Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #2

It is not like they are not going to get new carriers, they have already made it pretty clear that they are.

The point is that they inherited a large number of ships from the Soviet Union and most of them are time expired and needing to be upgraded or replaced.

There is not point in scrapping the Kuznetsov and building a brand new CVN because they have no place to base it, no ships to operate with it, no real use for it because they don't have the ships it would operate with because the cost of building it would take money from the corvettes and frigates and upgraded ships and all the little and not so little support ships they are also building let alone all the development work they are doing at all there navy ports and shipyards.

When building a fleet you don't start with big ships, you start with the useful smaller numbers ships... especially with modular designs... the difference between a frigate and a cruiser is the size of the radar and sonar antenna and the number of UKSK and Redut launcher you can fit on. Everything else is essentially the same... but the bigger ship can carry a lot more, further, and longer.

A corvette is smaller and might give up some capabilities for better capabilities in some areas, but you don't normally use them on their own so that is fine.

If there is an enemy sub in your waters you don't send one corvette to deal with the problem so if you send three plus a frigate then between them they will have enough sensors and helicopters and anti sub weapons to get the job done.

Their new ships are multirole... in the 1980s only their cruisers were big enough to have anti ship weapons and anti sub weapons and anti air weapons so they could do any job... their destroyers had a primary capability with secondary defence weapons, so the Sovremmenys had Moskit anti ship missiles but also had RBU launchers and torpedos to defend against subs and good gun armament too and reasonable air defence capacity. The Udaloys were optimised for anti sub so it had a decent sonar but its air defence and anti ship capacity were self defence only really.

Corvettes were one trick ponies... anti ship normally.

These days a corvette with a UKSK launcher can carry a mix of anti ship and anti sub and land attack weapons at one time, and while it might not have the best sonar it will have a helicopter and would operate with other vessels with better sonars.... we have seen them operate corvettes in the Caspian Sea attack land targets 2,500km away using calibr missiles... even the Kirov couldn't do that in the Cold War.... no Soviet ship could... at best they had nukes on SLBMs and cruise missiles which is rather less useful.

The Russian ship building capacity is increasing and as they make more civilian ships, those ships will need protection and support around the world, which is what they are also building.

The Russian Navy will not be enormous, but it also wont be like the British or French Navies where they have aircraft carriers but no cruisers to support them.

The purpose of a cruiser is to defend other ships... corvettes and Frigates defend themselves.. barely... Destroyers and Cruisers have missile types and capacities to defend other ships in a group.

Aircraft carriers for the Russian fleet are there to coordinate that air defence and provide highly mobile air defence missile platforms (fighters) and aircraft carried radar that missiles and aircraft cannot fly under its coverage (AWACS). They both also provide eyes and ears to locate and identify new threats and targets... so you don't have to wonder what that blip on the radar screen is. You can launch a couple of fighters to go and have a look so you know what is around you.

It is not perfect. Aircraft can be shot down... but these aircraft are essentially operating above a Russian air defence network that is the equivalent of dozens of S-400 and S-500 and hundreds of S-350 and TOR and Pantsir batteries along with 2S38 and Tunguska and all sorts of other systems including Igla-S and Verba and large numbers of radar and EO systems.... those AWACS aircraft and fighters are well protected as well as providing protection to the ships they will be operating with.

Having aircraft and being able to quickly check blind spots like the airspace behind the radar shadow of an Island or just see down to the level of the wave tops out several hundred kms just makes your ships safer and gives you more time to plan a defence and a response to attacks.

Being able to send fighters out to investigate a single target approaching that might be an airliner or it might be an attack aircraft... it would not be the first time the US has used civilian transponder codes for an attack, but sending armed aircraft out to have a look gives you reassurance and situational awareness that no ship surface based radar can provide.

Sure, as long as you are to keep it 1500km away from ashore.

Why?

The air defence capacity over a modern and upgraded Russian Navy force would be comparable to the air defence capacity over the Crimea or St Petersberg... with an aircraft carrier with fighters it will be even better protected.... are you saying the ships of the Russian Navy will need to keep their distance from places like Fiji or Argentina or even the Falklands Islands or the Solomon Islands?

There are only a tiny number of airforces that could challenge the Russian Navy at sea, and with Onyx and Zircon missiles on board and most ships being equipped with S-350 and S-400 type missiles at the medium and long range and TOR and Pantsir at the shorter ranges I would think any enemy force wanting to pick a fight had better be prepared to lose a lot of aircraft... and those ships and subs could easily be carrying 2,500km range land attack cruise missiles as well as soon 5,000km range cruise missiles too.

You mean 2000-2500km.

Even at that distance they could use existing land attack cruise missiles to hit land bases and ports and disrupt any country that wants to interfere in their presence... pretty soon that range will double with newer model missiles of larger calibre and length being loaded into the UKSK launch tubes.

As long as those would be used for colonial-style gunboat diplomacy.

Pretty clear Russia is the victim of that stuff rather than the perpetrator ATM.

It is all the British Navy is capable of these days...

Russian or Chinese carriers would not care much about the on-land opponents, as none of them possess now antiship assets reaching further than 300km.

Russian carriers are air defence carriers so, they are there to support the Russian surface ships doing whatever they are doing.

That makes them simply useless in the theatres we may consider as potentially important, leaving the ones that are protected by the natives with no serious anti-ship capabilities.

But third world countries are the normal fodder the USN likes to go up against.

SO what you are saying is that the colonial imperial super carrier that the US prefers is what is rendered less than useful... except the USN has the strongest IADS system within all of HATO and the only western IADS that even approaches the Russian system.

The thing is that Kinzhal and Zircon and Kh-32 are not wonder weapons thousands of tons and hundreds of metres long which they might have one or two of.

These are standard weapons that will be widely deployed and will be affordable to operate in enormous numbers.

Most of their anti ship missiles have evolved to have land attack capacity too, which is interesting.

The Zircon is a big advance. Compared to the P-800 with the same dimensions, it has twice the range and almost 4 times the speed. The American fleet would have problems intercepting the P-800, let alone Zircon or Kinzhal.Not long ago, the SM-6 did not even intercept a straight MRBM flying on a predictable trajectory.

You misunderstand what I was saying.

In the 1980s the missile that filled that job description was the P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 Shipwreck) (7 ton) or the P-1000 Vulcan (SS-N-12 Sandbox) (5 ton)... which were very big and very heavy missiles that could only be carried in small numbers on very large platforms... like the Oscar class SSGNs, Kirov class battlecruisers, Slava class cruisers, Kuznetsov carrier...

Because of the range and speed requirement they were huge and cumbersome, and so not widely deployed in enormous numbers like the Harpoon for instance.

The Zircon and Kinzhal on the other hand are much smaller and have much better performance and in the case of the former fit into standard launch tubes fitted to new production Corvettes and Frigates and Soon Destroyers and Cruisers, while upgraded destroyers and cruisers from the cold war are having UKSK launch tubes added, which will make them vastly more flexible and useful and capable.