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CaptainCrunch · 11-09-2024, 11:42 AM

Soviet/Russian Aircraft Carriers.

I’m always utterly fascinated by Soviet/Russian Naval doctrine and ship design. They do things differently. While other Navies design ships for specific roles, the Russians prefer a mixed and brute force approach. In Russia a Carrier will act as a cruiser, a anti-submarine platform and a carrier.

The Russian’s have also been plagued by serious design flaws and issues with quality control. Their ships and submarines usually seem to have major and devastating technical flaws. From the myriads of problems with the Kuznetsov, to the Kursk accident, the Soviets seem to have issues. This also can be attributed to a poorly thought-out conscription system that leads to poor crew training and discipline among the ranks.

I wanted to look at a specific part of Russian Naval doctrine built around Aircraft carriers. Outside of their submarine fleets, The Russians have designed their navy mainly around shoreline defense of the motherland, with occasional forays into deep waters. However, the Russians did not build a Navy that was designed to project power in the same way that the American’s do, or that the Chinese are moving to.

With that in mind, the Russians did play with the concept of Aircraft carriers and were late players to the game. The Russian designs have evolved over time from what could be generously classed as aircraft carrying cruisers right up to their own concept of a fleet carrier, and the Russian continue to look at designing and building a next generation super carrier of their own.

So, the final question is, why do the Russians continue to want to add carriers to their fleet. Beyond the ability to project power, A Aircraft carrier is almost a requirement for a modern Navy and brings with it a certain amount of prestige. Let’s face facts, despite Russia’s victories in WW2 and in the war against Napoleon, Russia’s military history in the last 200 or so years has had more losses than victory. From the thrashing of the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima by the Japanese to the failure and collapse of the Russian Army in WW1, to Afghanistan to their current war in Ukraine, the Russians don’t seem to win that often. Russia also seems to have an inferiority complex, especially when it comes to Western Powers, because of this there is a certain amount of overcompensation when it comes to the Military, so having a aircraft carrier goes towards feeling better about themselves.

Since 1967, The Russian’s have had 5 classes of ships capable of carrying fixed wing aircraft, they are also looking at a new design of Super Carrier in the Project 23000E which as of me writing this is still hanging in Limbo. We want to take a closer look at the life of each of these classes.

From time to time, I might refer to the Russians as Klingons, the thought comes from the Federation always trying to figure out how the Klingons think in Star Trek because their thought process is so different. The Russian’s when it comes to Naval doctrine and tactics are very Klingon.

The first attempt, Moskva

One thing that I’ve always said about the Russian designers is that they build beautiful looking naval vessels and fighter planes. They manage to give their designs a rakish intimidating look. Sure, they might be failures more due to quality control, but they’re pretty much museum pieces.

But those designers took the day off when it came to the Moskva class of helicopter carriers. There is nothing pretty about this early helicopter carrier. While the Moskva wasn’t really an aircraft carrier it was an early experimentation in Naval Aviation for the Soviets.

This initial class of 3 ships was designed primarily to defend the Soviet coast and Soviet Naval formations from early Western Nuclear Submarines. It also became a key part of Soviet Naval Doctrine. In the event of a war, the Soviets would scramble their Ballistic Missile Submarines to Northern Sea Bastians and use the Moskva to defend these Strategic assets. This would free the Soviets to surge their Attack Boats into the Atlantic to cut off NATO Convoys.

The three ships were ordered by Admiral Gorshkov the head of the Soviet Navy who was responsible for the massive expansion of the Soviet Navy in the cold war, and designed as command ships of anti-submarine formations, 3 ships were laid down but only two ships were built. The first named Moskva entered service in 1967, and the second named Leningrad sailed in 1968.

The Moskva which did not carry any fixed wing aircraft had a flight wing of either 18 Kamov KA-25 or 18 MI-8 Naval anti-submarine helicopters.

With the Moskva the Klingon effect hadn’t taken over the Russian Military design bureau, where ships could perform multiple missions, she was primarily armed as a ASW platform with limited air defense. She carried 2 x twin SA-N-2 SAM launchers, 2 twin 57 mm guns, a single launcher for a FRAS-1 Anti Submarine missile, 2 RBU 60000ASW Rockets, 10 553 mm Torpedo tubes and 2 decoy launchers.

From a performance perspective, there were some serious design flaws, its 2 steam turbines were under powered and because of that she was slow with a maximum speed of 30 knots, her hull design was notoriously bad in rough seas, and her crew of up to 850 men and officers could only stay at sea for 16 days.

Despite its flaws, the Moskva class cruisers were ideal command ships, and could protect themselves, the Moskva acted as the command ship of the Black Sea Fleet.

However their life was short by naval standards, and the Moskva was scrapped in 1997 and the Leningrad in 1968. The Soviets were about to take a large leap into Carrier Aviation with the new Kiev class of Carriers.

And this is where the Klingon design philosophy comes into play.

The Kiev Class

After the experimentation of the Moskva class the Soviets decided that they needed to create their own class of fixed wing carriers, something that they lacked. For the Soviets to transition from what is nicely called a frigate navy to a true-blue water navy with power projection capabilities, they needed to apply the lessons that they’d learned in the past from the Moskva class and the British and American carrier programs.

The Kiev carrier was more defined as an Aircraft carrying cruiser but could generously be called an escort carrier.

