Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact this is what they are doing:



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The only shipyard likely to build CVNs will be Zvezda in the far east not the northern fleet.

Yes, but they will need anyway a large drydock in the north as well for maintenance and overhaul and modernisation of this carrier and of the future carriers as well. Furthermore it can be used also for heavy cruisers and other ships.

True, but suggesting this might be sabotage is amusing... it would be like a big car company with one of the few car lifts able to lift a Humvee deliberately drops it and damages the lift beyond repair and damages the Humvee in potentially unknown ways in the hopes to get a new car lift and future contracts with the Humvee owner...

The Kuznetsov is a Northern Fleet carrier... the mainenance and support contracts just make sense to go to the Northern Fleet shipyards where they can undertake the work... sinking your only floating dry dock on purpose with the damn carrier on board is the dumbest thing they could do... it makes them look bad... it costs them a dry dock that was still working if at the end of its life... and it poses serious risk to the platform they want the contract to maintain... what if the Kuznetsov have rolled and gone into the water upside down... the risks would be enormous with no obvious pay off.

There is zero chance it was sabotage by the shipyard... some western spy flipping a switch or something can't be ruled out, but institutional sabotage is very very unlikely... especially when incompetence completely explains the situation already.

The future suggests lots of much bigger ships will be built... ie civilian ships mostly, so capacity to work on such enormous ships or smaller ships in larger numbers will become important as the Russian navy expands and the number of ships they operate increase.

It's not like Zvezda can do at the same time the overhaul and repair and the build of new ships in the same docks, and furthermore it's not practical to transfer ships all the time between fleets for maintenance ( and the capacity is also not there). Possibly the large floating drydock built in Japan in 80s could be used, but its conditions are probably not much better than PD50 before it sunk.

I would think having large capacity dry docks in both the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet ship yards would be a very beneficial and useful thing... and as the number of active ships in the Russian Navy increases it will become more beneficial and more useful over time.

It has been mentioned in a few publications that Sevmash would likely be a candidate to start building the new carriers?

I would expect they would start building new carriers when they have enough new Frigates and Corvettes in service as well as Destroyers in production too... there is no point in finding yourself in the same position as the British where they have 6 new destroyers and two aircraft carriers and not much else and have to form up coalitions of carrier groups to operate beyond UK waters... leaving nothing much left to operate in home waters if something happens to sail past...

Obviously they control their media with an iron fist so this debacle is not as critical as it would be if they had anything like a free press...

JohninMK wrote:A RNoAF photo to remind us how good she looked in earlier times.

For all the stupid BS aimed at the Kuz by the HATO trolls, I've seen very few pics that show her in anything other than a fairly good condition. Nothing any worse than a little surface rust and discoloured paint due to weather. She may have had propulsion issues due to clapped out (Ukrainian) boilers but she isn't exactly a rusty hulk listing at 15 degrees while run around and abandoned in an isolated cove north of the Arctic circle....

No its like a shipyard wants to entrench itself as the center of large ship overhaul in the region. An aging floating dock does not do that.

It is the shipyard they were already using for the work.... having a floating dock sink is hardly going to do them any favours at all.

It could have, if it was an accident.

It would not make sense for them to do this on purpose... it would just be fucking stupid to sink a ship they are supposed to be working on in the only dry dock they had they could use for the work.

How do you get to zero chance when the shipyard has gained enormously from the incident?

Gained what?

It already had the job of working on the ship, now it has a black mark against its name and is behind on that work.

I would actually respect them more for sabotage.

Then you are a fool. Accidents happen but the corruption level for sabotage is criminal.

It is better they made a mistake than to be criminally insane.

Incompetence of this level would IMHO disqualify them from any major work.

They are a northern fleet shipyard.... the Kuznetsov operates in the Northern Fleet... the alternative to them doing the work is a 6,000km trip to the far east... it was work they were always going to get except if the dry docks keep sinking because of incompetence...

So in this scenario, what would be better for them, an old aging floating dock or a spanking new world class drydock funded by the govt?

Are you mad? If they wanted a new dry dock they could have sunk it just after the took the Kuznetsov off it and not risked their sole remaining aircraft carrier... if this was planned then everyone should be not only fired but put in jail.

And you do understand a dry dock is just a place to repair a ship on... world class new ones, old worn out ones... as long as they work there is not much difference involved when it comes to the work we are talking about.

From what I understand the boilers themselves are fine in design. The Chinese also got them with their carrier and I think a similar boiler design is used in the Sovremennys. The problem is them Russian Navy sailors in the bad days kept using salt water direct from the ocean instead of using distilled fresh water on the boiler as per design.

Well it shouldn't be a problem now because half were replaced before she went to Syria and the other half have now been replaced so all are essentially brand new and essentially being "run in".

Sailing 6000 km for work on a carrier is not an issue.

The whole point of having an aircraft carrier is being able to use it.

Moving at perhaps 12 knots it would take weeks to move it 6,000km weather permitting and weeks to send her back... weeks turn to months... and for what... because you are too cheap to buy a dry dock big enough?

The entire US carrier fleet is serviced by a single shipyard and its is BY FAR the most insanely large carrier fleet in the world.

The thing is that they have more than one carrier so when one or even three carriers go to be serviced there are other carriers that can fill their shoes and do what they were doing... even if the work is unexpected repairs rather than scheduled maintenance that was planned 2 years ago.

The shipyard probably told the govt the dock was in disrepair, so it would not be blamed for its sinking.

If the Shipyard didn't think the drydock was safe then they should not have put the Kuznetsov on it in the first place.

Planned accidents happen quite often for gains in all contracts.

If you actually have proof please show it... otherwise it is baseless accusation.

One would question why this ship was not more secured to the dock and just floated freely away.

Because when the work is done the idea is that you sink the dock and the ship is supposed to float freely away... and not have cranes fall on them...

Now this shipyard has the best, newest large dock in Russia an is in prime postion to bid on all large ship work.

It is the Northern fleet where half their biggest ships and vessels are based... it was not like they were going to sail them to the Black Sea to get fixed.

Now this shipyard has the best, newest large dock in Russia an is in prime postion to bid on all large ship work.

It is a dry dock, not a super computer... it lifts ships out of the water so they can do work on their propellers and bits and pieces... the difference between the new dry dock being built and the old one is probably exactly bugger all, but the black stain of incompetence that led to them having it sink wont go away for a while and will likely be brought up by any shipyard in any competition for a new contract in the future.