I just read an interesting article about the Russians wanting to tie cruiser and a carrier to make a Aircraft Cruiser. IT sounds like they want to mix all aspects of a modern surface ship into one airplane carrying ship. It says the Russians plan to build three of these. Does anyone know anything about these?
Russian Battle Carriers
- Thread starter Corsair96
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It just keeps things organized and on topic.
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Sources?
Its far more useful if we can see the references to determine the calibre of the article before commenting.
the reason why I say this is because the russians travelled this path before and worked out pretty quickly that hybrid aircraft carriers were a waste of time. UK, France, Italy worked it out in the early 80's.
Everyone abandoned it for a reason.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4
here is the link, New Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier
I dont think its that bad of an idea for a small navy and a navy that is out of date. It could be a stepping stone for bigger things
Sorry about the bad listing
next time:hitwall
I dont think its that bad of an idea for a small navy and a navy that is out of date. It could be a stepping stone for bigger things
Sorry about the bad listing
next time:hitwall
its actually a worse idea for a small navy. they don't have critical mass costs and the killer is supporting logistics.
IMHO it is a spectacularly dumb idea. they failed before and the reasons for having them 30 years later still don't make tactical sense.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
On paper it might sound like a good idea. Practice is another matter entirely.
Let us consider a hypothetical cruiser-aircraft carrier for a minute.
When the ship is fufilling the 'cruiser' role, it would likely be providing a command centre, and covering some combination of ASW, ASuW and AAW (antisubmarine warfare, antisurface warfare and area air defence respectively). Particularly for the ASuW and AAW roles, the vessel needs to have the fields of fire open to launch missiles and/or fire guns and cannons. The same ship in the 'carrier' role needs to have safe ingress/egress corridors in which to launch and recover aircraft. In other words, the vessel could provide a cruiser or a carrier capability, but not both at the same time. It might be possible to switch back and forth between roles while underway, but either one, it can only be a 'cruiser' or a 'carrier' at any one time, not both.
This then leads to the next point. A cruiser which has the appropriate fitout to act as an aircraft carrier is going to have a number of expensive features and fittings (aircraft lift, aircraft fuel and magazine, hanger, etc) that is either not normally needed, or much larger than normal aboard a cruiser, all the while not benefitting the cruiser roles. By the same token, the 'aircraft carrier' will have all the cruiser features like naval cannon, torpedo tubes, air defence radar and illuminators, etc which are costly, take up space and require maintenance, but do not aid the carrier in operating aircraft. In short, systems and space get eaten up without providing a return.
Perhaps the most important, is that the various systems require proper integration. Adding systems which make a platform significantly more complicated without improving primary mission performance are generally avoided whenever possible. This is because such a situation makes system integration even more complicated than it already is, and that in turn just increases acquisition, development and ongoing operational costs. Assuming of course that the integration issues and costs do not reach the point where the platform is no longer considered worthwhile...
-Cheers
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #7
As the article states, the cruiser carriers would have the capabiltity to operate alone, instead of with a large ASW, and Asuw force. The ship would have the ability to operate on its own missions. I still dont think its a bad idea
The article might claim it, but it is fundamentally abject nonsense.
surface vessels in the 21st century are not going to be playing around in contested ocean space like the lone ranger.
apart from the obvious doctrine problems, the ship does not have the capacity to be fitted out effectively for all roles. to do it means that it must be bigger, it means power generation issues for all the relevant sensor suites, it means that the bigger it gets then the more attractive it is for a sub - it also means that the vessel becomes a single point of failure.
quite frankly, its idiotic and you'd have to question the credentials of anyone who wrote the article - they have ignored so many fundamental issues that its not funny.
The USN built several carriers with Terrier launchers, the appropriate radar and FCS's(the standard DL armament of the time) and fairly quickly removed them for more space for aircraft parts and other items more useful for the carrier. They were replaced by much more compact point defense missiles and guns.
The Kuznetsov was built with a VLS integrated into the flight deck, any firing of the missiles it contained or even maintenance of the cells will shut down the flight deck.
The USN toyed with the idea during the 70's as well, one of the iterations of the failed Aegis Strike cruiser was a hybrid carrier/cruiser it was abandoned when it proved to be massively expensive and of limited utility.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
As GF already posted, the idea realistically is nonsense. In a modern contested battlespace, there are air, surface and subsurface threats which need to be countered and/or neutralized. A single ship is not going to be able to provide responses to the entire range of potential threats at the same time, and this is assuming that the required subsystems are not interfering with each other.
The USN and others arrange vessels in taskforces to provide multiple sources of layered protection to high value assets. Having a single ship provide everything would eliminate the various layers, as well as provide a single point of failure. Anything which can damage/disable/sink the "ubership" would cause the navy to lose the ASW, ASuW, AAD and CV capabilities the ship had been providing. To accomplish the same result against a standard taskforce would require the loss or damage of several different vessels at the same time.
-Cheers
can you imagine the CONOPS for this vessel? It would be a bloody nightmare.
Insufficient air to run CAP
unable to run CAP if missiles are up
CAP needs to be outside of the reach box because of safety critical issues - so time on station is already impacted.
unable to field ASW air if missiles are up - meaning that it can only reach out for subs at the first detection layer
etc etc.....
an absolute woftam.
whoever is postulating this is a first class armchair general and a tool. lock him up before he starts killing people in real life ...