Admiral Sergei Gorshikov had spent a lot of time and energy focusing on the construction of a well-balanced navy that could theoretically project power into the third world, at the forefront of his vision was the construction of ballistic missile submarines. However, the Cuban missile crisis exposed what could be argued as a fatal flaw in Soviet Naval strategies. They lacked the long-range striking power and ability to challenge US carriers that could have confronted the US Naval blockade. The US dramatic leap forward in terms of ballistic missile technology including the Sub launch Trident C-3 meant that the Soviet Navy needed the assets to be able to challenge the US navy further out to sea to protect the motherland.

Gorshikov needed a platform that could perform multiple roles, it needed to be a strong sub hunter, be able to project power and confront and destroy Aircraft carriers. While this was an interesting concept on paper, it ignored traditional naval doctrine and became a symbol of the Klingon thought process of Soviet naval strategists while they have one platform attempting to do a lot of different things and not being able to do one thing well. It also created what could be generously called a Frankenstein carrier.

Laid down in 1970, there were a total of 4 ships in the Kiev class with the first ship the Kiev being launched in 1972 and commissioned in 1975. Originally the Navy wanted to build something that would have resembled the Kitty Hawk class of conventional carriers, instead they settled on a smaller design that seemed like some mad scientists had mashed two different types of ships together.

The front end of the ship resembled a traditional Cruisers and carried an overwhelming amount of offensive weaponry, the first two ships in this class carried:

4 twin P500 Bazait SSM missiles carrying 8 missiles. The Bazait was designated as the SS-N-3 Shaddock had a range of 550 km’s and flew at a speed of faster than Mach 3 and carried a massive 1-ton warhead and was designed as a carrier killer.

72 SA-N-3 Goblet intermediate range SAMs
40 OSA short range Sams
2 76 mm air defense guns.
9 CIWS
10 21-inch torpedo tubes
1 1 FRAS Anti-Submarine Rocket launchers.

The back end of the Kiev was the carrier section and designed to host a carrier air wing of 12 YAK-38 Forger STOL fighters and 16 anti-submarine helicopters.

To understand the interesting design choice, we need to pause for a second to look at modern carrier doctrine. The United States views a carrier as a strategic asset and not a tactical asset. A US Aircraft carrier’s main weapon is a fighter wing of 80 strike aircraft who can project power and created a exclusive zone of operations. Because of this doctrine, an aircraft carrier is heavily protected by its battle group made up of specialized warships and submarines to protect the carrier from air, surface and sub surface attacks. A Supercarrier is not a strong sub hunter, nor is it a missile boat. It launches aircraft and is one of the safest ships in the Navy.

The Kiev class on the other hand is treated as a tactical asset. It is designed to be able to hunt submarines, directly attack surface ships. Go after American carriers with its Surface to air missiles and protect itself from air threats and launch limited strikes with its combination of Sam and fixed wing aircraft. It also is designed to augment its escorts instead of completely depending on its escorts for protection and offensive fire power.

Despite that and because of the design of the class where they packed a ton of weapons into its hull it limited the size of its air wing to a single squadron of single mission aircraft. It goes to the theory of trying to master all and not being good at any.

As an interesting note the Kiev was designed with Black Sea duties in mind, and it was designated as a heavy cruiser which allowed it to pass through the Turkish Straits because the 1936 Montreux Convention prohibiting aircraft carriers of greater then 15,000 tons from passing through the Straits.

In total 4 vessels were built, the Kiev was the first followed by the Minsk and the Novorossiysk, the class went through a redesign and the 4th vessel the Admiral Gorshkov was part of a subclass called the Baki class which had a slightly different weapons load.

Fate was cruel to the Kiev class, with the breakup of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation ended up with 4 ships that they couldn’t afford to maintain, what made things worse is that the Nikolayev Shipyards, the only Soviet shipyard capable of maintaining these huge ships was now property of Ukraine.

With a Russian Federation that suddenly didn’t have the money or facility to maintain these ships, it was decided that they should be retired.

The Kiev and Minsk were sold to a Chinese company, the Kiev was converted to a hotel in Tianjin, but before it was converted the Chinese studied it as part of their interest in carrier construction. The Minsk because a museum piece in in Jiangsu. The Novorossiysk was broken up for scrap. The interesting story was that the Admiral Gorshkov was sold to India in one of the great money grabs by the cash poor Russians. The Indians removed the offensive weaponry from the bow of the ship, and they replaced it with a traditional ski jump launching system. They doubled the size of the airwing using the excellent Mig 29K multi-role fighter and renamed it as the INS Vikramadtya, which continues to serve the Indian Navy today.

Yak-38 Forger

If we’re going to look at the Kiev class of carrier its important to take a quick look at the Yak 38 Forger which was specifically designed to serve as its carrier strike class.

The Yak-38 was the first carrier based fixed wing aircraft that the Soviet Union developed and its first and only attempt at a VTOL naval based aircraft.

When the Soviet Navy requested that the Yakolev Design Bureau submit a design for a naval strike carrier, they asked for a light weight, supersonic, easy to fly, VTOL aircraft. In every aspect what they wanted was an aircraft that reflected the predecessor of the Hawker Harrier which was the P1154.

However issues came right from the start, it was decided that making a super sonic VTOL fighter was too difficult and they instead created a sub-Mach 1 fighter. While the Hawker version used one engine with controllable variable nozzles. The Forger used three engine, one vertical thrust engine in the back and two downward facing engines in the front, this created a heavier fighter, with poor range performance and a difficult to fly fighter. There was so little trust in the design that they installed a automatic ejection system that would fire the pilot out if the aircraft rolled past 60 degrees on take off.

