Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

It won't make sense to build Hypersonic drones. You would build drones that can launch hypersonic missiles. For a drone that can carry 2 hypersonic ASMs you can probably operate 10-30 of these from the new Amphibous ships they are building.

But that raises the obvious question... why bother with subsonic drones to carry hypersonic missiles... why not just have multistage missiles... the first stage powered by hypersonic scramjet motor for very high speed penetration of enemy air defences and kinetic kill capacity, but the launch stage being a huge fuel tank with turbojet sustainer for subsonic flight around the place to extended range at medium or low altitude for great distances...

Mounting them on a drone seems a little redundant... unless it is the PAK DA that carries hypersonic missiles internally with some level of stealth over strategic distances, but the weapons use hypersonic speed to penetrate defences...

But honestly... why do you think a drone carrying two hypersonic ASMs is any different from an Su-33 carrying three or five Brahmos-M missiles?

A drone big enough to carry two hypersonic missiles is going to be large and will need a rather large launch platform... like an aircraft carrier.

Those big Amphibious ships are just big ships you are claiming are obsolete aren't you?

If they are OK then why not have slightly bigger ones with decent fixed wing fighters and AWACS platforms...

Also, submarines are limited to using missiles. As has been beaten to death, carriers offer more flexibility.

A sub is an assassin... very capable and very useful in its role, but the sort of thing you have to use to sink ships... which creates dangerous escalation... surfacing a sub to scare the enemy could just as easily lead to it being attacked and sunk on the surface as the message being received and the enemy backing off.

But there is no active construction of carriers in Russia regardless of talk. This tells me that there are not enough Venezuela type
shipping and counter regime change needs around the world for Russia to spend the money. If Russia needed them for its own
needs and not such engagements, then they would be under construction years ago. This point cannot be glossed over even
if carriers would be beneficial.

Even if they had a magic money printing press new CVNs would be of little use to them right now... they simply don't have the ships and foreign bases and international trade links to justify it. Over time however Russia will make deals and make friends and the US and the west will do its damnest to break those deals and ties... and that will be when they will need to show the flag around the world... They could probably get away with some cruisers in some situations but eventually with no new carriers on the way the US and west will likely call their bluff.

The Kuznetsov upgraded and operational and upgraded Kirovs and Slavas as escorts and over time they will start making longer trips around the world to improve ties and trade links... this will take time just as much as building new carriers and the support ships and port infrastructure needed to get the most out of them.

Well he says carriers are better than ground aviation and a must have to be powerfull. UK has two of them armed with f-35. China has a K with j-15 prototypes. UK should be able to control China and chinese sea roads.

The real world doesn't work like that. The US has not been able to sail up to the Russian coast and launch deep nuclear armed strikes into Russia using aircraft carriers despite having rather more capable carriers than the UK has... but UK and US carriers are not the same as Russian carriers as I keep trying to say.

If the Kuznetsov was for deep strike to invade US territory then it would have strike aircraft on board instead of Granit anti ship missiles.

The Kuznetsov is intended to provide air protection and air support for the other ships it operates with while they launch huge anti ship missiles at the US carrier groups that they are engaging. The Su-33s wont be carrying anything except AAMs to shoot down any aircraft or anti ship missiles the US fleet is firing at the Russian fleet.

They should also go and destroy russians in the arctic. Russia is not a great power since it lacks carriers.

It's opinion. Not mine.

Russian land based air power and air defence systems means the only place Russia could defeat a US or UK carrier based attack is around Russia including the Arctic.

If a group of US or even UK ships met a group of Russian ships in the middle of the Atlantic or southern pacific ocean or even indian ocean or off either coast of Africa the Russian group of ships would struggle because they lack AEW and air power... despite having excellent IADS systems and weapons.

And I agree with that. But if you think one or two russian carriers will protect their interest in case nato attack them you are wrong.

I would think the presence of cruisers and destroyers and carriers would deter any HATO surface force from any attack... having aircraft in the air with radar working would quickly detect an attack and its extent and source, which I would think most of the time would result in the attacking weapons being quickly neutralised and the launch platforms also attended to to prevent a repeat attack.

They are good against less powerfull enemies.

They are good against any enemy... and they would make the most difference against more powerful enemies because they would give critical warning and the ability to return fire rapidly.... a super cruising Su-57 flying at mach 1.6 at 20km altitude using its radar and IR sensors to find targets would be a potent system at sea against any enemy... if it is carrying a Zircon missile it would be even more capable... fly 1,000km at mach 1.6 and then release a mach 9 weapon to fly another 1,000km... sounds pretty potent to me...

a land based aviation of a country with a decent military is almost always better than a carrier based aviation.

Very true but even ordinary land based air power can be decisive against a force with no air power at all.

Denying your naval surface groups any air power makes them much weaker and much easier to attack without warning.

Of course this does not mean that Russia should use them to become another world policeman, just to defend its own interests and protect its trade.

This is not about Russia building 10 carrier groups to dominate the whole world at once like the US tries... this is about making the Pacific Fleet and the Northern Fleet global reach fleets that can look after themselves away from port.

