Future Russian Aircraft Carriers and Deck Aviation. #2

Frankly yak-141 already exists and if I'm not wrong they were already working on its stealthy replacement.

It exists in the sense that the Mi-28A existed in the late 1980s, but it has taken 20+ years of work and new technology to make it a good modern attack helicopter.

They didn't get it anywhere near operational capability with operational systems... did its radar even work?

If they use its blueprints and modify the airframe to make it a more stealthy fighter it will be a very good poabe to use on their heli carriers for a low cost.

Not low cost... you don't just place 6 planes on a deck and that is it... fully operational fighters... you need hangar space, you need spare parts pool and maintenance equipment and spare engines and other parts, and for what... in the light strike role the Ka-52K is going to be much better.

That like mig-29 --> mig-35 work. Nothing close to creating an all new plane.

The obvious difference is that the MiG-29 is a functional working fighter aircraft... something the Yak never was.

For the Kuznetsov they can just use mig-35 which is already navalized from the begining.

I totally agree but think of the implications of that.... in 10 years time you are going to have MiG-35s and either Su-33s upgraded to Su-35 level or perhaps a naval Su-57 model on your only fixed wing carrier so you want Russia to develop a 5th gen VSTOL fighter from an incomplete 4th gen VSTOL design that never entered service so you can have 12 aircraft.... 6 for each helicopter carrier?

How to make the most expensive aircraft every invented... and for what... when would they use a helicopter carrier but not a fixed wing aircraft carrier?

If you are desperate to get Air to air missiles in the air over your ships the Kuznetsov is there and if it isn't even the Ka-52K with its AESA radar should be able to spot low flying targets at reasonable distances allowing ships to take those targets out at extended ranges with their active radar homing missiles.

I'am totally for building a smaller carrier like the semi-catamaran one to gain experience and then build a bigger one. It would be ready at the same time as su-75 if they start it now.

If the catamaran design works there might be no need for a big one... if you can get the capacity of a 80-90K carrier into a 40-50K ton cat then by all means build the cats...

The reduced weight means less power for propulsion and more for other things... as long as you keep aircraft numbers up to useful levels and onboard bunkerage for aviation fuel and ammo and weapons a smaller carrier is OK.

The problem is when you think a mini carrier with 6 or 12 fighters might do the job and save money.

Anything can be overwhelmed but such a mini carrier is too easy to overwhelm and not too cheap for that to not matter too much.

The Yak-41 was about to be developed into a much stealthier version - the Yak-41M. They also had a STOL version planned - the Yak-43.

They have been talking about that for 30 years.... if you mean the Yak-43 with the NK-32 based engine.

The more realistic approach would be the Su-57K which is not much bigger than the Mig-35 and far superior.

Having two sized of fighters on deck makes as much sense as it does on land. Having big heavy long range fighters on a ship is useful because they have the fuel to get out to max range and can operate further from the ships... making those ships safer, but not all of your aircraft need to operate far away from your ship... smaller lighter shorter ranged aircraft defending your AWACS and operating over your ships is useful too and being smaller it means you can carry more aircraft.

The navy isn't a priority for them and won't put money for naval su-57.

Now that trade ties with the west are being cut by the west, they are going to have to look to the rest of the world for trade and cooperation so the navy wasn't a priority but is going to become more and more important as time moves on.

They have already mentioned a carrier version of the Su-57.

Su-75 on the other hand can be cheap enough for buying it and can even be bought for chinese and indians carriers.

The top priority for carrier based aircraft is never that they are cheap. They are never going to need thousands of these types.

Perhaps 500 at most if they build two more CVNs and that includes spares and land based training facility aircraft... so the price is always going to be higher than for a land based aircraft.

The Su-75K can surely be an option as well, but single engine aircraft are not always preferred for carrier operations.

The core things that killed the LCS and the Zumwalt and made the Ford a pain in the arse was that they were all full of brand new unproven technology with new ideas and way too much risk.

