Russia's Heavy Aircraft Carrying Cruiser Kuznetsov 

There's a saying among sailors in the Red fleet: "If you misbehave, you'll end up on the Kuznetsov"

Kuznetsov, the most advanced ship ever made to help Navy tug boats train.

I've read that a contributing factor to Kuznetsov's unreliableness was that she was (and maybe still is) unable to receive external power at her home port. As such she must constantly run a few boilers while at dock. This inevitably eats into the service life of the boilers and leads to failures.

Kuznetsov was constructed in my home city of Nikolaev, not in Crimea. There are 3 shipyards in the city, but only one Black Sea shipyard has the capability to build such a big and complex ship.

Considering how big a Flanker is, being able to carry 32 of those plus no less than 24 helis is impressive

The story about acquiring the ex-Varyag/Liaoning makes sense to me. The PRC government probably convinced a wealthy individual to purchase it as a front man and the government would reimburse him. The guy then probably tried to up the price to the PRC government at the last minute, thinking that he could make some extra profit. I imagine that he really thought he held all the cards in the negotiation, right up to the point where they arrested him.

_"Crimea, Russia"_ [Everyone hated that]

Correction: The US *never* gave aid or support for IS in Syria or any other area. The US supported a third faction(SDF) which advocated for establishing a secular democratic regime in Syria which was opposed to both the Assad government and IS. In fact, at that same time coalition forces including US, British and French troop were fighting IS forces in western Iraq, assisting the IDF as requested by the Iraqi government.

I have heard that they never used shore ties while in port and remained on ships power. Over a short period of time they racked up huge a huge amount of hours on the equipment without doing cold maintenance on the systems.

A few notes about Liaoning: - The J-15 was not grounded for engine issues. It uses the same AL-31F engines as the base Su-27. The aircraft was grounded because the flight control system caused multiple uncommanded pitch-up incidents that killed a couple test pilots. This was due to it being the first FBW aircraft the Chinese developed indigenously - the original Su-27/J-11 was not FBW, and the J-10 and Su-30MKK had their flight control systems developed by IAI and Sukhoi respectively. - One of Liaoning’s steam mains ruptured during sea trials in 2014. This and other testing incidents caused the ship to not be accepted for years as the plant was continually modified to fix the flaws found, which is why the PLAN did not officially certify her for service until 2018. We know this because of Sun Bo, a senior engineer at Dalian who passed on details of Liaoning’s refit and shakedown process to the CIA - he has, of course, vanished since the CCP found out about it. - Liaoning has a half-sister, Shandong, that commissioned in 2020. So far neither ship has experienced any at-sea engine casualties (and we would know of them since they’re always tailed), so whatever the Chinese did, it seems to have worked. - The JMSDF reported that Liaoning was averaging 300 sorties/week during her 2021 deployment, during the entirety of which at least one Japanese warship shadowed them. That works out to about 42/day, which is pretty normal for a STOBAR or STOVL carrier, and nothing compared to a Nimitz (which does 100/day all the time) but is downright amazing when you consider Kuznetsov did 420 sorties over 4 months - about 4 sorties/day.

I was stationed on the Spruance class Destroyer USS Deyo, DD-989. Near the end of our 3-91 Med deployment, this was in November, the Russian Navy decided to move their carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, from the Black Sea, out of the Med and up to join their Northern Fleet. We were supposed to head out with the battle group, but were tasked to stay behind and 'escort' the Kuznetsov out of the Med. They didn't even have an airwing on board, since it was only a homeport move for them. Since we were an 'OUTBOARD'(Organizational Unit Tactical Baseline Operational Area Radio Detection Countermeasures Exploitation System) equipped ship, the Navy decided we should tag along and do our thing, which is monitor, record and classify any electronic signals etc. The Kuznetsov wasn't smoking like she does now, she was pretty new at the time. During the move, I managed to get a couple of photos. Also with Kuznestsov was the Krivak II Pytlivyy, 808. At one point, the Russian Krivak put a floating package in the water. We fished it out and it was wrapped in some plastic and newspaper and contained a bottle of wine, some ships hats and stuff like that. We in turn put together a package for them to pick up. I think it had some ships hats, some zippo lighters with the ships image on it, some fruit, stuff like that. Once they left the Med we caught up with our battle group to complete the transit back to Charleston, we got back on 21 Dec 1991.

