WTF is the point of combining a long range stand off attack ship (aircraft carrier) with a very close range ship (landing ship) that is like putting a bayonet on a sniper rifle..
Why do you think an aircraft carrier is an attack ship?
Why are you confusing a medium sized fixed wing carrier with a light helicopter landing ship?
Naval operations are safer and more effective if you can do them under the cover of air power.... whether it is destroying a baby milk factory network in Africa using ship and sub based missiles, or landing a peace keeping force in south america... having air cover during the operation makes everything safer...
because it is still cheaper and quicker then developing a new engine of this class of thrust form scratch?
Not true... they are going to completely redesign the engine to turn it from a very powerful but relatively old bomber engine (from the 1970s) into a state of the art new engine for the 21st C... plus give it full vectored thrust despite it likely being an engine with between 35 and 50 tons of thrust in full AB.
The R79 engine the Yak-41 used had up to 22 tons thrust in its last designed model so they are going to have to design an engine nozzle that will take rather more pressure and heat and still operate at over 90 degrees deflection angle...
That's one way to look at it but development of EM catapult in US got to 1 blns USD mark and is not finished yet. And US had vast experience in building and designing both carriers and catapults. Again US will use (if design is completed) EM catapult on many ships Russia on 1? 2? would it justify spending such budget? (30x22800 ships)
The Russians have just as much theoretical physics knowhow and work on EM equipment didn't start today in Russia. The US has vast experience in building carriers yet still are making the F-35 instead of an upgraded F-14D... how stupid are they?
The Russians are not stupid... EM cat technology can be used for short airstrips everywhere to launch aircraft from carrier based fixed wing fighters to AWACS aircraft to UAVs. Further development could lead to new types of weapons.
PAK FA as upgrade of Su-27? hmm so F-22 is an upgrade of F-14? But anyway if you look as LMFS thsi way then agreed.
The F-15 is basically a MiG-25... the F-22 is basically a stealthy MiG-25 originally but obviously just a stealthy F-15.
Hmmm but still this F-35B crap for some reason woks fine in RAF and should be ordered in like 500 units. Why so many countries want to buy it in VSTOL configuration ? Why UK? Why Spain, why Italy? They didnt have to buy this version but still did. Why Japan considers is to its carriers? perhaps not so bad in its role after all?
They believe the sales hype... it is cheaper and can operate from any flat surface... and ignore they can't actually just take off from any surface and they crash rather more often... and as fighter aircraft they have smaller payload and shorter range than almost identical conventional aircraft.
Japan spends billions on existing US equipment and makes them into more expensive military equipment... they are not weapons designers to follow.
And the UK has to buy F-35s because they sabotaged their own Harriers and their Eurofighters because they are idiots.
If -35 is underperforming because too many requirements to fin in one machine. If stealth and catobar are removed it could be much better and cheaper plane.
If stealth is removed it is a Buccaneer, not a fighter. If you took away VTOL then you get an F-35C which would be a much better aircraft...
Key feature of vtol is that you don't need catapaults and fact you can fit more jets in tighter spaces.
Unless you are building tiny useless carriers even an Su-33 can be carried and used without cats. VTOL aircraft are a pain in the ass but you wont fit more on a carrier and you will need very special heat treated tiles for them to take off from from anywhere... land or sea...
CVs can be resupplied with fuel, food & ammo. at sea by specialized ships, NP in the Med. isn't that essential now- like the Kiev class TAKRs had done
They had trouble supporting ships going from the Northern Fleet to Syria... don't you think that suggests building little tiny helicopter carriers and filling them up with VTOL aircraft with 35 ton thrust engines is going to require an entire fleet of support vessels that will be full time taking fuel and ammo to those carriers where ever they go? Finding such ships would be easy... just follow the 12knt capable Russian fueling ships...
After NITKA training, they'll still need to go to sea for real world ops
Why?
In all the years of operational use they have only ever had real world ops in Syria last year...
Besides why waste time with China? They could train their MiG-29 pilots in India...
MAD on helos/UAVs can be used to locate bombs on the ground &/ in the water, EODs then drop in & salvage them
That is even more expensive than just leaving them where they land. The magnetic signature of a missile or bomb will be a tiny fraction of that of a submarine or ship... MAD equipment would be totally useless for finding such things it would take months to find everything... in the mean time the NATO subs will be sniffing around looking for splashes to hunt down new Russian kit being dropped into their laps...
An engine designed for STOVL operations (obviously the qualifying feature is the vertical landing) works in a completely new way in the landing phase.
It should swivel its nozzle downward around 90 degrees, at the very same time it has either to provide thrust for additional vertical jets, or should be coordinated with additional turbojets.
It means both heavy and deep mechanical modifications and a rewritten FADEC.
The whole system should then pass the whole testing and certification procedure, just like any new engine.
Because during a vertical landing a really strict and near real time control of actual thrust is mandatory to provide the required control of the aircraft, deep modifications to the engine's hot section as well could not be discarded.
Actually it is rather more complicated than that... air needs to be taken from the hot section and fed to the wing tips and nose and tail unit to provide puffer jet control in addition to a front mounted lift system to balance the thrust from the rear and keep the aircraft level in the hover.
As for autonomy and endurance fully agreed NPP rulez. But why Russian should spend 2x Mistral costs to build 1 max 2 EM catapults alone?! Royal Navy resigned from catapults for a reason. And the reason was costs. Thus preferred VSTOL fighters as cheaper variant instead. Why Russians should not learn of examples?
Because it is the wrong lesson to learn.
Just because the tight fucking British don't want to develop new generation NPP systems and cripple their carriers because of that is not Russias problem.... the British already have steam cats anyway so it is no problem for them except the limits conventional propulsion impose on the design.
The Russians on the other hand have already designed their next generation NPP engines for their new large ships and will likely make all their big ships nukes from destroyers to cruisers and to carriers. Further more they will likely go the extra step and do away with enormous propeller shafts and use electric pod propulsion saving even more space.
Why not retrofit EM cats to the K and fit them on the 2 Mistral replacements and then the two new fixed wing carriers... that sounds like 5 EM cats to me for a start.
EM cats will allow large UAVs to be launched from helicopter carriers, so if they develop a UAV AWACS platform it could be used on all their new carriers.
Russians never built catapults, catapult costs helluva money (US EM cat costs 30x Karakurts), perhaps ensuring new fighter is STOL and eventually has VSTOL variant cost just less?
Russians have said they are developing EM cats and it would be money well spent as it could develop technology in other areas, including superconducting materials and super powerful magnets and increased velocity EM assisted guns...
If they just wanted cheap they could have just developed a new T series tank, BMP series IFV, and BTR series troop transport... instead they have developed more than three new entire families of vehicles... which is not cheap.
Whether you have a lift fan (that takes up an enormous amount of space which is a bad thing in a sleek modern fighter) or you have separate lift engines... which also take up space but have the added disadvantage of being heavy and consuming fuel too, there are huge penalties for taking of or landing vertically.
Rolling take offs can reduce the problem but do not offer a cure.
You also need high pressure piping through the wings and nose of the aircraft and at the tail from the main engines to generate puffer thrust to control the aircraft in the hover... this adds weight and complexity and adds vulnerable points that can destroy the aircraft if damaged because it means it can no longer land on that destroyer in the middle of the ocean...
The Russians lost two aircraft in Syria because they had no where to land because the arrester cable system failed... that pretty much ended operations for them... with V/STOL aircraft it would be worse because such accidents during vertical landing are much more common...
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