In this article, we will try to compare the capabilities of the aircraft carrier "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" (hereinafter - "Kuznetsov") with the aircraft carriers of other powers, namely the United States, France and England. For comparison, take the newest American Gerald R. Ford, the equally new Queen Elizabeth, and, of course, the French Charles de Gaulle.
It is sad to admit it, but such a comparison is akin to fortune telling on coffee grounds - unfortunately, many of the most important parameters of these ships are unknown, and we are forced to determine them "by eye". But there is at least one feature common to all four of the ships listed above: to date, none of them is working as it should. "Gerald R. Ford" has a lot of "childhood illnesses" and, in addition, electromagnetic catapults are not brought up to normal operation. "Queen Elizabeth" got a leak almost on the first out to sea. "Charles de Gaulle" does not get out of repairs. Well, even many of those who are almost not interested in the fleet know about the problems with the Kuznetsov power plant.
But in this article, we will not relish the details of the breakdowns and imperfections of these aircraft carriers, but will try to understand the potential in them, which we will compare. Why is that? The fact is that with the highest degree of probability, childhood illnesses of "Gerald R. Ford" and "Queen Elizabeth" will be "cured" not in a year, so in three, and most of Kuznetsov's problems may well be corrected, which began in 2017. major overhaul. As for Charles de Gaulle, it is, of course, more difficult with it, because it was repaired several times, but, apparently, it still has some problems with maintaining combat readiness. On the other hand, the aircraft carrier worked quite intensively on targets in Libya (when M. Gaddafi was killed), so, perhaps, today everything is not so with it and it is bad.
Whatever the supporters of the point of view "TAKR is not an aircraft carrier" say, the main weapon of "Kuznetsov" is the aviation based on it, but for other ships no one has ever disputed this thesis. Accordingly, first and foremost, we should assess the capabilities of all four ships by their ability to provide takeoff and landing operations, by the maximum number of aircraft simultaneously in the air, and by servicing their wing.
In essence, the maximum number of aircraft that a particular ship can lift into the air depends on:
1. The maximum number of aircraft that can be on immediate readiness for departure.
2. The speed of the air group ascent.
3. Speeds of landing operations.
Let's start in order - the number of aircraft in maximum readiness for departure. Simply put, the flight deck of any aircraft carrier can be divided into take-off zones, landing zones and technical zones (forgive me, professional readers for such a liberty of wording). Take-off zones are sections of the flight deck intended for aircraft take-off, that is, they are catapults of American and French aircraft carriers, launch positions and take-off areas to the Kuznetsov and Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier trampoline. For landing, a corner deck is usually used, on which aerofinishers are located, braking the aircraft, but if the ship provides for the basing of only VTOL aircraft and helicopters, then it is not necessary. At the same time, one should not think that VTOL aircraft can land on any place on the deck of an aircraft carrier - due to the very powerful and hot jet-exhaust, VTOL aircraft need specially equipped seats. Technical zones are places where aircraft are refueled, and where weapons are installed on them, as well as certain routine maintenance operations are performed that do not require the aircraft to descend into the hangar.
So, the maximum number of aircraft ready for departure is precisely limited by the capacity of the technical areas. Why is that?
Here comes an aircraft carrier, ready to lift an air group, but has not yet begun to lift it. Naturally, all aircraft in the technical areas can be fully prepared for departure. You can also put several fully combat-ready aircraft in take-off positions, that is, one aircraft per catapult or launch position, but no more, because otherwise they will simply block takeoff. I must say that there are exceptions to this rule - if an American aircraft carrier needs to lift a large number of aircraft, it may well block the "runway" of one or even two catapults - it still has at least 2 catapults to take off, and then, as lifting the air group and releasing the deck, the rest of the catapults are connected to them. In addition, a certain number of aircraft (small) can be placed in the landing zone, but only on condition that they take off first - flight safety clearly requires that the aircraft carrier be ready at any time to receive aircraft that have taken off from it, that is, its landing zone must be free.
But alas, all of the above placement does not allow the aircraft carrier's wing to be fully prepared for departure - some of the aircraft will still remain in the hangars, there is simply not enough space on the flight deck for it. And it is forbidden to equip planes for departure (that is, to fill it with fuel and suspend ammunition) in the hangar - it is too dangerous for the ship.
In theory, of course, it is possible to fully prepare the plane for departure on the flight deck, and then lower it into the hangar, but … this is also extremely dangerous. In conditions of hostilities against an equal enemy, there is always a risk of receiving combat damage. A fire in an aircraft with several tons of jet fuel and ammunition inside the ship is a terrible thing in itself, but what if there are several such aircraft? It is known that such incidents with US aircraft carriers (albeit without the participation of the enemy, since the Americans did everything for themselves) led to rather serious consequences, and in fact they took place on a fairly thick and durable flight deck.
