After MiG-29KR Crash, Kuznetsov aircraft flying from airbase, not carrier

Many of the fast jets that were embarked on the Russia aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov have been flown to the main Russian air base in Syria, Airbus Defence and Space satellite imagery obtained by IHS Jane's shows.

The imagery shows eight Russian Federation Navy Su-33 and one MiG-29KR jets alongside various Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft at Humaymim Air Base in Latakia province on 20 November.

Kuznetsov can carry around 20 fast jets and is known to have embarked at least eight Su-33s for its current deployment in the Eastern Mediterranean, and at least four of the new MiG-29KR multirole fighters for the first time. One of the new jets crashed on 14 November, an incident that a Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) statement attributed to an unspecified "equipment fault during an approach for deck landing".

www.janes.com...

a reply to: anzha

Carrier operations are exceedingly difficult. They require both the aircraft and the ship to be operating at the highest levels.

If the speculation is true, that a Mig-29 was lost due to waiting for the arresting gear to be fixed, that's a big loss.

Not that Russia is not extremely sophisticated in a number of areas, carrier strike group operations is not one of them. They are attempting to pretend they have this capability with their one outmoded carrier, and it has obviously proven a failure. They have made a very smart decision to get their planes off the carrier to save future accidents. At this point it would take them several years to equal the capabilities of Great Britain or France in this particular arena.

a reply to: anzha

There's quite the article today on the WSJ about how old that carrier is and how it doesn't have catapults and how out of practice the Russian pilots are at carrier landings. Ivan's got problems apparently.

a reply to: TonyS

Most foreign built carriers are STOBAR, unlike the US which use catapults. If you remove the 10 US carriers, you can count on one hand the number that have catapults.

STOBAR is almost a requirement for non nuclear carriers. A steam catapult uses steam from the reactor to power the catapult. Without a reactor, you'd have to have some kind of steam generation system, which would be heavy as hell and take up a lot of room.

As for the pilots, just like ours they train on land until they get to the ship. While Russia doesn't do many carrier operations, what they've overlooked, or didn't give a crap about, is that the deployments that the US does almost all end up coming home with aircraft missing.

Yet another case of reporters not bothering to research or care about things that matter.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I was aware that we lose a plane now and again. Flying is dangerous business. That's why I don't fly.

According to the WSJ article, the lack of catapults means that the Russian aircraft have to take off with a light load of missiles and fuel as opposed to the US aircraft.

One point I'd think about though.........yea, our pilots practice on land before landing on a carrier. But when I was in Pensacola Florida, the pilots practiced carrier landings on the old WWII USS Lexington, which is now in Corpus Christi Texas. Maybe the US is just lucky to have been proficient at this for so long and has extra aircraft carriers for practicing crashing into?

I am really shocked and surprised the Russians don't have Nuclear carriers.........but.......(tongue in cheek), maybe we should be glad considering Chernobyl.

a reply to: TonyS

Yes, they have to take off with a lighter load, but every nation outside of France that operates carriers does too. There is no reason to single that out as a problem.

The US, until relatively recently had a number of CV class carriers that could take one and park it in the Gulf to do carrier training on. Right now, we're sort of in the same boat as Russia though. We don't have any more CVs, so our CVNs have to do workups and requalify pilots on the ships. Until a couple months ago, just about the only CVNs we had that weren't actually deployed were in Drydock or pierside for maintenance. We no longer have dedicated training carriers, so it's kind of a catch as catch can as far as that goes.

Russia never went the way of dedicated carriers the way we did. Their "carriers" are multi purpose, and are frequently built as Aviation Cruisers or something along those lines. If you look at a CVN, all their offensive punch comes from either their escorts, or aircraft, where the Russian ships can pound targets without either.

a reply to: Zaphod58

When I was in the Navy (82 - 87) we had the Lexington as a designated training carrier. She was later replaced by the Forrestal. When the Forrestal was decommissioned, the idea was that the Kitty Hawk was going to replace her, because the Kitty Hawk was in the best material condition of the remaining conventional carriers. In an emergency the Kitty Hawk could easily be returned to active service. I'm not going into the politics that prevented this from happening.

As far as catapults go, they were originally hydraulic or black powder. (Cruiser seaplane cats from WWII were cartridge actuated) The later Essex class were the first to have steam cats. All of the Forrestal class, Improved Forrestal class and Nukes have had steam cats.

a reply to: JIMC5499

I say we go back to black powder catapults.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The problem with them is that they work harden the barrel every cycle. The carbon in the black powder actually carburizes the metal, making it brittle.

I don't want to be sleeping next to one of those. The steam cats on the Forrestal were bad enough.

a reply to: JIMC5499

I wouldn't want to be a pilot launching on one of them.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I rode in an A-6 on and off of the Forrestal. Best ride I ever had. I fell asleep on roller coasters after that.

a reply to: JIMC5499

I came within ten minutes of getting to hop a COD during RIMPAC one year. The bird that was waiting for parts canceled when they didn't arrive, and the other bird had just taxied.

a reply to: Zaphod58

No thanks on the C-2 ride. I don't like not being able to see where I'm going. I had some time between classes at Pensacola and a Senior Chief put me in the Flight Physiology class. That qualified me to ride in an aircraft equipped with an ejection seat. I had to scrounge rides on my own to get the hours to keep the qualification. I was able to get some S-3 crew time when we were deployed, but, a shore it was what ever Ops at Cecil Field would let me have. The S-3 was strange. If nobody was riding in the fourth seat, they had to put ballast in it to keep the ejection sequence straight. The XO of the squadron referred to me as "self-loading ballast".

a reply to: JIMC5499

I used to love and hate the S-3. They were fairly easy to deal with most of the time, and would come through without the need for a tanker, which was nice.

Then there was refueling. If we had to fuel them, there was going to be a fuel spill, period. We had to step down the pressure on the fuel line to try to keep it from venting due to over pressure.

a reply to: Zaphod58

They had problems with their high level shutoff valves. The grapes hated them for pretty much the same reason as you. Funny thing was that the S-3Bs were a pretty good bomber. They would build a float out in the ocean and take turns dropping practice bombs on it. It was close enough to the ship that we could watch. More than once the best score was an S-3. They wouldn't let our helos play, because we could stop and drop the bomb.

a reply to: JIMC5499

That doesn't surprise me. They were a damn good airplane. I'm hoping Korea brings them back.

That valve issue got to the point where when they said they needed fuel, we damn near declared a ground emergency before the fuel truck even rolled.

I took off from the deck of the USS Independence while underway. Did it in a Chinook though

a reply to: FlyingFox

When was that? I was with the Air Wing on the Indy from 83-85.

a reply to: JIMC5499

you were stationed on NAS Cecil Field? i was stationed In the Marine Barracks on Yellow Water. was sad to see the base decommissioned.