US to put more and more range onto those subsonic AShMs, that will be downed easily by low cost SAMs or even guided rounds as you say. They will develop hypersonic AShMs, it is a given.

When the Russian Navy starts trading missiles with the US Navy then I wouldn't worry too much who is goiAShng to win because it is very likely that any nukes will be used at sea first.

I differ a bit:

- The battle between big powers is most of the time purely theoretical, that is, the idea is to "win" the conditional fight in order to get deterrence. For blue navies deployed far from home, the idea would be to avoid US side from declaring naval blockades of allies or outright attacking them with some CSG, protect the own commerce, keep open ways of navigation and so on. If you have the Russians deploying the Nakhimov in theater with potentially 80 Tsirkons and several batteries of S-400 onboard and god knows how many SSGNs lurking around it, you are going to be much more polite than if you can crush anyone at will, that is for sure. So in the end you need to have the real capabilities, in order not to use them. Much like nukes.

- The fight for foreign influence and expansion is not going to be computed in the same way in terms of nuclear escalation as direct threats to the home territory. So I think but I cannot prove, that actually limited conflicts of this sort can develop and even reach kinetic confrontation levels and still stay contained in theater. Nobody will want to be nuked because of influence on some far away land, at least if it does not represent a critical national interest.

If they are only delivering cruise missiles then the Russian Navy has plenty of ships and Subs that can do that, and over time the number of missile tubes is going to increase massively.

true, but they must stay out of range of US forces when sailing to contested waters w/o a CVN.

It was shot down by an aircraft, not a ships SAM nor a land based SAM...

in our scenario, ships can & will do it when they feel threatened.

carrying tiny volumes of cargo in a massively expensive submarine requires serious justification when much much cheaper options are available.

they may carry critical cargo, gear & personnel. With their empty missile compartments, old SSBNs can be converted to supply roles.

When was the last time the Russian military overspent on anything?

The Soviet military did: w/o proper shore facilities & maintenance & with over/underuse, many ships & subs were sold for scrap early & languished in yards. 1 unfinished Slava CG is still in Nikolaev. Russia better be careful not to repeat that. She needs to modernize & expand her internal waterways canal system that requires $Bs in investment- doing so will raise their cost effectiveness,while strengthening her national security:
https://jamestown.org/program/volga-don-canal-last-great-stalin-project-desperately-needs-updating-or-replacement/

When foreign countries wont accept US dollars how many components from overseas can you buy with US dollars?

Japan, Taiwan & SK can pay for her protection with electronics. Their manufacture may also come back to the US. Everything else can also be produced here. If not, we may pay for it with our grain, meat, oil & gas.

Love the confidence but if that is the case, then why, with over 800 military bases world wide, does the US see the need for them?

we constantly transfer fighters & haul cargo overseas besides supporting local & naval ops.

Russian ships will operate in places where there might be ground based radar and airfields and fuel supplies really close, but considering experience like when HATO decided that no HATO members can provide fuel stops for Russian ships heading to Syria I don't know how you can make such a silly claim...

as soon as any of them deny transit rights/access to bases, then they r not worth to be traded with & can be sanctioned like Turkey was.

Without deploying bombers and fighters and AWACS aircraft and tankers around the world you basically have to take them with you... ie supply ships and aircraft carriers.

even US & UK friendly India granted Russia access to her bases. With others, if they want to keep the wolves away, Russian S-300/400s, etc. will be a good way to ensure access. Super bombers conducting diplomacy r cheaper than super carriers.

If that were possible the Brits would already be doing it.... soon they will have patchy air cover with flaky F-35s but no ships to operate with them...

Adm. Nelson's time when Britain ruled the waves is over; the RN will sail & operate with her allies from now on. Russia has only 4 allies: her Army, VMF, Atomflot, & the VKS.  

Because it would take them days to organise the tankers to fly down there and would have a few minutes on station and then they would have to leave because there are not enough inflight refuelling tankers in the Russian AF to keep them flying around a group of ships as top cover.

Tankers may be stationed at forward bases/overseas, & there will be more of them later. AN-22/124 &/ future IL-106 tanker versions could carry a lot more fuel than IL-478s. Tu-22/95/160 armed with lighter AAMs won't be burning as much fuel as with ASh/LACMs. http://geimint.blogspot.com/2007/07/russian-strategic-aviation-imagery.html
https://www.ng.ru/news/686850.html?print=Y

Nobody will want to be nuked because of influence on some far away land, at least if it does not represent a critical national interest.

exactly; China can nuke the US but the US is still itching for a fight in the SC Sea:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/11/asia/china-taiwan-guam-military-exercises-intl-hnk-scli/index.html?utm_term=1597141290248c17de2953455&utm_source=Five+Things+for+Tuesday%2C+August+11%2C+2020&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=234332_1597141290250&bt_ee=AFPbSuWFw7I1A646wAkrz3XLP6Y%2FEGDfew84%2FyHaVN5y7nOEHLTizyVpdIyrF5eO&bt_ts=1597141290250

The multihull part I agree wholeheartedly, the part about making it a cruiser like the Kuznetsov not so much.

The fundamental difference between a Soviet or Russian carrier and a US carrier is that the Soviet or Russian carrier is there to protect the ships it is operating with and to do that it needs its own airdefence as well as aircraft. A US carrier has ships that operate with the carrier to protect the carrier, but they are called carrier groups because the carrier is the offensive power.... the aircraft deliver bombs and missiles to the target.

In the Russian/Soviet Navy a Corvette can defend itself, and a Frigate can too, against a reasonable attack. A Destroyer has better area defence weapons and could probably defend itself and ships it is operating with. A Cruiser is basically a command ship that is never intended to be alone... and is designed to defend the ships it operates with using short, medium, and very long range SAMs.

A fixed wing aircraft carrier should operate with Cruisers, and therefore benefit from their super long range missiles, but it is a big vessel which can be equipped with the enormous radars needed to track objects in space and therefore use S-500 missiles. And of course its aircraft will defend both while offering the option of CAP where aircraft can fly out to a contact and check to see if it is hostile or not making it vastly more flexible than if they had not bothered with a fixed wing carrier and just decide to buy a few extra cruisers instead.

OF course Russian military coming from where they come they will demand it at least to de a SAM fortress and I think that makes sense, but missiles for surface and land attack roles are IMHO clearly out of scope.

The launch tubes that carry the attack missiles can also carry EW rockets and anti sub weapons too... and how long before PAKET comes in a model that can be carried in a UKSK launch tube?

HARMS are dangerous weapons, US is even testing the SM-6 in AShM role, they know speed helps a lot to go through the defences.

Yeah, every time the Russians talk about hypersonic weapons the US Navy guys say their SM-6 missiles are hypersonic too, but it really is not the same... as it manouvers the SM-6 is unpowered and bleeds speed rapidly... and can't actually manouver very well at all... whereas the Iskander is powered and uses thrust vectoring for vastly more efficient and effective manouvering... and Zircon and their other high speed missiles are powered during the terminal attack phase...

I seem to remember they tried using SM missiles on an Iranian ship but it missed... the ship was too small and it blew over the top or something...

Just like the failure of Patriot in Desert Storm... the Yanks think because the S-300 can shoot down ballistic weapons that Patriot can too... the difference is that the S-300 and later Soviet missiles were designed to shoot down high speed ballistic targets whereas original Patriot was not.

They will develop hypersonic AShMs, it is a given.

And in the time it takes to do so the Russians will have had years of experience and have probably a few hypersonic drones for testing air defence systems and developing tactics to defeat such targets...

- The fight for foreign influence and expansion is not going to be computed in the same way in terms of nuclear escalation as direct threats to the home territory. So I think but I cannot prove, that actually limited conflicts of this sort can develop and even reach kinetic confrontation levels and still stay contained in theater. Nobody will want to be nuked because of influence on some far away land, at least if it does not represent a critical national interest.

Russia being navally blocked from all trade with central and south America would be a national interest issue I would think...

in our scenario, ships can & will do it when they feel threatened.

A commercial aircraft flying straight and level emitting the IFF codes that it should be to identify it as a commercial flight should not be threatening to anyone.

The KAL007 was over territory it never should have gone anywhere near and the US radar trackers in Japan and South Korea should have signalled them that they were an enormous distance off course... instead they just let them continue into the fire and be killed.... hope they got valuable data because it was at the cost of those peoples lives.

they may carry critical cargo, gear & personnel. With their empty missile compartments, old SSBNs can be converted to supply roles.

Not realistic at all. Those missile compartments are designed for missiles and not much else.

If it is urgent then aircraft are much much faster.

If it is secret... that is fine too because the plane is not going to get searched on the way...

The Soviet military did: w/o proper shore facilities & maintenance & with over/underuse, many ships & subs were sold for scrap early & languished in yards. 1 unfinished Slava CG is still in Nikolaev.

That was not cases of overspending... those were cases of changes of circumstances and scrapping ships and subs prevented over spending on vessels that were no longer needed or useful.

The Slava in Nikolaev is not Russias problem.

Russia better be careful not to repeat that. She needs to modernize & expand her internal waterways canal system that requires $Bs in investment- doing so will raise their cost effectiveness,while strengthening her national security:

The fact that the Jamestown institute suggests it makes me think it is not worth it at all.

Upgrading internal waterways might be of benefit but is redundant really because they don't have their main large shipyards in the Black Sea any more so building large ships and moving them via internal waterways makes little sense, though it is an asset that should be kept and maintained there is little need to upgrade it... new large ships will be built in the far east.

Rail and road expansion across the country make rather more sense and would be a better use of available funds.... especially high speed rail...

Japan, Taiwan & SK can pay for her protection with electronics.

Protection from what? If most countries are not accepting the US dollar as payment why would Japan or Taiwan or SK accept it?

It will be a game of last man standing... no one will want to get stuck with useless US dollars... and any country that accepts them will end up with bits of paper that no one else will want to touch...

we constantly transfer fighters & haul cargo overseas besides supporting local & naval ops.

Cargo goes by sea.

Desert Storm... the ground component was delayed for the 6 months it took to transfer all the armour and resources that were needed for the ground component.... if Saddam had struck against them as they were sending stuff over it would have been sheridan tanks defending US bases, not Abrams tanks.

as soon as any of them deny transit rights/access to bases, then they r not worth to be traded with & can be sanctioned like Turkey was.

Any country Russia decides to trade with will immediately become a pariah and be subject to sanctions and perhaps even regime change from the US which means hostile neighbours who wont cooperate with the country or Russia... the country Russia is trading likely wont have an IAD as effective as one Russian Corvette let alone a whole surface group of ships... most countries don't have such a thing.

even US & UK friendly India granted Russia access to her bases.

India is a significant Russian ally and client and not really very representative... but even with Indian bases having a pirate patrol off Africa is too far away from Indian bases for air power to be support. A base in Yemen would be much more useful but not really possible with Saudi Arabia blowing the shit out of it...

With others, if they want to keep the wolves away, Russian S-300/400s, etc. will be a good way to ensure access. Super bombers conducting diplomacy r cheaper than super carriers.

Most countries can neither afford or need such systems... which on their own are actually still vulnerable to attack. It would also be subject to regime change too so you can't just equip any country willing to trade with Russian IADS systems...

Adm. Nelson's time when Britain ruled the waves is over; the RN will sail & operate with her allies from now on. Russia has only 4 allies: her Army, VMF, Atomflot, & the VKS.

The UK, like the US is not what it used to be and are both contracting in power and influence, but Russia is growing and developing and should not limit herself in terms of trade and cooperation...

Tankers may be stationed at forward bases/overseas, & there will be more of them later

Who is going to pay for all these forward deployed tankers and provide all the fuel they will use and transport when needed?

AN-22/124 &/ future IL-106 tanker versions could carry a lot more fuel than IL-478s.

The Navy does not have any inflight refuelling tanker aircraft and not Blackjack or Bear bombers either...

Tu-22/95/160 armed with lighter AAMs won't be burning as much fuel as with ASh/LACMs.

Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s, and Tu-160s armed with AAMs would be under the control of the Aerospace Forces... not the Navy... and could certainly not operate safely globally.

exactly; China can nuke the US but the US is still itching for a fight in the SC Sea:

To the Americans being able to sail where they like is a national interest... what if they start building islands in other strategic places... they can't stand for that.... it might give China an advantage... China should invade the island and remove all the people from the island and build a big runway and claim it as being theirs like the US and UK does... anything else is cheating.

A commercial aircraft flying straight and level emitting the IFF codes that it should be to identify it as a commercial flight should not be threatening to anyone.

USAF cargo & probably other planes used commercial air routes before to mask their presence. War is deception..

That was not cases of overspending... those were cases of changes of circumstances and scrapping ships and subs prevented over spending on vessels that were no longer needed or useful. The Slava in Nikolaev is not Russias problem.

the result is the same: $ spent=$ wasted. many of those ships incl. Slava in Nikolaev could still be used, reducing the need for new ships.

The fact that the Jamestown institute suggests it makes me think it is not worth it at all.

others suggest it, they r just reporting z& elaborating on it.

Upgrading internal waterways might be of benefit but is redundant really because they don't have their main large shipyards in the Black Sea any more so building large ships and moving them via internal waterways makes little sense, ..

it has nothing to do with shipyards in the Black Sea & building of large ships. It's about being able to move more cargo & transfer larger ships between Black & Caspian Seas more efficiently which will help the economy of S. Russia, Transcaucasus & C. Asia, adding stability.

Rail and road expansion across the country make rather more sense and would be a better use of available funds.... especially high speed rail...

even if $Bs r spent, water transport is the cheapest & will pay for itself in time. Otherwise, there would be only railroads across the isthmuses of Panama & Suez now.

Protection from what? 

perceived threat from China, RF & NK.

Cargo goes by sea.

some goes by air; C-5/17s r not sitting idle.

Who is going to pay for all these forward deployed tankers and provide all the fuel they will use and transport when needed?

the host country, if it wants the trade & mil. aid to continue. Btw, IL-62s can carry 40T of cargo each; a cargo/tanker version can fly on 2-3 engines to save fuel & act like VC10 Vickers
https://www.aircharterservice.com/aircraft-guide/cargo/ilyushin-russia/ilyushinil-62
http://www.airvectors.net/avvc10.html#m4

The Navy does not have any inflight refuelling tanker aircraft and not Blackjack or Bear bombers either...Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s, and Tu-160s armed with AAMs would be under the control of the Aerospace Forces... not the Navy... and could certainly not operate safely globally.

interoperability isn't only for NATO, Japan & Australia to practice. When protecting the VMF, they may be operationally controlled by admirals instead of generals. Recently there was talk about transferring some to the VMF.

To the Americans being able to sail where they like is a national interest... what if they start building islands in other strategic places... they can't stand for that.... it might give China an advantage...

yes, it's about containing China & preventing her further rize.

GarryB wrote:A Destroyer has better area defence weapons and could probably defend itself and ships it is operating with. A Cruiser is basically a command ship that is never intended to be alone... and is designed to defend the ships it operates with using short, medium, and very long range SAMs. A fixed wing aircraft carrier should operate with Cruisers, and therefore benefit from their super long range missiles

Agree here. That is why the carrier can and must use its high-value space for the air wing and leave the missile launching to the other ships. So, long range SAMs and land attack are not needed IMO.

Yeah, every time the Russians talk about hypersonic weapons the US Navy guys say their SM-6 missiles are hypersonic too, but it really is not the same.

Not the same at all, but since they don't have anything better they at least get the chance to actually hit the enemy...

and Zircon and their other high speed missiles are powered during the terminal attack phase...

Are you sure?

And in the time it takes to do so the Russians will have had years of experience and have probably a few hypersonic drones for testing air defence systems and developing tactics to defeat such targets...

Having an advantage is good, the problem is that eroding it is easier than building it up, specially now that US still has money.

Russia being navally blocked from all trade with central and south America would be a national interest issue I would think...

National interest for sure, only maybe not critical security issue at the time being. I would think that allowing Venezuela to fall would come close to that level in the long term though

USAF cargo & probably other planes used commercial air routes before to mask their presence. War is deception..

Yeah, but during peace time in international waters you can't just go blasting aircraft out of the sky because you think they are flying too close to you... I mean honestly with KAL007 if it was a recon plane it just flew over very secret areas of the Soviet Union so they had to stop it from leaving. In the case of the USS Vincennes that shot down an Iranian Airbus... it did so from inside Iranian waters where it was illegally firing on boats of the Iranian Navy... a single aircraft would not be used to mount an attack on an AEGIS class cruiser... the very idea is just silly, so shooting down that single aircraft was also unjustified... it had done nothing to indicate it was hostile... it was steadily climbing to cruise altitude and made no manouvers at all... and it was flying at subsonic speeds... it was not flying very low and fast like a real attack would... the commander that ordered it be shot down was a criminal.

the result is the same: $ spent=$ wasted.

No it is not. Mass producing cold war era ships today would be wasting money.

Getting rid of unneeded and unwanted ships and subs makes a lot of sense... Russia has no current use for the Soviet Navy... it would just bleed funds that are better spend on other things.

many of those ships incl. Slava in Nikolaev could still be used, reducing the need for new ships.

No matter what upgrades they decide upon for their Kirovs and Slavas both will need to be replaced anyway... there is no current urgent need for cruisers right now. Frigates and Corvettes for coastal patrol are more use as well as a few ships for the moment that can go further afield for longer.

Gradually they will need more and more longer ranged ships but by that stage they will likely have new destroyers and cruisers in production and they can retire or sell off the older ships.

others suggest it, they r just reporting z& elaborating on it.

They wouldn't suggest it and republish it if they thought it was good for Russia...

They don't want a strong Russia, they are not the first place Russia should go for advice... in fact they are the second last... the Clinton Foundation would be last.

it has nothing to do with shipyards in the Black Sea & building of large ships. It's about being able to move more cargo & transfer larger ships between Black & Caspian Seas more efficiently which will help the economy of S. Russia, Transcaucasus & C. Asia, adding stability.

Why would they want bigger ships on the Caspian?

How much material do you think they need to move between the Caspian and Black Seas?

even if $Bs r spent, water transport is the cheapest & will pay for itself in time. Otherwise, there would be only railroads across the isthmuses of Panama & Suez now.

Water is not an option in most places in Russia because for half the year it is frozen.

Material from ships can be easily transferred to trucks and trains for cross country high speed transfer to where it is needed.

perceived threat from China, RF & NK.

Then they are idiots... the US has done them more damage over the last few centuries than China, the RF and NK have done combined.

In fact the most destructive and abusive power in the region after the US was Japan.

But now it seems it needs its ass wiped...

the host country, if it wants the trade & mil. aid to continue. Btw, IL-62s can carry 40T of cargo each; a cargo/tanker version can fly on 2-3 engines to save fuel & act like VC10 Vickers

So what do you say to the host country... we are too tight arsed to pay for aircraft carriers so we are going to spend enormous amounts of money on aircraft and fuel and you get to pay for it... that is a situation where a stupid solution eliminates the problem... Russia wont need carriers or transports because no one will trade with them in that situation...

interoperability isn't only for NATO, Japan & Australia to practice. When protecting the VMF, they may be operationally controlled by admirals instead of generals. Recently there was talk about transferring some to the VMF.

Don't be silly.... what is Putin going to say if he decides to call a surprise test of Russias strategic deterrence and wants all strategic bombers in the air fully armed to test how long it takes and the commander of the force says sorry... no planes are available because they are stretched around the world with Air to Air missiles loaded on them because you are too tight to pay for aircraft carriers... give us 5 days and we can have them all flown back here ready for your exercise... whoops... Tsavo just managed what the US was unable to do... knocked out one leg of the Russian strategic triad of defence...

Not going to happen.

So, long range SAMs and land attack are not needed IMO.

But they are talking about 400km missiles in Redut so even if they don't mean 48N6 missiles can be loaded at the very least it means Redut will have long range missiles.

UKSK tubes will be carried... I doubt they would have land attack missiles... more likely anti sub missiles would make rather more sense and perhaps a couple of Zircon missiles for self defence.

Are you sure?

Zircon is a scramjet powered missile why would it not use fuel during the terminal phase to manouver?

Do you think the Russians are stupid enough to target enemy ships beyond the effective range of their missiles and just glide their missiles into the targets and hope they don't slow down too much that they can be shot down like much slower missiles will be?

What is the point of developing a mach 10 missile and then having it attack targets pulling enormous g and rapidly slowing down in close proximity to the target...

Having an advantage is good, the problem is that eroding it is easier than building it up, specially now that US still has money.

What good has their money done them?

While the US is trying to get hypersonic missiles right, Russia will be working on making them better and working out how to stop them...

Working out how to stop something you can actually test a fully working IADS against makes things more concrete and solid.

National interest for sure, only maybe not critical security issue at the time being

There is no difference... national interest to keep Russia and China out is because Russian and Chinese bases there are a security threat, and the risk that other countries in the region might also become interested in Russian and Chinese trade and weapons would be catastrophic...

Of course Russia has no say in Georgia or Ukraine or Belarus or the Arctic or the Baltic States, just because that is a region where Russia is and has territory, but of course the US has to protect its backyard because it is its backyard... central and south america is america.... didn't you know... it is unique...

Agree here. That is why the carrier can and must use its high-value space for the air wing and leave the missile launching to the other ships. So, long range SAMs and land attack are not needed IMO.

The Kuznetsov has CIWS like Kashtan and AK-630 turrets and about 192 Naval TOR missiles...

Notice short range air defence.

I agree a CVN would not need 400km range SAMs because the cruisers and destroyers it will be operating with will be carrying large numbers of them, but a future CVN will likely be armed with close in self defence systems... the gun turrets might be 57mm guns, the air defence mounts will likely be Pantsir, though probably with the quad tube missiles and the 20km range missiles, and they will likely have vertical launch tubes for upgraded TOR missiles and probably the equivalent of S-350 on land... ie Redut with 9M100 missiles and perhaps the short range 60km range 9M96 missiles as standard in large numbers.

Carriers that size have plenty of space.

They will also likely have UKSK launchers and S-500 launchers whatever they might be... the UKSK launchers will probably be loaded with anti sub ballistic missiles and EW rockets and perhaps anti torpedo weapons... hell over time they might develop UAVs or suicide drones that look like cruise missiles that they can launch from them.

GarryB wrote:Zircon is a scramjet powered missile why would it not use fuel during the terminal phase to manouver?

Do you think the Russians are stupid enough to target enemy ships beyond the effective range of their missiles and just glide their missiles into the targets and hope they don't slow down too much that they can be shot down like much slower missiles will be?

What is the point of developing a mach 10 missile and then having it attack targets pulling enormous g and rapidly slowing down in close proximity to the target...

I honestly dont know whether they have fuel for the terminal phase. The AShM Kalibr accelerates before impact, but that is probably to cross faster the last 15-20 km where they can actually be detected, it may be just a fast burn rocket. As to the others, having fuel for the terminal attack means more range is available if they attack relying on their kinetic energy. I really don't know.

What good has their money done them?

It made them enormously rich... and stupid. It allowed them to be normally ahead in many aspects of technological development or simply its deployment. So others just had to follow their path. If the situation reverses, US money is of great help to close the gap. As a general principle, I don't know if US will be very successful with hypersonics or when.

While the US is trying to get hypersonic missiles right,  Russia will be working on making them better and working out how to stop them...

I am not denying the benefits of the military advantage, only saying widening it is more difficult than closing it, all actors being rational (big assumption in this case I know)

There is no difference...

Critical threat is the national territory or anything that is close to it. Commercial interests 10,000 km away are normally just that, interests. A setback on those can be compensated somewhere else, but if you lose your homeland it is game over.

The Kuznetsov has CIWS like Kashtan and AK-630 turrets and about 192 Naval TOR missiles...

Notice short range air defence.

Rightly so... a carrier should have an absurdly high AD saturation threshold to really discourage any attempt to attack it.