I’m sure the radar reflective material was very effective at hiding the giant trail of black smoke.

Kind of surprised you didn’t cover Shandong (Type 002) as well, considering she is a subclass of this design. Also, I’m surprised you never covered Kuznetsov’s infamous “catacombs”: her lower levels were essentially abandoned for most of the 1990s and never repaired, which contributes in large part to her continual propulsion failures.

You never know when you might need a quick tug at sea.

For "The Hunt for Red October" (novel) fans, there was an error where the Forger was said to be Yak-36. It should be Yak38 as mentioned in the video

Or as I would call it, "airstrip extension for ports, with sea-based mobility option (availability limited)"

in syria it isn't just two factions, last i'd checked islamic state is a pretty small one. the others are various other rebels and extremist groups. ALL of them are fighting against the islamic state - the rebels, syrians, americans and russians.

The 30mm GSh-30-1 cannon with its 150 rounds firing at 1800 RPM is enough for exactly as much firing time as the M61A1 with its 500 rounds firing at 6000 RPM - five seconds. 150*60/1800=5 500*60/6000=5 Then again, a five second-burst from a GSh-30-1 is impossible because firing a burst of longer than 100 rounds destroys the barrel.

14:25 About the MIG-29: "the indian navy, they love this plane". Come on Aron! This is some over the top BS right here!

They were built in Mykolaiv or Nikolaev not the Crimea . It was I believe the only shipyard in the Soviet Union that could build that large a ship , built their Cruisers there as well. In the Current conflict Russia made it to the outskirts of Mykolaiv and I imagine it is something Putin wanted as the Shipyards are still there and Russia doesn't have any of its own large enough to build Carriers or other large warships in.. And they did roll out that Model of their dream Carrier a few years back so he wants one, he'd have to build the yards before he could start building any large warships ..

This ship looks good ON PAPER. I'd be gobsmacked if half the systems work at any given time.

The official name of the ship is Heavy Missile Carrying Battlecruiser Admiral of the seas Kuznetsov. It is the world's most heavily armed aircraft carrier.

Hull 2 is an amazing story. I bet it could be a movie.

Had she stayed (Admiral Kutznezov), in Ukraine during the break-up of the Soviet Union it would have been mothballed and either become a floating resort in China or may become the first aircraft carrier of the PLAN Loaning although the former Varyag would probably still have been acquired or completed in Ukraine then handed over to the PLAN or alternatively she may ended up with Indian Navy instead of the Admiral Gorshkov.

Love these briefs. Great job as always, but would have loved to hear more about the fuel on her basically being roofing tar and burning so black to was very easy to track.

These types of episodes are awesome man. You obviously put in lots of effort, it really shows in the quality. Keep up the good work.

That ship looks like a damage control nightmare… which is a trait of the Russian navy … Those Missile Hatches in the flight deck … what could possibly go wrong…?

The Kuznetsov Class. Continuing the time honored Russian/Soviet tradition of building expensive things cheaply and wondering why it doesn't work. Never change Russia.

Thank you for you great information, videos, and service.

The Kuznetsov looks very top heavy. The Chinese Liaoning looks much better. The former always has black smoke coming from the funnel, the latter has a clean exhaust, perhaps they replaced the boilers as they burn much cleaner. Perhaps the Russians used thick cheap bunker oil while the Chinese use lighter diesel.

It is interesting how logistics and maintenance have been a consistent issue with Soviet/Russian military since forever. I'm sure this Achilles heel is considered in NATO doctrine.

'Nuclear Depth Bomb' sounds like it deserves to be covered in more detail.

They sure do love their auto loaders...

