The Russian DGA

Directorate General of Armament... planning new weapons for Russia...

Shows the new carrier with its AWACS and naval Su-57 fighters and MiG-29K fighters on board too...

I remember models of carriers from the 1970s were shown with MiG-23s on board because the MiG-33 and Su-33 had not been developed yet.

It is hard to see the one in the glass box but the one over the back looks like a Mistral or something similar....

GarryB wrote:It is hard to see the one in the glass box but the one over the back looks like a Mistral or something similar....

The one Isos is referring to has only one island instead of two. The one at the back is a Mistral type or even the new Russian build.

A control tower on a conventional air field is located in the middle simply because it is not known which direction the aircraft are landing at any given time because it is determined with the wind direction... obviously landing into the wind improves takeoff performance.

With an aircraft carrier however, there is one end they land on all the time so having the control tower located to the rear is beneficial in terms of seeing planes that are landing and getting a good view of landings.

For some very big ships the control deck is at the rear because that is where the engines and rudder are, but most military ships have the deck located in the front 1/3rd of the ship... normally with a gun and a bunch of missiles in front of them to give a good view ahead.

Some carriers simulate both simply by having a very long island with the rear portion for flight operations and the front portion for sailing the ship, but having a huge island creates problems too not the least of which is taking up a lot of deck space that could be used for other things like parked aircraft.

Nothing will be set in stone at the moment, but I would say the USN was stronger when it had F-14Ds than it is now with only shorter ranged Hornets.... they are never going to have thousands of deck based aircraft fighters, so it makes sense to make them the best you have with a smaller one for numbers... the example shown was naval Su-57s as the CAP fighter and the MiG-35 like standard fighter aircraft for operating around the ships.

Interesting that the AWACS aircraft was a twin jet powered aircraft...

GarryB wrote:

Nothing will be set in stone at the moment, but I would say the USN was stronger when it had F-14Ds than it is now with only shorter ranged Hornets.... they are never going to have thousands of deck based aircraft fighters, so it makes sense to make them the best you have with a smaller one for numbers... the example shown was naval Su-57s as the CAP fighter and the MiG-35 like standard fighter aircraft for operating around the ships.

Interesting that the AWACS aircraft was a twin jet powered aircraft...

Both the carrier designs seems to go for huge deck space which is a good thing from a safety point of view and obviously you can handle a large number of aircraft as well.

The F-14D was a very good upgrade indeed but appropriately named Dick Cheney killed the program at around 60 air frames.

Personally I would prefer UAV's to perform AWACS and other recce roles with real time data and video links to the task force instead of heavy manned aircraft - but yes the jet engine variant is quite interesting.

Both the carrier designs seems to go for huge deck space which is a good thing from a safety point of view and obviously you can handle a large number of aircraft as well.

Having lots of deck space is critical to fast operations. Those deck lifts are slow and relatively inefficient, so most of the time the aircraft will spend most of their time on deck... making more space in the hangar for repairs and other work.

Obviously except if there is a storm brewing, but you generally try to sail around those when you can.

The F-14D was a very good upgrade indeed but appropriately named Dick Cheney killed the program at around 60 air frames.

The F-14D had excellent engines that were as powerful in 100% dry thrust as the engines from the F-14A model were in full AB... which meant the F-14D could take off in dry thrust safely, or in full AB with a better safety margin at heavier weights.

Personally I would prefer UAV's to perform AWACS and other recce roles with real time data and video links to the task force instead of heavy manned aircraft - but yes the jet engine variant is quite interesting.

There is no operational UAV AWACS platform anywhere, so if you are going for systems that don't exist then I would go for an airship based AWACS platform.

It could be designed in the shape of a big flat wing with the upper surface covered in solar panels but made strong enough for UAVS to land and take off from its upper surface like a flying aircraft carrier.

An Airship could be 100m long so the radar antenna arrays it could carry in 3 or four different frequency ranges could be enormous... and the heat generated with them running would add lift to the entire aircraft too.

ULF radio or ultra low frequency radio requires a cable several kms long but works best when hung vertically... they could hang several from an airship to communicate with submarines deep under water... the Tu-142 has a similar antenna but has to fly dangerously slow.... close to its stall speed to get the antenna vertical enough to be useful... and airship would have no problems in that regard.

