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HMS Liverpool shadows Russian carrier

A significant limitation on Russian carrier ops is they haven't developed the high degree of deck level control over landings and take off's Western Navy's have. Most of the directing and control is from the island rather than down on the deck and the pilots rely heavilly on their own judgement when getting back aboard

Also, while the SU-33 blasting off the front end of the Kuznetsov without cats is superficially impressive, there is a penalty.
They use an automated hold back system for the main wheels and power up to max and use the sheer brute power of the engines to get airborne with a bit of trajectory boost from the ski jump. The downside is the planes can't take off with full fuel or weapons loads, and take off's in marginal weather can be a bit 'sporty'.
 
Of course shes done the second or third deployment of a 22yr career. She will now go into refit, which will deny russia any carrier airpower for at least 3-5 years and given their track record since 1991, i'd suggest we'll not see her at sea for 5-10 years if ever.

Take a look at the gorshkov refit to see how hard it is to take a stovl carrier and make it ctol.
 
Of course shes done the second or third deployment of a 22yr career. She will now go into refit, which will deny russia any carrier airpower for at least 3-5 years and given their track record since 1991, i'd suggest we'll not see her at sea for 5-10 years if ever.

Take a look at the gorshkov refit to see how hard it is to take a stovl carrier and make it ctol.

One is inclined to wonder about why it should take so long. Obviously it's something of an apples and oranges comparison, but the conversion of the Akagi from her weird triple-decked design to the conventional full-length flight-deck system took from April '37 to August '38. Admittedly they were simpler ships, but still, I would guess (very much a guess, of course) that the requirements of an aircraft carrier haven't changed too very much in terms of what you have to have in it - i.e. space to store aircraft, fuel, ammo, stores etc. You have to wonder what could be done, if the Russians pulled their fingers out. having said that, Akagi was, for her time, pretty big. Big enough, fortunately, to accommodate the ever-growing sizes and take-off runs of her air wing. But still, I wonder.

Mind you, I know slightly less than bugger-all about the intricacies of aircraft carrier design, so I am now hunkering down in preparation for a bombardment of corrections.
 
A significant limitation on Russian carrier ops is they haven't developed the high degree of deck level control over landings and take off's Western Navy's have. Most of the directing and control is from the island rather than down on the deck and the pilots rely heavilly on their own judgement when getting back aboard

'.

I suspect a lot of it is also that they don't get a lot of practice. Carrier landings are a skill that don't necessarily come practicing on land, no matter how realistic you try and make it
 
One is inclined to wonder about why it should take so long. Obviously it's something of an apples and oranges comparison, but the conversion of the Akagi from her weird triple-decked design to the conventional full-length flight-deck system took from April '37 to August '38. Admittedly they were simpler ships, but still, I would guess (very much a guess, of course) that the requirements of an aircraft carrier haven't changed too very much in terms of what you have to have in it - i.e. space to store aircraft, fuel, ammo, stores etc. You have to wonder what could be done, if the Russians pulled their fingers out. having said that, Akagi was, for her time, pretty big. Big enough, fortunately, to accommodate the ever-growing sizes and take-off runs of her air wing. But still, I wonder.

Mind you, I know slightly less than bugger-all about the intricacies of aircraft carrier design, so I am now hunkering down in preparation for a bombardment of corrections.

What the Russians found the hard way is that no matter how many AGI's you send to follow US and RN carriers around like faithful puppies for decades taking millions of pictures and mountains of notes, carrier ops are an incredibly intricate art, and designing them is not something you can just 'learn from a book'.

Although the RN invented carriers and all the proceedures for operating them, as we are now finding, not having designed, built and operated a proper one for many decades means the institutional knowledge and design experience has perished. We're relying a lot on the Americans for input on how to 'do it right' with CVF.

The Russians don't have that advantage of being able to ask the guys with lots of proper carriers 'What's the best way to do this'. They have to go out and find out the hard way 'x' doesn't work, then try and figure out how to solve the problem and design the fix. It took us and the Americans the best part of 40 years to develop carriers to a fully sorted proposition. The Russians tried to jump straight past those decades of hard won experience and solution finding.
 
Not totally true. Even they recognised that they couldn't just build an Enterprise. They started with the weird Leningrad class(?) helicopter carrier and then went to the Kiev class before building the Kutznetzov. I think had they used her much after she was commissioned they'd be better at it. The Chinese are trying to shortcut the process by going for a larger carrier but it'll take them years to be fully operational. But then they play the long game
 
Not totally true. Even they recognised that they couldn't just build an Enterprise. They started with the weird Leningrad class(?) helicopter carrier and then went to the Kiev class before building the Kutznetzov. I think had they used her much after she was commissioned they'd be better at it. The Chinese are trying to shortcut the process by going for a larger carrier but it'll take them years to be fully operational. But then they play the long game



I was simplify the case for brevity, but I would argue that The Moskva's were just a 'me too' take of the rather silly Tiger Class conversions, and the Kievs were a rather curious and innefective chimera of CVS and a guided missile cruiser, and neither brought much to the carrier learning game.