Such an incident on the hangar deck would be fraught with much more serious consequences, up to the death of the ship. This is dangerous even when the enemy does not have the means to strike an aircraft carrier - the possibility of an accident has not been canceled. Therefore, in the author's opinion, in real combat operations against a somewhat serious enemy, the possibility of storing aircraft prepared for departure in the hangar will not be used. At the same time, it is also fraught with preparation for the departure of the cars standing in the hangar after the "first batch" leaves the sky - in this case, there will be more cars on the deck and in the air than the flight deck can accept, and this can cause problems with their timely landing
So, how many planes will be able to prepare for immediate departure the ships we compare? The clear leader is Gerald R. Ford.
On the flight deck of its ancestor - the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier "Nimitz", 45-50 aircraft can be accommodated quite freely provided that one catapult is blocked and, probably, up to 60 if two are blocked. The total area of the flight deck of the Nimitz, by the way, was 18,200 square meters.
Obviously, "Gerald R. Ford" has no less, and according to some sources - even more opportunities. But, of course, he cannot ensure the takeoff of his full size air group (that is, 90 aircraft) - some of them will have to be left in the hangar.
The second place, apparently, should be given to the British aircraft carrier "Queen Elizabeth" - its flight deck has a smaller area, "only" only about 13,000 square meters. m.
But at the same time, the absence of catapults and the use of only VTOL aircraft gave the British aircraft carrier certain advantages in terms of free space for technical areas - having, in fact, only one runway and not needing a large and taking up a lot of space on the corner deck for landing aircraft, this ship is quite capable keep on the flight deck his entire air group of 40 aircraft.
The honorable third place should be given to the French "Charles de Gaulle". With its very small size (and it is the smallest of the ships we compare) and the smallest flight deck (12,000 square meters), it can still accommodate about a dozen aircraft on its deck.
Alas, the aircraft carrier “Kuznetsov. It is doubtful that more than 18, maximum 20 aircraft could be accommodated on its flight deck.
It is interesting that such an assessment is in full accord with the opinion of V. P. Zablotsky, who, in his monograph "Heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser" Admiral Kuznetsov ", argued that following the results of the exercises during the ship's first combat service in 1995-1996. it was concluded that the ship (under certain conditions) could simultaneously enter into battle up to 18 fighters.
Why did this happen? In our opinion, there are several reasons for this. The size of the Kuznetsov's flight deck inspires respect - despite the fact that in terms of displacement our aircraft carrier takes the 3rd place, yielding to Gerald R. Ford and Queen Elizabeth, the flight deck of our aircraft carrier has quite a decent area - 14 800 sq. m., that is, even more than the British aircraft carrier. But with all this, there are fewer possibilities for placing aircraft on this deck, and here's why.
Firstly, the total length of the runways of our aircraft carrier is very, very large - on the Kuznetsov's deck there are two 90 (according to other sources - 105) m and one 180 (195) m. The designers, apparently, did their best so that the longest runway partially coincides with one of the short ones, and partially is on the corner, i.e. landing deck. But nevertheless, the need to "reduce" all three runways to one springboard necessitates the allocation of a fairly substantial deck area for them. Interestingly, the American steam catapults are about 93-95 m long, but the placement of two of them on the corner deck allowed the Americans to save a lot of space, almost without prejudice to takeoff and landing operations. One of the catapults, located parallel to the board, does not interfere with the landing of aircraft - unless at the moment of launch. The plane taking off from the second catapult, leaving the starting position, blocks the landing strip, but it will be a matter of minutes to remove it from there if there is a need to urgently take the planes. As a result, the Americans are able to force one or two of their bow catapults by aircraft, and they still have the ability to lift aircraft into the air, and the aircraft carrier "Kuznetsov" is deprived of such an opportunity - they cannot put planes on the springboard, and such an arrangement would make it impossible to take off from all three starting positions.
The second reason is the need for a landing strip. Of course, Gerald R. Ford and Charles de Gaulle also need it, but Queen Elizabeth, as a VTOL carrier, has an advantage over Kuznetsov - the Queen does not need it, relatively small landing sites are enough. In our fleet, they were 10 by 10 m, and they are unlikely to be significantly larger on a British aircraft carrier.
The third reason is an overdeveloped superstructure, "eating away" space from the aircraft. We see that the "islands" of Gerald R. Ford "and" Charles de Gaulle "is significantly less than that of our aircraft carrier. But the two Queen Elizabeth superstructures, perhaps, can compete with our Kuznetsov in the total area, but the absence of a landing strip overlaps everything else.
The fourth reason is, alas, the advanced defensive armament of the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. If we pay attention to the stern of the Charles de Gaulle, we will see that the French aircraft carrier has space on both sides of the landing strip for airplanes, but Kuznetsov's have been largely "eaten" by sponsors with rocket and artillery weapons
I must say that sometimes you have to see that planes are still standing on the starboard side at the stern, but in this case their tails are located exactly above the mines of the "Daggers" and in this case the air defense system is not capable of combat.
In general, summing up the comparison for this indicator, we see that the American aircraft carrier outperforms the aircraft carrier due to its large size and the presence of four catapults, allowing to allocate more space for technical zones, English - due to the basing of VTOL aircraft and the abandonment of the landing strip, French - due to the small superstructure of a more rational form of the flight deck, which was achieved, among other things, due to the significantly smaller defensive armament.
