Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation.

The Oscars r still noisy & keeping them submerged the whole time won't make much difference to the USN SSNs & MPA. But surfacing there will send a clear message to every1 in the region that they mean business. SSN/SSK escorts could be given them as well.

Doesn't matter if they are noisy... if they upgrade them with 72 Zircon missiles which fly at mach 9 to over 1,000km or 72 Kalibr subsonic 2,600km range cruise missiles it wont matter if the USN can track them... they still have to deal with them before they can launch an attack on US forces in the region...

You could have SSKs and SSNs there in ambush to attack any US platform that tries to sink the noisy easy to track Oscars... and the Oscars can have anti torpedo torpedos so the first few weapons you use to kill those Oscars might not get the job done and might alert nearby more quiet Russian assets to the presence and general location of US SSNs...

For a lot le$$, they & AF fighters can deploy to those bases with tanker support, like they did/do in Syria w/o the Adm. K. that needs to last a long time, as u wrote, w/o adding more wear & tear on the other side of the world which would add more time in the yards/dry docks that they don't have enough of.

If they want to be a global power with global reach expecting enemy forces to allow you to ship your air power into a region is a little naive and certainly something that could bit you on the ass... a container ship the British used to transfer helos to the Falklands war was hit and sunk which really changed their plans and timetables because it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in aircraft at a time when they were about to be put into use.

I doubt the EMALS can ever be debugged to perform as good as the steam CAT.

The Russians don't have steam cat technology so if they want to operate any heavy aircraft from carriers then it makes rather more sense to develop and then debug EMALS than to try to invent Steam cats first.

When developing a new sniper rifle they don't start by developing a flintlock version first and then upgrade to a cap firing model...

The technology involved in EMALs will be very useful in terms of all electric drive vehicles on land, sea, and air, and in space... it wont be super cheap or super easy but will be useful across a wide range of fields... from EM boosted powder charge guns to EM guns and beyond.

In the long run, it could be safer to use STOVLs & rumps.

In the short term they can continue to use ramps, but there are currently no STOVL alternatives unless you count the Ka-31/35 whose performance is rather too limited to be the primary AWACS platform.

Investment in EMALS makes enormous sense and will lead to new materials and new technological capabilities that will improve all sorts of things in Russian military and civilian production.

Instead of up to 4 Yak-44 size AEWAC, they could have 5-6+ smaller UAVs & helos/tilt-rotors to control & assist them to give the same, if not better, radar coverage & situational awareness. It's also possible to have more powerful equipment & bigger range on Mi-38s:

Technology has moved on since the Yak-44 was proposed and their new radar technology looks rather promising... the high speed helos offer potential performance that would make tiltrotor designs redundant... the cheapest and lowest risk option would be a rigid airship design that could temporarily land on a carrier or be tethered to a cruiser or destroyer or frigate even.

An EMALS assisted Yak-44 type platform offers low flight costs with good endurance and altitude without needing extra propulsion power to get such a heavy aircraft off the surface of such a ship.

Of course another option could be a Be-200 sized amphibian AWACS aircraft that could be operated from a large container like ship... ie have four aircraft stored on a large semi covered deck with a large crane to lower the aircraft onto the water where they could take off or land and be recovered back on to the ship for refuelling or changing crews. The centre section of the deck could be covered, with each end open to allow cranes at each end to recover or launch aircraft from the sea... large doors could be closed for storms... make the vessel an ice breaker and the aircraft able to operate on water and land (with wheels) or Ice (with skis)... or perhaps modify it with a small hovercraft type undercarriage like those cool Bartini designs so it can operate from ice or land or sea...[/quote]
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They can get steam CAT technology from the Chinese that r testing it along with the EMALS. The latter can be improved, but still may have unacceptable failure rate; the benefits may not justify the costs. 1

What makes you think Chinese steam Cat tech is so perfect... how long have they had it operational... which of their aircraft currently use steam cats to operate from Chinese carriers? How many years of operational experience does china have in operating these cats in different areas of the worlds oceans including arctic areas where the Russians will demand it be able to be used?

Have you noticed US carriers with steam cats and plenty of years of operational experience don't operate in the arctic very much because steam is made of water which freezes in the arctic... I have seen people in minus 40 degrees C temperatures throw boiling hot cups of coffee into the air which turns into a mist of ice crystals and does not reach the ground as a liquid... how do you think a steam catapult system will get on in those sorts of conditions... even an experienced mature system.

Of course there is a simple fix for the US... don't sail into the polar regions with aircraft carriers but such a solution is not much use for Russia who will likely be basing its carriers in arctic and semi arctic regions.

