Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, has long represented the failure of the country’s ambitions to create a navy.
The “heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser” was first commissioned in 1991 as a projection of Soviet air power; yet for nearly two decades, the ship has been unduly beset with technical problems, accidents, and long overhauls, thereby aging and becoming utterly ineffective.
Despite many hard bumps along the road, Moscow still pours money into trying to add another 25 years to Kuznetsov’s lifespan.
It stays in the modernization program, where air defenses, propulsion, and the flight deck are all supposed to get upgrades. Still, most seem to believe that the elderly ship is more of a shame than a prize that should have been retired several years back.
National pride and fear of a capabilities gap could be said to be the reasons why Russia is keeping the aging Kuznetsov.
It’s acting, in fact, as a training platform for future, supposedly better, aircraft carrier fleets, which Moscow has been planning to build since 2017. Meanwhile, this errant carrier spends most of its time in the shipyard, raising some questions over whether those capabilities are already lost to Russia.
Well, the Soviet Union had grand designs for an enlarged navy: Admiral Kuznetsov was laid down in 1982.
The carrier was going to be designed to grant Moscow the upper hand in any war. However, Moscow had to compromise with budgetary constraints, technological limits, and strategic disinformation purposes.
For instance, its qualification as a “heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser” was done specifically for it so that she could bypass international rules, allowing her transit of the Turkish Straits under the Montreux Convention.
Admiral Kuznetsov has a ski-jump sloping flight deck; it is, thus possible for the aircraft of this ship to carry out conventional takeoffs and landings of its naval aircraft, Su-33, and MiG-29K fighters. The ski-jump, however, is highly restrictive compared to catapults used by the United States to launch aircraft from their carriers.
Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia has the technical capability or the funding to fit this equipment to this model of carrier.
For its part, the carrier itself has been plagued by problems, accidents, and maintenance issues over its more than 30-year-long service life. Such problems have greatly limited the utility of the carrier to Russia and ensured Admiral Kuznetsov is little more than a sunk cost for Russia’s navy.
Russia has always been a land power, and it has always found it difficult even to try to build aircraft carriers. Costs, strategic priorities, and a lack of overseas-based support bases put Soviet attempts at building carriers firmly into their place.
Russia’s new proposed carrier is called the “Shtorm,” but financial considerations and recent military spending provide little likelihood of construction. So far, the Kuznetsov serves as a hall of fame for Russia’s bold yet problem-plagued aircraft carrier program.
The Soviet Union had one of the world’s superior defense industries but could never perfect aircraft carrier construction. Such continues to be a weakness it has carried over into the modern Russian era with Moscow’s plans to field a carrier fleet being only unrealized.
The dream for a strong carrier force continues to linger in Russian strategic thinking even as Admiral Kuznetsov sleeps in the dock, literally rusting away. At least two other conceptual designs for new carriers appear on paper, but the industry in Russia does not seem to be in a position capable of executing such plans.
As of 2018, the Russian Navy has reportedly started to look into a prospective new aircraft carrier. The first is a conventionally powered vessel of some 70,000 tonnes, and the second is a nuclear-powered vessel with greater displacement. Supposed to be part of Russia’s armament program for the period of 2019 to 2025 was the new “Shtorm” aircraft carrier, code-named Project 23000E.
However, with the present condition and with this growth in anti-ship weapons, it looks like Shtorm will never sail out of this concept of a plan that failed to leave the drawing board.