Their first go at a 'proper' carrier was the Kuznetsovs and even then, they seem to still be unable to make their minds up whether they are aircraft carriers or ASuW units.
Look at the armaments on Kuznetsov.

8 × AK-630 AA guns (6×30 mm, 6,000 round/min/mount, 24,000 rounds)
8 × CADS-N-1 Kashtan CIWS (each 2 × 30 mm Gatling AA plus 32 3K87 Kortik SAM)


OK, AA weaponry but the amount suggests they have serious doubts about the carriers life expectancy if the SHTF.

And then we get this…

12 × P-700 Granit SSM

Them's bloody huge SSM's designed for killing CVN's!

And them we get this…

• 18 × 8-cell 3K95 Kinzhal SAM VLS (192 missiles; 1 missile per 3 seconds)

OK, so they clearly have almost zero confidence in their carriers aircrafts abilty to defend it.

But this is truly baffling!

• RBU-12000 UDAV-1 ASW rocket launchers (60 rockets)

The worlds biggest ASW Frigate?
 
General concensus was that the RBU's were really some kind of anti-torpedo defence. In any case, you seem to be counter-arguing against yourself from other threads - they fitted it because they could afford to and their ships had the space. Isn't your argument that the t45's are no good because they have no anti-surface capability?

As to their carrier progression - a cleverly thought out strategy to go from multiple helo carrier, admittedly a bit of a failure, to light escort carrier to small strike carrier. Nothing ineffective about that. The Kievs were let down by their poor aircraft but in general were no worse than CVS - effective for what they were designed to do.
 
General concensus was that the RBU's were really some kind of anti-torpedo defence. In any case, you seem to be counter-arguing against yourself from other threads - they fitted it because they could afford to and their ships had the space. Isn't your argument that the t45's are no good because they have no anti-surface capability?

As to their carrier progression - a cleverly thought out strategy to go from multiple helo carrier, admittedly a bit of a failure, to light escort carrier to small strike carrier. Nothing ineffective about that. The Kievs were let down by their poor aircraft but in general were no worse than CVS - effective for what they were designed to do.


It was late, I was tired… ;P

The point with the Kuznetsovs is that by arming a carrier as a ASuW unit, they still have two issues they haven't addressed or are hazy about their capabilities.

Carriers are not ASuW units, we've seen that evolutionary dead end in the 20's with the Lexington's getting togged out with 8" guns so they could stand in the line of battle once they'd sent off all their planes. Look at our CVS, orginally to have Exocet for shooting at other ships until the penny dropped.

Also, the dispersment of the ships company required to fight a dual mode ship. On a 'proper' carrier, the entire crew is devoted to supporting the air wing that is you sole offensive and defensive capability without distractions or compromises.

My point is, you can't go from helicopters carriers to strike carriers without making the babysteps in between that we and the Americans did.
Helicopters carriers are helicopters carriers, and VTOL carriers are VTOL carriers, but going to fixed wing CTOL strike carriers are a whole different ballet as we're finding even though we used to have the things back in the day.

I would posit that the Russian Navy is about on the same point on the Naval aviaton evolutionary tree as the USN was in the 20's and 30's with the Lexington's, and it took the USN nearly 20 years with their Fleet Problem exercises in the 20's and 30's to fully develop the correct design and best techniques for deploying carriers and carrier aviation.
IMO, this is why the Kuznetsov is going back into a deep refit and is to be practically completely rebuilt, to make the next evolutionary step to the 50's so to speak.
 
.... Carriers are not ASuW units, we've seen that evolutionary dead end in the 20's with the Lexington's getting togged out with 8" guns so they could stand in the line of battle once they'd sent off all their planes. Look at our CVS, orginally to have Exocet for shooting at other ships until the penny dropped.

Also, the dispersment of the ships company required to fight a dual mode ship. On a 'proper' carrier, the entire crew is devoted to supporting the air wing that is you sole offensive and defensive capability without distractions or compromises....

You appear to be saying that it would be easier to take care of eggs if they are all in one basket. You also seem to be saying that Lipizzaners would put on a better show if they specialised in a single skill.
 
You appear to be saying that it would be easier to take care of eggs if they are all in one basket. You also seem to be saying that Lipizzaners would put on a better show if they specialised in a single skill.

There's no point in arguing with him. He's arrse's resident expert on all things maritime. He clearly can't see the irony of spending 30 plus pages on other threads arguing that MOD are a bunch of ignorant morons for buying ships like T45 that aren't adequately armed against all possible threats and then complaining that the Russians have. I mean, what the **** does "dispersement of the ship's company" mean? Never has so much bullshit been spouted by someone who knows so little.
 

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