Going back to the 1970s, the Soviet Union built four Kiev-class carriers
By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
When viewed within the larger, seemingly limitless expanse of time, Russia’s Kiev-class aircraft carriers could be seen as a momentary flicker of light which was quickly extinguished amid an eternity of darkness. Could the Russians actually build carriers? The record might not suggest that it could.
Going back to the 1970s, the Soviet Union built four Kiev-class carriers, two of which were sold to China as museums, one was sold to India years ago and another was scrapped. What was wrong with these carriers and why are they largely regarded as a failure?
There are likely many reasons for this, and the Soviet Union and Russia have a poor history when it comes to carriers and a Navy overall. One complication may have been that the project was simply a bit too ambitious, as write ups explain the Kiev-class carriers were engineered to be a full-deck carrier as well as a cruiser; the design of the ship shows a flat deck aircraft take-off area adjacent to a warship-like series of structures.
Heavy Aviation Cruiser
Russian publications described the Kiev class as a “heavy aviation cruiser” with both a flight deck for carrier-launched aircraft and a series of missiles and weapons typically not built into carriers. Heavy weaponry, when it comes to US carriers, are built into separate warships such as destroyers and cruisers in position to project carriers in Carrier Strike Groups.
Russia likely lacked the ability to build and operate anything close to a US Navy carrier strike group and may have attempted to integrate several disparate or separately functioning warship systems. US Navy carriers do have some integrated defenses of course, yet the primary focus is to support, sustain and enable a massive, lethal Carrier Air Wing.
US Carrier Strike Group
US Navy carriers are not intended to operate alone in a high threat environment, and will always operate with the protection of heavily armed warships. Many US Navy destroyers and cruisers operate with both offensive and defensive attack capacity, meaning they can use Aegis Combat Systems to track and intercept incoming ballistic missiles, yet also fire Tomahawks and other weapons in an offensive attack capacity.
Perhaps the Russian concept was either too ambitious or not properly aligned with the kinds of Concepts of Operation necessary to execute at sea air-attack campaigns. The Kiev-class ships were built with a flight deck that was only two-thirds of the total deck, something which may not have enabled the requisite at-sea-carrier-launched air attack space or maintenance.
Overall size also appears to be a huge factor, as the Kiev-class ships operated at a full displacement capacity of 45-tons, something less than one-half of the 100,000-tons the USS Ford can operate with. This displacement difference would suggest that US carriers can operate with twice as much weight, meaning they can support a much larger number of aircraft.
The flight deck of the Kiev class looks more like a US amphibious assault ship, and it therefore appears the Russians sought to operate Yak-38 short-take-off-and-landing attack(STOVL) aircraft. The Soviet ships may have simply been ill equipped to sufficiently support air attack operations, and therefore operated with a greatly limited air-operation capability.
The Kiev-class boats were equipped with heavy surface to air and surface to surface weapons, yet this may have greatly compromised their capacity to effectively operate like a carrier. Simply put a carrier and its supporting warship cannot be built as a single platform, without massively compromising or even disabling each respective function.
Simply looking at available specs, the Kiev-class flight deck is almost an entire football field “shorter” than the 1,092-ft flight deck of the US Navy’s Ford. The Kiev-class was reportedly able to fly up to 30-aircraft, a number roughly one-half if not one-third US Navy carrier-launch capacity. Armed with Yak-38 STOVL aircraft and helicopters, the Soviet ships appear somewhat similar to a US Navy amphibious assault ship. The Yak-38 was a 1970s Soviet aircraft which, much like a US Navy Harrier Jet, was engineered for vertical take-off.
Kris Osborn is President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.