What the Russian’s got was a poor performance aircraft, it had a max speed of Mach .95, it had a range of 810 miles, a service ceiling of 36,000 feet, it had 4 hardpoints with a capacity of 4400 lbs. It had no radar. Just to make a comparison, the most common carrier aircraft in the US navy was the F-14 Tomcat which had a speed of Mach 2.35, a range of 1800 miles, a service ceiling of 53,000 feet and had 10 hardpoints with a capacity of 14,500 pounds.

The Yak served in until the mid 1980’s seeing service with the Soviet Navy and seeing limited user in Afghanistan. It was, frankly, too slow, too lightly armed and too limited to be an effective combat threat. While the Harrier had a long and distinguished career and served in multiple navies and militaries around the world. Nobody can think of a good thing to say about the Forger.

The Soviet Navy was about to take a generational step forward In Naval Aviation, using the lessons learned by the Kiev class, and it would eventually become one of the most embarrassing chapters in Soviet and Russian Naval history.

The Kuznetsov Class

The Soviets first attempt at a full sized dedicated fixed win aircraft would eventually become one of the biggest misfires in Naval design history, expose the fact that while the Soviet/Russian Navy might be able to build them but don’t know how to maintain them, and lead to the rise of Chinese power protection.

While the Kuznetsov was designed to be a generational leap forward in Soviet power projection concepts, poor design decisions, poor technology choices and a Klingon viewpoint led to disaster after disaster making experts think that there was a for real curse on this ship.

Once again designated as a heavy aircraft cruiser to get around that pesky Montreux Convention, the Kuznetsov class was to be a class of three ships and was built on the frame of the Kiev class carrier. It was designed to be a primary ASW platform with an anti-carrier capability and carry a larger wing of more capable fixed wing aircraft.

In 1978, the Soviets were building the Kiev class carriers, but with the Soviets love of subclasses like the Bakut subclass of the Kiev class, they envisioned a 5th Kiev class as coming with catapults and arresting gear which would nicely get them away from the horrible Forger fighter. In other words, the Soviets wanted a more traditional Catapult and Barrier carrier.

In 1980 however after a review of the defense ministry, it was decided that this subclass would be too heavy and slow, and too expensive for what was becoming a cash poor Soviet Union, so the requirements of the Catapult were removed and replaced with the typical Ski Jump ramp.

This larger “Kiev” was to feature a greatly expanded flight wing, instead of 12 aircraft and 12 helicopter, the Air Wing was to be composed of 33 Fixed Wing Aircraft, composed of the Mig 29K and Sukhoi SU 33’s, and a dozen KA-27 ASW helicopters or KA-52K attack helicopters.

Once again though Soviet designers couldn’t decide on if they were building a carrier, or a offensive cruiser and basically smashed the two different concepts together like an angry kid with Lego. They placed a dozen SS-N-19 Shipwreck surface to surface missiles. 200 Kinzil SAMS and a UDAV ASW torpedo rocket launcher.

The biggest issue with the Kuznetsov design was at its heart with its propulsion plant, it was decided to continue to use a Mazut burning steam turbines. Mazut is known for its high energy output, however you can easily tell when a ship is burning Mazut by the cloud of black soot trailing the ship, and its murderous on a poorly maintained boiler, to continue to use Mazut there needs to be a high degree of maintenance which the Russian Navy is poor at. This propulsion decision led to not only endurance problems as the Kuznetsov can realistically stay at sea for 45 days, but it led to fires and environmental accidents.

The first ship of the lass originally named the Riga, then the Brezhnev and finally the Kuznetsov was laid down in 1982 and underwent a long construction period due to funding issues. However more issues rose, and the story of the Kuznetsov reads like a script from a grand theft auto game. Built at the Nikolayev shipyard, the ship was completed in 1989. However, the fall of the Soviet Union, the attempted coup attempts by the Russian Military, and the declaration of independence by Ukraine led to a tense situation as Ukraine declared ownership of the Kiev and ordered it to stay in port. This led to the Deputy of the Russian Northern Fleet Yuri Ustimenko to fly down to the Ukraine, and he basically stole the carrier and sailed it to Vidyayevo so it could remain with the Soviet Fleet.

Kuznetsov became fully operational in 1995 and was deployed to the Mediterranean with a limited air wing in time to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian Navy. This cruise also started the cascading failures, as the evaporators that provided fresh water and drinking water to the crew broke down leading to severe water rationing.

The Kuznetsov returned home for repairs and a refit that was delayed for 2 years due to a lack of funds, but she eventually returned to sea in 2000, but its triumphant return to international duty was delayed due to the sinking of the Kursk and the Kuznetsov participated in the search and salvage operation, but further operations were cancelled due to the investigation and reform attempts of the Russian Navy and the Kuznetsov sat inactive for 5 years. Disaster continued to follow the carrier as during her triumphant return to operations a SU-33 fell off the deck.

In 2007, the Kuznetsov returned to sea in a truly disastrous fashion, while in the Med, a small fire broke out that led to the death of a crewmember, the cause of the fire was poor maintenance practices, and then in 2009, a burst pipe led to a massive oil spill while refueling off the coast of Ireland. Once again, the Kuznetsov returned to its dock with its tail between its legs.