I agree a CVN would not need 400km range SAMs because the cruisers and destroyers it will be operating with will be carrying large numbers of them,

And even better, fighters at distances way longer than the range of those SAMs can cover.

but a future CVN will likely be armed with close in self defence systems... the gun turrets might be 57mm guns, the air defence mounts will likely be Pantsir, though probably with the quad tube missiles and the 20km range missiles, and they will likely have vertical launch tubes for upgraded TOR missiles and probably the equivalent of S-350 on land... ie Redut with 9M100 missiles and perhaps the short range 60km range 9M96 missiles as standard in large numbers.

I could agree on that, sure. The platforms at the four corners of carriers do have lots of space. But I would never interfere with the flight deck...

Carriers that size have plenty of space.

The space big enough to carry UKSK is better used with fighter weapons and fuel, hangar volume and so on, me thinks.

They will also likely have UKSK launchers and S-500 launchers whatever they might be... the UKSK launchers will probably be loaded with anti sub ballistic missiles and EW rockets and perhaps anti torpedo weapons... hell over time they might develop UAVs or suicide drones that look like cruise missiles that they can launch from them.

Covering all those functions better at longer ranges is the reason why the carrier has an air wing... if the escort is going to be there anyway, why not let it carry a few 91R rockets? Or do you propose the carrier to go alone?

you can't just go blasting aircraft out of the sky because you think they are flying too close to you...

they'll take measures to prevent it. Most civ. planes cross the N. Atlantic & N. Pacific oceans on the great circle route, not over their wider parts. VMF ships would be going South, SW & SE, crossing those air routes in a few hours at most. Russian intel will monitor all air traffic, esp. originating from potential adversaries long before they come close. Any suspicious aircraft would be contacted & warned away- if it doesn't, measures would be taken against it.

many of those ships incl. Slava in Nikolaev could still be used, reducing the need for new ships.

there is no current urgent need for cruisers right now.

if CGNs weren't useful, why modernize 2 of them? ! CG was even sent to E. Med. from the Pac. Fleet- if an extra Slava was active, it would be sent there instead.

They wouldn't suggest it and republish it if they thought it was good for Russia...

even a stopped clock shows correct time twice during a 24 period. The article is mostly a critique of the sorry state of their canals & waterways, not a recommendation/suggestion to course of action. The Russians know it as well as Western think tanks.

Why would they want bigger ships on the Caspian?
How much material do you think they need to move between the Caspian and Black Seas?

for trade to grow &/ relieve other modes of more costly transport, canals should be deepened for bigger ships/barges. Sooner or later a waterway to the Persian Gulf would be built, increasing the need for them.  

Water is not an option in most places in Russia because for half the year it is frozen.

no, in the W. part it's not frozen for 10.5 months: From about mid-March to mid-December, the Volga is navigable throughout most of its course, although it is subject to much flooding in May and June, when it is fed by an immense amount of melting snow. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/russia/articles/Russia-river-cruise-guide/
I never heard of the Volgo-Don canal being inoperable during winter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga%E2%80%93Don_Canal#Operation

So what do you say to the host country... we are too tight arsed to pay for aircraft carriers so we are going to spend enormous amounts of money on aircraft and fuel and you get to pay for it...

it won't be that much expencive- they already have those planes & the fuel will be produced locally, with Russian help if need be.
Poland recognized the power of the Russian Su-30SM

what is Putin going to say if he decides to call a surprise test of Russias strategic deterrence and wants all strategic bombers in the air fully armed to test how long it takes

Even some ex-N/AF Tu-16s/M-4s (4 r on display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-4#Aircraft_on_display), if still in storage, could be bought from former operators & given that task; a few older Tu-95/142/22/160s could be converted for that AA role & not be part of their strategic bomber force, since the Tu-160M2 production has been restarted.

Most civ. planes cross the N. Atlantic & N. Pacific oceans on the great circle route, not over their wider parts.

Really.... Mr Expert... so Air New Zealand planes and planes flying from Australia flying to London fly up the Pacific coast to Japan before flying across the Pacific... what a long way to go..

Russian intel will monitor all air traffic, esp. originating from potential adversaries long before they come close. Any suspicious aircraft would be contacted & warned away- if it doesn't, measures would be taken against it.

Of course all air traffic over military ships will be monitored... but how do they contact any plane in particular?

If they had an aircraft carrier they could send up fighter planes to escort it, but without fighter aircraft their only alternative is radio and who is to say anyone on board the plane is awake... and why contact them anyway... civilian planes fly over military ships all the freaken time...

if CGNs weren't useful, why modernize 2 of them? ! CG was even sent to E. Med. from the Pac. Fleet- if an extra Slava was active, it would be sent there instead.

Right now they can't be replaced because they have no production alternative, yet they are only bothering to upgrade two out of the four.

even a stopped clock shows correct time twice during a 24 period. The article is mostly a critique of the sorry state of their canals & waterways, not a recommendation/suggestion to course of action. The Russians know it as well as Western think tanks.

Which sums it up perfectly... whining bullshit from a US bias thinktank who is not trying to be constructive or helpful, but destructive and malicious....

Which is why I didn't read it...

for trade to grow &/ relieve other modes of more costly transport, canals should be deepened for bigger ships/barges. Sooner or later a waterway to the Persian Gulf would be built, increasing the need for them.

Most of the stuff coming from Iran is probably going all around Russia rather than directly to Sevastopol or the Crimea... it simply makes more sense to offload it in a port in the Caspian and put it on a train and then they can send it anywhere they like.

AFAIK they don't build the ships that operate on the Caspian in the Caspian... which means all the Russian ships that operate there sailed there anyway so they should already fit through the canals.

Any non Russian ships in the Caspian not fitting through Russian canals... tough...

it won't be that much expencive- they already have those planes & the fuel will be produced locally, with Russian help if need be.

The cost would be immense and the effective coverage it would provide would be pathetic so I think it is a silly idea and I don't think they would waste time trying to make it work.

Even some ex-N/AF Tu-16s/M-4s (4 r on display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-4#Aircraft_on_display), if still in storage, could be bought from former operators & given that task; a few older Tu-95/142/22/160s could be converted for that AA role & not be part of their strategic bomber force, since the Tu-160M2 production has been restarted.

Older planes have even less range and would be sitting ducks that could easily be picked off... along with their refuelling aircraft... the cost of which would be as damaging as losing a lot of ships which would also happen too... just to save a few billion dollars building aircraft carriers...

Sorry mate, but that is just a silly idea.

I honestly dont know whether they have fuel for the terminal phase.

They will be flying at altitudes of 40km and above and so the terminal phase would be a dive on the target... look up any weapon manual for air to air missiles and the range of the weapon is taken into account to determine launch ranges and the launch range for Zircon will allow the missile to manage its fuel and speed and altitude to ensure it is powered to impact because that makes it more effective.

The AShM Kalibr accelerates before impact, but that is probably to cross faster the last 15-20 km where they can actually be detected, it may be just a fast burn rocket. As to the others, having fuel for the terminal attack means more range is available if they attack relying on their kinetic energy. I really don't know.

Well do you think the subsonic all the way Kalibr will have fuel all the way to the target... I mean it could extend its range by a few kilometres if it just shut its engine down before impact and just coasted into the target... the lack of engine noise would make it harder to hear... but it would also slow down... especially if it performs evasive terminal manouvers too.

The Supersonic anti ship Kalibr definitely does not hit the target with its rocket motor running but that is the thing about rocket motors... they burn fast and offer huge acceleration and then you cruise to impact... at very very low altitude a slow burning rocket motor to reduce drag and help maintain speed could be used too I guess, but it wont be powering into the target like a weapon with a scramjet could.

The space big enough to carry UKSK is better used with fighter weapons and fuel, hangar volume and so on, me thinks.

So you think being able to push a button and launch a 91ER1 missile at mach 2.5 to attack a submarine 40km away is a bad thing?

UKSK take depth but the area in front of the Island is fairly useless for parking planes... you might get two or three there at best, but having missiles there and also along the outer edge of the entire flight deck for SAMs of all types just makes sense... It is an extra reason for people and things to not get close to the edge between where the deck is and it is dry and where the sea is and you drown or lose an aircraft or vehicle forever...

Covering all those functions better at longer ranges is the reason why the carrier has an air wing... if the escort is going to be there anyway, why not let it carry a few 91R rockets? Or do you propose the carrier to go alone?

The carrier needs to be able to operate alone if need be... and a CVN might need to rush to an area perhaps with only a cruiser escort... transferring from one area to another... it makes it flexible... it doens't have to stick close to this or that ship because this or that ship has the anti sub missiles it needs for protection...

Besides being a capital ship it is going to get the attention of all sorts, which means it will need to carry S-500s and I doubt they will be fitted to Redut launchers.

Worst case scenario the UKSK launcher could carry an extra 32 9M96 missiles (four per tube and 8 tubes), while at other times other missiles of various types could be loaded.

It adds flexibility.

GarryB wrote:the launch range for Zircon will allow the missile to manage its fuel and speed and  altitude to ensure it is powered to impact because that makes it more effective.

The missile needs a certain energy and speed to make high g manoeuvring while finishing the approach to the ship. It is not a sustained turning and really in such cases you would need to make numbers to know for sure what can be done with the kinetic energy of the missile depending on its speed, drag, approach time, needed maneouvering and so on.

Air density at 40 km is like 1% of that at sea level. A scramjet designed to operate at that altitude is going to operate with 100 times more air going into the intake? As said previously, at low altitude and very high speed the drag and temperature the inlet and engine would create may be a serious problem, it may well be better to detach the engine completely. Also: how long the descent to target is going to take and what a difference the engine operation will make? Is it not enough to do that descent supported by gravity? Until 20-15 km altitude there is no significant drag to defeat, so the time is like what, 3-5 seconds from that altitude to target? A missile flying on a lofted trajectory at high altitude can keep very high speed for very long range and extend beyond powered range for hundreds of km. So I don't know what is considered useful range and what is not.

So you think being able to push a button and launch a 91ER1 missile at mach 2.5 to attack a submarine 40km away is a bad thing?

No it is not... at least the carrier has a squadron of ASW helos and maybe UAVs too offering much better coverage than what any other surface ship can have. But I think it is very unlikely that the carrier is going to be alone without a sad frigate to help. This would be unheard of.

UKSK take depth but the area in front of the Island is fairly useless for parking planes... you might get two or three there at best, but having missiles there and also along the outer edge of the entire flight deck for SAMs of all types just makes sense... It is an extra reason for people and things to not get close to the edge between where the deck is and it is dry and where the sea is and you drown or lose an aircraft or vehicle forever...

USN has some new VLS that can be installed at the border of the hull. There was a corvette from Krylov with some similar approach. More equipment means less space for the air wing, more cost, less reliability and more crew. I think it is not worth it and read the guys from Krylov and Nevskoe saying the same. But maybe I am wrong!

The carrier needs to be able to operate alone if need be... and a CVN might need to rush to an area perhaps with only a cruiser escort... transferring from one area to another... it makes it flexible... it doens't have to stick close to this or that ship because this or that ship has the anti sub missiles it needs for protection...

It adds flexibility.

IMHO that would be very problematic, because supporting the air wing is already very space and personnel demanding. The carrier is an specialised vessel.

BTW, excerpts from interviews with Nevskoe's Vlasov for an authoritative opinion:

- In your opinion, in what direction will aircraft carriers evolve?
- First of all, the automation of such a ship should be increased, its electronic armament should be improved, the means of protection (for example, anti-aircraft weapons), the habitability for the personnel who will live on this ship should be improved. The aircraft fleet and all the necessary devices and mechanisms that this aircraft fleet will operate will be improved. Together with the development of our science and technology, these ships should also "grow".

Whether they will be big or small is not an obvious question. But be that as it may, the seaworthiness of a small ship is much lower than that of a large one. And the restrictions on aviation flights directly depend on seaworthiness.

- In our previous conversations we talked about the fact that the desire of the fleet to "stuff" as many functions into the ship as possible is, in general, ineradicable ...
- And today, unfortunately, there are such tendencies. We are trying to resist them. Our opinion on this issue has not changed - an aircraft carrier must be an aircraft carrier. Don't blame him for everything you can. If the ship is large, this does not mean that it has to carry everything. Usually, several ships go with an aircraft carrier, which solve all related tasks. And his business is to launch and receive aircraft back.