The U.S. has Carrier strike groups, Russia has a Carrier Tug group

Dude, the picture from the periscope of a sub behind the kuzetzov, maybe 12in or less above the water line! Wondering where that particular snap came from😉 (please say us😁)

That shaddy casino story is crazy, you can't make this up. The Chinese version of '' The House always wins ''.

I love the Admiral Kuznetsov, it is so effective at eating Russian funds, the only thing left to improve is to heat the boilers by burning Rubels.

the reason that sukhoi s carry so few rounds is that their guns are for air to air and not air to ground. when the pilot squeezes the gun trigger the air plane's weapons system/avionics takes control of the aircraft. after calculating the speed, direction, size of both the sukhoi and the target aircraft, the plane then orients itself to align the gun for the perfect shot. only then does the gun fire. gun accuracy is exceptionally good with hit ratios of better than 99% after five shots. there are also proximity fuses that can be used but come with smaller explosive shells. the stored shell capacity of 130 is more than enough to deal with multiple air threats. getting too close to a sukhoi is suicide.

On the Helicopter slide I believe that second photo is actually a KA-29, with the lack of surface search radar, different cockpit windows and the struts of the landing gear, and generally bulkier appearance as it has a primary role as a troop transport, that minor nitpick aside, great work as always Aaron, thanks for providing real info, not idly repeating the tug boat and pipework issues and saying nothing else like clickbait tubers, thanks!

Really enjoyed the brief and history of both ships and what the appalling living conditions were like on Kuznetsov while in the north. I have built the 1/350 scale Trumpeter PLAN Liaoning, which is basically the same as the Kuznetsov kit but with revised decals, aircraft / helos and CIWS. Cheers.

Another fire on the Kuznetsov reported today

PROOF that if you rename a ship you doom her to poor luck

Mig 29 K does have digital fly-by-wire, old Mig 29 S, and Mig 29 A do not have FBW

It's kinda funny how the Chinese one seems to have addressed less issues, but the ship looks nicer

Where my boy at? It’s been two weeks. Hopefully enjoying a nice break!

Does anyone know why the Soviet Union loved to paint much of their decks that red-brown colour? I think it actually looks quite good, but it's not exactly low viz. Then again, if you're enemy has a direct visual on you, you're probably dead anyway.

Thanks! Gonna enjoy this with some coffee tomorrow morning Can't wait to get into nitty gritty on the ski ramp / catapult fascinating stuff

Fun fact about the yak-38: it would eject the pilot DOWN, and would automatically eject based off the roll of the plane. So yeah, very safe.

The greatest money pit in Russian Navy history & THAT is probably its greatest achievement😘

Wow, amazing Hull 2 - VARYAR storytelling . First I ever heard of it Good show 👍👍

One correction. Three keels were laid in Ukraine in 1980th, two carriers were launched, and later commissioned - namely, Russian Kuznetsov and Chinese Liaoning. When USSR collapsed, the third keel was still in the very initial stage of construction with no funding anymore, so it was ultimately scrapped for its metal.

I believe India isn’t so thrilled with the MiG-29K. They seem to be looking at replacing them. They have two carriers again, Vikramaditya and the new Vikrant.

Dude I am checking your channel twice each day for new videos

Very interesting story indeed! Another good video brief by Aaron.

Fun facts Kuznetzov is classified by Russian Navy as 'heavy aviation cruiser' not a carrier. So it can pass through Bosporus, as aircraft carriers are prohibited in Black Sea by 1936 naval treaty, and by Turkish Government. Kashtan is Russian word for chestnut.

"Arresting" the company management showed how important this thing was to PLAN, especially considering many other cases of civilian imports. Minsk actually became an amusement park and I have visited there years ago. HMAS Melbourne was also sold to China as scrap, but PLAN didn't spend much time on it either.

Isn't it bad luck to change the name of a ship? 😂

Imagine if Russia had 10 of these modernized and in good condition. That would be very scary.

I'm more interested in the tug which pulls it.