Then in 2012 during a deployment to the Med, the Kuznetsov suffered what could be generously described as a catastrophic failure of its propulsion system, and it was towed back to port. From that point on, the Kuznetsov was not allowed to leave port without a tugboat accompanying it.

In 2013, despite cascading problems with the Kuznetsov and more time spend in repairs then at sea the Russian Government announced that they were expending the life of the carrier, whoops sorry heavy aircraft cruiser until 2030, far beyond its design limits.

In a rare war deployment in 2016, the Kuznetsov participated in strikes using SU-33’s against militants in Syria, and its mission was viewed as successful despite losing an aircraft due to a defective arrestor cable. With that it was decided that Kuznetsov would go through a extensive refit and repair cycle in Murmansk in 2017. She has never left port since then and has taken on the appearance of a rusted abandoned ship. However, this wasn’t the end of the curse of the Kuznetsov. In 2018 the floating drydocks servicing the carrier sank and sent a crane crashing through the flight deck. Due to not having a large enough drydock the Russians decided to take a year and a half to merge two dry docks, but poor maintenance and repair practices led to a major fire that killed 2 people and caused extensive damage. A second fire broke out in 2023, then when the Russians finally had their stuff together enough to get the ship into the franken dock bad weather delayed repair work for almost a year.

It was expected that the Kuznetsov would return to the sea in early 2024, but is seems like the repair and refit is years behind schedule and the question is, will it ever return to duty, its become too expensive and too obsolete, also with the Russian Navy’s failure in Ukraine, a change in the Russian submarine fleet to boats that can defend themselves against the West, and an emphasis on ground operations In Ukraine, it seems unlikely that the Kuznetsov will leave port except for a trip to a chop shop.

Mig-29k – an excellent, and probably one of the best designed fighters that the Soviets/Russians have ever produced. The 29K is a carrier based twin-engine all-weather fighters. Originally rolled out in the late 1970’s. Originally designed as a counter to the F-15 and the F-14, the Mig 29k has different avionics and heavier landing gear and an arrester hook. Currently the 29k continues to serve in the Russian Military and is the fighter of choice for the Indian Navies 2 carriers.

Sukhoi Su-33 – the naval variation of the venerable SU-27. It is a twin-engine Multirole fighter that was first rolled out in 1998.

We’ve talked a lot about the Kuznetsov, but what happened to the other ships in the class? The second ship in the class was laid down in 1985 in the Mykolaiv shipyards in the Ukraine. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the ship was barely 2/3rds completed; Ukraine ordered construction stopped as they claimed ownership of the hulk. Ukraine then put the ship up for auction, and it was purchased for 20 million dollars by a Chinese private conglomerate, who wanted to make it into a hotel. The west viewed this deal with a lot of suspicion as the Chong Lot the company that bought the hulk had no telephone office and no address and was run by former PLAN officers. The ship was towed to a dry dock in Dalian and refitted by the Chinese Navy as their first operational dedicated aircraft carrier, she was named the Liaoning and was designated as a type 01 class carrier. She was commissioned in 2012. The Liaoning was never meant to be anything but a proof-of-concept experimental carrier. Her whole idea was to learn about carrier aviation and use it as a test bed project and use those lessons to create a made in China version of a heavy carrier.

The Chinese then rolled out the type 002 carrier, the Shandong was commissioned in 2019, she is a enhanced made in China version of the Kuznetsov class, while she looks like her predecessor, she uses a conventional oil steam turbine proposal system instead of Mazut, she has none of the offensive punch of her predecessor carrying light defensive weapons and she focuses on air wing
operations.
The Future

In the 1988 the Soviet Navy laid down the keep of the next generation Ulyanovska class carrier, this represented a massive leap forward in carrier construction. This was to be a true super carrier featuring steam catapults and an air wing featuring 69 Mig-29k of SU-33s and 16 helicopters. And 4 nuclear power plants. She was 44% complete when the Soviet Union was collapsed follow by the collapse of the new Russian Navy. With a lack of funds, she was scrapped in 1991.

So, is there a future for Russian Aircraft carriers? There is a proposal for a new carrier designated as the Shtorm class which as of 2017 had been in development for 10 years and shows no signs of being laid down even though its still in the Russian’s state armament Programme. This carrier is rumored to be a nuclear powered Stobar carrier with a capability of carrying up to 100 fighters in its air wing.

However, a lack of funds, a shifting priority to the modernization of the Russian Navy’s subs and surface ships, and a technology embargo due to the war in Ukraine that has strangled the Russian’s access to high tech components that they have killed will probably doom this project.

Every modern Navy wants to have carriers, they are the best political expression of power projections. Even countries that have a relatively small Military Budget have joined the carrier club. The British recently built two Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers. Japan has recently joined the carrier club thanks to the flexibility of the F-35C variant. China continues to learn and build new carriers as their type 003 is currently reaching the end of its construction, and of course there are the Americans’ the king of the Carrier class.

Will Russia rejoin the Carrier club; it doesn’t look likely even though Putin has stated repeatedly that he wants a carrier to enhance the reach of power of the Russian Navy.

The problem Is that the Russians have never gotten carriers right, the other problem is that the poorly trained Russian sailors just aren’t good at maintaining equipment or using it effectively which is detrimental to something as complex and expensive as a Aircraft carrier in its flight wing.

The question is also around the future of the Aircraft carrier, which is up for debate, but the technology around anti-ship missiles, long range ordinance and the ability to track the movements of carriers might put the future in jeopardy, and the Soviets don’t have the money or the training to take that risk.

