What don't you understand in "they have no plan for 70kt carriers".
They do. They have talked about wanting carriers with larger aircraft capacity than the current Kuznetsov... in other words they want something bigger than 55K tons and most of their comments talk about 70-90K tons.
They are only building large helicopter carrier on which they can put VTOL jets.
No.
They are building Helicopter carriers to carry Helicopters... if they want VTOL jets then the Ka-52K with AESA radar and Air to Air missiles would be totally redundant and pointless... the naval Ka-52 would be identical to the Army model that is dedicated to engaging ground targets with secondary air to air capability for self defence.
VTOL fifth gen fighters will take longer to develop and perfect than CVNs.
A 200kt carrier would be better than a 70kt carrier too. That doesn't mean they will build it.
No it would not. There is such a thing as too big. 200Kt would be too big and too heavy and too expensive for the performance level it could achieve....
Just the same as a 110K ton carrier is not useful for Russia either... if they wanted a strike capacity that allowed them to attack countries and invade them then 100K ton plus carriers would be needed to carry the heavy strike aircraft and numbers of fighters to support fighter and bomber activity in enemy airspace.
The Russians don't need that... cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles can better penetrate enemy airspace and take down targets rather more efficiently and effectively and without support aircraft.... a Russian carrier is primarily an air defence carrier intended to defend surface groups of ships from enemy attack... surprise or otherwise.
You need to stick with reality.
Yeah, Britain wants two carriers and France wants two carriers but Russia can't afford them?
Or they can't build them because they don't know how...
Because they have it, and even the 40K ships will take at least 6 years to deliver
So the 40K ships that are helicopter carriers will take 6 years to deliver and there were plans for four with the Mistrals, so we can assume an order for two more after that 6 years so maybe four years after that they will have four 40K ton helicopter landing ships... so their 40K ton VSTOL fighter carriers will not be laid down for at least 10 years and will likely take another 6-8 years beyond that to develop assuming a VSTOL fighter is even ready by then... and creating a 5th gen VSTOL fighter in just 16 years is pretty damn short notice... especially committing to building carriers 10 years into development of the aircraft themselves... sounds a bit risky to me...
Oh!! And Russia does not? lol. If anything they are worse.
Yeah.... obviously... 65 billion a year and most MIC companies up to their eyeballs in debt to banks because of their tiny margins selling to the Russian government... they are just dripping in corruption... worse you say... really?
So even if they build a Nimitz class or a KuzII what will that take ..once the dock is completed.
Yeah, they are spending big money upgrading shipyards to build big ships and now (2020-2022) when such shipyards become available ready to produce ships they decide not to use them?
That was money well spent. Sure they will be making large 350K ton gas carriers and oil carrying ships, but I am pretty sure they could spare one slip to build a big carrier...
Considering the project has already started with some of the plans we have seen, by the time this ship is in service it would have taken at LEAST 15 years even if they laid it down tomorrow.
Aircraft carriers are neither quick to make nor cheap... but some 40K carrier can be built overnight and has ready made VSTOL fighters superior to Su-57s ready to go... NOT.
They are going to replace all their big helicopters with V-22 clones too... all the talk of EMALS cats and high speed helicopters is just disinformation.
Talk of STOL aircraft just means small planes with very powerful engines... the sort you need to supercruise.... I am sure if they can manage STOVL they will give it a try, but as usual it will be more of a pain in the arse than a valuable asset as usual as it has for all other attempts at such designs and it will be dropped to prevent it becoming a Russian F-35.
If they did not have those carriers they could not have even conducteed the operation, and I think your thinking is obsolete.
That is right... even having poor air support was better than no air support at all.... but a 40K ton carrier with Ka-31s and Ka-52Ks can provide poor air support already without a single cent being wasted on VSTOL fighters, but Ka-52Ks and Ka-31s could also operate on bigger ships like the Kuznetsov and also provide similar support if all other solutions fail they can also use MiG-29KRs or upgraded MiG-35s for even better. But their plans are for EMALS cats and AWACS aircraft and Su-57s which would not only be better than helicopters for both roles, but would also be better than any VSTOL alternative.
They don't need dozens of CVNs... perhaps two more at most together with the Kuznetsov would be fine for the next 30 + years.
They might end up carrying hypersonic drones, but they will remain useful... because air power will always be useful.
I think we are long past the pretense that carriers would be useful in a Russia/USA war.
Which is why I keep wondering why you bring up the false claim that in WWIII all carriers will be dead so having more smaller cheaper carriers makes more sense than fewer bigger ones.
All ships will be dead in WWIII eventually, but in peace time two CVNs is going to be more use and cheaper than the 6 or more small carriers you would need to give you similar performance... and the difference would be compounded further as new things become available like newer smaller more compact catapults, and drones that offer AWACS level performance from fighter sized airframes etc.
Today they simply do not have the skill base and facilities to build a super carrier.
So the Zvezda shipyard in the Far East designed to build military and civilian conventional and nuclear powered ships up to 350K ton weight and 400m in length is not facilities to build an aircraft carrier?
Do you think the British and French and Americans and Chinese have some magic secrets that allow them to make large carriers that Russia does not understand and cannot develop for themselves?
They do not even have the facilties to overhaul the one sizable carrier they have.
But they have... they said it will be back in the water on schedule... 2022 or 23 or something...
