Russian aircraft carriers: will we have an aircraft carrier fleet?

2024 Author: Matthew Elmers | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:49

The topic of re-equipping the Russian Navy with the latest ships has become a dominant topic in the field of military-technical information this summer. Against the backdrop of ongoing negotiations on the terms of termination of the contract for the Mistrals, the Russian military-industrial complex has decisively declared: we will cope with everything ourselves! It turned out that Russia intends to build the latest large landing craft, an ultra-modern destroyer and aircraft carrier, which our Navy has never seen.

Presentations of new projects took place within the framework of the "Army" exhibition and the subsequent Naval Salon in St. Petersburg. The public was shown the model of the aircraft carrier, and we saw that it will be as big as its American counterparts, and, what is especially interesting, atomic.

How are they and how are we

Americans, always wanting to have a "long arm" in the ocean, took up their aircraft carrier fleet almost a century ago. Back in 1920, they converted the Jupiter coal carrier into the USS Langley (CV-1) aircraft carrier. Piston aircraft of the Curtiss TF-1 type were based on it, and communication between the flight crews and the ship was carried out using pigeon mail.

When USS Enterprise, the first American aircraft carrier with a nuclear power plant, was launched in 1960, it already had the CVN-65 index, that is, it was the 65th US aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier of the new class Gerald R. Ford received the CVN-78 index, and its two sisterships - John F. Kennedy and the third Enterprise - will bring this score to 80. These numbers illustrate an already well-known fact - America has long considered aircraft carriers as a critical military -political tool. The only country that, besides the United States, has built a nuclear aircraft carrier, is France with its Charles de Gaulle.

There was nothing like this in our homeland, and some more or less convincing attempts to create an aircraft carrier fleet in the USSR began only in the 1960s, when our country launched two helicopter carriers - "Moscow" and "Leningrad". Of course, something has been done before - you can recall the seaplane transports of the Russian Empire or the Red Army "Commune" - the barge "France", converted during the Civil War to transport aircraft. Of course, they could not take off from the barge. There was also a pre-war project of an aircraft-carrying cruiser (Project 71), which was stopped by the war. And after the war, while the giant US aircraft carriers accompanied by the AUG, as they say, plowed the seas, the Soviet leadership tended to an asymmetric response, mainly in the form of nuclear missile weapons and long-range aviation. The situation changed with the removal in 1964 of Nikita Khrushchev from the leadership of the party and the state. In 1968 it was decided to stop the construction of the anti-submarine cruiser 1123.3 at the Black Sea plant in the city of Nikolaev and instead start work on the first large anti-submarine aircraft-carrying cruiser of the project 1143 "Krechet". During the 1970s, four ships of this project were built (they could carry 12 vertical take-off aircraft Yak-36 / Yak-38 and a certain number of helicopters, and the first-born was "Kiev"). In reality, the combat capabilities of these ships were very modest. Differing from the lightly armed US aircraft carriers with an impressive array of missile and artillery weapons, they could not boast of aviation power. The Yak-38 turned out to be not the best product of the domestic aircraft industry - it did not even have an onboard radar and was poorly armed. Of the four sisterships of the Krechet project, only one is in service today. In the past it was called "Baku", then "Admiral Gorshkov", and now it goes to sea under the Indian flag and the name "Vikramaditya".

The development of this Soviet line of heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers was project 1143.5, within the framework of which the aircraft-carrying cruisers Varyag and Admiral Kuznetsov were built in the same place, in Nikolaev. And they were already closer to traditional aircraft carriers. Due to the abandonment of some of the weapons, these ships had an enlarged flight deck with a characteristic springboard. Unlike Project 1143, they carried aircraft taking off with a running start. All of the above Soviet heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers had a boiler-turbine power plant, and only the aircraft carrier "Ulyanovsk" within the framework of project 1143.7 was planned to be equipped with an atomic heart. In addition, it was planned to install a steam catapult on the ship, the design of which was being tested at the famous Crimean test site NITKA. But “Ulyanovsk did not survive the collapse of the USSR and was dismantled on the slipway in 1992.

The deck-based MiG-29 is a multi-functional all-weather vehicle of the “4 ++” generation. Their tasks include anti-aircraft and anti-ship defense of the formation of ships, striking enemy ground targets. The most modern modification is the MiG-29 KUB.

Russian aircraft carriers: will we have an aircraft carrier fleet?

The day after tomorrow

This is the end of the history of Russian aircraft carriers. The Admiral Kuznetsov continues to be in service, but this year it has undergone major overhaul. "Varyag" was bought by China from Ukraine, ostensibly to create an entertainment center, and then completed and entered into the PLA Navy under the name "Liaoning".

There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this whole story. The first conclusion: all domestic aircraft carriers were built at a plant in Nikolaev, and cooperation with this enterprise, located on the territory of Ukraine, is impossible for the Russian defense industry today due to known circumstances. Second conclusion: none of these aircraft carrier cruisers were equipped with a nuclear power plant. Of the warships using atomic energy, only submarines and Project 1144 Orlan heavy missile nuclear cruisers existed in our Navy. One of four such cruisers - "Peter the Great" - is in service. Ships of this type were produced in Leningrad / Petersburg, at the Baltic Shipyard, and thus the competence in the construction of heavy surface ships with a nuclear reactor in Russia remains.

