You'd figure that a country which has an ambition to build six aircraft carriers in the next forty years would find the time and money to dispose of their junked ships properly, instead of just leaving them derelict at the carrier pier.
A Northern Fleet strike group led by the Admiral Kuznetsov will leave Severomorsk and head for the Mediterranean Sea for exercises with ships of the Black Sea fleet led by the missile cruiser Moskva.
The ships will conduct a month long exercise simulating battle between two strike groups.
"The main goal of the deployment - resolution of operational-strategic tasks and showing the St. Andrew's flag in foreign ports", RIA Novosti quoted sources in the Navy Headquarters.
The Northern Fleet strike group will be on deployment for three months.
Comment: This is pretty big if it happens - when was the last time the Russians had THREE battle groups at sea at once? Plus they're establishing what looks like an East Africa station. Plus they are talking with the Libyans about building a base in Tripoli.
Have the Russians forgotten that oil is closer to $60/bbl and not $120/bbl?
Lots of cool footage of the month-long, nationwide strategic exercise Stability-2008.
Strategic Aviation:
Twelve combat aircraft, TU-95 and TU-160 missile carriers took off from Saratov Oblast' this morning. Thirty more aircraft joined them in the air. Their mission was to practice joint operations with interceptors and bombers in simulated battle and to conduct aerial refueling. But the main task will take place in a few hours: cruise missile launches over neutral waters.
A-50s deploy to Komi (probably Vorkuta) to support "War in the Far North", a reflection of the interest the Russians show in the Arctic theater:
Gist: Stability-2008 continues in the polar regions. Airmen complete their tasks in especially harsh conditions. Not every army can wage war in the far north. Here's the report. The airfield easily handles the maneuvers of the Il-76s and An-12s. This airfield is uniquely huge. There aren't any bigger airfields in the polar region. Its big enough to handle any size aircraft including the Buran space shuttle (Note: that's a little OBE, don't you think?). This 200 ton piece of equipment is an A-50, a modified Il-76. This radar system operating in the one centimeter wavelength range is able to detect fighter sized targets and maritime targets at ranges of up to 200-400 km. The mission of the A-50 during the exercise is to conduct radar reconnaissance, relaying information to the central command post on targets in the area. The commander of the aircraft says that operating in the far north is not easy.
Flight time is limited because of short daylight hours and there is poor visibility at night and the the weather changes quickly and weather forecasts up here are only right about half the time.
Landing among the MiGs is an An-12 which has already completed its mission. It took off this morning and spent six hours in the air. It has the airplane's symbol painted on the fuselage: a black mammoth. It was deployed to Tiksi, much further north than Vorkuta. The commander reports that the training was outstanding.
Our crew performed littoral weather reconnaissance, and the flight was okay. We completed the mission.
All crews have completed their training missions. Today is the last day of exercises and tomorrow they all return to their home airfields.
Medved'ev also visited the space launch center at Plesetsk, where he observed the successful launch of an SS-25 Topol' mobile ICBM, hitting the target at the Kura test range on Kamchatka and inspected the new Angara launch system, consisting entirely of Russian made components (vice the Ukrainian made missiles the Russians previously used).
But before watching the Topol' launch, Medved'ev and Minister of Defense Serdyukov embarked aboard the aircraft carrying cruiser Admiral of the Soviet Fleet Kuznetsov to watch maritime portions of Stability-2008, culminating in a SS-N-23 Sineva launch from Delta IV SSBN Tula, descibed as "record setting", traveling 11,547km and hitting a notional target in the Pacific Ocean.
Gist starting at story footage: The President and the Minister of Defense arrived on board the carrier by helicopter and considering the class of the ship, it was full of symbolism. Despite the strong winds, Medved'ev and Anatoliy Serdyukov walked the entire flight deck and then went down to the hanger deck. The President greeted the sailors, inspected the aircraft and even sat in the cockpits of an Su-33 and a Ka-27. President Medved'ev visited the Combat Information Center before heading up to the flag bridge to watch the progress of training.
1MC: Next evolution - attack on enemy ground targets with ballistic missiles.
Stability-2008 is continuing for a month and of course the ship has been to sea several times already during the exercises. But today was the most spectacular with the full might of the Northern Fleet on display. DM even went to the flag bridge a couple of times to watch missile launches and flight ops. The exercise script calls for the repulsion of an attack by a fleet of enemy submarines, but the highlight of the exercise was an SS-N-23 Sineva launch from a submurged position. For the first time in the history of the Russian Navy, an SLBM traveled more than 11,500km and destroyed a notional target in the Pacific Ocean.
(Cut to reporter with a little spiel about the capabilities of the Kuznetsov).
