Carriers, according to the original plan, are floating air bases. Their mass construction began in the twenties of the XX century. To provide air support to land forces landed on foreign shores, to protect them from bombing attacks - this is the main purpose of this class of ships.
When and under what circumstances did the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov appear in the Russian Navy, a photo of which foreign news agencies regularly publish as an illustration of our growing military power?
Countries with colonies or pursuing a foreign policy requiring forceful argumentation were the first owners of these expensive heavy vessels. The Soviet Union, due to its geographical features, did not need mobile airfields. To protect their territory, it was cheaper and easier to build a sufficient number of conventional, ground-based.
Carrier cruisers in the USSR were built in the 70s. BOD (large anti-submarine ships) “Moscow” and “Leningrad”, then “Kiev” significantly differed from “Nimitz” or “Enterprise” in terms of displacement, length, and construction. The difference with the conventional cruiser was aft, it was aligned under the flight deck, on which helicopters or fighters with vertical take-off and landing were based. The main function of the air wing was to detect and combat enemy submarines.
Today, the Russian Navy has the Admiral Kuznetsov ship. Is this an aircraft carrier, and why is it persistently called an aircraft carrier cruiser in official documents ? To understand this issue, you need to mentally move to the Ukrainian city of Nikolaev in the autumn of 1982. Here, in the homeland of the Russian shipbuilders, the solemn laying of the new huge Russian military ship, which was going to be called the TANK (heavy aircraft carrier) "Riga", takes place. Then L.I. died Brezhnev, and his memory was honored by renaming the ship. Then perestroika began, and it was considered inappropriate to call the cruiser in honor of the leader of the era of stagnation , so he became "Tbilisi". It was in 1985, and four years later the ship received its current name - "Admiral Kuznetsov."
An aircraft carrier, according to the 1936 agreement concluded in Montreux and signed by the Soviet delegation, has no right to cross the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Nothing, we have a cruiser, he can.
Only nine countries possess ships of this class. Fifty aircraft can solve the most complex and varied combat missions: from anti-submarine defense to attack assaults. For this purpose, there are helicopters and aircraft on board, moreover, not some specialized deck-based, with truncated flight characteristics, but the MiG-29 and SU-27, however, with special marine equipment.
In the Crimean town of Saki, a base was built for training pilots who were to lift their cars from the deck of the cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov. Aircraft carrier became a forge of naval aviation personnel. Today, for Russian pilots, such flights have become a chore, while experience was not enough, everything was new.
Warships are built for a reason, they embody a specific military doctrine. In the modern world, the Russian fleet defends the interests of the country in all areas of the oceans. To maintain a high degree of protection for maritime formations consisting of ships of various purposes and classes, stable air support is required. This is the problem that Admiral Kuznetsov solves. The aircraft carrier has anti-ship, anti-submarine and anti-aircraft weapons systems, and its aircraft wing can cover the actions of an entire squadron.
As for the assumptions about the aggressiveness of Russian foreign policy, they are baseless. If we evaluate "imperial aspirations" by the number of ships of this class, then it is enough to compare the number of nuclear strike aircraft carriers of the United States (11) with the number "one", and everything will become clear immediately. The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov does not represent a threat to the world, but it will defend its country, if necessary.