Of the 12 records two were the following: climb rate and maximum combat load for this type of the aircraft. Another record was a vertical take off for 12 kilometers! Anyway The Yak-41 exceeded all known parameters of the Harrier II by a country mile!

And the MiG-25 was faster than the F-15... does that make it superior overall... or only in some roles?

The Harrier was a fully operational fighter aircraft and also a ground attack type... the Yak is an unfinished idea of a plane...

On paper some of its features are impressive but it is a shiny tool looking for a role... turning helicopter carriers into fixed wing carriers is no great feat because there is a need for helicopter carriers and putting fighter planes on it detracts from that rather than improves it.

The Sea Harrier FA2 had the excellent Blue Vixen radar which is better than the APG-65 that was fitted in the AV-8B Plus variant. These together with the Sea Harrier FRS1 were the only radar equipped versions of the Harrier. All the GR variants as well as the AV8A and all other AV-8B's had no radar.

I know... the fighters had radar and the ground attack models didn't, while the multirole AV-8 didn't have the best radar.

The point is that in ground attack roles the Harrier was horribly vulnerable to MANPADS because the side mounted nozzles meant they could be targeted even by very old tail chasing missiles from most angles, and hovering is a death sentence for anything except landing or taking off... if you want to carry weapons and fuel then for landing only.

The Yak-41's were slated for the Phazotron S-41M Zhuk radar which was eventually fitted to the Mig-29SMT variant for example, which is very similar in performance to the Blue Vixen multi-mode radar. However as an example the Kh-31 missile is much faster than the British Sea Eagle and has longer legs as well. It is also a known fact that domestic radars are somewhat better performers than export versions.

But that is the point... any radar or missiles the Yak-41 might have come to use could be fitted to the MiG-29 too and it is cheaper and faster and already developed.

Why spend money and time and effort recreating a slightly inferior aircraft to do something you can already do.

I think I have mentioned it before but the Ka-52K has only 4 weapon pylons?

So the same number as the Yak...

Also I think it would be better to equip your spinning Ka-52KP interceptor with a mast mounted radar >>

It might, but as the Yak does not have 360 degree radar is it such a problem if their helicopters don't?

They should be able to hover at least up to 3-4km altitude so a pedal turn can cover any angle if needed.

The moment I will start to take seriously those models will be when the program of an on board AWACS plane will be taken out of nowhere.

For every ship made there will be dozens of models made because models are rather cheaper to make than the real thing... especially when the customer is never exactly sure of precisely what they want.

Almost there

So if they are jet powered and not turboprop powered which engine power range would they be needing... PD-14, PD-18... PD-35 with no cats

Yup, just needs a little scaling&detailing

The thing is that in 10 years time when they will be needed they might have new radar technology that is rather more compact and lower drag that could be incorporated into the leading and trailing edges of a flying wing body structure that is all radar and fuel.

if you take a look at Juan Carlos - it can embark troops in LHD role or only air wing in aircraft carrier role. I.e. anti sub helos/awacs and VSTOL. No contradictions here. It is called a universal ship. My bet is on something like that in the Russian case. Not of exact size or solutions but similar in a way of usage.

The makers of the helicopter carrier did mention other versions, but did not mention VSTOL fighter carrier.

Helicopter carrier/landing ship with naval infantry and their armour and landing ships and helicopters was what was ordered and he mentioned a ship with helicopters and drones presumably to support landing operations with more helicopters and lots of drones... presumably land and sea and sub sea and air based drones... and he also mentioned a hospital ship based on the design too.

Su-70 or alike would rather use a deck and catapult. as for other types - let's see how it goes

At about 20 tons with a single engine I would think the S-70 would need a rather powerful catapult to get airborne from a helicopter carrier, and I suspect it would be a bit wasteful having a catapult just to launch S-70s.

VSTOL aircraft don't use cats, so underpowered drones and heavy aircraft like AWACS planes would use them on bigger carriers, or standard fighters on mini carriers would need them, but the best solution is always a full sized carrier with full sized fighters.

