It all started with an idea...

Leonid Brezjnev - The father of Russian aircraft carriers

The first USSR president that seriously thought of building aircraft carriers was Leonid Brezhnev. He thought that the carriers could be very useful as they were very flexible and therefore able to protect the gigantic 22,200,000 km² Soviet Union. So he led today's Russia into the development and commissioning of the Moskva and Leningrad, the only two carriers of the Moskva class. But they were, as can be seen in the table, not real aircraft carriers as they only carried helicopters. This was however very useful at the time because of the possibilities of using helicopters as antisubmarine warfare platforms since the dawn of the nuclear powered submarines had just arrived.

The next step in the Russian carrier history was the project Orel. The Orel class destroyers were supposed to weigh more than 5 times the weight of its predecessor, carry 70 fixed wing aircraft and be nuclear powered. The plan was to compete with the American flag ship USS Enterprise which had proven itself being worth the $430 million it had cost to build it in 1958. However when the president who started the project died, a new president that was more into smaller, more cost efficient carriers rose to power and got the project (that started in '73), scrapped.

After the Orel project had been shut down all parts of the Navy agreed that they still needed carriers to give sufficient air support when at sea. The discussions went on and the result was a compromise: not as big as the Orel but still a real step up from the (very) small Moskva class. The result? The Kiev class. The four carriers of this class weighed about 40,000 tons each, and had a much bigger air wing than the small 15,000-ton predecessor had carried. The major difference between the Kievs and the western carriers was mostly that since the Kievs were “cruisers” they were also fitted with heavy armament such as 76 mm guns, P-500 surface-to-surface missiles, up to 200 surface-to-air missiles and even torpedo tubes. These carriers received widespread approval across Russia and were a milestone in further developments - even though the Yak-38, which were the fixed-wing aircraft on the Kiev carriers was not very liked .

Kuznetsov - The king of Russia's Navy

Kusnetsov Aircraft Carrier infographic

The Kuznetsov class. The Kuznetsov carriers were first thought to be a close follow up on the Kiev class but after the Orel project failed and after further delays it did not go as it was thought. However in 1981 the current Russian minister of defense Dmitriy Ustinov attended an exercise on board one of the Kiev carriers to make his mind up in the matter. The flaws that he saw made him think: What is the point of having such mighty ships if they are not even comparable with the US Navy’s. He therefore got the Kuznetsov project going, and 14 years after the exercise, in 1995, the Admiral Kuznetsov was finally fully operational (needless to say that the USSR was no longer operational at this time). It was the first ever Russian aircraft carrier capable of launching normal take-off aircraft such as Sukhoi Su-27s and Mikoyan MiG-29s. The earlier Kiev class had only been able to launch its STOVL (ShortTakeOffVerticalLanding) jets Yak-38. Just as the Kiev, Minsk, Novorossiysk and Gorshkov (Kiev cruisers) the new Kuznetsov had a heavy armament on board, making her the new pride of the Russian fleet.

Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier

The fate of the Soviet Union's mistakes

The Chinese Liaoning during its recommission in 2012

Some Russian carriers have been sold and scrapped over the years, for different reasons. The Admiral Gorshkov was too expensive to be maintained and used with the Russian Navy after the Cold War. It was therefore sold to India, modified and recommissioned in 2013 under the name INS Vikramaditya. It is currently one of two active Indian carriers. The Varyag carrier (seen in the table) was rewritten as property of Ukraine after the Cold War. It was stripped of all electronics and later sold in an auction (only the hull). The winning bid came from a Hong Kong businessman who wanted to make a casino in Macao out of it. It did not happen, finally the hull ended in a dry dock at Dalian and became the Liaoning, the Chinese carrier.

The Ulyanovsk shown last in the table was also a project of the USSR. It was basically the Orel hull fitted with modern weapons and electronics. This idea was also scrapped but the blueprints of it were sold to China which plans to use them when building future generations of carriers.

Further reading:

• Article about the full history of aircraft carriers
• A comparison between the USAF and Russian air force
• La Luftwaffe allemande et le MiG-29 Fulcrum

Sources :

• India-defence.com
• Rand.org
• Rusnavy.com
• Russiafile.com
• Public.navy.mil
• (All information acquired on 21/5-2014)