And now it was announced that in the field of building aircraft carriers, we must step from the Soviet past into the day after tomorrow. There will be a Russian nuclear aircraft carrier. But when? The layout of the promising ship was created within the walls of the St. Petersburg "Krylov State Scientific Center" - perhaps the main "brain" trust of the Russian military shipbuilding. In June, at the Army-2015 exhibition, the model was exhibited at the stand of the Russian Navy. Captain Second Rank Maksim Sorokin, working at the stand, speaks of the project with typical military caution: “What we see at the stand is the likely appearance of the ship and the aircraft that will be based on it. The fate of the project has not been finally decided. There is no final decision either on the designer or on the enterprise on which the aircraft carrier will be built. There are two programs for the construction of the Navy - short-term (until 2020) and long-term (until 2050). The creation of an aircraft carrier, therefore, refers to the period 2020–2050”.

USS Langley (CV-1), the first true aircraft carrier in the US Navy, was converted from the Jupiter charcoal carrier back in 1920. Since then, the United States has acquired a powerful aircraft carrier fleet that has spanned several generations.

Islands and jumps

The preliminary project was presented in sufficient detail by representatives of the Krylov Center at the Naval Salon - 2015, held in July in St. Petersburg. It became known that the project received the index 23000 "Storm". It is assumed that the aircraft carrier will have both a nuclear power plant and an additional (backup) - gas turbine. There are few numbers announced, but what is known is interesting to compare with the parameters of the newest American aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford. Both ships - existing and projected - have a displacement of about 100,000 tons. The length of the "American" is 337 meters. The "Storm" is 7 meters shorter. The waterline width of the hull is 41 and 40 m, respectively. Draft is 12 and 11 m. The speed is also similar - about 30 knots (55.6 km / h). Ford can carry more than 75 aircraft, including multifunctional fighters, AWACS aircraft, helicopters and drones. The Russian project, with a similar structure of the aviation group, has 90 aircraft declared.

This simple comparison suggests that the Russian project in terms of weight and size parameters and a set of weapons is guided not so much by domestic traditions as by the latest samples of American aircraft-carrying ships. However, there are some notable differences. One thing has already been said - this is a hybrid power plant. The second is that, unlike the US aircraft carriers, instead of one "island" on the deck of the "Storm" there are two, but "thinner" ones. Such a scheme with the separation in space of control points of the ship and aircraft, according to representatives of the Krylov Center, will increase the survivability of the ship. True, this option can hardly be recognized as a domestic know-how. Two "islands" on the deck are installed on the newest British aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth. The third difference is that, in the spirit of Russian traditions, our ship will have a springboard, and even two. Two trampoline tracks (one short, the other long) will lead to them. As you know, Americans do not use springboards on their ships. They use catapults - steam, and now also electromagnetic, and launch from a catapult is also provided for in the "Storm" project.

USS Gerald R. Ford (CV-78) belongs to the newest generation. The ship is equipped with two nuclear reactors and is capable of carrying about 76 aircraft on board. Due to the total automation of control, the number of crew members has been significantly reduced.

If we talk about the aviation group of our promising aircraft carrier, it will presumably include the MiG-29KUB multipurpose carrier-based fighters, as well as the carrier-based version of the 5th generation fighter, now known as the T-50 PAK FA. In addition to attack aircraft, the ship will receive a grouping of AWACS assets. Perhaps these will be aircraft developed on the basis of the unrealized Yak-44 project, which was worked out back in the 1970s and had as its obvious prototype the American E-2 Hawkeye (development of the 1950s, which is still in the ranks of the US Navy). It is difficult to say anything about the unmanned component now, since promising Russian models are under development. Unlike the Soviet aircraft carrier and following the example of the American aircraft carriers, "Storm" will not have a significant amount of shipborne weapons on board, but it will be equipped with an anti-aircraft missile system and anti-torpedo protection.

However, the lack of a large number of its own weapons suggests that the aircraft carrier is guarded not only by its own aircraft, but also by other combat surface and submarine ships. So the implementation of Project Storm will undoubtedly mean an upgrade in other classes. Along with the aircraft carrier, the Krylov Center presented this summer the project of the Russian destroyer "Shkval", which is an export version of the nuclear destroyer "Leader", which, however, is also only a project so far. These multifunctional ships, developed using stealth technology, will, in particular, be involved in the air defense and missile defense systems and will take on board such facilities as the S-400 and S-500 complexes (when and if the latter is created).

If a Storm aircraft carrier is built one day, it will, of course, be an outstanding achievement for the Russian defense industry. And the question of how it will fit into the Russian military doctrine, and what this doctrine will be like by the time the ship is launched, will probably be discussed for a long time.