Russian Navy - News and Analysis

Pictures shared by Twitter user Rob Lee showed a lack of progress on the construction of the new dry dock for Russia's only aircraft carrier RFS Admiral Kuznetsov at the 35th ship repair plant. The shared photos showed the construction site on June 12, 2020 as well as how it looked at November 2019. The Google Earth picture of June 12 revealed that very little to almost no progress was made in the construction of the new dry dock during this period. Construction progress during November 2019 Since the sinking of the PD-50 floating dry dock, Russia does not have the facilities large enough to dock its only aircraft carrier, RFS Admiral Kuznetsov. The solution put forward was to take two existing dry docks and tear down the concrete barrier that separated them. This would create a dry dock large enough in with to dock the RFS Admiral Kuznetsov whenever work and maintenance is needed on the ships hull located under the water line. A contract was given to the IEC (Inves...

Whenever the Russian media shows scale models of potential aircraft carriers for the Russian Navy, a widespread debate starts about the use and purpose of these vessels by the Russian Navy. While these discussions have their rightful place, there is a general ignorance that the aircraft carrier debate is part of a larger discussion, namely that Russia has always been lagging in the construction and operation of capital ships. One simply has to look to the fact that Russian shipyards are currently not building larger vessels such as destroyers and cruisers. Indeed, all capital ships currently in use by the Russian Navy date back from the Soviet era and it is unlikely that the lack in capital ships will be resolved in the near future. Lamantin class carrier - scale model Historical perspective The lack of capital warships in the Russian navy can be traced back to the end of the tsarists empire. Having lost the majority of its capital ships first in the Battle of Tsushima in ...