NI: Why did the USSR decided to arm an aircraft carrier with P-700 "Granit" missiles

July 28 2020 4

Once the Russian heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser of project 1143.5 "Admiral of the Soviet Union Fleet Kuznetsov" had a cunning "up his sleeve", because under the USSR, such ships were armed with powerful anti-ship missiles P-700 "Granit", writes the American conservative magazine National Interest.

Twelve vertical launchers are still under its deck. However, in the early 2000s, Russians stopped using them. This ship is a reminder of how Moscow approached political issues and war at sea. Today TAVKR "Admiral Kuznetsov" is the only aircraft-carrying ship in the world that can be in the Black Sea according to the Montreux convention. The passage of the Black Sea Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) by "clean" aircraft carriers is prohibited, but this ship is considered an "aircraft carrier".

Moscow's military doctrine until 1962 provided for war at sea, land and air on the periphery of the USSR, as well as nuclear deterrence. Moscow was not going to fight in more distant seas and spaces, but the Cuban missile crisis changed everything.

As a result, the USSR acquired two classes of aircraft carriers, which received missile armament and, unlike their “colleagues” from Western countries, could stand up for themselves on their own. Soviet aircraft carriers were defensively self-sufficient.

The aircraft carriers of the Western countries were and remain an exclusively offensive type of weapons. They cannot stand up for themselves. Therefore, they are accompanied by a whole flotilla of ships and vessels, which provides them with versatile cover.

Soviet TAVKR could be far from their bases. Their main task was to intercept the enemy's AUG and destroy or permanently incapacitate his aircraft carrier. US and NATO aircraft carriers were not supposed to reach the shores of the USSR. First-class "Granites" were the most suitable for this task. Now Russia is modernizing the "Admiral Kuznetsov" and there is a high probability that anti-ship missiles will appear under its deck again, only even more powerful.

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Sergey Latyshev

-4

28 July 2020 12: 03

The Russian progressive journal National Interest is right.
Weapon of last chance. Since, due to the small number, they made small series and combined the capabilities of the classes of ships.
1. Lawyer
  
  -1
  
  30 July 2020 07: 13
  
  This is not a Russian magazine.
  It is a foreign yellow magazine published for the reporting of the Russian embassy in Washington with the money of a Russian taxpayer by editors - retired state security.
  At the same Soviet level.
Lawyer

-1

30 July 2020 07: 10

The possibility is even greater that all those remnants of Uncle Sam's sumptuous dinner will go to open-hearth furnaces.
Following the armadas of tanks, to which Russia has already given its last pants.
Well, apparently, they got rich, again ran to OrMag for an ax for a sworn neighbor.
The most important thing a country needs today is to show its flag in the oceans.
Even if it is in tow. :)))
Vladimir kaperang

+1

16 September 2020 06: 04

The usual journalistic nonsense with a bunch of fundamental mistakes. This is for American aircraft carriers. The Montreux Convention prohibits entry into the Black Sea, but not because an "aircraft carrier" (this type of ship is already in two classes in the convention), but because the agreement contains a limit of 45 thousand tons, and the American is twice as thick. Ships of any type, class, displacement of those states whose coastline goes into the Black Sea basin are not subject to the restrictions of the convention. About missiles. In his memoirs, one of the chief engineers of the Soviet aircraft carrier Arkady Borisovich Morin recalls not only why it was forbidden to call the aircraft carrier project an "aircraft carrier" (because the word "aircraft carrier" in Soviet propaganda was firmly associated with the slogan in different versions: "aircraft carrier is a club world imperialism "), but also how, being the deputy of the TAKR Group of Companies, the engineers proved to the admirals that the TAKR deck should be strengthened in order to accommodate heavier and more powerful aviation, to which the admirals reasoned in their own way: when we will have such an aircraft is unknown, but missiles are already there, and stick them in. They stuck missiles instead of aviation. Later, in the 1990s, Doctor of Military Sciences Konstantin Valentinovich Sivkov conducted the first studies of the combat capabilities of ships using special programs for computer simulation of combat operations, which showed the combat effectiveness coefficient in a non-nuclear conflict for an American aircraft carrier 35 conventional units, and for the Russian Kuznetsov - 29. This is a payback for thick missiles, a thin deck and the absence of heavy attack carrier aircraft.