Russia has put in its only aircraft carrier for repairs. Obviously, the country's leadership decided that it is possible to make a short pause in building up foreign policy activity near the “distant shores”. Then to return there with tripled forces
On May 14, in the Murmansk region, the only Russian aircraft carrier, the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov, was docked for repairs. The military does not name the timing of its repair. Volumes too. "The ship repairers will first conduct a dock inspection of the ship, following which the issue of the volume of repairs will be decided," the press service of the Northern Fleet told TASS.
This may mean that the largest Russian warship (the total displacement of the Kuznetsov is 55 thousand tons) will undergo current repairs over the next few months, and then set sail again. However, what is more likely, the political and military leadership of Russia decided this time to put the only domestic aircraft carrier under overhaul, which will last at least 2-3 years. And that's why.
The heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser (TAVKR) "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" was launched almost 30 years ago - on December 4, 1985. The fate of this ship is unique. It remained the only operating aircraft carrier in the post-Soviet space, which was built in the Soviet Union in the 70-80s of the last century at the Black Sea shipyard in Nikolaev (now Ukraine). In total, 7 units of the "Kiev" type TAVKR were created there. However, the lead ship of this series - "Kiev", was withdrawn from the fleet in 1993, sold to China and now functions as a floating hotel in the Chinese city of Tianjin. At the same time, the second ship of this series, the Minsk, was sold to China as scrap metal (now it is operated as an attraction in the Chinese city of Shenzhen). The aircraft carrier "Novorossiysk" was sold a year later for scrap in South Korea, where it was completely dismantled. TAVKR "Ulyanovsk", which for the first time in the Soviet fleet was supposed to provide the start of aircraft with steam catapults and have the first nuclear power plant among Soviet aircraft carriers, was destroyed by the Ukrainian authorities on the stocks in Nikolaev in February 1992. The aircraft carrier "Baku" was sold to the Indians, rebuilt at the Russian "Sevmash", and in 2013 under the name "Vikramaditya" entered the Indian Navy. The aircraft carrier Varyag, launched in 1988, was sold by the Ukrainian authorities to the Chinese company Chong Lot Travel Agency for $ 20 million for what was then said to be a floating casino. However, in fact, the Chinese made a full-fledged combat ship out of the Varyag, which, under the name Liaoning, became the first operating aircraft carrier of the PRC. Moreover. Since, together in the Varyag, as witnesses say, the technical documentation (including drawings) for the construction of this ship was transferred to China, by 2020 China will be ready to deploy from 4 to 6 strike aircraft carrier groups in the East China and South China Seas.
The aircraft carrier "Admiral Kuznetsov" (before that it bore the names "Soviet Union", "Riga", "Leonid Brezhnev", "Tbilisi") slipped past these events by some miracle. Suffice it to say that this ship was, in fact, hijacked at the end of 1991. That year the "division of property" was taking place between Ukraine and Russia. And the ship, which was then officially part of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy, received a telegram signed by Leonid Kravchuk, declaring the aircraft carrier the property of Ukraine and ordering it to remain on the roadstead of Sevastopol.
However, according to eyewitnesses, on December 1, 1991, at 21 o'clock, the first deputy commander of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Yuri Ustimenko, boarded the Kuznetsov and ordered the ship's commander, Captain 1st Rank Yarygin, to urgently weaken anchor and go to Severodvinsk. And at 23-40, without lighting navigation lights, with only a third of the crew on board (most of it remained on the shore), without aircraft (they also remained at coastal airfields and joined later), "Admiral Kuznetsov" left the raid and headed for Bosphorus. Already near Gibraltar, the Americans tried to detain the Russian warship first (the American carrier group imitated combat attacks on the ship and dropped training bombs along the course of its movement), then the British. However, the nerves of the Russian sailors did not flinch and on December 27, "Admiral Kuznetsov" moored in Severodvinsk.
At the same time, frankly speaking, neither then nor now, "Kuznetsov" was not a masterpiece of world shipbuilding. Numerous complaints from the sailors were caused by the main power plant of the ship, and the military-political leadership was caused by the weakness of its aviation group. However, during this time, the Russian aircraft carrier made seven long-range cruises, the last of which was in the Mediterranean in 2013-2014, and played an important role in preventing Western aggression against one of Russia's strategic allies in the Middle East - Syria.
Representatives of the Russian military department have repeatedly stated that in recent years the only Russian aircraft carrier is in good technical condition. In 2008, at the Zvezdochka ship repair center, for example, the main power plant on the ship was renewed, boiler equipment, air conditioning systems, and mechanisms for lifting aircraft to the flight deck were repaired. Replaced cable routes, restored individual blocks of the cruiser weapons systems. The head missile system "Granit" is working, the anti-aircraft artillery is working, the means of observation and guidance are working as usual. There is a planned replacement of the air group, including the Su-33 interceptors, with the MiG-29K and MiG-29 KUB multifunctional fighters.
However, this does not solve the main problem. During its almost 30-year history, "Admiral Kuznetsov" has never undergone major repairs. The ship needs at least a new propulsion system, new electronic equipment and new ship weapon systems, which have been abundantly developed by the Russian defense industry in the past 20 years. Therefore, back in 2011, among the military and "defense industry" began to talk about the fact that the aircraft carrier would soon be put on overhaul. A prerequisite for this is the fact that over the past 10 years Russian shipbuilders have gained the necessary experience in modernizing such a scale during the restoration and alteration of Kuznetsov's "brother" - "Admiral Gorshkov", which two years ago was transferred to the Indian Navy under the name Vikramaditya ". “Sevmash has gained serious experience in the repair and modernization of aircraft carriers thanks to“Vikramaditya”. Today this plant is absolutely ready for normal repair of "Kuznetsov" - one of the sources in the military-industrial complex reported to ITAR-TASS the opinion on this matter.
Strange as it may seem, the current foreign policy situation also contributes to the production of "Kuznetsov" for overhaul1 repairs. Any aircraft carrier is, first of all, a power tool of foreign policy, a means of demonstrating the seriousness of the intentions of one's country thousands of kilometers from its native shores. And, from this point of view, in the next 2-3 years, the main place of collision of interests of Russia, the United States and Europe will not be the Middle East (where, if necessary, instead of Kuznetsov, it is possible to send the aircraft carrier Peter the Great and new nuclear submarines of the type Ash "with cruise missiles on board), and Ukraine. And here an aircraft carrier is not needed - the Black Sea and its coast are completely controlled by aviation, which is based on the territory of Crimea.
Therefore, Russia has several years to modernize its only aircraft carrier, create (more precisely, restore) naval bases for AUG in Southeast Asia and Latin America, overhaul heavy nuclear-powered cruisers of the Orlan type (Admiral Nakhimov, "Admiral Lazarev", "Admiral Ushakov" and "Peter the Great"), which at one time were created to guard and escort Soviet aircraft carriers. During this time, the political and military leadership of our country, obviously, will determine the future of aircraft carriers as such. Some American experts believe that the time of these ships is gone, just as huge battleships disappeared from the oceans. In their opinion, backed up by the experience of Western aggression against Libya, modern submarines are much more effective in destroying facilities on the territory of coastal states than aircraft carrier groups. However, a similar operation against Syria did not begin, including because there at that time, along with a detachment of other ships of the Northern Fleet, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov was demonstrating Russian interests.