11-09-2024, 11:42 AM	#253
CaptainCrunch Norm! Join Date: Jun 2002 Exp:	Soviet/Russian Aircraft Carriers. I’m always utterly fascinated by Soviet/Russian Naval doctrine and ship design. They do things differently. While other Navies design ships for specific roles, the Russians prefer a mixed and brute force approach. In Russia a Carrier will act as a cruiser, a anti-submarine platform and a carrier. The Russian’s have also been plagued by serious design flaws and issues with quality control. Their ships and submarines usually seem to have major and devastating technical flaws. From the myriads of problems with the Kuznetsov, to the Kursk accident, the Soviets seem to have issues. This also can be attributed to a poorly thought-out conscription system that leads to poor crew training and discipline among the ranks. I wanted to look at a specific part of Russian Naval doctrine built around Aircraft carriers. Outside of their submarine fleets, The Russians have designed their navy mainly around shoreline defense of the motherland, with occasional forays into deep waters. However, the Russians did not build a Navy that was designed to project power in the same way that the American’s do, or that the Chinese are moving to. With that in mind, the Russians did play with the concept of Aircraft carriers and were late players to the game. The Russian designs have evolved over time from what could be generously classed as aircraft carrying cruisers right up to their own concept of a fleet carrier, and the Russian continue to look at designing and building a next generation super carrier of their own. So, the final question is, why do the Russians continue to want to add carriers to their fleet. Beyond the ability to project power, A Aircraft carrier is almost a requirement for a modern Navy and brings with it a certain amount of prestige. Let’s face facts, despite Russia’s victories in WW2 and in the war against Napoleon, Russia’s military history in the last 200 or so years has had more losses than victory. From the thrashing of the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima by the Japanese to the failure and collapse of the Russian Army in WW1, to Afghanistan to their current war in Ukraine, the Russians don’t seem to win that often. Russia also seems to have an inferiority complex, especially when it comes to Western Powers, because of this there is a certain amount of overcompensation when it comes to the Military, so having a aircraft carrier goes towards feeling better about themselves. Since 1967, The Russian’s have had 5 classes of ships capable of carrying fixed wing aircraft, they are also looking at a new design of Super Carrier in the Project 23000E which as of me writing this is still hanging in Limbo. We want to take a closer look at the life of each of these classes. From time to time, I might refer to the Russians as Klingons, the thought comes from the Federation always trying to figure out how the Klingons think in Star Trek because their thought process is so different. The Russian’s when it comes to Naval doctrine and tactics are very Klingon. The first attempt, Moskva One thing that I’ve always said about the Russian designers is that they build beautiful looking naval vessels and fighter planes. They manage to give their designs a rakish intimidating look. Sure, they might be failures more due to quality control, but they’re pretty much museum pieces. But those designers took the day off when it came to the Moskva class of helicopter carriers. There is nothing pretty about this early helicopter carrier. While the Moskva wasn’t really an aircraft carrier it was an early experimentation in Naval Aviation for the Soviets. This initial class of 3 ships was designed primarily to defend the Soviet coast and Soviet Naval formations from early Western Nuclear Submarines. It also became a key part of Soviet Naval Doctrine. In the event of a war, the Soviets would scramble their Ballistic Missile Submarines to Northern Sea Bastians and use the Moskva to defend these Strategic assets. This would free the Soviets to surge their Attack Boats into the Atlantic to cut off NATO Convoys. The three ships were ordered by Admiral Gorshkov the head of the Soviet Navy who was responsible for the massive expansion of the Soviet Navy in the cold war, and designed as command ships of anti-submarine formations, 3 ships were laid down but only two ships were built. The first named Moskva entered service in 1967, and the second named Leningrad sailed in 1968. The Moskva which did not carry any fixed wing aircraft had a flight wing of either 18 Kamov KA-25 or 18 MI-8 Naval anti-submarine helicopters. With the Moskva the Klingon effect hadn’t taken over the Russian Military design bureau, where ships could perform multiple missions, she was primarily armed as a ASW platform with limited air defense. She carried 2 x twin SA-N-2 SAM launchers, 2 twin 57 mm guns, a single launcher for a FRAS-1 Anti Submarine missile, 2 RBU 60000ASW Rockets, 10 553 mm Torpedo tubes and 2 decoy launchers. From a performance perspective, there were some serious design flaws, its 2 steam turbines were under powered and because of that she was slow with a maximum speed of 30 knots, her hull design was notoriously bad in rough seas, and her crew of up to 850 men and officers could only stay at sea for 16 days. Despite its flaws, the Moskva class cruisers were ideal command ships, and could protect themselves, the Moskva acted as the command ship of the Black Sea Fleet. However their life was short by naval standards, and the Moskva was scrapped in 1997 and the Leningrad in 1968. The Soviets were about to take a large leap into Carrier Aviation with the new Kiev class of Carriers. And this is where the Klingon design philosophy comes into play. The Kiev Class After the experimentation of the Moskva class the Soviets decided that they needed to create their own class of fixed wing carriers, something that they lacked. For the Soviets to transition from what is nicely called a frigate navy to a true-blue water navy with power projection capabilities, they needed to apply the lessons that they’d learned in the past from the Moskva class and the British and American carrier programs. The Kiev carrier was more defined as an Aircraft carrying cruiser but could generously be called an escort carrier. Admiral Sergei Gorshikov had spent a lot of time and energy focusing on the construction of a well-balanced