So the question is, do we wait 10-15 years for this capability or accept a significant capabilty earlier.
What capability earlier?
Where is this VSTOL 5th gen fighter coming from... and what magic is going to get the yards currently building helicopter landing ships to magically be able to make air defence carriers... wont they need to learn new magic?
What is the foreign policy behind this carrier?
The foreign policy is that the west has rejected Russia and will willfully act against Russia every chance it gets so if Russia wants to foster good relations and trade with countries around the world then they will need a military presence around the world to back that up. Military presence without air support is always weaker than with air support.
Or do you think the west will be nice and let Russia create good trade relations with countries around the world without imposing sanctions like they did in Venezuela?
What country is going to trade with Russia at the risk of Washington initiated coup threats...
The US and the west want to isolate Russia to break her... Russia needs her own independent access to the world... and that is what a carrier does.
Lets face it if Russia builds 3 super carriers and goes head to head with the US 12 CVNS is game over.
Russia does not build any carriers or ships bigger than a frigate and the west will put sanctions and trade embargoes against any customer that dares trade with Russia and Russia suffocates and dies.
So who is the opposition here. If you have 25 MIG-29s on a carrier equipped with KH-31, that allows you to dominate a HUGE radius of sea and rain hellfire on weak nations from 800KM, close sea lanes or just stick the ship there and dare the USA to hit it and end the world.
Get WWIII out of your head.... Russia does not need carriers to fight WWIII Russia will fuck the US with ICBMS, SLBMs, air launched cruise missiles, unlimited range nuclear powered cruise missiles... nuclear powered nuclear armed underwater drones... carriers will be irrelevant in WWIII... Russia already has anti ship missiles to deal with US carriers for WWIII, but no amount of anti ship missiles will protect a surface group of Russian ships anywhere on the planet.
Sailing through international waters a dozen blips appear on the radar heading towards the Russian ships and are closing... what does the Russian commander do?
Send a ship? That would take hours. Wait till the blips get within visual range... pretty damn risky... send out a helicopter... that would take almost as long as the ship and be much more vulnerable... send a flight of four Su-57s at mach 1.6 in supercruise fully armed with AAMs to investigate...
Hmmm... which one will stop a civilian airliner being shot down in error... or that twitchy commander can just try to guess what to do...
A group of Yachts, some formation of drones being used for some civilian purpose, a group of small aircraft on a sight seeing trip, a group of fishing vessels... catamarans practising for the Americas cup...
But if it is a group of subsonic anti ship missiles the greater distance you can detect and confirm what they are the greater distance you can start shooting them down.... meaning orders of magnitude more missiles will be needed to defeat your force... but you want to save a few dollars...
None have tried..hmmmm isn't that really what we are after? None have DARED.
Which is what you get with carrier support, but the French are really pushing the limit with the CdG, it is going to struggle in the future against 5th gen aircraft.
From a Russian perspective a Rafale is essentially a MIG-35... if they could use Su-57s they would and they can with a bigger ship.
Even the USA with its massive super carriers is not safe to sail near Russian or Chinese waters.
That is right, though I would argue that they would be much safer off the coasts of western countries because western countries don't have the land based air defence capacity that Russia does.
I keep telling you Russia does not need aircraft carriers for WWIII or to invade or approach the US coast or the EU... they are for peace time use to assure the protection and improve the performance of Russian surface ships. Nukes will deal with the west...
They know full well if war breaks out both the Chinese and Russians can defeat their carriers.
They have never used their carriers against Russia and are unlikely to ever try in the future... does that mean their carriers are useless?
The US has a self appointed mission of being the world police so having 10-12 carriers and carrier groups positioned around the world is critical to them being able to get anywhere fast to bully and murder.
Russia does not need that, which means smaller carriers will do, but better aircraft are needed, to ensure the best protection of Russian ships.
You complain it will be 15 years... it will be 15 years before they have enough cruisers and destroyers to operate with new CVNs anyway.
No it would not. Fact is, if anyone messed with a Russian warship they know full well Russia has the means to retaliate in a million different ways.
Promises mean nothing... Israeli forces attacked a barely armed US ship pretending they didn't know it was American because it was a spy ship and could detect they were violating their agreement with the US... they kept pretending they did not recognise the ship until they intercepted the call saying F-14 tomcats had gotten their mayday and were inbound... if those F-14s were not there it is likely a lot more US sailors would have died that day... murdered by an ally...
Now there are no Russian Navy ships that only have two heavy machine guns for self defence... they are not idiots... but even still a ship on its own is vulnerable and the response time for an aircraft is always much much better than for any ship or sub.
Having said that if it was a Russian Navy spy ship the only response would be for a nearby cruiser to launch an S-400 and shoot down the aircraft that was attacking the Russian ship and to launch a long range anti ship missile to take out the small boat that torpedoed the ship... so in this example the alternative would have killed Israelis... but then better tactics should have seen the ship operating in what was a war zone with a proper escort so the "mistake" would never have happened.
No one today would dare touch a Russian warship unless it is to render assistance.
Really? Does that apply to Su-24s killing terrorists too?
Even the clapped out old Russian ASW ship was able to intimidate an advanced US destroyer even though the US destroyer easily outgunned it (Peter the Great gulf incident).
I believe it is called BMNB syndrome... (Big Mouth, No Balls)
Of course the fact that they sailed two kilometres into Russian waters suggests your claims don't hold water.