(Cut to DM on the mess decks): After completion of the main task, DM went to the mess decks to meet with the crew. The crew had the opportunity to ask any question they wanted of the Commander in Chief and the old Russian saying, "Sailors have no questions" (TR Note: its a cute rhyme in Russian) didn't apply. The questions were wide ranging and included questions about the future of the armed forces.
DM: We have to build new aircraft carrying cruisers. It is completely obvious that it is the most important issue for the Navy. Across the world, all the great powers have great armed forces and powerful navies and I think we should do the same.
The sailors gave DM a hat and a striped sailor's shirt and DM signed the ship's guest book. The President gave Saturday's training an "Outstanding". Training continues for another month.
Strategic Projection: The Admirals will allocate money to build carriers, but where are they going to get the ship building capacity?
Oleg Leonidovich Sergeyev is a Technical Sciences PhD and a Colonel.
On the eve of the May holidays, the Commander in Chief of the Navy Vladimir Vysotsky elaborated on the prospective development of the national fleet. Special attention was given to the plans to construct 5-6 aircraft carriers by the middle of the century, but not as individual ships with carrier aviation, but as systems as part of a multi-purpose task group and strike formation. There will be 5-6 such systems in the Pacific and Northern Fleets. The construction of the aircraft carriers must begin in the 2012-2013 time frame.
The ambitious plans to develop the Navy are based on the concept of the deterring a potential enemy – the USA - in the littoral zone under the cover of anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems and periodic build up of naval presence in regions of strategic interest to Russia. So as to cover the sea with aircraft carriers, driving poachers from their shores, is completely wasteful from an economic point of view. But there isn’t any easily defined operational doctrine explaining the necessity of such ships and none is foreseen for now. Today, that’s why the only Russian aircraft carrier “Admiral Kuznetsov” spends a month or two in the Atlantic once a year, just showing the flag and the ambitions of the high command, absent any easily definable task.
By the way, the US naval strategy is now under the influence of a new threat – high tech terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, piracy – this is a serious change from when the priority was the deter the USSR and Russia aspired to control over the world ocean with the participation of not less than thousands of ships in the international fleet.
The very name “carrier strike group” says that aircraft carriers are offensive weapons systems, acting far from home shores. But Russia has no pretensions to mastery of distant waters, she has enough of her own territory to spare. A clear answer as to why she needs aircraft carriers has as of yet not been received from the admirals and politicians.
The airwing is the key element of the carrier strike groups, determining the composition and specification of the combat employment of a given formation of ships and the allocation of infrastructure, scientific-technical and production centers focused on the realization of the “life cycle” of the sea-based aviation weapons systems. Complicating the military ship construction policies without a system of organization of efforts to modernize weapons usually leads to economic losses. It was in this way in the Khrushchev Era that half finished artillery ships and shore based aircraft went straight to the scrap pile.
The service life of an aircraft carrier with planned maintenance between deployments is about 30 years or more, and the construction tempo (assuming financing) determines the number of graving docks. The realistic service life and corresponding number of these ships in service with the USSR and Russia was determined by the lack of repair facilities and the neglect of the production base. For this reason the first ships were authorized to be repaired in the Nikolayev shipyard, and further reconstruction in shipyards in the Northern and Pacific theaters. The fruition of these plans were not in the cards and the heavy aircraft carrying cruisers of the Pacific Fleet were stricken and sold for scrap before their time – earlier than the 20 year service life – in the middle of the 90s.
Seven to ten years are needed in order to introduce the specialized production ability in order do repairs and modernization of the aircraft carrier and all of its systems in a quality manner. For now it isn’t obvious that the new chairman of the council of directors of the Unified Shipbuilding Company, Igor’ Sechin, will be able to resolve this issue.
Not having resolved this task, even if there were dock space in the north and east of Russia in 2012-2013, three aircraft carriers with be withdrawn from service in the fleet by the middle of the 21st century – two “new” construction and the only one that is active today – the TAVKR “Admiral Kuznetsov”. Accordingly, Russia should start building in this period up to 10 aircraft carriers, whose average time of construction is 8 years, based on the production rate at the Black Sea Nikolayev shipyard and based on the cooperation of hundreds of subcontractors all over the USSR. To this number it is also necessary to add dozens of ships that make up the carrier strike groups.
Can the aircraft carrier fleet become a breakthrough project or is it the latest in a series of conceptual soap bubbles, far from realization? One can divine the answer to that this way – by technical cooperation of national production, outsourcing potential to the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, most of all, Ukraine and by widespread use of management by objective. On the other hand, the mark of failure will be the creation of new Directorates – in their number per capita we are well ahead of the rest of the planet.