navy that could theoretically project power into the third world, at the forefront of his vision was the construction of ballistic missile submarines. However, the Cuban missile crisis exposed what could be argued as a fatal flaw in Soviet Naval strategies. They lacked the long-range striking power and ability to challenge US carriers that could have confronted the US Naval blockade. The US dramatic leap forward in terms of ballistic missile technology including the Sub launch Trident C-3 meant that the Soviet Navy needed the assets to be able to challenge the US navy further out to sea to protect the motherland. Gorshikov needed a platform that could perform multiple roles, it needed to be a strong sub hunter, be able to project power and confront and destroy Aircraft carriers. While this was an interesting concept on paper, it ignored traditional naval doctrine and became a symbol of the Klingon thought process of Soviet naval strategists while they have one platform attempting to do a lot of different things and not being able to do one thing well. It also created what could be generously called a Frankenstein carrier. Laid down in 1970, there were a total of 4 ships in the Kiev class with the first ship the Kiev being launched in 1972 and commissioned in 1975. Originally the Navy wanted to build something that would have resembled the Kitty Hawk class of conventional carriers, instead they settled on a smaller design that seemed like some mad scientists had mashed two different types of ships together. The front end of the ship resembled a traditional Cruisers and carried an overwhelming amount of offensive weaponry, the first two ships in this class carried: 4 twin P500 Bazait SSM missiles carrying 8 missiles. The Bazait was designated as the SS-N-3 Shaddock had a range of 550 km’s and flew at a speed of faster than Mach 3 and carried a massive 1-ton warhead and was designed as a carrier killer. 72 SA-N-3 Goblet intermediate range SAMs 40 OSA short range Sams 2 76 mm air defense guns. 9 CIWS 10 21-inch torpedo tubes 1 1 FRAS Anti-Submarine Rocket launchers. The back end of the Kiev was the carrier section and designed to host a carrier air wing of 12 YAK-38 Forger STOL fighters and 16 anti-submarine helicopters. To understand the interesting design choice, we need to pause for a second to look at modern carrier doctrine. The United States views a carrier as a strategic asset and not a tactical asset. A US Aircraft carrier’s main weapon is a fighter wing of 80 strike aircraft who can project power and created a exclusive zone of operations. Because of this doctrine, an aircraft carrier is heavily protected by its battle group made up of specialized warships and submarines to protect the carrier from air, surface and sub surface attacks. A Supercarrier is not a strong sub hunter, nor is it a missile boat. It launches aircraft and is one of the safest ships in the Navy. The Kiev class on the other hand is treated as a tactical asset. It is designed to be able to hunt submarines, directly attack surface ships. Go after American carriers with its Surface to air missiles and protect itself from air threats and launch limited strikes with its combination of Sam and fixed wing aircraft. It also is designed to augment its escorts instead of completely depending on its escorts for protection and offensive fire power. Despite that and because of the design of the class where they packed a ton of weapons into its hull it limited the size of its air wing to a single squadron of single mission aircraft. It goes to the theory of trying to master all and not being good at any. As an interesting note the Kiev was designed with Black Sea duties in mind, and it was designated as a heavy cruiser which allowed it to pass through the Turkish Straits because the 1936 Montreux Convention prohibiting aircraft carriers of greater then 15,000 tons from passing through the Straits. In total 4 vessels were built, the Kiev was the first followed by the Minsk and the Novorossiysk, the class went through a redesign and the 4th vessel the Admiral Gorshkov was part of a subclass called the Baki class which had a slightly different weapons load. Fate was cruel to the Kiev class, with the breakup of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation ended up with 4 ships that they couldn’t afford to maintain, what made things worse is that the Nikolayev Shipyards, the only Soviet shipyard capable of maintaining these huge ships was now property of Ukraine. With a Russian Federation that suddenly didn’t have the money or facility to maintain these ships, it was decided that they should be retired. The Kiev and Minsk were sold to a Chinese company, the Kiev was converted to a hotel in Tianjin, but before it was converted the Chinese studied it as part of their interest in carrier construction. The Minsk because a museum piece in in Jiangsu. The Novorossiysk was broken up for scrap. The interesting story was that the Admiral Gorshkov was sold to India in one of the great money grabs by the cash poor Russians. The Indians removed the offensive weaponry from the bow of the ship, and they replaced it with a traditional ski jump launching system. They doubled the size of the airwing using the excellent Mig 29K multi-role fighter and renamed it as the INS Vikramadtya, which continues to serve the Indian Navy today. Yak-38 Forger If we’re going to look at the Kiev class of carrier its important to take a quick look at the Yak 38 Forger which was specifically designed to serve as its carrier strike class. The Yak-38 was the first carrier based fixed wing aircraft that the Soviet Union developed and its first and only attempt at a VTOL naval based aircraft. When the Soviet Navy requested that the Yakolev Design Bureau submit a design for a naval strike carrier, they asked for a light weight, supersonic, easy to fly, VTOL aircraft. In every aspect what they wanted was an aircraft that reflected the predecessor of the Hawker Harrier which was the P1154. However issues came right from the start, it was decided that making a super sonic VTOL fighter was too difficult and they instead created a sub-Mach 1 fighter. While the Hawker version used one engine with controllable variable nozzles. The Forger used three engine, one vertical thrust engine in the back and two downward facing engines in the front, this created a heavier fighter, with poor range performance and a difficult to fly fighter. There