Not trying to rip off the Chinese, but the Russians need new technology here... EMALS technology might also be useful for designing electric high speed trains and many other things that involve accelerating large heavy objects around the place... imagine a fully reusable vertical launch missile lofter that throws missiles into the air before their rocket motors are started... they already use gas powered systems and hot rocket systems for that but an EMALS might be more efficient and fully reusable immediately without replacement so new missiles can be cheaper and smaller and lighter because they wont need to include the gas booster section to be carried around as reloads.

1-2 steam CAT will be enough, but helos & tilt-rotors may be an alternative to heavy fixed wing COD & AEWC aircraft.
CAT requires extra space, personnel, power, & maintenance time.

Considering the location of the Granit launch tubes on the Kuznetsov they might be able to install an EMALS cat system there for testing... its location on the deck and the firewalls around it would mean it would not really be much use for anything else except carrying a different type of missile.

If you are going to be building a large carrier with slightly better capacity than the Kuznetsov as they keep saying they want, then why go half-arse on something as critical as its AWACS component?

It is like spending millions of dollars on a brand new tractor but using the old 3m wide grass cutting trailer your old ride on motor mower used...

Things are going to be changing over the next few years regarding radar technology... these new photonic radars sound very very interesting... but of course their might be problems. Talk of photographic like performance against stealth targets at more than 400km suggests an amazing resolution... but also the problem of seeing the world through a telescope... only seeing a small area at a time... like seeing the world through a straw... they might need wide FOV normal radars to find things worth looking at more closely, so a combination of short, medium and long wave radar antenna as well as these new photonic radar sensors too... sounds a lot for a helo, which over its operational life will cost rather more than a light fixed wing aircraft to operate and maintain.

They can't take off in heavy seas.
A Chinook-style helo could perform well as COD & AEWC as well, with
Service ceiling: 20,000 ft (6100 m)

And how often do you see any carrier based aircraft take off in heavy seas?

Also why bother with a Chinook design... as you mention they already tried that layout and it was inferior to other designs like the Mi-6 and Mi-26...

They may have them long before the VMF does.

Steam cat technology is not good for the Russian Navy because they want to be able to operate their carriers in arctic waters... their two major naval bases are in arctic or near arctic regions.

If China wants to operate their carrier in the Arctic then it is something they need to consider too, but I suspect once they have perfected the technologies associated with aircraft carriers, they will be more interested in projecting power to South and Central america and Africa than the north sea route which will largely be under the control of Russia... which will likely be managed in a way that does not hurt Chinese interests...

The Bohai Gulf gets cold enough to freeze & there r icebreakers for that. For training, they can fly AEWCs from land bases; during deployments, they can launch them in warmer waters so the CAT won't create ice buildup on their decks.

Most of Russias northern border is frozen much of the year, for them very cold weather is more of an issue which makes the EMALS much more attractive for many many reasons.

China is much less effected by such considerations and the quicker easier steam cats could be a realistic stopgap, but for Russia there wont be that much difference in the time and energy and money needed to develop a working and mature steam system and the time and energy and money to develop a working and mature EMALS system... the difference is that the technology and materials that would be needed to make the latter work will be applicable in a much wider range of areas... electrical power manipulation, generation and storage, as well as magnets and plasma technologies can be applied to other areas like maglev trains and EM accelerators.

Imagine a 5km long maglev train line that at the end curved up like a rollercoaster to point vertically that could be used to accelerate an object to several kms per second that could replace the first and biggest and heaviest and most expensive component of a space launch rocket... electrical propulsion is going to be way more efficient than chemical propulsion especially for large heavy loads...

Some where in the Ural mountains the side of a mountain that offers a useful angle could have a similar track ready to launch objects upwards with a better supported track able to handle enormous weights up to reasonable flight speeds... remember the first stage rocket of most space launch systems are the most powerful and filled with the most fuel just to get the rest of the spacecraft moving and climbing... by the time they reach 10,000m altitude they are often only slightly supersonic but they are on their way... getting a much smaller object moving rather faster at 4km altitude could reduce the launch costs by an enormous amount...

The USN deployed CV/Ns into the cold N. Atlantic & Norwegian fiords before, practicing flight ops there.

Minus 40 degrees?

How many are based in Alaska and normally operate only in the Arctic ocean... like a Russian carrier might need to?

I doubt they will remove missiles & change other things for that. A barge can be used to test it at sea/lake.

Not to test the EMALS... to upgrade the Kuznetsov to make it able to carry a heavier aircraft AWACS platform...

Even on the CVN/TAKRN, with all the armament, radars, & other equipment, there may not be enough power generated left for the EMALS for their simultaneous use.