For you, yes, for many admirals and navies they do have sense. Looks like they have no idea about their trade.

They tried VSTOL fighters... the non operational Yak-36, the Yak-38 and Yak-38M which were operational and a bloody disaster, and the Yak-41 which was cancelled.

Traditionally single engined aircraft are frowned upon and multi engined planes are preferred because you are reducing the chance of a crash, but with lift engines then you multiply the chance of a crash by adding engines that do not add redundancy.

Russian ship naming convention is not a pizza not everyone has to like it

But it basically means ship that carries aircraft... many corvettes and frigates and destroyers and cruisers could be named the same.

The cause was exceeding admissible vertical speed by landing, crash was effect not other way around.

But if an engine stall from hot air ingestion was the cause of the high descent rate then the problem is a fundamental design fault where the engine exhaust from the front lift engines need to be isolated from the main air intakes of the main jet engine.

Either that or greatly increase the volume the lift jets occupy and add a massive front fan with bypass air on top of them, or maybe just use one with an even bigger front fan to suck cold oxygen rich air and use that to generate thrust at the front with perhaps a thrust vector nozzle directing the hot turbojet core airflow away from the front of the aircraft... but that will make the aircraft fat and make keeping it supersonic pretty hard.

Like I keep saying... trying to make a VSTOL fighter supersonic is the core of the problem... not as bad as trying to make a helicopter supersonic but with similar problems.

However, on 3rd October 1989 test pilot Yakimov flying Yak-141 '77 White' exceeded the admissible descent speed during a vertical landing on the Admiral Gorshkov, which resulted in a crash. On impact the mainwheel struts punched through the fuel tanks and a massive fire ensued; the pilot ejected to safety but the aircraft was seriously damaged, never to fly again. "

We know he crashed the plane because he fell down too hard on the deck... the question is... do you believe the pilot quite a height above the deck shut down his engines by pushing them to idle throttle setting, or do you think hot air entered the main air intakes and stalled the engine.



Look for yourself.

If crash killed the programme and not money supply then Yak-44 / LFMS/LMFI were also crashing constantly.

Poor reasoning... fundamental problems with no easy obvious fix killed the Yak-41, so of course it was cancelled... they had to cancel most things because they had no money so cancel the problem aircraft first. The Yak-44 was an easy cancel too because the ships they were designed to operate from now belonged to the Ukraine who sold them to China.

And the LFMS/LMFI are ongoing programmes that were delayed while the PAK FA programme was completed and serial production started.

In your eyes but not in Russian admiralty and airforce. It has no worse characteristics but requires cheaper ships to be based on. Much cheaper.

No they aren't cheaper... the Russians want air defence carriers and a core component of that is AWACS platforms... smaller ships means helicopter based AEW platforms which lack the range and persistance of proper AWACS types. The helicopters are certainly better than nothing but are not cheaper than nothing and an AWACS platform is more useful than just AEW.

If it's worse than it wouldn't be considered in the first place. Here you have comparison characteristics of the MiG-29 original one with the Yak-141. They are pretty close. Range is better for Yak BTW Twisted Evil Twisted Evil Twisted Evil . Same radar and avionics.

The numbers for the Yak-41 are estimates and promises and with its small supersonic wing it would be rather less manouverable too.

Range is not important because the MiG-29K is not the heavy long range fighter... the Su-33 is.

I would also suggest that this was the MiG-29 that was being compared and not the MiG-29M the MiG-29K is based on in both versions of it.

funny Su-33 is being phased out,

Who said?

MiG-21 is dead for years and F-35 is on more and more ships instead and doing a much better job.

The F-35s cost more than the ship they operate on, and are still not fully operational with many problems still to be sorted out.

More importantly even if you fixed the Yak-41 and made it perfect right now how many are they going to make?

Two helicopter carriers and the K... so rather less than 200 and I am being super generous here... they wont make that many unless they are very realistic and anticipate attrition...

It would be Russias best effort to make the world most expensive fighter... but not the worlds most capable fighter of course.