was so little trust in the design that they installed a automatic ejection system that would fire the pilot out if the aircraft rolled past 60 degrees on take off. What the Russian’s got was a poor performance aircraft, it had a max speed of Mach .95, it had a range of 810 miles, a service ceiling of 36,000 feet, it had 4 hardpoints with a capacity of 4400 lbs. It had no radar. Just to make a comparison, the most common carrier aircraft in the US navy was the F-14 Tomcat which had a speed of Mach 2.35, a range of 1800 miles, a service ceiling of 53,000 feet and had 10 hardpoints with a capacity of 14,500 pounds. The Yak served in until the mid 1980’s seeing service with the Soviet Navy and seeing limited user in Afghanistan. It was, frankly, too slow, too lightly armed and too limited to be an effective combat threat. While the Harrier had a long and distinguished career and served in multiple navies and militaries around the world. Nobody can think of a good thing to say about the Forger. The Soviet Navy was about to take a generational step forward In Naval Aviation, using the lessons learned by the Kiev class, and it would eventually become one of the most embarrassing chapters in Soviet and Russian Naval history. The Kuznetsov Class The Soviets first attempt at a full sized dedicated fixed win aircraft would eventually become one of the biggest misfires in Naval design history, expose the fact that while the Soviet/Russian Navy might be able to build them but don’t know how to maintain them, and lead to the rise of Chinese power protection. While the Kuznetsov was designed to be a generational leap forward in Soviet power projection concepts, poor design decisions, poor technology choices and a Klingon viewpoint led to disaster after disaster making experts think that there was a for real curse on this ship. Once again designated as a heavy aircraft cruiser to get around that pesky Montreux Convention, the Kuznetsov class was to be a class of three ships and was built on the frame of the Kiev class carrier. It was designed to be a primary ASW platform with an anti-carrier capability and carry a larger wing of more capable fixed wing aircraft. In 1978, the Soviets were building the Kiev class carriers, but with the Soviets love of subclasses like the Bakut subclass of the Kiev class, they envisioned a 5th Kiev class as coming with catapults and arresting gear which would nicely get them away from the horrible Forger fighter. In other words, the Soviets wanted a more traditional Catapult and Barrier carrier. In 1980 however after a review of the defense ministry, it was decided that this subclass would be too heavy and slow, and too expensive for what was becoming a cash poor Soviet Union, so the requirements of the Catapult were removed and replaced with the typical Ski Jump ramp. This larger “Kiev” was to feature a greatly expanded flight wing, instead of 12 aircraft and 12 helicopter, the Air Wing was to be composed of 33 Fixed Wing Aircraft, composed of the Mig 29K and Sukhoi SU 33’s, and a dozen KA-27 ASW helicopters or KA-52K attack helicopters. Once again though Soviet designers couldn’t decide on if they were building a carrier, or a offensive cruiser and basically smashed the two different concepts together like an angry kid with Lego. They placed a dozen SS-N-19 Shipwreck surface to surface missiles. 200 Kinzil SAMS and a UDAV ASW torpedo rocket launcher. The biggest issue with the Kuznetsov design was at its heart with its propulsion plant, it was decided to continue to use a Mazut burning steam turbines. Mazut is known for its high energy output, however you can easily tell when a ship is burning Mazut by the cloud of black soot trailing the ship, and its murderous on a poorly maintained boiler, to continue to use Mazut there needs to be a high degree of maintenance which the Russian Navy is poor at. This propulsion decision led to not only endurance problems as the Kuznetsov can realistically stay at sea for 45 days, but it led to fires and environmental accidents. The first ship of the lass originally named the Riga, then the Brezhnev and finally the Kuznetsov was laid down in 1982 and underwent a long construction period due to funding issues. However more issues rose, and the story of the Kuznetsov reads like a script from a grand theft auto game. Built at the Nikolayev shipyard, the ship was completed in 1989. However, the fall of the Soviet Union, the attempted coup attempts by the Russian Military, and the declaration of independence by Ukraine led to a tense situation as Ukraine declared ownership of the Kiev and ordered it to stay in port. This led to the Deputy of the Russian Northern Fleet Yuri Ustimenko to fly down to the Ukraine, and he basically stole the carrier and sailed it to Vidyayevo so it could remain with the Soviet Fleet. Kuznetsov became fully operational in 1995 and was deployed to the Mediterranean with a limited air wing in time to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian Navy. This cruise also started the cascading failures, as the evaporators that provided fresh water and drinking water to the crew broke down leading to severe water rationing. The Kuznetsov returned home for repairs and a refit that was delayed for 2 years due to a lack of funds, but she eventually returned to sea in 2000, but its triumphant return to international duty was delayed due to the sinking of the Kursk and the Kuznetsov participated in the search and salvage operation, but further operations were cancelled due to the investigation and reform attempts of the Russian Navy and the Kuznetsov sat inactive for 5 years. Disaster continued to follow the carrier as during her triumphant return to operations a SU-33 fell off the deck. In 2007, the Kuznetsov returned to sea in a truly disastrous fashion, while in the Med, a small fire broke out that led to the death of a crewmember, the cause of the fire was poor maintenance practices, and then in 2009, a burst pipe led to a massive oil spill while refueling off the coast of Ireland. Once again, the Kuznetsov returned to its dock with its tail between its legs. Then in 2012 during a deployment to the Med, the Kuznetsov suffered what could be generously described as a catastrophic failure of its propulsion system, and it was towed back to port. From that point on, the Kuznetsov was not allowed to leave port without a tugboat accompanying it. In 2013, despite cascading problems with the Kuznetsov