A Russian CVN would only be using EMALS to launch AWACS aircraft... their fighters wouldn't need them for normal operations... so one launch every 6-8 hours is hardly going to require the entire ship to power down for a launch... and with AWACS aircraft operating those radars on the ship will spend most of their operational lives listening and not transmitting so the power they will be using will be fairly minimal.

They operated nuclear ice breakers & subs for a long time but not CVNs, unlike the USN, as u correctly mentioned; there will be many kinks to be corrected & learned to avoid.

All their ships use radar and have weapon systems that use power, so power management wont really be a brand new thing for them I suspect.

The time it takes to prepare an aircraft to launch means it can charge up capacitor banks over a period of time before a launch without demanding full power from the power source.

They might want to launch two heavy aircraft at once but they wont be launching dozens at a time... as I mentioned above only the AWACS and perhaps eventually a heavy strike model aircraft might be launched but most of the aircraft will be fighters that could take off conventionally...

They can still do it in the sea states that an amphibian would break apart.

If that were true then an AWACS aircraft taking off or landing on a heaving deck should also break apart for the very same reasons... in high sea states very few ships will be operating normally...

Those 2 r not deck helos & r too big; as land based, they r perfect. But a tandem helo the size of between CH-46 & CH-47 is more power efficient & safer; it could serve as COD, AEWC, SAR/ASW/Marine/VDV/SOF/gunship platform for less $ & time to develop than the tilt-rotors, even if its performance is not as good:

At a time when new high speed helos are being developed, why would Russia want to dig up a dinosaur and build a new copy of it?

Why build a tandem rotor design helo when they could built a very large coaxial rotor model that they can put a forward driving tail mounted propeller or turbofan engine for better speed?

With folding main rotors it could be interesting, but at the end of the day a fixed wing aircraft will be cheaper to buy and operate and have better performance.

The CH-47F can fly at speeds of over 175 mph (282 km/h) with a payload of more than 21,000 lb (9.5 t). ..
A CH-47F Block 2 is planned to be introduced after 2020. The Block 2 aims for a payload of 22,000 lb (10,000 kg) with 4,000 ft (1,200 m) and 95 °F (35 °C) high and hot hover performance, eventually increased up to 6,000 ft (1,800 m),..

Nice features but all vastly inferior to existing Russian helicopters...


... from wiki unfortunately:

Afghanistan Chinook recovery

In the spring of 2002, a civilian Mi-26 was leased to recover two U.S. Army MH-47E Chinook helicopters from a mountain in Afghanistan. The Chinooks, operated by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, had been employed in Operation Anaconda, an effort to drive al Qaeda and Taliban fighters out of the Shahi-Kot Valley and surrounding mountains. They found themselves stranded on the slopes above Sirkhankel at altitudes of 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) and 3,100 metres (10,200 ft). While the second craft was too badly damaged to recover, the first was determined to be repairable and estimated to weigh 12,000 kilograms (26,000 lb) with fuel, rotors, and non-essential equipment removed. That weight exceeded the maximum payload of 9,100 kilograms (20,100 lb) at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) of the U.S. military's Sikorsky CH-53E.[6]

The Mi-26 was located through Skylink Aviation in Toronto, which had connections with a Russian company called Sportsflite that operated three civilian Mi-26 versions called "Heavycopters". One of the aircraft, aiding in construction and firefighting work in neighboring Tajikistan, was leased for $300,000; it lifted the Chinook, flew it to Kabul, then later to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan to ship to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, U.S. for repairs. Six months later, a second U.S. Army CH-47 that had made a hard landing 160 kilometres (100 mi) north of Bagram at an altitude of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) was recovered by another Sportsflite-operated Mi-26 Heavycopter.[6]

Such a helo can be very useful in the Far North, Siberia & the RFE:
The civilian version of the Chinook is the Boeing Vertol 234. It has been used for a variety of purposes by a range of different civil operators, having often been used for passenger and cargo transport, along with niche roles such as aerial firefighting and to support various industrial activities, including logging, construction, and oil extraction

They already have Mi-8/17 and Mi-26 and will soon add Mi-38... there is little point in adding a brand new design they haven't even started on yet...

We discussed this already: CVNs have nothing to do in the high Arctic, with other assets to defend approaches to Russia from that vector can do it better & safer. Their A-50/100s, Il-38s & Tu-142s can provide better radar coverage there than any organic AEWC/AWACS deck asset- no need to launch them at all, unlike the ASW/SAR/ice recon helos.