Not prices but proportions are similar. Russians estimated the Shtorm unit cost 5 billions USD. Then small A/C shall be by rule of thumb 1/3

Apart from 100K ton models the Russian Navy has never mentioned any interest in aircraft carriers bigger than 70-80K tons, and more accurately they want carriers with that capacity, so a 40-50K ton ship with the same capacity would do just fine.

I provided numbers for proportions of price to build in the west

Useful for Russia if they ever decide to build something in orbit....

One big which is easier to eliminate than a couple of smaller ones.

So you are saying it is easier to sink a Nimitz class carrier than one of the Marines helicopter landing ships?

Really?

I would think having smaller ships would mean more cruisers and more destroyers would be needed to defend them, but if you are saving money on smaller carriers then it is unlikely you will get the extra number of cruisers and destroyers you need so in effect your smaller carriers will also have less support ships defending them... but somehow they are a harder nut to crack... right.

Even regular maintenance leaves you without aviation cover...

Maintenance on 6 medium ships will be more than maintenance on 2 big ones.

What's worse, big AC cannot be in the Far East and Atlantic and Indian oceans at the same time to keep fleets safe from, say pirates or support local wars.

Pirates have their own custom designed Corvette sized ship to deal with them... using a carrier group is drama queen bullshit... the sort of thing the US or UK or France would do.

In the case of a local war the aircraft carrier will be sent along with the cruisers and destroyers that support them.

If there are hundreds of wars then they will need to prioritise... sending a mini carrier to 3 different places will lead to management and support issues that will make them all vulnerable to being sunk.

So basically close to useless for far sea support actions. So basically a big expensive toy just for showing off.

What country is going to trade with Russia if Russia has corvettes and frigates only.... what should Russia say when US carriers arrive off the coast of Venezuela for an "exercise"... what does Russia do when landing ships arrive and regime change is talked about openly in the international press.

Russia is no alternative if they don't have the naval power to back up their words... and they don't need to come over and sink the US carrier... but they do need to send some naval force for their own exercises with Venezuela... a carrier would not be critical, but it might make the difference between some country having a go, or not.

A carrier wont make the Russian Navy safe, but it suggests to any enemy wanting to **** with them that they will pay a serious price and any attempt at attack will cost them dearly.

How many small ones were sunk in this millenium?

Which just goes to show how safe they are in peace time... and that is what they are for... peace time.

They are guaranteed access to international waters, which a more globally focused Russia needs access to.

then tell me please in how many places can there be only one big ship in the Russian navy at the same time? Or the Russian merchant fleet is going to sail only in one place?

The existence of a Russian carrier means it can be sent where it is needed... when the Argentinians invaded the Falklands the British didn't arrive the next day with an armata of ships. When Saddam invaded Kuwaite the US fleet took 6 months to shift all the tanks and crap they needed for Desert Storm to happen.

The purpose of an aircraft carrier is to protect your major ships which operate in groups... they will never have enough ships to police the entire worlds oceans or act as bodyguard to every Russian ship around the world.

The US doesn't even do that.

And if there's a global conflict how can one Russian Ac fight with 3-4 US ones? only to heroically die as Japs fleet in IIWW ?

If there is a global conflict right now Russian ships will immediately head for the nearest safe port and their subs will likely deploy so they don't get trapped in port and the attack subs can go hunting their western equivalents and protect friendly vessels in the process.

The Kuznetsov will operate with upgraded Kirovs with up to 80 Zircon missiles ready to fire... how effective will 6 US carrier groups be once all their AEGIS cruisers and the carriers are all sunk or burning?

The system is built around the Zhuk multi-mode airborne radar with a slotted antenna array (modification M002). This radar station is similar to the radar of the MiG-29M fighter , but has smaller overall dimensions

Smaller and lighter radar than used on the MiG-29.

That's avionics now armament

Smaller and lighter means reduced performance... a bigger radar has better performance than a reduced weight more compact design model.