In addition, saturation with various systems and weapons will automatically lead to an increase in the cost of the project. The hull of the ship, "iron" is a penny in comparison with the cost of components, radio electronics, weapons. As soon as we start to "push" something into it, the price starts to rise. This is the most intelligible argument for those who expect everything from an aircraft carrier at once.

https://tass.ru/interviews/4965950

Any ship formation far from its native shores in the event of full-fledged hostilities is doomed to destruction without air support.

If it is equipped with various weapons, the price will increase dramatically, if you put only anti-aircraft systems, the cost will be less.

https://ria.ru/20140203/992456922.html

quote]Really.... Mr Expert... so Air New Zealand planes and planes flying from Australia flying to London fly up the Pacific coast to Japan before flying across the Pacific...[/quote]
"most planes" isn't = all planes.

Of course all air traffic over military ships will be monitored... but how do they contact any plane in particular? If they had an aircraft carrier they could send up fighter planes to escort it, but without fighter aircraft their only alternative is radio and who is to say anyone on board the plane is awake... and why contact them anyway... civilian planes fly over military ships all the freaken time...

their airline & traffic controllers may also be contacted, & they better not be flying over Russian ships that can be as trigger happy as the West. Why spend $Bs on CVNs just to be nice, "talking softly & carrying a big stick"? The Russians r, or should be, like the US Marines who "can be ur best friend or ur worst enemy".

Right now they can't be replaced because they have no production alternative, yet they are only bothering to upgrade two out of the four.

they may keep the other 2 & upgrade them later- stay tuned!

Which sums it up perfectly... whining bullshit from a US bias thinktank who is not trying to be constructive or helpful, but destructive and malicious....

by the same token, they may have published it to prevent canal modernization, using reverse psychology.

Which is why I didn't read it...

than u better not discuss its contents; if I was so biased, I would stop reading this forum all together!

Most of the stuff coming from Iran is probably going all around Russia rather than directly to Sevastopol or the Crimea... it simply makes more sense to offload it in a port in the Caspian and put it on a train and then they can send it anywhere they like.

N-S trade trade corridor from India will pass via Iran & the Crimea isn't its main destination by any measure.

AFAIK they don't build the ships that operate on the Caspian in the Caspian...

they do in Astrahan & Baku:  http://www.cnrg.ru/en/construction/
https://www.korabel.ru/shipbuilding/shipyard/astrahanskoe_sudostroitelnoe_proizvodstvennoe_obedinenie.html
https://www.aoosk.ru/en/companies/jointstock-company-shipbuilding-plant-lotos-/
http://meb.com.ua/oile/RST12Ce.html

Any non Russian ships in the Caspian not fitting through Russian canals... tough...

good way to lose transit & port fees on ships from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan & Iran.

The cost would be immense and the effective coverage it would provide would be pathetic so I think it is a silly idea and I don't think they would waste time trying to make it work.

not as immense as having CVNs that won't be there 24/7/365 anyway. The Germans with their long range Condors covered most of the N. Atlantic where it mattered until 1944 w/o any carriers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fliegerf%C3%BChrer_Atlantik

Older planes have even less range and would be sitting ducks that could easily be picked off... along with their refuelling aircraft...

they can be given newer engines & avionics to perform better; tankers will be escorted by fighters & bombers armed with AAMs can protect themselves. AN-22/124s can be motherships for UCAVs, & they don't need refuelings to cross the N. Atlantic/Pacific.
Besides developing hypersonic AshMs, in a few years the US will put weapons in space capable of hitting CVNs anywhere at anytime. With good targeting & guidance, even SSBNs can use SLBMs to slam warheads filled with concrete/high explosives on their decks from Ks of miles away.
Russia can expand & grow her economy w/o much trade with L. America & Africa; it will take decades, if at all, to have the volume of trade worth investing in CVNs to protect it. As the Russian saying goes, Овчи́нка вы́делки не сто́ит. Translation: Lambskin is not worth currying.
English equivalent: The game isn’t worth the candle.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Russian_proverbs#%D0%9E

I was out on holyday for a week therefore i had not chance to follow the posts added here.

Now i will attempt to remedy

LMFS wrote:- The offensive / defensive balance of the vessels in the scenario is skewed by the really poor anti-ship potential of the US weapons, probably a result of the mentioned land-attack specialization of the USN and lack of true competitors. The FREMM frigates could well be capable of repelling the attacks of the subsonic Harpoon / JSM missiles, but what is their capability to threat the carrier group, only armed with 16 x subsonic, 185 km ranged NSM? What would be the proportion of SAMs and offensive weapons in the Mk41 VLS, considering the limitations in number and capacities of the RAM?

The scenario i have proposed ,using as example US Navy simply because it is the Navy at world (probably the only one...) that has put aircraft carriers to the center of its force's composition architecture, is projected in the time frame where the most advanced version of US aircraft carrier -Ford Class-, theirs air wing - F-35 - and weapon systems -such as LRASM- will be available.

In this time window the probable loadout of weapons in MK-41 launchers of FFGX frigates, for sea superiority role and maritime strik,e (maintaining reasonable self-defence capabilities) would be likely something like 10 LRASM, 12 SM-2/6 and 40 ESSM , obviously as said the hard defeat defense layers of each frigate will include also 21 RAM and the full loadout of 57 mm MAD-FIRES corrected anti-air rounds purposely developed for destroy long range subsonic missiles.

The engagement range of those FFGX against high displacement enemy ships will be that of the LRASM they will carry in the MK-41 VLS (ostensibly no more than 10-12 missiles for ship).

LMFS wrote:- Cost: without making a point of contention the data proposed, there are other options that don't change the substance of the comparison but produce less exaggerated values. The FREMM is estimated to cost USN an average of $800 million per unit, limit set is $950 million. $1.28 billion for the first unit, including design modifications. Data diverge from others presented in the original post, I have not dug deeper to check which ones are better.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/05/05/5-things-you-should-know-about-the-us-navys-new-frigate/

A CVN like Nimitz would offer no practical difference in performance for this example and USN reports them as costing $4.5 billion. Wiki reports 8.5 billion though.

https://www.public.navy.mil/airfor/cvn71/pages/factsandfigures.aspx

4 squadrons F-18 would be around $2.46 B, plus $700 million for 4 x E-2D

https://news.usni.org/2019/03/21/42021

The proportion if we use these values would be between ca. 10 and 15 FREMM frigates per carrier, which is surprisingly low, but even so the costs of a carrier group are way higher as we know, due to the whole escorting ships involved. I have not calculated them, since in the scenario only attacks by air power were considered for the carrier fleet.

LMFS i have used the cost of the most up-to-date aircraft carrier now available worldwide - Ford Class- to make comparison in US Navy between equals : money spent on the most advanced aircraft carrier against the same money spent on the most advanced frigate, you want to use that of the Nimitz-class that would be enormously less efficient in maritime strike cause the huge limits of take-off fuel/weapon weight and sortie for day (for the most performant Nimitz-class in war time it was 140 sorties in 24 hours for a single day of conflict).

For FFGX i have proposed a conservatively high price of a similar ship -650 ml. dollars- if it would be constructed by US shipyards and not procured on the market exactly like happen for its aircraft carrier and if difference of prices between domestic US procurements contracts and export ones can provide a guidance ,likely the price of an US-built FFGX would be also sensibly lower than $ 650 ml.

The costs you have proposed for Nimitz class and its air wing (even discounting the helicopter groups and transport aircraft that would easily add another 1,5 billions $) is not realistic:

- The latest Nimitz-class constructed -USS George H.W. Bush - had a price of 6,24 billions $ in 2009 dollars , in 2020 dollars adding all the other contracts of the last decade, its price would be about 8,4 billions $
- The air wing of F/A-18E/F of a Nimitz class (44 aircraft) would have a cost of 3,778 billions $ -the contract you have quoted is a modification to an already existing one The all unit procurement price for those systems is available in the US Department Of Defence's "Program Acquisition Cost By Weapon System 2021" of February 2020

https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=834726

- The 4 E2-D would cost 1,47 billions $.
-The 5 Growlers about 512 millions $

Therefore the cost in 2020 of a significantly less performant Nimitz class with its air wing (without the ASW and transport helicopters, without F-35 and without the weapons on board) is about 14,16 billions $ , therefore for the same tax-payers money US Navy could procure 17-18 FFGX on the export market or 21-22 FFGX domestically produced.

In neither instance that Nimitz-class cariier would have a single chance to win against the other side; this is exactly the reason those anachronistic WWII's leftovers need huge complements of destroyers ,submarine, and cruisers (that furtherly worsen the cost-efficiency parameters).

In substance carrier's aircraft, to the contrary of WWII, do not provide any relevent coverage to the naval group in a condition of modern sea warfare between peers opponents, a task that is commited to the destroyer and cruiser complement and since half of '60 years absolve the unique role of expeditionary/remote power projection missions from sea sectors against ground targets of insulated inferior enemies ,in line with the violent imperialistic doctrine at the basis of US Navy's structure.

Any non Russian ships in the Caspian not fitting through Russian canals... tough...

Perhaps that is the key... maybe they want the canals widened so in 10 years time they can start sailing bigger ships through there to get to the Caspian Sea to extract materials from the former Soviet States and perhaps Afghanistan through a former Soviet State and therefore bypass Pakistan...

The missile needs a certain energy and speed to make high g manoeuvring while finishing the approach to the ship. It is not a sustained turning and really in such cases you would need to make numbers to know for sure what can be done with the kinetic energy of the missile depending on its speed, drag, approach time, needed maneouvering and so on.

A missile that uses speed for effectiveness would benefit from being powered during its dive to target...

Air density at 40 km is like 1% of that at sea level. A scramjet designed to operate at that altitude is going to operate with 100 times more air going into the intake?

They make air intakes adjustable for that very reason.... look at the engine of the SR-71... the cone centre of it can be moved right forward at high speed reducing incoming air to a narrow slit around the outside of the cone into the intake.... most scramjets seem to have rectangular intakes so raising the lip to create a narrow slit inlet is probably the idea there too...

As said previously, at low altitude and very high speed the drag and temperature the inlet and engine would create may be a serious problem, it may well be better to detach the engine completely.

Even if it is running in idle to counter some drag in the last few seconds of flight the extra mass and material will add to the impact...

No it is not... at least the carrier has a squadron of ASW helos and maybe UAVs too offering much better coverage than what any other surface ship can have. But I think it is very unlikely that the carrier is going to be alone without a sad frigate to help. This would be unheard of.

Having large numbers of medium helicopters with dipping sonars triangulating the location of enemy subs is very useful but once the targets location has been approximated a mach 2.5 ballistic rocket will cover 40km in less time than it would take a torpedo or a helicopter to cover that distance... and it would mean those subs could continue listening for other targets and perhaps listen to the engagement to ensure a kill or request a follow up shot...

A 90K ton aircraft carrier can carry dozens of UKSK launchers without problem... there will be plenty of corners with the space needed...

USN has some new VLS that can be installed at the border of the hull. There was a corvette from Krylov with some similar approach. More equipment means less space for the air wing, more cost, less reliability and more crew. I think it is not worth it and read the guys from Krylov and Nevskoe saying the same. But maybe I am wrong!

Apart from the hatches, these systems should have electronic monitoring systems and not need under deck access to check individual missiles like the Rif and Klintok missiles before them.

Having 300+ short range SAMs sitting in launch tubes ready to go is vastly cheaper and more effective than trying to keep aircraft airborne 24/7 armed with live missiles just in case there is a surprise sneak attack like the one executed against the Saudis oil fields...

For all we know these new photonic radars might be able to see 500m into sea water and submarines might be rendered useless, but it would likely still operate with a few around it... and having some land attack or anti sub or even anti ship missiles on board just makes it a more flexible ship/weapon system.