Correction: US CVNs might have nothing to do with the Arctic... With icebreakers making the north sea route viable they will want to base their CVNs with the northern fleet or the pacific fleet or both so operations in arctic conditions will be normal and necessary... there will be a lot of commercial traffic moving through there... which of course will make Greenpeace squeal because it will be killing polar bears of some such crap, but it will be mostly Russian territorial waters which they will want a military presence and will be used to transit from Pacific to Atlantic or back fairly quickly giving them access to most of the planet most efficiently.

The US can put pressure on Panama or Egypt to block the relevant canals but they can't stop the Russians using the NSR...

A large CVN is a lot more stable in heavy seas than an amphibian; fixed wings can CATOBAR on it up to certain sea/wind state/speeds, while an amphibian will be marooned in the same weather. More argument to use rotary wings for those missions!

Helicopter operations are severely restricted in conditions of high cross winds... for fixed wing aircraft the carrier could simply turn in to the wind and use the high winds to its advantage.

Well, the Ka-102 is now being developed:

At 36 metres long they might as well use the 40 metre long Mi-26 which is already operational... and with much greater lifting capacity...

Why discard a very successful concept that can outdo the CH-47 & help Mi-26s? Also this 1 is interesting, although slower (speed isn't essential for it), it would be able to lift more than a tilt-rotor (a variant of it is also possible

Did you even read the chart at the end showing potential performance?

Payloads were 2 tons... an Mi-17 can already do better than that, and while it is slower speed is irrelevant to an AWACS platform... carrying lots of electronics and lots of fuel is what is important.

If an AWACS & COD variants r built, they won't need the CAT at all.
Better invest time $ in them than in steam or EMALS catapults that may not work as required, causing losses of aircraft & crews.

All those blades and engines will create more problems than they solve and will likely kill more crew and pilots than conventional aircraft using CATs... even if EMALS fails the Russians have excellent ejection seats. The Yak-38 probably has the record for most aircraft lost in non combat situations but didn't lose very many pilots because of its excellent crew evacuation systems...

EM cats offer much better performance and would actually be safer than steam cats... with steam cats you set the pressure and fire... a small plane with a light weapon load and a light fuel load will have a light setting and a big heavy aircraft with full payload and fuel will have a very high setting... get the setting wrong and the small light plane gets its nose wheel ripped off as it is taking off or the big heavy plane lands directly into the water because it did not get enough of a boost from the cat system to get airborne.

An EM cat system can sense resistance from its load and increase power or decrease power in a fraction of a second to prevent a problem... you could have it so that it adapts as the aircraft takes off so you might only have to set the type of aircraft being launched and it will do the rest which is always better than having someone work it out and make a choice that cannot be changed during launch.

As I have mentioned the technologies that need to be developed for EM cats will be very useful and will have broad uses across the field of military and civilian products.

Their new nuclear powered space tug could use an EM catapult to launch the rendered down parts of satellites down into a steep reentry path to burn them up in the atmosphere to get rid of space junk for instance. With control it could launch smaller satellites into different higher orbits or to approach the ISS to be captured and taken on board for reuse or study... from the moon a large flat area could have a large EM cat build where you could put material to be sent back to earth with electricity from solar panels or nuclear power instead of hydrogen and oxygen rocket fuels which could otherwise be used for supporting life on the base for breathing and drinking... without an atmosphere to slow it down if you accelerate horizontally an object to escape velocity it will continue horizontally but as the moon curves away from it it will continue out into space... cheap and simple transport...

As with everything, there r trade offs. IMO Russia won't gain much & will loo$e more by having CATOBAR on her future CVN/TAKRs.

The technology will be useful in a range of fields, and the benefit of having fixed wing reliable and stable AWACS will make any surface action group much much safer and better able to defend itself which will save rather more money in the long run.

Most of the time... ie during peace time it is hard to justify launching missiles at any air or sea blip on a radar... being able to scan for groups of things and to send aircraft to rapidly and conclusively investigate makes the commander of the surface fleets job much much easier and much less stressful.

Unlike US cruiser commanders, Russian ones wont get medals for shooting down Iranian airbus aircraft from Iranian territorial waters... so being able to launch an aircraft to have a look and be certain instead of barking out radio orders on the wrong frequencies and leaving it till the last second and then launching a missile to shoot the perceived threat down only to find out it was not what you thought it was can be eliminated... sounds worth it to me.

With new long range scramjet powered missiles they could put half a dozen missiles slightly bigger than the R-37M on their AWACS platform with double the flight speed and double the range of the current missiles to engage enemy AWACS and inflight refuelling tankers too along with a dozen 9M100 missiles to shoot down any missiles fired at it...