The airship could be made of modern fire proof materials that are light and strong and not flammable, the inner volume could be purged with nitrogen so if you hit the airship with a missile and it penetrated deep into the centre of the airship and released flares or flammable material they would not keep burning because there would only be hydrogen and nitrogen.

In fact it would probably take multiple hits to do enough damage to make the airship descend.

The airship could be designed to sit on the water.

You could have different sized models that include some that can be tethered to smaller ships like corvettes... say with a 30m long antenna and electric propulsion motors for station keeping... it could deliver the radar data directly via the tether and be powered from the ship... they could operate 24/7.

In case of storms the carrier size airship could simply climb above the weather.

With modern hydrogen fuel cells you have an easy way to convert lifting gas to ballast and back again with solar panels as one source of power and of course batteries and even a small gas turbine could be mounted... even a nuclear battery as used in satellites.

The radar antenna could be enormous, the operational capacity could be months or years at a time, you could have multiple radar array types including very large and bulky long wave radar arrays as part of the airships structure.

It would not be particularly fast but it only has to keep pace with the carrier group.

You could operate high altitude UAVS off its back and you could mount weapons to defend the airship from attack.

In fact you could change altitude to catch the trade winds to relocate to another place quite quickly if need be.

Speed is not so critical for AWACS platforms as radar size, and altitude and endurance... and in those areas an airship cannot be beaten... even a satellite cannot carry as large and as many different types of radar antenna as an airship which could be huge.

Yes your airship concept can be quite a useful addition as an recce or AWACS platform. I think the Brits toyed with that very idea back in the 80's but it came to none. Mind you an unmanned airship is just another UAV.

The other thing I've noticed about the AWACS on the proposed carrier is that it is quite a small aircraft compared to the Su-57. The Russians are very serious about developing unmanned vehicles and aircraft atm - so that may just be an unmanned AWACS? That's if you can trust the scale of the various models.

[quote="Mir"][quote="GarryB"]

Nothing will be set in stone at the moment, but I would say the USN was stronger when it had F-14Ds than it is now with only shorter ranged Hornets.... they are never going to have thousands of deck based aircraft fighters, so it makes sense to make them the best you have with a smaller one for numbers... the example shown was naval Su-57s as the CAP fighter and the MiG-35 like standard fighter aircraft for operating around the ships.

The F-14D was a very good upgrade indeed but appropriately named Dick Cheney killed the program at around 60 air frames.
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The Tomcat-D was part of Grumman's F-14 2000 (or Bombcat, as it became known affectionately as) design....and while SecDef Cheney cancelled production (as he had with the proposed A-6F Intruder version), over. the following years, most F-14A/B aircraft were "upgraded" to include most of the Tomcat 2000 improvements and systems.

The biggest loss today might be the F-14's ability to use the Phoenix AAM, designed to engage bombers up to 200-miles distant....given Russia's retention of most of those same Tupolev series bombers, the inability of the F/A-18 Hornet (gone) / Super Hornet aircraft to use that standoff conventional / nuclear-capable AAM, remains a problem for the US Navy - especially as the new generation of air-launched missiles have been added to the Tupolev bomber designs.

geminif4ucorsair wrote:
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The Tomcat-D was part of Grumman's F-14 2000 (or Bombcat, as it became known affectionately as) design....and while SecDef Cheney cancelled production (as he had with the proposed A-6F Intruder version), over. the following years, most F-14A/B aircraft were "upgraded" to include most of the Tomcat 2000 improvements and systems.

The biggest loss today might be the F-14's ability to use the Phoenix AAM, designed to engage bombers up to 200-miles distant....given Russia's retention of most of those same Tupolev series bombers, the inability of the F/A-18 Hornet (gone) / Super Hornet aircraft to use that standoff conventional / nuclear-capable AAM, remains a problem for the US Navy - especially as the new generation of air-launched missiles have been added to the Tupolev bomber designs.

