I would also suspect that Russia has very few qualified carrier pilots.
The Yak-41 was a supersonic capable V/STOL follow-on to the Yak-38 employed on the Kiev class cruiser-carrier. Never got past RDT&E stage most likely to budget as well as eventual decomm of the Kiev class.
The problem is that this does not improve or positively change the impact of lower volley, package form up rates and thus coherent package to target issues. It gives a better rate for the STOBAR carrier, but it does not make it any more competitive against CTOL as other mission parameters still stay in the red.
Russia does have a buddy refueling capability, at least on the Flanker family.
From what I've heard, carrying and using the buddy refueling pods is not a major task, involving only modifications to the aircraft's fuel management system. Modern FMS (even on smaller fighters) are capable of handling this job even without any modifications.
Currently, the only catapults available are those powered by steam. This requires a large amount of the onboard volume and power to generate the steam (always done near the engine/reactor room, pump it, store it and finally blast it
). The tanks and pipes occupy a large amount of volume and require frequent maintenance.Nice video, thank you for that. Clearly shows the buddy-buddy IFR.
Thank you for all of that, i thought that the Kuznetzov was a large ship, apparently the aircrafts was not the only thing they carried.
Here are some more pics, of the Kuznetsov when it was in the straights of Gibraltar.
Nice photos, thank you!
Not sure that is ENTIRELY true, when I was stationed in Norfolk I saw the carriers moored on either side to the pier, but the rest of your story is true enough. Heck both destroyers I was on do that, if only because it is easier to paint the hull from the pier than from the little aluminum fishing boat the BM's use to paint the non-pier side.
Life rafts. They look similar to the ones the USN uses, just white.
It is a good vidoe but it also shows that the ship can realistily only laurch one aircraft at a time off the ramp but could have two ranged). In so far as buddy refuellingis ocncnered given the reduction in MTOW to amountof feul available coudl be constrained wiht reduces effectiveness.
Annother thing that should be considered is reliability. Ski jumps can not break down, cat's do. For a navy that is not especially sophisticated in maintinance and logistical terms this could be an important factor.
With out any weapons on store for a plane, how much fuel can the plane take off with from the longer launch position, to be a dedicated refuelers?
As people have said previously in this post and as is available online it seems that steam catapults add on a lot of operational and maintenance baggage to a ship i guess that must increase its life cost by a quite significant.
There are 2 short take off positions on which the aircraft can oly carry limited weapons and 1 long on which MTOW is possible, which is essentially a long run on one of the first two.
This is precicely what i mean. you have to make a judgement as to wether your logistical and maintinance infestructure can handle the added work of steam cats, and if so is the additional capability worth it? In the case of the USN it clearly is, but not so for the british. There seems to be alot more to the CATOBAR vs STOBAr debate than sortie rates.
Good points Ozzy. I think this is a well balanced assessment as to why only a few navies (USN and French) are building CATOBAR carriers.