Just to make an example, if I had to actively support the Libyan national army against the turkish backed GNA, and I had support of the neighbouring states, I would deploy them (as an example mig 29k and su25) either in Sidi barrani (west part of Egypt) or in Tunisia. Alternatively, Tobruk could also be a good choice.
Here I do not mean that Russia should intervene directly in Lybia, it is just an example.

I would agree, but the fundamental thing about Russian carriers is that they are not a delivery system for mobile air power... their primary purpose and primary use is to defend the ships they operate with from enemy interference above all else.

For the US their carriers are the strike core of their fleet and their AEGIS cruisers are there to protect their carriers.

For Russia, their carriers are there to protect their cruisers and destroyers and subs.

A few STOVLs would be enough to ID a threat before shooting it down.

For the cost of developing STOVL fighters it would be cheaper to just make bigger more capable better equipped carriers with decent fighters (Su-57).

they'll build them anyway, so why not use them as mini-carriers? their speed isn't that important- going a few knots slower &/ sending them ahead of time will keep the group together & under aircover at anytime.

They are helicopter landing ships they have specific roles and missions... making a few extra wont make them any cheaper, but having some you don't need is simply a waste of funds. Designing and making STOVL fighters for them will cost more than buying large carriers... a light 5th gen fighter with STOVL would cost billions of dollars and likely result in an aircraft inferior to the Su-57 that is already ready for production.

A few tweaks and it could be ready in 3-4 years.

It amazes me....people do not seem to understand planes are not nuclear powered....and that land-based fighter cannot follow ships out into the blue waters.

Indeed the problem is compounded... to keep a fighter flying around following ships means it would need dozens of inflight refuelling tankers each and most of the enormous fuel burn would go into keeping all those inflight refuelling tankers also flying continuously providing fuel to each other and the one fighter they support.

Within a month you would have spent more fuel on aircraft than it would cost to operate a carrier...

With new missiles like Zirkon (1000+km range), Kinzhal (2500+km range) and all the new ones like kalibr with 4000km range and new aircrafts like su-57 (1500km range) or pak da or tu-22M3M and their huge ranges you can cover pretty much all the oceans from few airbases around the world.

So friendly aircraft carriers are too vulnerable to make and send out into the open ocean but Backfires and PAK DAs can fly around willy nilly with no threat or risk at being shot down... and of course the obvious question... with these Su-57s and PAK DAs and Tu-22M3s distributed around the world to take on enemy naval power... when you sink a US carrier and they declare WWIII how many of those PAK DAs are going to manage to get back to Russia.... be refuelled and loaded up with strategic nuclear weapons and sent on their primary mission?

A carrier to be effective need to come at 1000km from its target and few tens of guided bombs to destroy just one airport effectively while it can be put out of action with just one hit.

Very few airfields around the planet will be behind so many layers of air defence as a Russian air craft carrier.

Just takes one shot to kill president Trump... and you'd think there would be a queue to do so yet so far no one has managed to do so... maybe it is not as easy as it appears.

Maybe that orange camo is more effective than it appears...

The Ulyanovsk was not cancelled due to military or doctrinal issues but due to the disintegration of the USSR so the idea is pretty old and has changed quite little in all this time. Carriers are needed because without airpower a fleet far from your own territory is toast, that's it.

They had realised that the Kuznetsov was too small and their final carrier needed to be bigger and fitted with catapults to allow proper AWACS operations... and that has not changed.

To be clear the UK had dinky little 20K ton carriers with VSTOL fighters during the Falklands war... so smaller is cheaper and you can save a lot of money by unifying the design of a helicopter carrier like the Hermes and a fixed wing VSTOL carrier design.... problem is that even the cash strapped UK navy well known for cutting budgets after every conflict decided their future lay in the use of the QEII... a ship very similar in size to the Kuznetsov... but then they are tied in to the F-35 programme so you would think they could have four 20K carriers instead of two 55K ton carriers because the F-35 is VSTOL... but it seems they think smaller carriers are not effective... just like the Russian Navy identified the Ulyanovsk as being the right size for them and their aircraft choices...

IMO future carriers are fairly small drone carriers, pretty much the size of current Russian LHDs under construction.

Yet the US, a leader in drone technology makes 100K ton Ford class carriers, and the french and brits and chinese all of which have drone programmes also seem to be making aircraft carriers that are rather too big for what you are suggesting...

The collapse of the INF treaty essentially means very long range scramjet powered missiles can be developed for surface and air launch platforms, so flight ranges can be dramatically increased simply the same way aircraft flight ranges can be increased simply by adding more fuel.

The problem isn't range... you could use ICBMs and have the missile range to hit any target on the planet any time you like... but even with conventional warheads to sink ships that is no substitute for an aircraft carrier in supporting friendly ships... your carrier has AWACS platforms in the air scanning for targets and threats and surprise attacks.... ICBMs can't do that... when targets are detected 100kms from your ships a flight of four fighters can be sent out to investigate and identify the target or targets and determine if they are a threat or not... missiles can't do that either... if the target turns out to be enemy your planes don't have to launch a single missile they can provide target data to the nearest Cruiser which can launch a volley of how ever many S-400 missiles are needed to deal with the problem... your aircraft can monitor the results and then return to the carrier with more aircraft sent out in their place to monitor the enemy recovering the pilots and sifting through the wreckage.