The Kuznetsov’s boilers and steam turbines aren’t just smokey: they’re unreliable too. The old ship has frequently been accompanied by a large ocean-going tugboat, to tow her if she breaks down.
Following her latest lengthy spell in dock, it had been planned for Kuznetsov to return to sea for trials in 2022. But then, in December 2022, yet another fire broke out on the ship. Alexei Rakhmanov, head of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, insisted the fire was “small.” “All the relevant fire systems worked normally,” Rakhmanov said. “There was no damage and no casualties.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe the 2022 fire didn’t add delay to Kuznetsov’s already long-delayed overhaul. But something did. It usually takes American shipyards around three years to overhaul one of the US Navy’s 11 nuclear-powered flattops; so far, it’s taken seven years for a Russian shipyard to overhaul the smaller, less-complex, conventionally-powered Kuznetsov – and there’s no end in sight.
Any other carrier-equipped fleet might just cut its losses, decommission a hopelessly decrepit flattop and build a new one to replace it. But Russian industry probably isn’t capable of building a direct replacement for Kuznetsov.
Russian surface shipyards never really recovered from the Soviet Union’s collapse. Some big old ships such as Kuznetsov remain in service, but new construction focuses almost entirely on smaller, simpler surface ships – frigates, corvettes and coastal patrol vessels – as well as submarines.
“The main issue is engines,” said Pavel Luzin, a military expert at Russia’s Perm University. Factories in Ukraine built most of the Soviet navy’s big maritime engines. It should go without saying the Ukrainians no longer export major defense items – including these engines – to Russia.
And the Russians haven’t managed to establish their own production of similar engines. Western sanctions complicate, if they do not completely prevent, imports of suitable foreign powerplants.
Perhaps the strongest signal that the navy has all but given up on Kuznetsov, or a near-term replacement, is what it’s doing with the carrier’s planes. The fleet has staged some of the carrier’s 22 Mikoyan MiG-29KRs in northern Russia for land-based air-defense patrols.
It seems other naval MiGs deployed to Crimea, in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, to support the Russian air campaign. In mid-May, a Ukrainian rocket strike on a Crimean airfield blew up at least one Russian MiG-29 – possibly one of the former carrier planes.
That the Russians are willing to risk the unique carrier-capable MiGs in combat in Ukraine underscores how unlikely these same planes are to ever return to sea. Russian carrier aviation is fading away, just as more successful nations – the UK, Japan, Turkey and others – are joining or re-joining the aircraft carrier club.