Anything improved they could fit in the Yak-41 they could put in a new model MiG-29K... the current model radar in the current MiGs is better than anything they had in the 1990s for the Yak.

That's avionics now armament - AAM R-77/ R-27 and R-73 same as MiG-29+ 5th node under belly for fuel tank

there was never a belly position for weapons or any pylons... the airflow under the belly is critical... and hot.

Two weapon pylons on each wing... that is the weapon load out.

Payload Yak -2600kg

On four wing pylons the heaviest load it could possibly carry would be four 500kg bombs for 2 tons total.

Mig-29K has a payload of 4.5 tons on 8 weapon pylons.

http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/aerospace-systems/fighters/mig-29k-kub/

That's why IMHO Russians started working on V/STOL fighters for the sake of rolling starts. Has the landing been vertical ? not really , like has Su-57 always gone up almost vertically? I have found info about testing external weapons during vertical landing but never find anything that was unsuccessful. Did you find anything like that in real sources?

You have it arse about... aircraft that have their takeoff assisted... either through thrust vectoring and rolling takeoffs or via catapult launch get airborne with more weight than they are able to safely land with. Most airliners are the same... their MTOW is higher than the landing weight.

Most VSTOL fighter do land vertically... they approach from behind at a forward speed slightly faster than the ship but once they are over the ship they lower their throttle and land near vertically.

ok you might be like an Amish against technology progress. Your right but not necessarily it is a must follow for the Russian military.

The thing is that the technology is not there yet... they need a decent breakthrough before a complex and expensive and fragile VSTOL fighter makes more sense than a more conventional type with better performance all round and more solid simpler development and serial production.

Yak-201

Maybe extend the air intakes all the way to the nose so there is less chance of exhaust air ingestion... maybe a design decision to make it subsonic only which means you can have some real fun like forward swept wings with serious forward sweep that allows the wing tips to be in front of the cg so wingtip mounted lift jet engines that can pivot back and be used in forward flight too so they are not dead weight... you could angle them forward but also outward so the exhaust does not accumulate below the aircraft and rise up into the main engine intakes... the main engines at the rear could be angled backwards slightly to compensate for teh slightly forward angle of the wing tip engines meaning no super hot airflow over the belly of the aircraft... fully articulated nozzles on the wingtip and main engines allow good control without internal high pressure air for puffer jets in the tail, nose, and wingtips.

Maybe even make the wingtip jets electric and take power from two main engines at the rear so you just need power to the wingtips which could also feed ESM sensors there too... so no fuel lines needed to the wingtips.

Yes the Mig-25P/D was superiour to the F-15 in its intended role - as an interceptor.

In speed only... most other aspects it was inferior... obviously because it is not an air superiority fighter.

The MiG was also a better high speed high altitude bomber and recon platform, roles for which the F-15 was not used.

Although the US initially thought the Mig-25 was an air superiority fighter, Viktor Belenko's defection changed all that.

They decided to essentially build their own MiG-25 with superior American technology and know how, confident that superior American skills would result in a much better aircraft.

In a few areas they succeeded, but they missed the point of what the aircraft was for... they should be thanking the Soviets for the basic layout that they copied.

The Russian Navy will likely take another peak at a Yak VTOL simply because it can take off and land on a Pr.23900 Ivan Rogov carrier - the Mig-29 can't. Simple as that.

Carrying a dozen VSTOL fighters on one or two helicopter carriers is a dreadful waste of money and time... it would be incredibly stupid to try to squeeze and air defence carriers capacity onto a helicopter carrier/landing ship... the most obvious reason being no AWACS platform could operate from such a small vessel and the purpose of making air defence carriers 70-90K tons is numbers of aircraft but also decent AWACS platform.

A decent air defence carrier costs money... trying to do it on the cheap actually costs more money than you are actually saving... a VSTOL fighter programme for a 5th gen fighter is going to cost 20 billion plus and those planes are going to be eye wateringly expensive if you only have helicopter carriers to put them on... maybe 6 aircraft per carrier... your air coverage is going to be worse than the Ukraines current air coverage... but VSTOL fighters are not cheap and they tend to crash more often on average than more conventional platforms.

