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Old 07-13-2025, 11:52 PM   #276
CaptainCrunch
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A bit of a bump, but I wrote about the history of Russian Aircraft Carriers and it had a key focus on the cursed Kuznetsov. The news over the last couple of days is that the Russian's might finally be throwing in the towel on this cursed carrier and scrapping it. Multiple stories have been published stating that all repairs have been halted and an evaluation is under way on whether its worth it to continue to repair and refit the Admiral Kuznetsov. Officially commissioned in 1995, the carrier has spent most of its operational life in dry dock. Its seen failures to its water condensers which left the crew without fresh water. Multiple fires, it blew a Oil leak off of the coast of Ireland. It had multiple fires, including several in dry dock. It had a repair crane fall through its flight deck.


It just might be that the Russian's finally relized that even if repaired and refitted it was far behind the more modern carriers of the United States, the UK, China, India and France among others.


There are rumors that the Russian's are negotiating to buy the Chinese Carrier Liaoning which is the same class of carrier as the Kuzenetsov and used as a training ship for cash and land.


To be clear that scrapping the Kuznetsov beyond the loss of perceived naval prestige by leaving Russia without a carrier would be a net positive for the Russians. they have spent a ton of money on a carrier that only carried out one combat deployment, and scrapping it would free up more money for the Ukrainian War.


This also signals that Russia is likely not going to pursue the construction of Shtorm class of carrier that was expected to be sea ready by the halfway point of the 2030's with an estimated cost of 5.5 Billion dollars.
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