Let us now consider the rate of climb of the air group.
The easiest way is with the American aircraft carrier - we have already analyzed the speed of the air group's rise in the article "Some features of the actions of the carrier-based aircraft of the supercarriers of the" Nimitz "type" and on the basis of video filming of actual launches, we came to the conclusion that one catapult is able to send one aircraft in flight in 2, 2-2, 5 minutes, that is, three working catapults will lift 30 aircraft in 25 minutes - taking into account the fact that during this time the fourth catapult will inevitably be "unlocked", it can be assumed that during the specified time "Nimitz" is able to send into the air not less than 35 aircraft, and in half an hour - not less than 40-45. The capabilities of "Gerald R. Ford" obviously will not be lower (of course, when the Americans bring to mind the electromagnetic catapult). This suggests that an American aircraft carrier, for example, will not make it difficult to "hang" over its order a patrol of 6 aircraft (standard - one AWACS aircraft, one "Growler", four fighters), then send, say, to attack an enemy ship order a strike force of 30-35 aircraft, and at the same time keep a dozen fighters on alert on deck - just in case.
The capabilities of the French ship are more modest - having two steam catapults (built under an American license and corresponding to those installed on the Nimitzes), Charles de Gaulle is capable of sending 22-24 aircraft in the same half hour.
English "Queen Elizabeth". Usually in publications devoted to this ship, it is indicated that at the maximum intensity of takeoff operations, it is able to lift 24 aircraft into the air in 15 minutes, but this figure is very doubtful. However, the organization of the rise of the British aircraft carrier's air group is completely unclear.
The fact is that the sources usually indicate the presence of three runways - two short 160 m long for takeoff of the F-35 and a long one (about 260 m) for heavy aircraft. As you can understand, the primary source of this information was the publication of the site naval-technology.com, and there are a lot of questions to this article. The first of them - looking at the deck of an aircraft carrier, we see only one runway, but not three.
Therefore, it should be assumed that the description given in the article does not refer to the final, but to some of the intermediate projects of the ship, perhaps this one:
This assumption is all the more similar to the truth, since the article mentions the installation of gas protection shields in the area of the first "island", which, of course, we do not see on the real "Queen Elizabeth".
From the above, it can be assumed that the figure of 24 aircraft in 15 minutes was considered (if it was considered by anyone at all, and is not a journalistic fantasy) based on the simultaneous operation of two (or even three) runways. Thus, we can assume that the actual ascent rate of the air group from Queen Elizabeth using one runway will be 12 aircraft in 15 minutes or 24 aircraft in half an hour. This raises the question - how is it that Queen Elizabeth, having one runway, practically caught up and even, perhaps, slightly overtook the Charles de Gaulle with its two catapults? The answer lies in the advantage of VTOL aircraft over ejection launch aircraft. The F-35B needs to taxi to the starting position, stop, get permission to take off - but after that it just needs to open its "fan" and - you can take off. That is, it is not necessary to cling to the catapult hook and wait for its operation, there is no loss of time for lifting and cleaning the gas shield, etc. All this suggests that the takeoff rate of VTOL aircraft from one runway may well take a little more than a minute to take off one aircraft, and thus twice the rate of launching aircraft from a catapult.
Domestic "Kuznetsov" … Here, alas, it remains only to theorize. Judging by the video, and simply by reasoning logically, the time taken to take off one plane from a springboard should be approximately equivalent to taking off from a catapult. Both the "springboard" and "catapult" aircraft need to go to the starting position, stop there, catch on the catapult (ours - to rest the landing gear against the flaps that will keep the aircraft from premature start), wait for the gas shield to rise, then transfer the engines to the forced mode - and then the catapult starts moving (the stopper stops holding the plane) and, in fact, everything, we take off. The problem is one - the American aircraft carrier has four catapults, and ours has only one springboard. That is, American catapults launch aircraft when ready, and ours are forced to wait for their turn. But how much does it delay flight operations?
In theory, we can simultaneously prepare three aircraft for takeoff at the same time, at least until the moment when they are ready to give forced thrust, but after that they take off sequentially, one after the other - and until the last one has taken off, the next three are prepared cannot take off. Also, apparently (this is the opinion of the author, nothing more), the planes cannot give afterburner at the same time - that is, after the planes are ready for takeoff at the starting positions, the first gives afterburner - takeoff, then the second boosts the engines - takeoff and then exactly also the third. All these considerations suggest that the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier is capable of sending three planes into the air approximately every four and a half to five minutes (2.5 minutes - preparation for takeoff, and the same amount of takeoff). Thus, theoretically, "Kuznetsov" should have the ability to lift 18-20 aircraft in half an hour. Alas, how things are in practice is unknown, because there is no evidence that Kuznetsov once carried out an increase in its entire air group (albeit even in the number of 10-12 aircraft) to speed.
Nevertheless, we can assume that in terms of the rate of rise of aircraft, the aircraft carrier "Kuznetsov" is approximately twice, or slightly more, inferior to the nuclear supercarrier, and by 20-30 percent - to the British and French aircraft carriers.