It is known that Yak is currently working on a new VTOL - so who knows?

Of course they are... that is their area of speciality, but just because they are working on them does not mean the Russian military has to pay for it.

In the end they might just opt for UAV's or both? Fact is the Mig-29 won't be an option.

Sabotaging their helicopter landing ships by forcing them to reduce their performance capacity to carry aircraft is just stupid and is a waste of a helicopter carrier... but having said that if they develop EMALS cats for launching heavy drones I don't see why they couldn't launch MiG-35s from those vessels with EMALS cats assistance.

The core problem will be they will have to rely on the Ka-31/35 AEW helicopter for situational awareness, which makes them as weak as the mini carriers the British used in the Falklands war.

Actually the Yak-41 has 5 >>>

According to that it can only be used for an external fuel tank... weapons cannot be loaded there because of the heat of the engine exhaust hitting the belly of the aircraft during vertical landing and vertical takeoffs.

Have never seen an actual aircraft of that type fitted with any pylon on its belly because of the effect on airflow under the aircraft.

But even assuming it can use it for an external fuel tank... whippee... they have Ka-52Ks ready for service right now which can carry all those ordinance options now (minus the centreline fuel tank) and those helicopter carriers are already going to be carrying those Ka-52Ks anyway as their ground attack platforms... so what does spending billions on maybe a half dozen VSTOL fighters actually achieve... except pissing away funding to get a capability they already have in the form of MiGs and soon improved Sukois (Su-57 navalised version confirmed being developed).

A small and large fighter makes sense because reach and speed with the heavy fighter and numbers with the smaller aircraft to operate closer to the ships they are defending makes sense and reduces costs.

Spending 20 billion to get a Failed F-35B wannabe... how many helicopter carriers do you think they are going to be making... AFAIK the standard plan was four... two for the northern fleet and two for the Pacific fleet with one each as a helicopter and naval infantry carrier with helicopters and armour and naval infantry troops, while the other is a support carrier with helicopters and drones... to support landings.

That means if you want them on the drone ships that is maybe a total of 12 aircraft for your fleet?

Too expensive and fragile for land use... most places there are motorways any of their conventional aircraft can operate from.

As I've mentioned somewhere before I would simply use a dedicated AWACS and let the Yak-41 and the Ka-52 do its intended job.
The Yak-41 as a multi-role fighter and the Ka-52 as an attack helicopter.

I would agree... except that the naval Ka-52K has an AESA radar optimised for air to air as well as air to ground use... the size of the antenna you could fit above the rotor on a helicopter is not really AWACS standard, but the nose of the Ka-52K and having a cm wave radar AESA means it should be able to detect targets out to very reasonable distances.

If you spend billions to make a VSTOL fighter then you might get half a dozen fighters on a helicopter carrier... their current design Ivan Rogov type can carry 20 helicopters... half of which will be transports most likely but also half will be attack helicopters with air to air capacity too... and they will already be on board.

If you want VSTOL fighters you probably lose your 10 attack helicopters to get 6 fighter jets on board... and that chart showing its ordinance is not impressive.

Not quite sure what you're trying to say here but the screenshot of those AWACS are from the Storm carrier model which is supposed to have EMALS. They are quite small as well compared to the old Yak-44 if you can go by the Su-57K models on the ship >>

All of their AWACS options have been big enough to require cat launches... I am just speculating on the power level of those engines to get airborne safely.

The Ka-31s are not AWACS, only AEW.

While battling the designed threats, that would be a very effective combination, but as time goes by, Muricans changed their whole tactics.
Instead of going higher and faster, they went low&slow to make themselves covered.

Could argue that the MiG-25 and MiG-31 and of course S-200, S-300 etc led to them realising speed wont get them through and the shift from subsonic to mach 1.5 is expensive... from 1.5 to 2 is even more so, and to mach 3 is very very expensive... but in practical terms not any safer.