They might develop a reusable vertically launched 10 metre long 750mm calibre UAV that is scramjet powered but can land using a tail hook back on the carrier.... launched from a UKSK launch tube... able to cruise out at mach 10 to use a radar and EO systems to scan the area and then fly back to be reused... the solid rocket fuel booster replaced and internal fuel replaced after landing and reloaded into the UKSK system where its batteries are recharged and electronics tested and checked in place... or perhaps a much slower HALE or MALE subsonic model for launch in bad weather conditions with serious crosswinds or other issues that prevent conventional aircraft taking off.  After a few dozen launches you could take out the unnecessary (more expensive) electronics (for reuse) and use it as a drone target for target practise or as a weapon to hit ISIS targets in Syria or Libya...

IMHO that would be very problematic, because supporting the air wing is already very space and personnel demanding. The carrier is an specialised vessel.

The role of the Russian aircraft carrier is to provide air cover for Russian surface ships and subs... effectively its job is to be the air force for the navy.... it is essentially being an AEGIS cruiser to protect the cruisers and destroyers of the Russian Navy... which are already better protected than US AEGIS cruisers....

Why do you think a US AEGIS cruiser is not safe on its own?

- First of all, the automation of such a ship should be increased, its electronic armament should be improved, the means of protection (for example, anti-aircraft weapons), the habitability for the personnel who will live on this ship should be improved. The aircraft fleet and all the necessary devices and mechanisms that this aircraft fleet will operate will be improved. Together with the development of our science and technology, these ships should also "grow".

Redut and UKSK are not manually operated weapons that need rotary launch systems maintained and monitored... both will be operated from command by a sailor at a set of controls...

Whether they will be big or small is not an obvious question. But be that as it may, the seaworthiness of a small ship is much lower than that of a large one. And the restrictions on aviation flights directly depend on seaworthiness.

It also adds persistence when in operation... a carrier that can carry 90 fighters plus all the other aircraft it needs might have stores and supplies to operate for two or three weeks depending on the tempo of operations, but if you only load up 48 fighters but carry full munitions and fuel capacity that should mean operations for  four to six weeks just using standard available stores... without stacking shipping containers of extra material on empty areas on the deck for instance or in the hangar areas for those other 42 fighters you don't have on board...

The operation might require 90 fighters but I think that is a bit excessive... but that is the point... having CVN with 90 fighters is more useful than three tiny carriers with 30 fighters each because a lot of the time you would probably take two of the smaller carriers when one big one would do...

If you are worried about spending money then curl up in a little ball and let the rest of the world play soccer with you...  

Usually, several ships go with an aircraft carrier, which solve all related tasks. And his business is to launch and receive aircraft back.

The carrier is likely to be the flagship of any group of Russian ships and needs to be able to perform any role needed.... I am not saying put 152mm or 203mm artillery guns on it, but the universal attack missile launchers add flexibility and could be scabbed on the sides of the ship most of the way around without getting in anyones way and without reducing the number of type of aircraft carried... and the same for Redut and other systems.

I am not saying they need 100 UKSK launchers on the ship... I don't think they should make it into an arsenal ship with thousands of missiles... but I would expect at the very least that there would be 6 Pantsir systems... one in each corner and two waist located systems... along with as many Duet gun mounts (6 double barrer turrets)... located close to the Pantsir systems, and I would think the new version of Naval TOR in a fixed cell launcher instead of the mechanised rotary system on the Kuznetsov could carry twice the number of ready to fire missiles in rather less space because the missiles are half the size and also no rotary launch systems with empty unused space, so two lots of 192 missiles... should be easy to fit.... so 384 missiles... and then I would go for perhaps 3 Redut systems on each side of the ship... front, middle, and rear on the edges out of the way, so that would be 6 x 12 launch tubes... assuming you are right with missile numbers then that would be 6 x  12 x 4 9M100 missiles which is 288 more missiles... so perhaps 8 UKSK launchers in total would give 48 anti sub rockets, or if necessary 400km range SAMs or 9M96 redut missiles or combinations of all three.

In addition, saturation with various systems and weapons will automatically lead to an increase in the cost of the project. The hull of the ship, "iron" is a penny in comparison with the cost of components, radio electronics, weapons. As soon as we start to "push" something into it, the price starts to rise. This is the most intelligible argument for those who expect everything from an aircraft carrier at once.

They could reduce costs by fitting for but not with some of the systems... the improved TOR missiles are cheap but accurate command guided missiles as are the Pantsir, so they would certainly be a priority over Redut and UKSK launchers which could perhaps be added later... all their new ships are getting these launchers so after a while the price should become more reasonable... because they will be standard.

Any ship formation far from its native shores in the event of full-fledged hostilities is doomed to destruction without air support.

To be fair, even without air support it would probably still be doomed, but with air support they will be able to extract a price from the enemy for fighting them that the enemy might not be prepared to pay.

We have seen in Syria that air defences only can take so much... what is needed is an active defence that strikes back at the attacker to weaken and perhaps even stop attacks before they form up properly and become a real threat. Syrian fighter planes operating near Syrian borders looking for enemy aircraft launching stand off weapons would escalate the situation but also make Israel have to decide to continue an attack of 1,000 cuts in which they lose aircraft... which they can't afford, or escalate and perhaps lose even more aircraft which they can't afford or adopt a different tack to deal with their perceived problems like stopping supporting terrorists trying to over throw Assad and therefore give Iran no reason to have forces there in the first place...

If it is equipped with various weapons, the price will increase dramatically, if you put only anti-aircraft systems, the cost will be less.

The presence of a UKSK and all the needed software and electronics makes the ship more flexible and safer, and considering all their new destroyers and cruisers will have the exact launchers and software means it should not be a big problem as you are effectively installing a launcher that can launch a dozen different types of weapons... the hardware should be unified and standardised and the software too.

"most planes" isn't = all planes.

Even if it is just three planes a day it is a problem.

their airline & traffic controllers may also be contacted,

What traffic controllers? An Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Hawaii on its way to the US to get to London is not under air traffic control all the way across the Pacific Ocean and contacting the Auckland office of Air New Zealand wont do you much good either.

& they better not be flying over Russian ships that can be as trigger happy as the West.

How would they even know? They have no surface search radar fitted AFAIK.

If there is a military exercise then that is publicised but during peacetime and outside of conflict zones they don't say where their ships are.

Why spend $Bs on CVNs just to be nice, "talking softly & carrying a big stick"? The Russians r, or should be, like the US Marines who "can be ur best friend or ur worst enemy".

Because those billions of dollars spent on air power that operates everywhere you surface ships do makes them much safer and much more powerful... they can still talk softly, but it puts nails in the end of their stick and sets it on fire....

they may keep the other 2 & upgrade them later- stay tuned!

I think it would be good if they did... I would think after all this time they have new nuclear power plants for large ships so a big ship whose reactor is shot would be a good opportunity to take it out and deal with it, while at the same time put in a new NPP and give it a test in a real ship... a modern and much safer NPP that can operate without expensive and dangerous refuelling every few years would be an important step forward for them... a reactor that will operate for 30-40 years without refuelling would make nuclear propulsion rather cheaper and safer and testing it in a ship that has proven OK makes more sense that trying to fix large numbers of problems with lots of different brand new technologies never tested before like Zumwalt and Ford and LCS.

by the same token, they may have published it to prevent canal modernization, using reverse psychology.

Their reasoning is not Russias problem... the Russians will know what they want and need... they have not been getting their ideas from western think tanks so far, and it seems to be working out well for them.

I rather suspect the west has plans to open up an alternate route to Afghanistan perhaps or some other dirty scheme.

than u better not discuss its contents; if I was so biased, I would stop reading this forum all together!

I appreciate what you are trying to say, but I would not expect anything of use or value from that source... they made their bed... I would not read anything from Hilary Clinton on what Russia can do to become great again... for the same reasons.

N-S trade trade corridor from India will pass via Iran & the Crimea isn't its main destination by any measure.

Getting taken off a ship and put on a train means the Russian ports in the Caspian will get work... sending it through canals into the Black Sea means it will then sail through the Black Sea and down past Turkey to European ports... how would Russia benefit from bypassing its own transport infrastructure from India to the EU?  For quite some time I suspect there will be little bulk transport from Iran to the EU, so we are just talking about stuff from India.

they do in Astrahan & Baku:

If they build them in the Caspian and find they are too big to leave then whose problem is that?

Baku is not in Russia so it is not Russias problem if they can't leave the Caspian Sea...

And they are hardly going to build ships in Astrakhan that are too big to get out if they need them to operate outside of the Caspian.... they could make them in the Crimea instead...

good way to lose transit & port fees on ships from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan & Iran.

Good way to earn port fees transferring the goods from ships to trains to get to where they are going.

If they want goods to travel via Russian canals then they need to send them on ships that conform to the size the canals can take.

not as immense as having CVNs that won't be there 24/7/365 anyway.

CVNs can move about with the groups of Russian ships that are doing things that are important... not every single Russian ship in international waters needs air cover but some of them will.

With good targeting & guidance, even SSBNs can use SLBMs to slam warheads filled with concrete/high explosives on their decks from Ks of miles away.

S-500 will be able to shoot such things down.

While an X-15 scramjet from the US reached heat over 1480 Celsius going mach 6.7 so bumping up speeds should not be that much of a heating issue for the zircon

X-15 was a rocket... not a scramjet.

@Mindstorm:

Thanks for your answer, I will start giving some feedback below about concrete aspects of your reasoning and adding further sources of interest.

Mindstorm wrote:In this time window the probable loadout of weapons in MK-41 launchers of FFGX frigates, for sea superiority role and maritime strik,e (maintaining reasonable self-defence capabilities) would be likely something like 10 LRASM, 12 SM-2/6 and 40 ESSM , obviously as said the hard defeat defense layers of each frigate will include also 21 RAM and the full loadout of 57 mm MAD-FIRES corrected anti-air rounds purposely developed for destroy long range subsonic missiles.

Seems a balanced loadout. How many targets of the type subsonic / sea skimming AShMs do you estimate the FFGX could repel at the same time? VLS SAMs are going to be capable against all aspect attack and have active seeker in the terminal phase, while I assume RAM and the 57 mm gun can only cover one direction at the same time.

I don't know if you were going to address it in another post, but I am interested in your opinion about ARMs like HARM being potentially used against a naval target. It would not be necessary, if USN was not pathologically fixated on land attack instead of naval strike to the point of not having state of the art AShMs, or even supersonic ones. But in the scenario proposed, which is a purely theoretical one, I consider it sensible as the air crews on the carrier would have no better option to defeat serious naval AD without using an absurd amount of missiles.

The engagement range of those FFGX against high displacement enemy ships will be that of the LRASM they will carry in the MK-41 VLS (ostensibly no more than 10-12 missiles for ship).

The unofficial sources I find refer 300 nm / 560 km range for the surface launched version of this missile. That would be essentially the same as the air launched version, but using a booster from ASROC. So the carrier remains unthreatened. Since the scenario is very theoretical, I struggle to imagine how it would be caught within range by the distributed fleet, unless under very fanciful conditions. The carrier would simply start by not coming close to shores where threats could be hidden, and in case of the distributed fleet going "kamikaze" (cannot find a better word) and making a synchronised approach in order to get in missile range, the carrier has a superior propulsion. What strategy may the distributed fleet, save for waiting in the shore for the carrier to approach, use to become a threat to it, if the carrier stays in open ocean?

LMFS i have used the cost of the most up-to-date aircraft carrier now available worldwide - Ford Class- to make comparison in US Navy between equals : money spent on the most advanced aircraft carrier against the same money spent on the most advanced frigate,

The reasons I propose the Nimitz are:

- The bottleneck of the whole scenario is the lack of a capable anti-ship missile in the USN inventory. The carrier struggles to threat the frigates, and they don't threat the carrier almost at all. Therefore the type of carrier used, newer or older, is pretty much irrelevant, as far as it can store missiles, launch planes and have the propulsion to keep up with the frigates in the worst case.

