#9 - RW 11-5-04 - RW Home
Moscow Times
November 2, 2004
A Foolhardy Naval Exercise
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last week a Russian naval aircraft carrier battle group limped back to port after the biggest and most ambitious naval exercises in the mid-Atlantic ever performed by our Navy. The group was comprised of our newest and most powerful ships: the Navy's flagship nuclear-powered heavy cruiser, the Pyotr Veliky, our only aircraft carrier currently in service, the Admiral Kuznetsov, the cruiser Marshal Ustinov, the destroyer Admiral Ushakov, a tanker and two support ships. A number of nuclear attack submarines, including the Oscar II subs -- sister boats of the Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 -- were also deployed in the Atlantic as part of the exercise.

This naval deployment was undertaken at great cost and risk. The Kuznetsov, which first was named the Leonid Brezhnev and later the Tbilisi, was last at sea during the Kursk salvage operation and left the shipyard after repairs lasting several years. The last time the carrier was at sea with its air wing to practice deck landings and takeoffs was fully seven years ago.

During these years the Kuznetsov's air wing pilots have tried to keep in trim by flying from land air bases, including the Nitka facility, a land-based takeoff and landing pad simulating the Kuznetsov built in Soviet times in the Crimea. It is now being leased from the Ukrainians.

The lack of proper practice has taken its toll: The late air wing commander of the Kuznetsov, General Timur Apakidze, plunged to the ground in his Su-33 at an air show near Pskov in July 2001 and was fatally injured. Apakidze held the Hero of Russia rank for being the first Russian pilot to takeoff and land on the deck of the Kuznetsov.

During the latest exercise, an Su-25 UTG jet crash-landed on deck, apparently because the pilot's approach was too fast. The front wheel broke off and the plane plowed up the carrier's flight deck as it skidded to a halt. Luckily, the gods were merciful: No one was killed.

The North Atlantic's high seas badly battered our ships. Several were reported to have taken on water, and by the time the battle group sailed past Norway to its home base off the northern Kola Peninsula, the Kuznetsov was oozing fuel into the sea, leaving an oil slick. The sailors of the Kuznetsov were all first-time conscripts, while the officers and pilots were old hands close to retirement age. Which young and aspiring top gun pilots would want to join an air wing that gets to fly off an aircraft carrier deck once in seven years?

The Kuznetsov is a modernized version of a Kiev-class aircraft carrier with an extended fly deck and other improvements. Its sister ships the Kiev, Minsk and Novorossiisk have already been cut up for scrap after actively serving only a few years in Soviet times. The Gorshkov, formerly called the Baku, is being refurbished to serve with the Indian Navy.

The Soviet-built carriers, including the Kuznetsov, have been plagued with maintenance problems. Their steam turbine engines require distilled pure water, but supplying this at sea is often a problem, as the engine tubings constantly get clogged up and rupture. Typically, a Russian aircraft carrier puts to sea for a month or two, and then spends years in the shipyard undergoing repairs.

The Kuznetsov does not have a takeoff catapult, and its Su-33 fighters cannot take off with any heavy payload or at full fuel capacity. The Kuznetsov fighters cannot bomb land targets or attack enemy ships: They carry only light air-to-air missiles to intercept enemy planes. The Kuznetsov also has long-range S-300 anti-aircraft missiles and was built primarily to defend ships and submarines at sea against NATO air supremacy, while its helicopters can attack enemy subs.

This time in the Atlantic, our carrier battle group simulated an attack by a U.S. carrier group with cruise missiles of the Pyotr Veliky and Oscar II subs, while the Kuznetsov did its best to defend against enemy aircraft counterattacks. Nowadays a mid-Atlantic clash between Russian and U.S. carrier groups seems to be a remote possibility, but what else can our Navy do? Its present hardware allows it to either stay in port or simulate fighting NATO.

The Navy put all it had into a show of strength to try to show the West, the Kremlin and our public it is still capable of action. The result, like other high-profile naval exercises in recent years, is a public embarrassment that could easily have turned into a major disaster. Someone should authoritatively tell our admirals to stop playing games with a nuclear fleet in disarray before they have another Kursk-size accident.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.