It's true for subs & some warships, but unless it's a wartime emergency/crisis & they need an extra CVN transferred between N. Pacific & N. Atlantic, I doubt it'll be necessary for their CVNs to use the NSR.

The point is that from the northern fleet base or the pacific fleet base they can reach most of the world that they need to reach, and both bases are large enough to allow expansion to allow moorings for such large ships and the support ships that will need to operate with them for them to function.

Panama Canal is still too narrow for even smaller Russian future CVN. But if/when a bigger 1 is built across Nicaragua, it'll add more flexibility.

Which makes basing in the northern fleet or pacific fleet bases and use of the NSR even more crucial... to accessing any part of the worlds oceans quickly.

The Soviet TAKRs had dozens of helos & operated them on the high seas; they will turn into the wind for them too so there r no cross winds.

You were talking about extreme weather conditions that will effect operations, now you are asking about why they didn't react like they were in storm conditions during normal operations with previous vessels... ummm perhaps because they are not retarded?

Of course one of the huge advantages of the coaxial designs on the deck of a ship is that you can swing the nose around in any direction you like without swinging around a dangerous tail rotor that is probably the biggest killer of crew on decks in helicopter related incidents... coaxial rotor helos don't need to point in to the wind for stability and balance issues...

A shorter naval variant can be built; they won't have 20T payloads for COD missions most of the time- why risk sending an Mi-26 that may not even have enough room to safely land on, with all the other birds on deck?

It would be quicker and easier to make a much smaller Mi-26 with the same layout and engines but still much better performance than these theoretical designs and unproven designs.

Good point! It's a future prototype that may grow to bigger size & even may have 4 wings & 4 rotors. If not, using them in pairs & with mid-air refueling, together with a Ka-31s/Mi-38, will give C-2/E-2 like performance.

Why bother?

A freaken Ka-52K has more payload than those designs and it already has a nose mounted AESA radar... a quick redesign that replaces the wings with side facing antenna arrays oriented at 120 degrees each so together with the nose mounted antenna offer 360 degree coverage without needing an above rotor rotating antenna, or below fuselage rotating antenna with electronic scanning in vertical and horizontal planes would be much quicker and cheaper and simpler... the front antenna is something like 120kgs so the side antenna would be the same so the rest of the payload of just over 2 tons could be extra fuel to improve endurance...

So, the fixed wing AWACS/COD planes may not need the CAT at all; as all the plans for proposed future Russian CVNs still have rumps.

A large aircraft like a Yak-44 or the US equivalent would not benefit from a ramp... their low power to weight ratio means they would not continue to accelerate up the ramp... they would probably actually lose a lot of speed so when they reached the edge they would more than likely just drop into the water.

Think of the difference between a Olympic jumper using the ramp for extra height for their jump... it would improve their performance and make getting longer distances easier. For a 300kg overweight man however he will struggle to get up the ramp so any speed he might have gotten up to would be lost and if he got to the top he would just fall off into the water.

Basing 1-2 in the Black &/ Med. Seas would help that, as it's still too far away to the S. Atlantic/S.

Tartus is nothing like the size needed to operate an entire carrier group from... it was a small workshop base that has been slightly upgraded to take more ships, but it is nothing like the size needed to dock six or more large ships needed for a carrier group.

More importantly such a set up would be horribly vulnerable to attack by terrorists... such an attack would have little value for the anti assad syrians but the countries funding them like the US and Israel and Saudi Arabia would love to see such things damaged.

Based in the Northern Fleet fairly quick and easy access via the GIUK gap can be achieved... who cares if NATO can track them through there it would really have little to do with them anyway and if they tried to actually stop them that would be justification for return fire which would pretty much cripple most of the EU so it probably wont happen.

Pacific & the Indian Ocean from Kola & Kamchatka; getting there will take 2-3 weeks.

Exercises will be planned years in advance, and even an emergency will take a few weeks to gather up resources anyway... depending on the situation a few ships can be sent ahead to stabilise the situation or provide a presence for the Russian government to have a say with follow up forces arriving later if muscle is required...

Russia will never be in the position the US is in where it has carrier groups for each ocean ready to operate at short notice... it will be more like France or the UK who only have a few options and much longer preparation time.

Obviously Intel services means it can anticipate situations and send a carrier to a hot spot with further destroyers and support ships to solidify its presence a bit later.

As I have mentioned if it carries 90 aircraft max then it might travel around with half that, but when it arrives on station support ships wont be able to deliver AWACS and Su-57K fighters, but aviation fuel and ordinance for 90 aircraft which is the capacity of the ship, plus some extra stores that could be placed where the full compliment of the other 45 aircraft that are not on board means better persistence and performance because it will effectively have twice the fuel and weapon load for the aircraft it carries than it would normally have if it had a full load of aircraft.