- Ford is extremely expensive without actually adding anything of worth to the naval strike role. In the doctrinal/budgetary discussion about carriers in the US that I find, the permanent issue is to justify the carrier's role as an effective tool for land attack, compared even to land based air power (!). That is what has shaped the Ford and what justifies the exorbitant prices the US MIC practises, because carriers allow US to police the world and that can be priced at a huge premium. But such approach is a military abomination.

- The Ford represents the apex and probably last example of unchecked, blatant robbery of federal budget and criminal program management / risk conflation that we will probably see. In fact the FFGX is an answer to it, as are threats by Trump of cancelling EMALS.

you want to use that of the Nimitz-class that would be enormously less efficient in maritime strike cause the huge limits of take-off fuel/weapon weight and sortie for day (for the most performant Nimitz-class in war time it was 140 sorties in 24 hours for a single day of conflict).

I don't see that 140 sorties per day affect the chances of the frigates, since they cannot get offensive on the carrier. But just as a reference that I consider very valuable, the report of the 1997 SURGEX exercise with USS Nimitz should be kept in mind. They managed 975 sorties in 4 days, with a peak of 279 sorties on the 4th day, delivering 1336 bombs (again the land attack obsession) to targets in average 200 nm away and included a regular schedule of SEAD, supporting sorties, AEW, DCA etc. Apparently the carrier would have needed to resupply after one more day at this rate, and it is admittedly an exercise where everything was ready for a surge operational tempo, but the capabilities shown were real. Again, nowhere in the world would such sortie generation be needed for naval strike, if only they had some decent AShMs...

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a362472.pdf

Of course others (namely USAF, of course) replied questioning the results, but observe how they keep focusing on the land attack role in an exercise of short-sightedness:

https://www.airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/1999/March%201999/0399carrier.pdf

For FFGX i have proposed a conservatively high price of a similar ship -650 ml. dollars- if it would be constructed by US shipyards and not procured on the market exactly like happen for its aircraft carrier and if difference of prices between domestic US procurements contracts and export ones can provide a guidance ,likely the price of an US-built FFGX would be also sensibly lower than $ 650 ml.

The costs you have proposed for Nimitz class and its air wing (even discounting the helicopter groups and transport aircraft that would easily add another 1,5 billions $) is not realistic:

Therefore the cost in 2020 of a significantly less performant Nimitz class with its air wing (without the ASW and transport helicopters, without F-35 and without the weapons on board) is about 14,16 billions $ , therefore for the same tax-payers money US Navy could procure 17-18 FFGX on the export market or 21-22 FFGX domestically produced.

I will check the cost sources in detail but agree to use the proportion carrier / frigates you propose, it does not essentially affect my point

In neither instance that Nimitz-class cariier would have a single chance to win against the other side;

Could you explain how do you come to that conclusion? I don't know how many LRASM / Harpoon / NSM a carrier can store, the references about bombs I get are between 2,000 and 4,000, on SURGEX they should carry at least 500 t / close to 1700 units of Mk 82 and Mk 83 bombs. That would mean in weight something like 1000 units of NSM or 50 per frigate. Given the questionable effectiveness of the AShM used and its ability to pick the attack conditions, the carrier could use weapons simpler than LRASM, air released naval mines, or PGMs, depending on the way SM-6 missiles are used by the frigates and the range at which the fighters manage to approach. The question is that once more, the side with air power manages to chose the time and type of the attack and the surface (land) side remains on the defensive position and vulnerable to leakers, overwhelming attacks or any other successful approach by the attacking side. They could attack frigates one by one and overwhelm them, given they have the time on their side.

this is exactly the reason those anachronistic WWII's leftovers need huge complements of destroyers ,submarine, and cruisers (that furtherly worsen the cost-efficiency parameters).

The interesting thing is that the current, USN-specific doctrine has nothing to do with what carriers were created to do and what their function during WWII was, that is, to battle enemy fleets. It is a doctrinal dead-end street and carrier use should return to providing air cover to naval forces. That is the way useful and cost rational carriers can be created, not by trying to beat land based air forces in payload on target as the US does.

In substance carrier's aircraft, to the contrary of WWII, do not provide any relevent coverage to the naval group in a condition of modern sea warfare between peers opponents, a task that is commited to the destroyer and cruiser complement and since half of '60 years absolve the unique role of expeditionary/remote power projection missions from sea sectors against ground targets of insulated inferior enemies ,in line with the violent imperialistic doctrine at the basis of US Navy's structure.

In the presence of effective air launched AShM I think this does not fully adjust to reality, maybe you could give some feedback regarding the "Russian" scenario I proposed?

thegopnik wrote:@LMFSThe drag is not a problem for air breathable missiles as it is for HGVs, ballistic missiles or ballistic missiles with thrust vectoring.

Of course the speeds are different, but the inlet / engine generate massive drag if they need to be closed at low altitude. If used with very dense air, the ram compression + friction will increase the temperature substantially. And of course a strategic weapon and a tactical one have different sizes, prices and complexities.

GarryB wrote:Even if it is running in idle to counter some drag in the last few seconds of flight the extra mass and material will add to the impact...

I don't feel in conditions to support one opinion or other, there are no real examples that I know to compare. Hopefully soon we will know how the real thing is done.

Having large numbers of medium helicopters with dipping sonars triangulating the location of enemy subs is very useful but once the targets location has been approximated a mach 2.5 ballistic rocket will cover 40km in less time than it would take a torpedo or a helicopter to cover that distance... and it would mean those subs could continue listening for other targets and perhaps listen to the engagement to ensure a kill or request a follow up shot...

Yeah, no questioning the anti-submarine rocket makes sense.

A 90K ton aircraft carrier can carry dozens of UKSK launchers without problem... there will be plenty of corners with the space needed...

We wanted it to be 60-70 kt but ok... the VMF apparently wants that flexibility you mention, design bureaus say it makes no sense... I tend to think like them, since the carrier exists to cover the fleet and without a fleet you don't need a carrier, so you should count on a few frigates or destroyers at least with some UKSK and leave the carrier focus on what makes it valuable. But ok we will see.

it is essentially being an AEGIS cruiser to protect the cruisers and destroyers of the Russian Navy.

Big surface combatants are filled with missiles, the carrier is filled with planes. They can extend the range of the defence of other ships but as I say above, they are meant to operate with other ships that complement them. You could create a carrier that does it all, I think it would loose capacity in the air wing aspect, be complex, expensive and need a lot of crew. I just think it is more effective not to overcomplicate it.

It also adds persistence when in operation...

Very important. If you notice, USN carriers do not even have nuclear + boost propulsion, it is all nuclear, to sail 30+ kt at will. Such capacities have a cost of course.

If you are worried about spending money then curl up in a little ball and let the rest of the world play soccer with you...

West approved

but I would expect at the very least that there would be 6 Pantsir systems...

I agree with the AD side, as far as it is medium and above all short range, with many independently targeted interceptors, and many Paket-NK systems. That is already a lot of equipment to install, use and maintain, on top of the air wing.

To be fair, even without air support it would probably still be doomed, but with air support they will be able to extract a price from the enemy for fighting them that the enemy might not be prepared to pay.

Not, if you don't mess too much with land forces, which you shouldn't if your military and political doctrine are reasonable...

EDIT: we saw the containers on the drawing of the UDK, maybe this is the Russian answer to the need for flexibility in their ships and maybe it can apply to carriers too:

https://iz.ru/1047958/roman-kretcul-aleksei-ramm/vyzvali-patrul-novoe-rossiiskoe-oruzhie-ispytaiut-v-severnykh-moriakh

Perhaps that is the key... maybe they want the canals widened so in 10 years time they can start sailing bigger ships through there to get to the Caspian Sea to extract materials from the former Soviet States and perhaps Afghanistan through a former Soviet State and therefore bypass Pakistan...

who "they"?

Even if it is just three planes a day it is a problem. How would they even know? They have no surface search radar fitted AFAIK. If there is a military exercise then that is publicised but during peacetime and outside of conflict zones they don't say where their ships are.

they could just periodically announce that any plane approaching a certain area will have its navigation gear malfunction- there r EW means already tried off Crimea & Syria.

Because those billions of dollars spent on air power that operates everywhere you surface ships do makes them much safer and much more powerful... they can still talk softly, but it puts nails in the end of their stick and sets it on fire....

VKS & NAF can do it for le$$. If they can't build artificial islands in the open oceans, floating air bases of steel & concrete big enough for AN-22/124s & TU-22/95/142/160s & MiG-31/35s & Su-27/30/34/35/57 & IL-38/476/8s & A-50/100s & ekranoplans/amphibians, powered by floating NPPs & w/o any EMALS CATOBAR that CVNs need can be built. With adequate SAMs & ASW, they won't need any DDG/CGs to protect them.
https://vz.ru/world/2020/8/15/1055206.html

Getting taken off a ship and put on a train means the Russian ports in the Caspian will get work... sending it through canals into the Black Sea means it will then sail through the Black Sea and down past Turkey to European ports...

or to Ukraine, Bulgaria & Romania- the Danube River is navigable deep into C. Europe.

how would Russia benefit from bypassing its own transport infrastructure from India to the EU? ..Good way to earn port fees transferring the goods from ships to trains to get to where they are going. If they want goods to travel via Russian canals then they need to send them on ships that conform to the size the canals can take.

the Eurasian Canal may take some transit fees from Russia but will allow bigger cargo/warships to enter Caspian & later Indian Ocean & back via Iran, bypassing Turkey. So the VMF may send Black/Baltic/N. Fleet medium sized ships & subs to the Indian Ocean & back via the internal waterways, bypassing the N. Atlantic, Med. & Red Seas, saving a lot of time/$ while presenting less targets to others.

If they build them in the Caspian and find they are too big to leave then whose problem is that? ..And they are hardly going to build ships in Astrakhan that are too big to get out if they need them to operate outside of the Caspian...

"if u build it, they'll come", & every1 will benefit.

Baku is not in Russia so it is not Russias problem if they can't leave the Caspian Sea...

better transportation links=better economy & relations. Russia needs that to prevent Baku becoming another Belgrade or Tbilisi, courted by NATO, or a complete Turkish/Iranian/Chinese marionette.

S-500 will be able to shoot such things down.

not all of them, esp. when coming straight down. Long ranged torpedoes can also be fitted atop it or NATO SSKs can ambush CVNs & release them a few dozen miles away to explode underneath a CVN, detonating all the missiles & bombs in their holds.

LMFS wrote:Seems a balanced loadout. How many targets of the type subsonic / sea skimming AShMs do you estimate the FFGX could repel at the same time? VLS SAMs are going to be capable against all aspect attack and have active seeker in the terminal phase, while I assume RAM and the 57 mm gun can only cover one direction at the same time.

I mean an insulated FFGx against an attack by LRASM delivered by carrier aircraft ? Probably between soft and hard suppression defensive systems no less than 35 incoming missiles within a very low time window, with a very high percentage of no "leakers" in the salvo.

With a conservative 7 or 8 LRASM deceived by combination of Mk53 Nulka and SEWIP Block 2 (with the integration of a Sylena MK2 ,against similar subsonic missiles, probably even double this figure) you could account for the interception of the remaining 27-28 LRASMs with the expense of 6-7 SM-2/6, about 25 ESSM, 12-13 RAM and 6 o 7 salvo of 57 mm MAD-FIRES on the eventual leakers.

To produce a similar salvo density (obviously totally insuffcient) against a single enemy frigate the carrier should organize the preparation load out and take-off of at least an E2-D and 17-18 F/A-18 (for 34-36 LRASMs) for a cycle of take-offs of not less than 3 hours , accepting in this way or an enormous penality to the combat range of the entire strike group (allowing the enemy unit/s to close the aircraft carrier for that "penalty" distance) maintaining missile salvo density or instead attack with only 6-7 aircraft at times producing a salvo density of no more than 12-14 missiles.

This scenario obviously should take into account an enemy group of 21 or 22 FFGx not even in WWII an aircraft carrier could have survived a similar enemy formation even half of them would be too much.....