So the Soviets redesigned the whole system, changing the radar suite for Saphir-25 and adding a IRST, and modernizing R-40 plus making a IR guided version. It was again highly effective combination, as it could work down to 50 m and even higher than Smerch. R-40T was extremely useful for hitting high flying targets.

The R-40T was available at the start... and the TD model was valuable because it was designed to fly at high supersonic speeds so it was actually used on the MiG-31 because although the MiG-31 could carry the R-60MK to shoot down cruise missiles the MiG could not fly great distances at very high speeds while carrying the R-60s because they were not heat resistant enough. There was no IR version of the R-33 or R-37 so they just kept using the R-40TD.

An enormous advantage of the R-40TD is that with the IRST fitted to the MiG-25 and MiG-31 they could actually detect and lock an SR-71 flying at mach 3 at greater distances than the earliest MiG-25s could detect them with their radar.

The very high speed of the SR-71 meant they glowed brightly in IR and could be engaged head on from a significant distance with R-40TDs which could be carried around at any speed the launch platform wanted to fly at without problems.

Your problem GarryB is that you compare a 90kt carrier ith 60 su-57K to a small heli carrier with 6 yak 141.

But that is the point... if they go for the cheap option they will get cheap... meaning only 2-3 carriers at best and they will have to be all used together to create a decent capability which might make their operational costs comparable to a much bigger carrier with much better performance.

We don't see France making Mistrals into CdG replacements do we?

The countries that use the small carriers are quite frankly countries that never expect to actually use them on their own... they will have allies with big carriers to fill the space they create.

The Soviets and the British tried mini carriers and they were awful... and not exactly cheap either.

Yes the carrier is better but it doesn't exists and russians have no intention of building one soon. The admiral in chief already said that. On the opposite helicopter carriers are being built.

The amount of time it will take to build enough ships like Destroyers and Cruisers and Frigates there is no rush... they have a decent fixed wing carrier... screwing up the new Helicopter carrier designs to put bullshit expensive halfbreeds on them is just a waste of money and time...

Carrier groups are not spur of the moment things... the UK carrier group that went to the Malvinas took 6 months to sort out and set up before it sailed... if their carriers had been in dry docks do you think they would have just given up?

If they had their previous gen carriers with Phantoms and Buccaneers and proper AWACS platforms things would have been much much easier and they likely would not have lost so many ships.

The Kuznetsov last time it was used, carried 4 mig-29k and some ka-52 and since then it is in shipyard. I wouldn't count on that ship and they have just one.

How many carriers does France have?

It was tested in a combat situation, but it was just a test... the conflict did not hinge on its performance, and they found some useful things and got some valuable experience too.

Its primary air search capacity is Ka-31 based which is better than nothing but not as good as a decent AWACS... the Ka-31 is AEW only.

Having 4-8 helicopter carriers with each 6-10 Vtol yak gives you a big advantage over any enemy in that you have supersonic jets with good radar that can spot ships 300km away and launch future hypersoniv small missiles. It can also be used to do SEAD and protect your airspace.

Even if they built 8 Ivan Rogov class carriers half of them will likely be used in their intended role of landing ships with armour and naval infantry and helicopters. two more of them will likely be drone carriers with helicopters and drones and possibly oriented for support and hospital functions... that would leave two carriers... so being super generous a total of 20 VSTOL fighters are required... hand made from gold perhaps?

What could they achieve that a Ka-52K cannot already do at a fraction of the cost and available now.

Being able to attack first is way better than relying on air defence systems on a ship moving 20km/h.

What you are not getting is that a Russian carrier is going to be operating with ships carrying the equivalent of S-500, S-400, S-350, BUK, Panstir, TOR, etc etc etc..

If there are enemy planes 400km away from the ships the Ka-52K just needs to get airborne and climb 4km vertically and use its AESA radar to detect those enemy planes and any missiles they might have already launched and pass that target data to the ships it is operating with... the 9M96 in it larger model has a range of 150km and is ARH so the target could be 1m above the wave tops and it can still hit it from 150km away... as long as it knows where the target is as it approaches it will start looking for itself and find the target and engage it.