In the empty space where those 45 aircraft could have been they could carry a dozen Iskander TELs with 24 missiles plus perhaps 48 reloads, and with the INF treaty gone they could be 3,000km range models for use against targets ashore... soften up the air defence network of the country that is being visited for instance.

Or they might take UAVs in place of those extra aircraft that they can send into enemy air space and monitor enemy air defences and reaction times and procedures...

In contrast, it took the CV-63 home ported in Yokosuka, Japan just a week to sail from Guam to the Arabian/Persian Gulf in 1998.

For the ground war in desert storm it took 6 months to form up a force... the point is that you can dictate the time table yourself with a carrier force... it can be a fire brigade or a siege engine...

but not enough endurance. Can it patrol for 6 hrs over water 300km away from a CVN?

A lightweight model that is all fuel and radar antennas could easily manage that sort of performance, but as I keep saying a fixed wing AWACS platform would do it better and cheaper and easier for longer...

Inflight refuelling for a fixed wing aircraft is easier than for a helo... and yes I know the Americans have refuelling options for their large helos, but the Russians don't... refuelling a long endurance fixed wing aircraft is more efficient and easier and cheaper.

The joint RF-PRC project will produce such a cargo helo with 15T payload, but it won't be as good for COD due to it's size & conventional layout.

You would want a ground up custom designed aircraft for such a specialised role as AWACS and COD for a carrier... the project you mention probably wont even bother with folding main rotors because it would be an extra complication and expense that would not be used that much in a land based aircraft.

And if you are going to be making a custom designed aircraft then adding wing lift and more efficient propulsion and you end up with a Yak-44 type aircraft.

By the time they have a CVN, those tandem & side by side rotor helos/tilt-rotors will be past their theoretical and unproven stages, as they r needed in many other, non-naval specific applications.

They might, but why spend money on them just in case? There is no fountain of money printing machine in Russia... you actually have to show some real benefits that justify the costs and the risks. VSTOLS are nice toys, but in practical terms if a more conventional model can do the job cheaper and easier and simpler then it is a no brainer choice.

Then why put heavier engines with contra-rotating props on them?! That's what gives the AN-70 short field performance!

During takeoff the whole point of the exercise is to accelerate the air flow over the wings to hold the weight of the aircraft.

A MiG-29KR has a relatively big wing with lots of high lift devices and also rather powerful engines to rapidly accelerate the aircraft over a short distance... it can use the ramp to loft it up into the air when it looses the support of the carrier deck to improve its ability to get airborne.

For a bigger heavier much less powerful aircraft like the Yak-44 having a ramp makes its takeoff performance worse because it is much heavier but has much less power so climbing up a ramp slows it down at a time when it needs to be rapidly accelerating to get to a speed above its stall speed.

For the MiG the ramp is like a jump at the end of its run, and it improves its ability to get airborne and to start climbing, for a Yak-44 a ramp is like tripping and slowing down just before it falls into the water.

The Yak-44 could be fitted with the jet engines of the An-124 and have enormous thrust for takeoff but the size and weight and fuel consumption and drag means it will need to land or be refuelled within a few minutes of takeoff because its normal fuel load will be replaced by a fuel guzzling engine.

Contra rotating propellers like the Bear or An-70 require a lot more power to turn so you need much bigger much more powerful engines to use those.

In fact with the Bear a normal four blade propeller would need to be huge to absorb the enormous power of the engines so having 8 blades in a contra propeller arrangement is a good way to prevent the blade tips from moving supersonically and losing propulsive thrust in use.

Very simply bigger more powerful engines will reduce the range and endurance of the aircraft which is a bad thing.

There is no perfect solution... rocket boosters are dangerous to things on the deck during takeoff and solid rocket fuel is expensive and you would be limited in your AWACS and heavy aircraft operations by how many rockets you could carry.

EMALS, if you can get it working, offers the best all round solution... you can say that the US has struggled with it, but then they have also struggled with hypersonic weapons... I am sure funding for both will be boosted to help sort out problems, though such a solution is not always what is needed...

That's where history & geography come together. The Russian Empire/Federation is contiguous, w/o overseas colonies/territories, unlike the USA. If in the past Russians had SLOCs, markets, or strategic/geopolitical interests to defend outside of their perimeter, like now in Syria, they would've established their own Guam & Diego Garcia a long time ago. They sold Alaska which was not essential to their economy, unsustainable as a colony, & hard to defend.
They could forward deploy a CBG in Venezuela should there be an economic/political need for it; from there, it could sail around S. America/Africa to get to the Pac./Indian Oceans or via the Nicaraguan Canal if it'll ever gets built. That will save trips on the NSR & across the 2 largest oceans for the NF & PF CVNs.

