Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov: News #2

Russia has the power plants to make super carriers with the RITM-400 nuclear reactor.
The Chinese have electromagnetic catapults today. So even if Russia cannot make those, or doesn't want to make those, they can probably be imported.

So other than budgetary concerns Russia has no impediment to making their own supercarriers if it wants to. But given the current situation with the surface fleet, with lack of destroyers, it does not make much sense to build carriers. So Admiral Kuznetsov must continue to soldier on alone.

Yep, and the Atlantacist Exceptionalists had circle-jerked themselves into an exhausted lather in believing it was impossible

The irony is that their pressure and attempts to isolate and contain Russia as they describe it, have led to a situation where Russia needs to increase funding of her navy if she wants to survive and trade with the rest of the world...

So not just not impossible... thanks to those losers... it is now necessary.

But given the current situation with the surface fleet, with lack of destroyers, it does not make much sense to build carriers. So Admiral Kuznetsov must continue to soldier on alone.

Well they have two 40K ton helicopter carriers laid down and under construction so laying down a CVN would be premature in my opinion, but I suspect the urgency of getting Corvettes and Frigates into serial production for home waters operations and allow older ships to be retired or perhaps even upgraded and sold off, but they need to start looking at laying down some new destroyers, though they might want to see how the heavier improved Gorshkovs perform first...

New anti drone laser systems might be a useful addition across the navy too...

Combat experience is invaluable and needs to be applied when learned quickly.

GarryB wrote:but they need to start looking at laying down some new destroyers, though they might want to see how the heavier improved Gorshkovs perform first...

Super Gorshkov's will be an excellent stop-gap in the meantime, they should be good enough to protect Russian shipping lanes until the Destroyers are constructed and put into service, which aren't going to be ready before the 2030's.

The Chinese have electromagnetic catapults today. So even if Russia cannot make those, or doesn't want to make those, they can probably be imported.

Work on EM cats and all electric drives is probably related and probably the core reason why they have not laid down any destroyers just yet... the advantages of such a set up probably make the delay worth it... the Soviets and Russians have been working on the problems of EM cats since the 1980s to 1990s, so they may have been working with the Chinese on that already if you know what I mean...

China wanted EM cats and Russia does too so why not work together... Russia would certainly not try to hinder Chinese efforts and vice versa.

China would be silly to not hire Russian experts in the field like they have for aircraft and other systems.... Just the same as Russia spent money with Thales of France on Thermal Imagers, and bought British naval gear too (ROVs and pumps and motors etc).

Super Gorshkov's will be an excellent stop-gap in the meantime, they should be good enough to protect Russian shipping lanes until the Destroyers are constructed and put into service, which aren't going to be ready before the 2030's.

They might be but they will test them before putting them into serial production... they can't afford expensive white elephants like the LCS or Zumwalt...

Russia could also go this path. Only build a second carrier with improvements, then a significantly larger, based on the well -known design.

The problem there is that normally building two the same is economic because the second one being the same as the first means the second one can be built faster because any problems were already solved making the first one so there should be no new surprises.

Obviously if Russia builds two more carriers they have plenty of experience in the use of the Kuznetsov but the shipyard that will build the new carriers didn't build the Kuznetsov so the shipyard making the two new carriers will be making two different unique ships so no benefit of the problems being the same

Making two bigger ships on the other hand makes much more sense and would not work out to be much more expensive.

The Kuznetsov is not a bad ship... its problems are being sorted out, but it is a little too small to safely operate Su-33s, which means a bigger ship makes much more sense... especially when operating naval Su-57s.

For China it made sense to build Kuznetsov type ships, but the shipyards which upgraded and modernised the design also built the new ships so experience is accumulated, which would not be the case for the Russian shipyards making new carriers.

The new helicopter carriers will be interesting because I suspect they will want to operate their new helicopter replacement for the Helix family, and the second ship is supposed to be a drone carrier, which would be a first in the world and would make a lot of sense to have a 40K ton ship dedicated to remote operated platforms... ground and sea and air and undersea perhaps... its ability to land armour would enable unmanned patrol ships to be carried too and also subs recovered and released and of course remote controlled vehicles could be landed by ship or amphibious vehicles land themselves and indeed the deck for helicopters and drones to operate from.... it is supposed to carry 1,000 naval infantry and their armour and helicopter support for 60 days so the space on board for armour and ammo and water and food and helicopters and landing vessels would be significant... but the drone model could be a landing support vessel with suicide drones and recon drones and an enlarged hospital, plus lots of helicopters which are always useful as well as hovercraft and trucks and other things useful in a war zone or a natural disaster zone.

GarryB wrote:For China it made sense to build Kuznetsov type ships, but the shipyards which upgraded and modernised the design also built the new ships so experience is accumulated, which would not be the case for the Russian shipyards making new carriers.

This is not 100% accurate. Their second carrier, the Shandong, was built at Dalian which was where they did the refit of the Liaoning. But this carrier is being built in Shanghai. At a different shipyard.

This is not 100% accurate. Their second carrier, the Shandong, was built at Dalian which was where they did the refit of the Liaoning. But this carrier is being built in Shanghai. At a different shipyard.

There are lots of reasons for doing things different ways and logic can be applied to all of them to make sense.

Building a second carrier in a different yard might make sense because the original yard is busy making other things, or they might want more than one yard to be making carriers and have carrier making experience... it just means the first of a type of ship made in a particular yard will have extra problems that a yard serially producing something they have already made wont need to deal with for each ship made of a type they have already made.

I think they changed yards for political reasons.
The previous head of the shipyard at Dalian was arrested in Xi's anti-corruption drive.

I might be wrong however. It would not be the first time the government split orders between both yards.