But vehicles on a landing ship should be there to support a landing... helicopters (transport and attack) and landing ships to deliver armour to shore as well as soldiers and that armour. Taking off useful stuff to put some planes you might need 20 of in total is incredibly wasteful... criminally wasteful.

And they have already said they are making a carrier version of the Su-57 which means big carriers... two or maybe four, but with cats to launch AWACS platforms means there is zero need for VSTOL fighters.

Those landing ships might have cat launchers too for heavy drones like maybe S-70 so fighters are even less useful.

We also know that Sevmash is capable of constructing large aircraft carriers if they want to. Maybe in a year or two the Nikolayev shipyard might be up and running as well? Now if you throw the Varan concept and the Ivan Rogov's into the mix you will have an excellent Blue Water Navy - pretty soon.

Russia knows it cannot rely on the good will of the west to access the globe via the seas, but I suspect they will expand and upgrade most of their shipyards as they can because it is not just carriers... they need destroyers and cruisers and more frigates and corvettes and the civilian fleet needs various oil and gas and cargo carriers to get some independence from the west too...

They are making the Ivan Rogov class, so if you want to go down the Varan pathway I would think it would make more sense to use the already in production Ivan Rogov as the base model for a helicopter landing ship, a hospital ship, a cargo carrier etc etc etc.

Personally I hope they seriously look at multihull designs that have increased deck and hangar space with minimal max weight... the navy has already said the K is too small and that a 70-90K ton ship would be more useful...

This "high capacity shipyard" is Zvezda.
In the meaning of a whole cluster that includes ex-navy repair facility that is a part of it.
Nobody will build a new shipyard there I guess, as the existing one is a monster.

The actual shipyard there for making 350K ships is a monster but will be busy with oil tankers and gas tankers and cargo ships for quite some time... having more huge shipyards just makes sense so aircraft carriers as well as destroyer and cruiser sized ships can be built in numbers, while smaller yards build frigates and corvettes.

The boss of the navy said there are no plans for now to buy one.

They need ships to operate with it first...

Even if they order one today it would need at least 15 years to have it. Then another 2 or 3 years of testing.

I think they could probably do it in 12 years... the shipyards they would be building it in are designed by South Korea, who know a thing or three about ship building.

They would likely build two at a time just for efficiency reasons.

The projects showed were just fantasy design made by the design bureaus. First step is the navy that makes a list of its wishes for the ship then they start designing various designs then they order it officially then they build it , then they receieve it then they test it abd rework what's wrong...

They have been doing that for the last 30 years... we really don't know what stage they are at with any of their new ships and they wouldn't tell us either way.

If you look closely at the Lamantin carrier it is basically a modernized Ulyanovsk - which means they obviously have the blue prints - saving a lot of time and money - not to mention pain again.

The failure of the LCS and Zumwalt and the problems with the Ford was too much new unproven stuff they expected to just fit and it would all work.

Any design is complex and there are interactions between parts that make things even more complex... what they should have done was take the last Nimitz class ship they made and fit it with an experimental EMALS cat... with the Zumwalt they should have made a standard calibre gun that fires already used standard ammo and then started to improve the design and expand its range and performance in a way that could be applied to existing guns on ships and on land so as it improved all their guns improved... which means you could afford to spend billions on it because the effect will be huge.

Honestly don't know what they were thinking with the LCS....

There is no information about the plan to build a new shipyard or expand Zviezda? It would be interesting especially that Zviezda builds civilian units and has a lot of orders, so he probably won't switch to military production.

It was built with the expectation that it could build large military ships later on down the line, but its order books are packed and with no Russian competition for such orders that is unlikely to change any time soon... so other shipyards are to be upgraded.

look at that VSTOL fighter and EM catapult

That article does not mention VSTOL fighters... only EMAL cats... and the two testing sites... the original and the Russian version built after Kiev denied Russia access to the original Soviet site.