That is the problem with your logic... saving trips on the NSR is not something they care about... they want countries to use the NSR... that is the purpose of the NSR... to bypass the longer slower routes... why would they then spend a small fortune to then base their major naval vessels in Venezuela?

Probably Cuba or Vietnam could be places they could send ships, but forward deployed for what?

They wont be sending out carrier groups to fight WWIII... more likely they will be moving them to the Arctic ocean and northern Pacific ocean to protect its own flanks and cover its out going strategic weapons with further cover from ground based aircraft like MiG-31s and Backfires with Kinzhal and Kh-32 and variants.

“Some say it is an expensive helicopter but it is also a pretty cheap C-130 [fixed-wing transport aircraft]. If you want an aircraft that does both then this is what you need.”

They already have Mi-26s which are even better.

They will build a more capable tilt/tandem rotor aircraft, as with the Soviet helicopters & cargo planes. Many benefits of having them outweigh the bigger losses incurred of not having them, multiplied by the RF geography, terrain, & weather.
The naval/marine/army/NG/CG/FSB/MChS/civil aviation will benefit from them in many ways.

They can talk all they want but right now conventional aircraft do the job much better than rotary aircraft and much cheaper operational costs too... not to mention much safer. Where vertical take offs are needed they already have helicopters that are better than Chinooks and are working on high speed helicopter designs that should lead to new rotor and engine technology that can be retrofited to older models in service to further improve performance without having to build brand new designs.

Then, basing them on Kola & Kamchatka in the right #s will eliminate the need to transfer them on the NSR, dedicating icebreakers & presenting big targets to hostile subs.

What are the right numbers though... right now it is a no brainer because there are not carriers, but when the Kuznestov is back at sea do you base her at Kola or Kamchatka... and whichever you choose does that mean they can't send it through the NSR to go the other way?

For instance the Kuznetsov based in Kola and there is an issue in Quito in Equador where they want to send help because they are under threat from US supported terrorists from US controlled Columbia... it would obviously sail through the NSR down into the Pacific Ocean and then across to Equador.

Or they decide to send a carrier group on a good will visit to Dunedin New Zealand to reward an agent they have there for his sterling service with flights on two seat MiG-29KRs and discussions on what Russia needs for its Naval Future.....


The point is that even if you had two carriers if one is in overhaul or is at sea and not at base... which is common and something happens that it can attend then the other has to make that journey and no one can block the NSR for them... and talk of hostile subs is amusing... were US carrier groups worried about being sunk off the coast of the US on their way to Vietnam by Soviet subs?

If US or British or French subs want to start something by sinking a Russian Sub... they have plenty of targets for Russian air power and submarines too... is that really a game they want to start playing?

It's like having An-12s & Il-76s or C-17s & C-130Js with nothing in between.

Having an aircraft platform for every niche size is not efficient... a bit like the tool box of a computer engineer... he will have a long handled and a short handled phillips screwdriver... he wont have 20 different sizes in flat head and phillips types because he has no use for them...

Helicopters are specific shorter range high cost platforms used in situations where there are no established airfields because it is cheaper to use a helo in the mountains of Afghanistan than it is to build airfields in country that is largely vertical anyway... they are much more expensive to buy and operate than fixed wing transports, but sometimes they are the best option.

An example would be to transport people to and from an oil rig out in the middle of the sea... no air port, and not thousands of kms... probably just 100km or perhaps 300km but not further.

Cheaper, smaller helos/tilt-rotors can be built in larger #s, incl. for export, & will need less fuel & maintenance with smaller airframes & engines.

Helos are not flight efficient aircraft... what they do is rather unique but they are orders of magnitude more expensive to operate than a fixed wing aircraft... they are also generally fairly high maintenance... A tilt rotor is a hybrid between helos and fixed wing types and offer better performance than a helo, but vertical takeoff and landing over the fixed wing aircraft... but where there are airfields at each end of the trip a fixed wing aircraft will always be faster, longer ranged, and cheaper and much more efficient... and also safer simply because vertical takeoff and landing means landing and taking off anywhere... which has its own dangers...

Otherwise, China could've ordered/license build 20T payload Mi-26s instead of developing a 15T payload helo jointly with Russia.

Sounds like they want to build a helo they can call their own and they have a very specific requirement for it. That does not mean Russia needs another new aircraft in a different payload capacity... they have Mi-38s and Mi-26s and in the smaller category a range of smaller lighter aircraft.