The big problem with the F-14A - and I think even the B model - was the lack of power and the F-14D addressed that issue very well, but I don't think the older models received the new power plant despite the further upgrades?

The Russians do have a huge advantage with their anti-ship missiles esp the hypersonic ones. This is actually quite a big shift in maritime power and the US Navy and especially their carriers are sitting ducks atm. As you say, using nuclear weapons against conventional hypersonic missiles wouldn't go down well esp if you don't want to escalate into a full blown nuclear exchange!

Isos wrote:There is another carrier design at the begining.

I had never seen that carrier model before, it seems huge and the superstructure seems very modern. More of that subtle Russian trolling with some part of truth and some of misinformation in it that we have come to appreciate so much

It has three elevators and seems as if if could fill the dry dock at Zvezda...

BTW, they also talked about the Shtorm that it would combine catapult and springboard in the same TO positions, that was a doubt that had been kept open since the concept was presented

Yes your airship concept can be quite a useful addition as an recce or AWACS platform. I think the Brits toyed with that very idea back in the 80's but it came to none. Mind you an unmanned airship is just another UAV.

The British have explored a lot of different ideas and technologies and they came to nothing, but that does not mean they were bad ideas... it just means the UK spends money on the wrong things as usual... look at their current situation with AWACS aircraft... retiring the old one before the new one is ready... the pressure to buy American is enormous normally and often leads them to terrible decisions quite regularly.

There was a missile called the Blue Streak I seem to remember that had enormous and excellent potential... but was dropped for the American Sky Bolt... I remember reading about it in the 1980s in articles by British writers who were clearly bitter at the weapon not going forward... it was very much the British Avro Arrow... the performance claims only got better and better over time.

The other thing I've noticed about the AWACS on the proposed carrier is that it is quite a small aircraft compared to the Su-57. The Russians are very serious about developing unmanned vehicles and aircraft atm - so that may just be an unmanned AWACS? That's if you can trust the scale of the various models.

Soviet Carrier models from the 1970s showed Kuznetsov and Ulyanovsk type carriers with MiG-27s and MiG-23s operating from their decks... the people who design carriers are not normally involved in also designing the aircraft that will be operating on those carriers so existing types or prototypes of local models are often substituted.

They don't have to be real... just a place holder... the whole purpose of the catapults is for heavier platforms to operate like AWACS planes... but whether they are manned or unmanned is not important.

The biggest loss today might be the F-14's ability to use the Phoenix AAM, designed to engage bombers up to 200-miles distant....given Russia's retention of most of those same Tupolev series bombers, the inability of the F/A-18 Hornet (gone) / Super Hornet aircraft to use that standoff conventional / nuclear-capable AAM, remains a problem for the US Navy - especially as the new generation of air-launched missiles have been added to the Tupolev bomber designs.

The main problem for the Americans is that the new missiles like the Kh-32 and any likely air launched version of Zircon or replacement will be flying at 40km altitude or higher, rendering Phoenix and AMRAAM rather ineffective, so they will need new AAMs and SAMs or at least serious upgrades of both just to intercept the incoming missiles let alone the platforms delivering those missiles.

The big problem with the F-14A - and I think even the B model - was the lack of power and the F-14D addressed that issue very well, but I don't think the older models received the new power plant despite the further upgrades?

The problem with the F-14 was sabotage... they didn't even upgrade it to carry AMRAAM so it was stuck with obsolete Sparrows.

In the early campaign in Afghanistan it was clearly shown the Hornets lacked the range for operations there so they had to use the F-14 and had to make upgrades... I remember one such upgrade that was mentioned that was sort of a datalink directly with ground troops where an F-14 flying overhead with LANTIRN III targeting pods with thermal cameras and the nose radar of the aircraft provided a detailed view of the ground in any specific area that the ground troops could access and mark friendlies and targets on the map in real time so the crew of the aircraft could then engage enemy positions knowing the troops on the ground have marked their locations to keep them safe from friendly fire... it looked very impressive... but they wanted rid of the plane because maintenance costs were going up...

You'd think all the money they piss away on useless bullshit they could spend a little to keep the good stuff working.

As you say, using nuclear weapons against conventional hypersonic missiles wouldn't go down well esp if you don't want to escalate into a full blown nuclear exchange!

