2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16
Aircraft carriers are originally designed to be floating air bases. Their mass construction began in the twenties of the XX century. To provide air support to ground forces that have landed on foreign shores, to protect them from bombing attacks - this is the main purpose of this class of ships.
When and under what circumstances did the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov appear in the Russian Navy, a photo of which is regularly published by foreign news agencies as an illustration of our growing military power?
Countries that had colonies or pursued a foreign policy that required forceful arguments became the first owners of these expensive heavy ships. The Soviet Union, due to its geographical features, did not need mobile airfields. To protect your territory, it was cheaper and easier to build a sufficient number of conventional, ground.
Aircraft-carrying cruisers in the USSR were built in the 70s. BOD (large anti-submarine ships) "Moscow" and "Leningrad", then "Kyiv" differed significantly from the "Nimitz" or "Enterprise" in terms of displacement, length, and design. The difference with a conventional cruiser was in the aft part, it was aligned under the flight deck, on which helicopters or VTOL fighters were based. The main function of the air wing was to detect enemy submarines and fight them.
Today, the Russian Navy has the Admiral Kuznetsov ship. Is it an aircraft carrier, and why is it persistently called an aircraft carrier cruiser in official documents? To understand this issue, you need to mentally transport yourself to the Ukrainian city of Nikolaev in the fall of 1982. Here, in the homeland of Russian shipbuilders, there is a solemn laying of a new huge Russian military vessel, which was going to be called the TANK (heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser) "Riga". Then L. I. died. Brezhnev, and his memory was honored by renaming the ship. Then perestroika began, and it was considered inappropriate to name the cruiser in honor of the leader of the era of stagnation, so it became Tbilisi. It was in 1985, and four years later the ship received its current name - "Admiral Kuznetsov".
Aircraft carrier, according to the 1936 treaty concluded in Montreux and signed by the Soviet delegation, has no right to cross the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. Nothing, we have a cruiser, he can.
Ships of this class have only nine countries. Fifty aircraft can solve the most complex and diverse combat missions: from anti-submarine defense to assault strikes. For this purpose, there are both helicopters and planes on board, moreover, not some specialized deck ones, with truncatedflight characteristics, and the MiG-29 and SU-27, however, with special marine equipment.
In the Crimean town of Saki, a base was built for training pilots who were to lift their cars from the deck of the cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov. The aircraft carrier became a forge of naval aviation personnel. Today, for Russian pilots, such flights have become a routine, at the same time there was not enough experience, everything was new.
Warships are built for a reason, they embody a certain military doctrine. In the modern world, the Russian fleet protects the interests of the country in all areas of the world's oceans. Sustained air support is required to maintain a high degree of protection for naval formations consisting of ships of various purposes and classes. It is this task that Admiral Kuznetsov solves. The aircraft carrier has anti-ship, anti-submarine and anti-aircraft weapons systems, and its air wing can cover the operations of an entire squadron.
As for the assumptions about the aggressiveness of Russian foreign policy, they are groundless. If we evaluate "imperial aspirations" by the number of ships of this class, then it is enough to compare the number of US nuclear attack aircraft carriers (11) with the number "one", and everything will immediately become clear. The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov does not pose a threat to the world, but she will protect her country, if necessary.
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