"Admiral Kuznetsov": an aircraft carrier or a cruiser?

The aircraft carriers, as originally conceived, are floating airbases. Their mass construction began in the twenties of the twentieth century. Provide air support to land forces that landed on foreign shores, protect them from bomb attacks - that's the main purpose of this class of ships.

When and under what circumstances in the Russian fleet appeared the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, a photo of which foreign news agencies regularly publish as an illustration of our growing military power?

Countries that had colonies or pursued foreign policy, which demanded strong arguments, became the first owners of these expensive heavy vessels. The Soviet Union, by virtue of its geographical features, did not need mobile aerodromes. To protect its territory, it was cheaper and easier to build a sufficient number of conventional, terrestrial ones.

The aircraft carrying cruisers in the USSR were built in the 70s. BODs (large anti-submarine ships) Moscow and Leningrad, then Kiev were significantly different from Nimitsa or Enterprise in terms of displacement, length, and design. The difference with the conventional cruiser was aft, it was aligned to the flight deck, on which helicopters or fighter jets with vertical take-off and landing were based. The main function of the air wing was to detect enemy submarines and fight against them.

Today, the Russian Navy has a ship called Admiral Kuznetsov. An aircraft carrier is this, and why is it in official documents persistently called an aircraft-carrying cruiser? To understand this issue, you need to mentally move to the Ukrainian city of Nikolayev in the fall of 1982. Here, in the homeland of Russian shipbuilders, the solemn laying of a new huge Russian military ship is going on, which was going to be called the TANK (heavy aircraft carrying cruiser) Riga. Then L.I. Brezhnev, and his memory was honored by renaming the ship. Then the perestroika began, and they called the cruiser after the leader of the era of stagnation irrelevant, so he became "Tbilisi". It was in 1985, and four years later the ship received the current name - "Admiral Kuznetsov".

The aircraft carrier, according to the 1936 treaty, concluded in Montreux and signed by the Soviet delegation, has no right to cross the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. Nothing, we have a cruiser, he can.

Only nine countries possess ships of this class. Half a dozen aircraft can solve the most complex and diverse combat missions: from anti-submarine defense to assault strikes. For this purpose, there are both helicopters and aircraft on board, and not some specialized deck, with truncated flight characteristics, but MiG-29 and SU-27, however, with special marine equipment.

In the Crimean town of Saki was built a base for training pilots, who were to raise their cars from the deck of the cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov. The aircraft carrier became a forge of the personnel of naval aviation. Today, for Russian pilots such flights became routine, then experience was not enough, everything was new.

Military ships are built not just because they embody a certain military doctrine. In the modern world, the Russian fleet protects the interests of the country in all zones of the world's oceans. To maintain a high degree of protection for sea-based formations, consisting of ships of various purposes and classes, sustained air support is required. It is this task that Admiral Kuznetsov decides. The aircraft carrier has anti-ship, antisubmarine and antiaircraft weapons systems, and its air wing can cover the actions of an entire squadron.

As for the assumptions about the aggressiveness of Russian foreign policy, they are groundless. If we evaluate the "imperial aspirations" by the number of ships of this class, then it is enough to compare the number of US nuclear strike aircraft carriers (11) with the figure "one", and everything will immediately become clear. The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov does not represent threats to the world, but will defend his country, if necessary.