Countries don't pull payload weights out of their ass... the Il-76 could carry 40 tons originally because that is about the weight of their tanks... the An-124 could carry 120 tons because they were supposed to carry three MBTs, and An-22s could carry 80 tons so they could carry two tanks.

The C-17 has a large payload capacity because US tanks are heavy.

Do you think it is an accident that the An-12 and the Mi-26 both can carry 20 ton payloads?

Do you think it would be useful to be able to carry those 20 ton payloads long range in a cheap propeller driven aircraft or to take it from where it is... whereever it is and take it anywhere and land it anywhere? Like from the side of a mountain in Afghanistan where it was shot down to somewhere the US could recover it and take it away in pieces with their smaller lighter aircraft that can't operate hot and high in Afghanistan with those sort of loads?

Now isn't that strange... there were plenty of photos of the Mi-26 rescuing those Chinooks but there are no photos of it on the wiki page for the Mi-26 or the Chinook... like it never happened... talk about propaganda...

Occasionally, esp. in winter/spring, even the current nuclear icebreakers can get stuck in the East Siberian/Chukchi Sea; the Bering Strait can be mined from subs & B-52s.

You are not understanding what I am saying... the US can't make the ice too thick for Russian icebreakers to operate and anyway by 2030 there probably wont be much ice anyway. Mining international waterways is an act of war and after several european cargo ships taking the NSR are sunk by US mines and mine hunters are sent in to find the problem and it is modern US mines they will have to explain it to their allies what they were doing... US subs laying mines in international water ways during peace time means open season on sinking US subs for self preservation, and B-52s detected dropping mines could be shot down on sight for the same reason.

A cargo ship/tanker can also wait there & ram a CV/N, with plausible deniability- go prove it was intentional by the Pentagon!

Sinking such vessels would be very straight forward... after appropriate warnings of course.

And if given orders to ram I doubt they will take the wrap on their own without squealing.

They r building/expanding air fields in the North, but there r many road, etc. projects with no air strips for 100s of miles from nearest airbase/port.

I think you are confusing Russia with Afghanistan... finding flat open areas in Russia where you remove big rocks and flatten hollows in the ground over an area a km long is not actually that difficult and most of their transport aircraft can operate from fairly rough strips of ground.

Most important areas will have proper paved air strips... villages of reigndeer herders move around the place but they are tiny collections of people that could easily be serviced by an An-2 that can pretty much land most places anyway.

Drop a few people off and take a few people away and some skins for sale and it is plenty.

Those sparsely populated areas have no roads, & it's not feasible to build/maintain airfields capable of fixed wing ops there. They still use the older Mi-6/8/10/17s, besides Mi-26s, to move people & supplies there. Like those helos, tilt/tandem rotors (which r good in cross winds) r dual use & the gov. forces/entities will get them 1st anyway; after that, civilian companies will, like in Canada & the US. Their higher operating cost is still lower than the costs of building of new airstrips, hangars, planes, training & hiring more pilots/crews, housing, & everything else that goes with them.

Anything worth a damn.... like a gas field or a mine will require a lot of people and make a proper airstrip by far the best option most of the time. There is money to be made in that region and you don't save money by not spending money... rail lines and air fields end up saving money because things can be transported in and out much faster and much easier and much cheaper than using slow helicopter links.

15-25% larger than CH-47 size helos will perform a lot better than coaxial Ka-27M/29TB/31s in ASW/SAR/AWACS (with bigger radar)/Marine/SF assault + can be used as COD

And a more conventional design similar to the Yak-44 but more modern would be much much better still... and cheaper in the long term.

It'll also surpass the civil Ka-32A, which is used as ..passenger and cargo transport, a flying crane for building construction, transport for bulky cargo up to 5t carried on an external sling, logging, search and rescue, medical and emergency evacuation, loading and unloading ships at sea and offshore operations. ..The Ka-32 can fly at a maximum speed of 260km/h. Its cruise speed is 240km/h. The range of the helicopter [is] 1,135km [vs. the CH-47 315 km/h, 296 km/h & 2,252km].

I have spoken to a guy that operated Ka-32s in the north island of New Zealand.... they were using them for selective milling so they could pick particular trees for felling and removal without having to build roads and basically clear fell the whole forest. He said the Ka-32 was the best helicopter he had ever flown. He said it handled like a Hughes 500 and accelerated rapidly and was very manouverable even with a full external load... he loved it...

It was a commercial operation... they could as easily have hired a Chinook for the job.

A Chinook would take an enormous amount of space inside a carrier... you might as well have the extra performance (range, speed, payload) of a fixed wing aircraft.