and more time spend in repairs then at sea the Russian Government announced that they were expending the life of the carrier, whoops sorry heavy aircraft cruiser until 2030, far beyond its design limits. In a rare war deployment in 2016, the Kuznetsov participated in strikes using SU-33’s against militants in Syria, and its mission was viewed as successful despite losing an aircraft due to a defective arrestor cable. With that it was decided that Kuznetsov would go through a extensive refit and repair cycle in Murmansk in 2017. She has never left port since then and has taken on the appearance of a rusted abandoned ship. However, this wasn’t the end of the curse of the Kuznetsov. In 2018 the floating drydocks servicing the carrier sank and sent a crane crashing through the flight deck. Due to not having a large enough drydock the Russians decided to take a year and a half to merge two dry docks, but poor maintenance and repair practices led to a major fire that killed 2 people and caused extensive damage. A second fire broke out in 2023, then when the Russians finally had their stuff together enough to get the ship into the franken dock bad weather delayed repair work for almost a year. It was expected that the Kuznetsov would return to the sea in early 2024, but is seems like the repair and refit is years behind schedule and the question is, will it ever return to duty, its become too expensive and too obsolete, also with the Russian Navy’s failure in Ukraine, a change in the Russian submarine fleet to boats that can defend themselves against the West, and an emphasis on ground operations In Ukraine, it seems unlikely that the Kuznetsov will leave port except for a trip to a chop shop. Mig-29k – an excellent, and probably one of the best designed fighters that the Soviets/Russians have ever produced. The 29K is a carrier based twin-engine all-weather fighters. Originally rolled out in the late 1970’s. Originally designed as a counter to the F-15 and the F-14, the Mig 29k has different avionics and heavier landing gear and an arrester hook. Currently the 29k continues to serve in the Russian Military and is the fighter of choice for the Indian Navies 2 carriers. Sukhoi Su-33 – the naval variation of the venerable SU-27. It is a twin-engine Multirole fighter that was first rolled out in 1998. We’ve talked a lot about the Kuznetsov, but what happened to the other ships in the class? The second ship in the class was laid down in 1985 in the Mykolaiv shipyards in the Ukraine. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the ship was barely 2/3rds completed; Ukraine ordered construction stopped as they claimed ownership of the hulk. Ukraine then put the ship up for auction, and it was purchased for 20 million dollars by a Chinese private conglomerate, who wanted to make it into a hotel. The west viewed this deal with a lot of suspicion as the Chong Lot the company that bought the hulk had no telephone office and no address and was run by former PLAN officers. The ship was towed to a dry dock in Dalian and refitted by the Chinese Navy as their first operational dedicated aircraft carrier, she was named the Liaoning and was designated as a type 01 class carrier. She was commissioned in 2012. The Liaoning was never meant to be anything but a proof-of-concept experimental carrier. Her whole idea was to learn about carrier aviation and use it as a test bed project and use those lessons to create a made in China version of a heavy carrier. The Chinese then rolled out the type 002 carrier, the Shandong was commissioned in 2019, she is a enhanced made in China version of the Kuznetsov class, while she looks like her predecessor, she uses a conventional oil steam turbine proposal system instead of Mazut, she has none of the offensive punch of her predecessor carrying light defensive weapons and she focuses on air wing operations. The Future In the 1988 the Soviet Navy laid down the keep of the next generation Ulyanovska class carrier, this represented a massive leap forward in carrier construction. This was to be a true super carrier featuring steam catapults and an air wing featuring 69 Mig-29k of SU-33s and 16 helicopters. And 4 nuclear power plants. She was 44% complete when the Soviet Union was collapsed follow by the collapse of the new Russian Navy. With a lack of funds, she was scrapped in 1991. So, is there a future for Russian Aircraft carriers? There is a proposal for a new carrier designated as the Shtorm class which as of 2017 had been in development for 10 years and shows no signs of being laid down even though its still in the Russian’s state armament Programme. This carrier is rumored to be a nuclear powered Stobar carrier with a capability of carrying up to 100 fighters in its air wing. However, a lack of funds, a shifting priority to the modernization of the Russian Navy’s subs and surface ships, and a technology embargo due to the war in Ukraine that has strangled the Russian’s access to high tech components that they have killed will probably doom this project. Every modern Navy wants to have carriers, they are the best political expression of power projections. Even countries that have a relatively small Military Budget have joined the carrier club. The British recently built two Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers. Japan has recently joined the carrier club thanks to the flexibility of the F-35C variant. China continues to learn and build new carriers as their type 003 is currently reaching the end of its construction, and of course there are the Americans’ the king of the Carrier class. Will Russia rejoin the Carrier club; it doesn’t look likely even though Putin has stated repeatedly that he wants a carrier to enhance the reach of power of the Russian Navy. The problem Is that the Russians have never gotten carriers right, the other problem is that the poorly trained Russian sailors just aren’t good at maintaining equipment or using it effectively which is detrimental to something as complex and expensive as a Aircraft carrier in its flight wing. The question is also around the future of the Aircraft carrier, which is up for debate, but the technology around anti-ship missiles, long range ordinance and the ability to track the movements of carriers might put the future in jeopardy, and the Soviets don’t have the money or the training to take that risk. __________________ My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!