LMFS wrote:I don't know if you were going to address it in another post, but I am interested in your opinion about ARMs like HARM being potentially used against a naval target. It would not be necessary, if USN was not pathologically fixated on land attack instead of naval strike to the point of not having state of the art AShMs, or even supersonic ones. But in the scenario proposed, which is a purely theoretical one, I consider it sensible as the air crews on the carrier would have no better option to defeat serious naval AD without using an absurd amount of missiles.

Mine opinion ....and not only mine obvioulsy..... is that generally anti-radar missiles, even the most modern ones, have very few relevant employments in maritime operations against ships targets for strictly technical reasons

- Modern radars have very small horizontal sidelobes, often actually not dosable at all , that cause a very significative degradation of the mean error of the anti-radiation missile guidance.
- Antiradiation missiles can engage radars the wave lenght of which are ,among ship-born ones, mostly characteristic of engagement radars, not search radars (against which the mean error at target would be of dozen of meters), this is the reason for which US Navy in spite, of its range, name the new AARGM-ER as SEAD "Stand-in Attack Weapon", because it would be delivered in operations -mostly against ground targets- when enemy fire radars would have tracked an aircraft of an attack group.
In substance against modern radars anti-radiation missiles are "duel" weapons mostly used to attempt to interrupt an attack on the aircraft of a strike Group.
- The position of the radiating element in a ship is obviously not fixed like happen for fixed ground based radars and this contribute to significatively degrade the precision of the missile because the guidance's algorythms cannot progressively "construct" the position of the enemy radiating elements assuming its position as a constant (fixed in space).

Tomorrow i will continue with the remaining questions.......

I don't know if you were going to address it in another post, but I am interested in your opinion about ARMs like HARM being potentially used against a naval target.

The Soviets routinely used ARM Kh-22 and Kh-22M for naval and land attack use. Land attack against major radar and SAM sites, but at sea the USN tended to operate with strict emission control so the first missiles launched would need radars on to find their targets... but after they are detected the target carrier group will likely turn radars on because that is their eyes and they don't want to fight with their eyes closed... so the first wave of missiles being normal radar homing missiles but the second wave could include anti radiation missiles...

I don't feel in conditions to support one opinion or other, there are no real examples that I know to compare. Hopefully soon we will know how the real thing is done.

The scramjet engine can be turned off or on... so if they wanted to coast engine off to extend range they could do so while still conserving fuel to be used in the terminal dive to improve speed when you most needed it.

There is little advantage to launching at targets beyond the effective range of the missile to have it glide down to the target at much lower speeds than it used to get there....

Yeah, no questioning the anti-submarine rocket makes sense.

The one currently used on ship based UKSK launchers is the 533mm model so they should be able to fairly easily design and make a much longer ranged weapon for carrier defence... take the Granit tubes out of Kuznetsov and replace it with perhaps four UKSK launchers for 32 tubes...

We wanted it to be 60-70 kt but ok... the VMF apparently wants that flexibility you mention, design bureaus say it makes no sense... I tend to think like them, since the carrier exists to cover the fleet and without a fleet you don't need a carrier, so you should count on a few frigates or destroyers at least with some UKSK and leave the carrier focus on what makes it valuable. But ok we will see.

The problem is that if you look carefully at a Frigate.... how many SAMs does it carry... an enemy might launch two or three anti ship missiles at each frigate, but against an aircraft carrier they are going to launch dozens... which Russian Frigate currently carries enough SAMs to stop dozens of missiles launched against ships around them? And that is the first attack because even if they blunt a first attack those ships need to rearm and reload which might be some distance away... once a country attacks these Russian ships they will not doubt get orders to engage nearby now enemy assets so UKSK launches which might result in more attacks on them... how are those two frigates you have with that carrier going for SAMs?

If they manage to design a special double hull or triple hull that is clever and gives them a 45K ton carrier with the capacity of a US 90K ton carrier then that is great... I am not interested in weight... I am interested in capacity and I prefer they have too much capacity and not need it than not enough and have to build four CVNs instead of just needing two.

A Russian CVN can be used to protect airspace too... so if need be they could park it off the coast in some area and declare their own no fly zone that helps the locals deal with belligerent neighbours for instance, or it might operate in an area of interest for Russia... parking a carrier in a region with pirates for instance... with aircraft and AWACs and inflight refuelling their fighters could cover an enormous area of territory... the naval infantry might be performing a landing operation which might require air control for a week or two...

You could create a carrier that does it all, I think it would loose capacity in the air wing aspect, be complex, expensive and need a lot of crew. I just think it is more effective not to overcomplicate it.

Yeah, I don't see how fitting one Redut missile launcher would require less crew than having 6 launchers fitted... they have mechanisms to open the hatches for launch... they are not manually operated, and they take very little space... as I said you could put them around the edge and it wont effect aircraft capacity or operations at all. They would increase costs but they don't need to fill them most of the time... they likely wont need a full compliment of aircraft for a while either if money is a problem...

I agree with the AD side, as far as it is medium and above all short range, with many independently targeted interceptors, and many Paket-NK systems. That is already a lot of equipment to install, use and maintain, on top of the air wing.

With electronic monitoring the vertically launched missiles should be fine for the entire cruise and not need any maintainence at all.

Once it is installed it should be fine most of the time... unlike the air wing.

Not, if you don't mess too much with land forces, which you shouldn't if your military and political doctrine are reasonable...

Russia has shown rather less interests to interfere in the affairs of other countries than any country in the west, whose every breath is criticism against every country not doing as they are told...

EDIT: we saw the containers on the drawing of the UDK, maybe this is the Russian answer to the need for flexibility in their ships and maybe it can apply to carriers too:

Those "containers" sometimes were just half a metre tall on the deck... which suggests to me they are deck mounted launchers for Redut or UKSK or both.

who "they"?

America.... because in 10 years time when Putin is gone and they control the Kremlin and are using Russia against China they can use the canals to ship all the mineral booty they can extract from afghanistan and all the stans around it...

they could just periodically announce that any plane approaching a certain area will have its navigation gear malfunction- there r EW means already tried off Crimea & Syria.

So how does making civilian airliners lose navigation and have them fly around lost till they run out of fuel and crash any different from actually shooting them down?

VKS & NAF can do it for le$$. If they can't build artificial islands in the open oceans, floating air bases of steel & concrete big enough for AN-22/124s & TU-22/95/142/160s & MiG-31/35s & Su-27/30/34/35/57 & IL-38/476/8s & A-50/100s & ekranoplans/amphibians, powered by floating NPPs & w/o any EMALS CATOBAR that CVNs need can be built. With adequate SAMs & ASW, they won't need any DDG/CGs to protect them.

A barge big enough for An-124s to land on would be 500K tons and would be freaken enormous and would cost more than 20 traditional CVNs...

or to Ukraine, Bulgaria & Romania- the Danube River is navigable deep into C. Europe.

Why should Russia spend money making its canals bigger so Caspian Sea countries can send stuff to Central Europe and bypass them?

the Eurasian Canal may take some transit fees from Russia but will allow bigger cargo/warships to enter Caspian & later Indian Ocean & back via Iran, bypassing Turkey. So the VMF may send Black/Baltic/N. Fleet medium sized ships & subs to the Indian Ocean & back via the internal waterways, bypassing the N. Atlantic, Med. & Red Seas, saving a lot of time/$ while presenting less targets to others.

That would require a huge amount of work to upgrade their entire canal network... and at the end of the day essentially trades Turkey as the gate keeper for Iran as the gate keeper because Iran would need to build a canal and I rather doubt they will build a canal deep enough for Russia to move carriers through its country... that would be hugely more expensive than doing it for much smaller ships...

"if u build it, they'll come", & every1 will benefit.

How will they benefit?

The Caspian Sea is not a huge bottleneck with billions of tons of cargo stuck there because there no way to ship it out of there...

better transportation links=better economy & relations. Russia needs that to prevent Baku becoming another Belgrade or Tbilisi, courted by NATO, or a complete Turkish/Iranian/Chinese marionette.

Baku is Azerbeizhan isn't it? Russia has reasonable relations, but even if they fall to HATO and the US... so what... they have no way of getting US or HATO ships there... or out.

not all of them, esp. when coming straight down.

Things coming straight down are coming straight which makes them easiest to shoot down for vertically launched weapons. For angled weapons like Patriot it would be a problem but S-500 is not Patriot.

Long ranged torpedoes can also be fitted atop it or NATO SSKs can ambush CVNs & release them a few dozen miles away to explode underneath a CVN, detonating all the missiles & bombs in their holds.

The Russians have something called PAKET that is designed to engage and destroy enemy torpedoes...

GarryB wrote:so the first wave of missiles being normal radar homing missiles but the second wave could include anti radiation missiles...

ARM and AShM can share many characteristics, as the Kh-31 in both versions proves. And modern seekers are multimode, for instance AARGM has a anti-radiation head but also home on jamming and active MMW radar. In the US case, they are already talking actively about the naval role of the ARMs, probably because they, as the numbers above illustrate, have no real means to attack serious AD with their current AShMs.

The problem is that if you look carefully at a Frigate.... how many SAMs does it carry... an enemy might launch two or three anti ship missiles at each frigate, but against an aircraft carrier they are going to launch dozens... which Russian Frigate currently carries enough SAMs to stop dozens of missiles launched against ships around them?

I already said the carrier should definitely have SAMs, because it needs to raise its saturation threshold to a very high level and act even against very fast missiles that cannot be covered by aircraft.

But having said that, it is a major mission of the air wing to avoid:

- Any other vessel (or aircraft) to reach launch position against the carrier or the fleet protected by it
- To intercept as many of the incoming missiles and avoid depletion of ship's SAMs. Not too difficult against subsonic missiles launched from long distance, like the new AShM version of the Tomahawk for instance.

They would increase costs but they don't need to fill them most of the time... they likely wont need a full compliment of aircraft for a while either if money is a problem...

The more missiles and the more planes they have the better, how would I discuss that? I just think, based on what I read experts say and by compared analysis of existing designs, that there exists a compromise between one and the other, and my personal opinion is that a carrier is worth more because of its planes than because of its offensive missiles, so that is what I would prioritise if, for instance, space or crew for UKSKs would need to be diverted from the capacity of the air wing. Then, what is possible and what is not requires a detailed quantitative analysis and design work based on actual technical and economic constraints. I can only comment on very broad trends and principles. If they think 0, 1 or 8 UKSK fit in a carrier and make sense to VMF, I don't know.

In any case I can only suggest to read the SURGEX report I linked the other day. It is very good to understand the huge organizational complexity and sheer amount of space needed to sustain the operations of the carrier.

With electronic monitoring the vertically launched missiles should be fine for the entire cruise and not need any maintainence at all.

In real life electromechanical systems break and electronic monitoring too...

Obvious but sometimes forgotten... there is no such a thing as a maintenance-free system, it requires the specialists, tools, equipment, documentation, spares... for the system itself and often overlooked, all its supporting subsystems in the ship. It may mean more or less burden, but always > zero.

Russia has shown rather less interests to interfere in the affairs of other countries than any country in the west, whose every breath is criticism against every country not doing as they are told...

Yeah, and that is why I think they can implement the naval strike carrier in a proper way. I guess this is going to surprise many people, given today's practical identification of the carrier with a land attack tool.

America.... because in 10 years time when Putin is gone and they control the Kremlin and are using Russia against China they can use the canals to ship all the mineral booty they can extract from afghanistan and all the stans around it...

I wouldn't give them so much credit for planning such long term projection- it's a wishful thinking that Putin's successors will be more pro-Western than he is. The Chinese may be a lot more successful in influencing/if not having a hand in installing them- they have Tokaev in Kazakhstan now.

So how does making civilian airliners lose navigation and have them fly around lost till they run out of fuel and crash any different from actually shooting them down?

that's the point- to avoid that, they'll stay away; as soon as it happens, the Russians would vector them out of the area.

A barge big enough for An-124s to land on would be 500K tons and would be freaken enormous and would cost more than 20 traditional  CVNs...

then An-22s & IL-476/8/106s would still be enough. A huge platform will give them more capability leaving CVNs in the dust so it's worth it. Also, it could be used for A2/AD &/ no fly zone enforcement w/o having to sell any or as many S-400/500s.

