The aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov will be returned to the Russian Navy in 2024
The only Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov cruiser, will return to the fleet only in 2024. The United Shipbuilding Corporation said that the timing of the transfer of the ship is shifted by a couple of months. All gas turbine units of the cruiser are being repaired now. The ship has been in dock since 2018 - after returning from a trip to the Mediterranean Sea, where he took part in the Syrian campaign.
The aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, the only aircraft carrier of the Russian Navy, will return to service after repairs no earlier than the first quarter of 2024. This was stated by the CEO of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) Alexey Rakhmanov, RIA Novosti reports.
The return of the aircraft carrier to the Russian Navy was scheduled for the end of 2023. Initially, it was supposed to repair only one gas turbine unit, but in the end, after diagnosis, it was decided to repair all four engines.
Admiral Kuznetsov is currently in dock at the 35th Shipyard in Murmansk. According to Rakhmanov, the ship will leave the dry dock in the fall of 2022 - after the completion of repair and modernization works. After that, the repair will continue "at the factory wall".
The aircraft carrier has been undergoing scheduled repairs since 2018 - after returning from a trip to the Mediterranean Sea. There, Admiral Kuznetsov and its carrier-based aircraft took part in the operation of Russian troops in Syria during 2016-2017.
Heavy aircraft carrier "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" during the passage through the English Channel
Image source: RIA Novosti
Admiral Kuznetsov was put into service in 1991. According to Business Insider magazine, the main problem of the Kiev-class ship, built back in the USSR, is an unreliable power plant. The publication included the ship in the list of the seven worst aircraft carriers in the world.
Aircraft carrier repairs are accompanied by accidents. In 2018, Russia's largest floating dock PD-50 sank in Murmansk when the Admiral Kuznetsov was leaving it. The cruiser itself was not damaged and was towed to the 35th ship repair plant. As a result of the incident, one person went missing, one worker died in hospital from his injuries. Three others were seriously injured.
In December 2019, the Admiral Kuznetsov caught fire in the Murmansk dock. Two people were killed in the fire, and 19 others were injured.
"According to preliminary information, the fire is happening in the first power section, thick black smoke is coming from the upper deck," a source told TASS.
Due to the failure of the initial repair deadlines - the Northern Fleet expected to receive the aircraft carrier back in 2021 - USC terminated the contract with the former contractor for the construction of the dock, the St. Petersburg company "Investments. Engineering. Construction" (AIS). A new contract was signed with Orgenergostroy.
Initially, the cost of repair work was estimated at 20 billion rubles, later it increased to 33.6 billion rubles.
On June 2, the American military portal 19FortyFive wrote that "Admiral Kuznetsov" is an "aging smoking relic." According to the authors of the material, aircraft carriers in the Soviet Union had fewer requirements than in the United States, so the Admiral Kuznetsov turned out to be suitable "only for supporting submarine and surface fleets protecting the coastal zone of Russia, while the American ones were for projecting forces far beyond America."
The maximum speed of the Admiral Kuznetsov is 29 knots (54 km / h), and the area of its runway is comparable to three football fields. The Admiral Kuznetsov Air Wing is designed to base and maintain 28 aircraft and 24 helicopters.
The ex-commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, said that the US aircraft carriers and Admiral Kuznetsov are ships of the same class, but there is a scientific and technical gap of 30 years between them. At the same time, military expert, editor of the magazine "Arsenal of the Fatherland" Alexey Leonkov believes that Kuznetsov has a good combination of aircraft-carrying properties and missile weapons.
Peter Nikolaev
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