I think if the US is shooting down incoming Russian hypersonic anti ship missiles that this ship has already sailed...

Nuclear war is most likely to start at sea from day one... and the near future expansion of the Russian Navy to support its global trade ambitions is likely going to lead to increased tensions...

BTW, they also talked about the Shtorm that it would combine catapult and springboard in the same TO positions, that was a doubt that had been kept open since the concept was presented

Well that raises another issue... perhaps they could use an angled deck instead of a ski jump... ie instead of that last second lift of a ski jump like they use to jump cars in some 1980s cheesy US tv show like CHiPs, they could use the entire front ramp that is angled upwards say 15-20 degrees from start to finish to add a vertical component to the takeoff without the high g bit at the end that heavier aircraft probably wont like but might take value from with the added acceleration of the catapult mechanism?

I would like to hear more about their ideas in terms of multihull designs with ultra wide hulls because that would also mean ultra wide decks as well...

I would add that the helmet mounted sights shown being developed presumably for helicopter pilots based on the uniform and helmet being worn during testing could be very widely used.

There was an article posted on a thread about the DAS IIR system being used for Hinds and Hips with fixed cameras showing the airspace around the helicopter in real time within about 2km or more with fixed cameras that had their footage stitched together so a set of HMS displays could be used to create a virtual 3D view around the platform (helicopter, aircraft, tank or vehicle, ship, etc etc) that could be used in real time by the crew member inside the vehicle to look 360 degrees around but see what the cameras see so seeing through cockpits and vehicle structure to see the airspace or ground around the platform... with potential information over layed over top of that like a HUD is rather interesting.

The IIR view is provided by fixed IIR cameras of the DAS system which means sitting inside the hull of a tank you could have a 360 degree all weather day night view of what is happening around your platform... driver, gunner, commander etc... even for a helicopter pilot or gunner spotting ground based threats or just flying in the dark... reminds me of playing Apache Havoc and Commanche Hokum with the cockpit turned off....

Would make operating buttoned up much less claustrophobic and much more effective... no reason to stick your head out of the armoured vehicle to see what is going on...

GarryB wrote:I would like to hear more about their ideas in terms of multihull designs with ultra wide hulls because that would also mean ultra wide decks as well...

A 70,000 Tonne version of the LMA Krylov would probably be the best option for Russia, although that would mean a radical departure from traditional aircraft carrier designs with all the risks associated with a new concept.

GarryB wrote:Well that raises another issue... perhaps they could use an angled deck instead of a ski jump... ie instead of that last second lift of a ski jump like they use to jump cars in some 1980s cheesy US tv show like CHiPs, they could use the entire front ramp that is angled upwards say 15-20 degrees from start to finish to add a vertical component to the takeoff without the high g bit at the end that heavier aircraft probably wont like but might take value from with the added acceleration of the catapult mechanism?

I would like to hear more about their ideas in terms of multihull designs with ultra wide hulls because that would also mean ultra wide decks as well...

I don't think the lanes are designed for that position, and having the progressive ramp allows it to be used without catapult, and the load of the landing gear at the ramp is not very demanding either...

It really depends on the AWACS platform chosen... I mean an AWACS platform based on the An-2 biplane perhaps with two jet engines and therefore also blown flaps and other high lift devices might be able to get airborne at 90km/h... it could probably get airborne without much assistance at all... and once airborne it might use a single engine to maintain height and fly for very long periods at not a particularly high flight speed... altitude and antenna size and endurance are the important factors... speed no so much.

A heavy Hawkeye type AWACS however needs a cat to get airborne... which just makes sense if you think of a cat assisted launch as being like the afterburners on an aircraft.

A fighter has its own afterburners so would not normally need cat assisted takeoffs, but an AWACS plane would only use after burners for a very short strip takeoff but would not use them at other stages of flight so it makes sense for the AWACS ABs to be part of the ship rather than part of the aircraft as dead weight.

A 5 degree incline from launch position to the edge of the takeoff area should improve takeoff performance and allow a cat system to be used normally.

Mixing different technologies is a good thing.