Why should Russia spend money making its canals bigger so Caspian Sea countries can send stuff to Central Europe and bypass them?

they do it already, only on a smaller scale:
https://menafn.com/1098257059/Fleets-of-the-Caspian-amid-emerging-profitable-trends https://www.ocean-team.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/world/asia/china-kazakhstan-silk-road.html
https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/central-asia/245-central-asias-silk-road-rivalries

New N-S river route to C. Asia will negate at least some of that loss:
https://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13554-kazakhstan-as-an-arctic-state-and-a-maritime-power.html

That would require a huge amount of work to upgrade their entire canal network... and at the end of the day essentially trades Turkey as the gate keeper for Iran as the gate keeper because Iran would need to build a canal and I rather doubt they will build a canal deep enough for Russia to move carriers through its country...

they need to improve/upgrade it anyway; Iran will need Russia's help in canal construction & won't even think of closing it; no1 is suggesting using it to deploy UDKs & CVNs.

How will they benefit? The Caspian Sea is not a huge bottleneck with billions of tons of cargo stuck there because there no way to ship it out of there...

stronger economies=stability on Russia's perimeter.

Baku is Azerbaijan isn't it?  Russia has reasonable relations, but even if they fall to HATO and the US... so what... they have no way of getting US or HATO ships there... or out.

true, for big ships; small boats can be brought in on C-17/5s &/ via Turkey & Georgia. They can also send crews & weapons/gear to be placed on ships of littoral navies.

I continue......

LMFS wrote:
The unofficial sources I find refer 300 nm / 560 km range for the surface launched version of this missile. That would be essentially the same as the air launched version, but using a booster from ASROC. So the carrier remains unthreatened. Since the scenario is very theoretical, I struggle to imagine how it would be caught within range by the distributed fleet, unless under very fanciful conditions. The carrier would simply start by not coming close to shores where threats could be hidden, and in case of the distributed fleet going "kamikaze" (cannot find a better word) and making a synchronised approach in order to get in missile range, the carrier has a superior propulsion.

I believe that the concept of "maritime distributed lethality" (or "modular naval force concentration" in the domestic version od the concept) is not perfectly clear.....

The possibility of disperse and mask an high number of lower tonnage/lower signature among littoral elements and civil sea ships do NOT aim at allow your group of ships operating from there.

The purpose is instead to negate to the enemy the initial position of wide majority of your units so that its ISR and and Command and Control assets must find each of them and follow each of them separately splitting its surveillance resorces (in particular UAVs and surveillance aircraft) in the space and in the time and rendering them much more easier to destroy -because you cannot provide the necessary CAP protection to each of those UAV/Aircraft like in a recce mission against a large ship force concentration  -.  

Enemy at this time will manage to detect and maintain track only of a fraction of those relatively low tonnage ships when them will exit from theirs masking sites (proceeding toward the next one if possible) to converge toward enemy ship's formations to conduct cooperatively an attack on them with long range weapons .

After that attack they retain the option to continue to operate in a singular formation or disperse and mask among civilian traffic or in littoral formations.

LMFS wrote:What strategy may the distributed fleet, save for waiting in the shore for the carrier to approach, use to become a threat to it, if the carrier stays in open ocean?

Try to not reason in abstract ,naval warfare in real word do not happen on an infinite surface without geographical elements and point of strategic interests

Point of "Superiority at Sea" is to gain control of the sea sectors ,routes and strategically important coastal infrastructures of the enemy , so to "strangle" its logistical, economic and production's potential and naturally also the possibility to resupply and repair its naval units.

Let make an example using greography of USA and the Federation (as they was two nations identical ) with the first employing its resource in a single Nimtz-class carrier with its complement of fixed-wings aircraft and the second using the same resources to procure (in a way absolutely inefficient) 22 FFGx.

Let we choose the most favourable scenario for the aircraft carrier : open Pacific Ocean west CONUS side (choosing a scenario like Baltic, Northern or Black Sea would had very quickly transformed in a turkey shoot for the FFGx's side)  


https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm#

The two groups of 11 FFGx would be likely dispersed on the coast of Чуко́тка and Камчатка peninsula ; let begin saying that positioning the opposing aircraft carrier past the Aleutians Arcipelago, to avoid to be trapped and fall within range of engagement of opposing forces, the US Navy side would have effectively consigned control over Alaska sector to the opposing side that could be free to organize an attack with cruise missiles and cover amphibious and airborne attacks against the key airfields, radar installations and, above all, missile defense installations placed there.

But let continue our scenario moving the interst of sea control of this finctional Federation and its modular maritime strike forces more to the South.....

The aircraft carrier could be placed about 400-450 km SE of the western part of the Alesians so that its F/A-18-E/F with 2 LRASM (attacking at groups of 5 aircraft at times so to not suffer huge penalties to theirs combat range for wait the preparation and take -off from the carrier of others F/A-18-E/F) could attack enemy ships up to 1282 km far away (390 nm -722,28 km- with two external tanks of 1818 liter and the two LRASM).

Enemy FFGx frigates will move ,let put at a speed 20 knots, from theirs dispersed positions converging in two groups of long two SE and E vectors towards Aleutians islands where they will cover and disperse behind the islands.

Let image that space based and long range UAVs or sea bed sensors (the on board E2-D will detect those frigates well within engagement range of theirs LRASM therefore chance of survival are all on third party detection) manage to detect and discriminate from civil maritime traffic very optimistically 13 on those 22 frigates.

Those two groups of FFGx frigates will reach on average the archipelago in 29 and 34 hours at this 20 knots speed and therefore those detected will force the aircraft carrier at move in the opposite direction since hour 15-18 hours - hoping that the wind's direction will be benevolent allowing the aircraft to still taking off - let put at a speed of 24 knots but toward South to avoid to be eventually trapped , within the next 80 hours by one of the frigates groups, proceeding S-SE for some dozen of hours long western continental US's coast.


In this time frame at this distance (390 nm) the carrier could organize only about 1,2 sorties for each of its F/A-18, taking into account the additional reduction to the range from hour 15-18 therefore 52-53 aircraft for 104 -106 LRASMs (almost the entire LRASM production of 2019-2020 and 2021 amounting to 118 missiles !!!) at groups of 10-12 missiles at times.

As said that amount of missiles will struggle to produce even one or two leakers (capable at maximum to damage one) against 2-3 FFGx frigates let alone two groups of 11 FFGx.....

Next stage ,after 12-13 hours from the dispersion and riorganization long Alesians Islands, would be toward US coast , for a variable distance of about 2800-3400 km from the arcipelago.

Those frigates will take control of western continental US sectors and probably destroy or assist other units in destroy major ports, military shipyards (including where aircraft carriers are constructed, repaired and resupplied) military industrial centers and weapon depots about 75 to 94 hours  

The aircraft carrier would deplete its stock of stand-off missiles (employing also half of the entire US production of SLAM-ER)....obviously no carrier in reality will ever carry or be materially capable to host even only a fraction of a similar amount of stand-off maritime strike missiles.....by the next 72 hours

http://www.deagel.com/equipment/Offensive-Weapons/Harpoon.htm

Results, with a good amount of luck, would be the incapacitation or the sink of 3-4 FFGx frigates on the 22 in total and unluckly also.......the loss of the sea control and probably the infrastructures entire US West Coast !

This finctional scenario is obviously very simplicistic, but render clear what you obtain in terms of maritime control potential with the two options anything else left out.

Mindstorm wrote:I mean an insulated FFGx against an attack by LRASM delivered by carrier aircraft ? Probably between soft and hard suppression defensive systems no less than 35 incoming missiles within a very low time window, with a very high percentage of no "leakers" in the salvo.

Yes, that is what I meant. The amount is appalling, but I actually don't think it would be very different from reality, in the conditions you are considering. I assume a salvo being launched within few seconds from different directions and a time for the ship's AD from discovery at ca. 15 km to potential impact of each single missile a little below 1 minute.

Things would be a bit different with the one  below I guess

With a conservative 7 or 8 LRASM deceived by combination of Mk53 Nulka and SEWIP Block 2 (with the integration of a Sylena MK2 ,against similar subsonic missiles, probably even double this figure)

This is maybe a not so relevant detail in the big picture, but the current crop of missiles with two way datalinks + E-2D in the area makes the guidance an apparently trivial issue, unless I am missing some fundamental fact. I see it not completely obvious for the ship's EW to fool such weapons when left on their own, due to multimode seekers with passive radar locators, ESM/ECCM, IIR and other rather advanced technology, and practically impossible when external high-end platforms are providing the targetting. Unimpeded by enemy air power, the carrier fleet can keep their surveillance of the targets with all the advantages it implies.

To produce a similar salvo density (obviously totally insuffcient) against a single enemy frigate the carrier should organize the preparation load out and take-off of at least an E2-D and 17-18 F/A-18 (for 34-36 LRASMs) for a cycle of take-offs of not less than 3 hours ,

There are some important comments here:

> Based on the SURGEX report I linked, the Nimitz could generate, on average, 11.6 sorties per hour over a 24 h period (officially considered time by USN is 240 sorties over 24 h or 10 per hour). But that means, considering ALL the operations needed on board, with the differences in tempo between day and night, and in a sustained way. Short term launching of ready planes into the air has a pace of roughly 4 launches per minute. BTW, the act of launching the whole air wing of the carrier is called Alpha Strike and it is considered to take roughly half an hour, including lifting, arming, fuelling and staging the planes. The flight deck can handle roughly 30 aircraft simultaneously, before getting overcrowded.

https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-an-aircraft-carrier-to-get-all-of-its-fighters-into-the-air
https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/667092.pdf
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a362472.pdf

> Based on the fit checks done on the F-18E/F, 4 JSM could be carried by each plane. In this case as said the bottleneck is not the warhead size or other missile parameters, but its mere ability to impact the target. So a rational planer would, IMHO, try to first and foremost find the most effective way to pierce the ship's AD, since once impacts start onboard either a mission kill is obtained or subsequent attacks are way more likely to succeed, for obvious reasons. The size of the air wing needed for the 40-strong salvo would go down to 10 aircraft.

https://www.kongsberg.com/newsandmedia/news-archive/2013/kongsberg-and-boeing-complete-joint-strike-missile-jsm-check-on-fa-18-super/

I am deliberately not including considerations about the employment of ARMs here.

Under the conditions given above, the time to launch (for the effects of this particular case) an air wing with 40 AShMs in the air would be from 2.5 to 5 minutes, depending on whether JSM or LRASM are used. This has crucial consequences for the rest of the calculations done in this scenario.
 

Mine opinion ....and not only mine obvioulsy..... is that generally anti-radar missiles, even the most modern ones, have very few relevant employments in maritime operations against ships targets for strictly technical reasons ++

Just some fast thoughts here:

> As said above, I don't know what prevents the E-2D or even the fighters of the fleet from taking care of the targetting in such case. Given the capacities of the USN AWACS and the available radar horizon (it could also operate passively beyond radar horizon in fact), the operation of the HARM or even better the upcoming AARGM-ER for faster and longed ranged flight, could be controlled by data link and hence make it largely independent on the difficulties you are commenting. I assume the range of the SM-6 on-board smaller than the radar range of the E-2 (>500 km) and even then I assume AAMs from the fighters' attack wing could eventually intercept them if needed.

> The current loadout of the F/A-18E/F is 6 x HARM per plane, which would substantially increase the chances to saturate the ship's AD, much more if the notably higher speed of the missile is considered. As said above, the payload on target is way lower than with purpose-built AShM, but the goal is to crack the defences open and then use bigger warheads to finish the job, once the ship has been damaged. For a the same 10 planes air wing considered above, a 60 missile salvo would be obtained, without considering that the saturation threshold against such missiles would probably be substantially lower than against subsonic ones (even if they can be detected before by the ship's radars due to their different flight profile).

> I read repeated claims about AARGM starting to being considered as a potential weapon for naval strike, I cannot tell if they are on the right track or not. But in the place of the USN I would explore this possibility indeed, because as you are explaining, the current effectiveness of their AShM against strong AD is, at least on paper, very poor.