Really enjoying this series. Hopefully you can do some Royal Navy ships at some point 👍🏻

Good morning Sir and subscribers. I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. The Ticonderoga class cruiser is a large part of the Navy's defense. Your briefing show just large the hole in a in the Navy's defense is. The Navy has no replacement and even you triple the amount of Arleigh-Burke class destroyers the Navy will still fall short. Do you have briefing on all of the Arleigh-Burke class that includes all of the up dated versions? Thank you. Have Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Good morning G

As far as I understand, Tbilisi wasn't the third name for the first hull, but actually a name for the second one

"That's it for the Kuznetsov." Final words for your very entertaining history of this Russian attempt to compete as a aircraft carrier naval power, and likely a damning prognostication of the vessel's future, as well.

3:26 "dalian shipbuilding industry"...yeah about that. Aaron you may want to look into it.

She must be making 80k shaft horsepower each, it would be insane if a ship that big makes 32 knots on 80k shaft horsepower total

I thought the Indian Vikramaditya was the same class as the kuznetsov, like the Kiev and Minsk which were both sold to china for entertainment as well. But those 3 were a completely different class. Huh, they look quite similar though.

any chance you could do some briefs on ww2 subs? that would be very cool. great show.

24:25 Not in the future Cap, India commissioned their 1st homemade carrier this year

ahhhh America backing islamic state WTF dude 22:12. 😐

I'm surprised you didn't mention the Kamov KA-31 airborne early warning helicopter.

Is there a chance that you could play some sonar recordings and explain how you would Analyse those, what it tells you about the ship, it's technology or like how it sounds when a sub or torpedo is approaching? I have no idea how you could "read" something like this from a seemingly monotonous sound. Love your channel! Greetings from Germany

...also it was discovered that most of the copper cabling has been stolen for sale making her almost useless until the replacement of most of the electronics (if they will even bother to do it at all).

comparable to carriers in 1980s? more like mid 1940s. Midway was of comparable displacement

5:22 Hey what does my girlfriend have to do with this?😂

The Soviets suffered badly with one-up-man-ship. IT seems to me that many of their projects were just for show: as soon as they were a few years old the military lost interest (and therefore budget) to keep them working, they didn't fill a very useful role for them (in this case, they already had lots of planes that could go where ever they legitimately needed without an aircraft carrier), and they were often stuffed with equipment that didn't make sense for the mission that seems like it was just there to say "oh look at all these goodies" (all those missiles).

It is very well armed, I like to know if there any in depth books about this ship.

Kuznetsov, they forgot to install engines. Instead they got magnificent smoke generator plant for fighting in First WW.

25:48 Wow I never knew this part. It's incredibly and fishy. There is no way in China a private business can do such a thing, so this "business man" has to be related to CCP somehow, in which case imprisonment is even more mysterious.

LOL. It just had another fire -- add another year or two to the 'refurbishment' schedule ;) At the rate it is going, it will soon enter service alongside the Moskva ;)

Dalian is in China where the Chinese reconstructed the one unfinished hual and a copy of the ship I wouldn't call it the construction yard.

Very nice video SB. Few extra facts 1)Russians couldn't make steam catupults work in north so they opted for ski ramp. Having a deck frozen to -20c and trying to operate a steam system out of it did't sound something easy. Next class of carriers called Ulyanovsk would have nuke propulsion so more power to make a steam system work in the north. 2)2nd ship Varyag was not allowed at first to cross Vosporus, so they ended up circling Black sea for 16 months. When the got permision to cross, a sea gale in Aegean caused tow lines to brake and the ship was heading to the rocks of Skyros island. A Greek helicopter landed on it to pick 7 crew members, fortunatelly the weather became better so they managed to re-attach tow lines and keep going. 3)Egypt forbit it to cross Suez for a ship without own power, so they had to circle Africa to reach china.

The incident mentioned on 20:40 has been caught on video. Just search for "Sukhoi Su 33 Crash".

Unanswered question: how many bottles of vodka were typically smuggled per man?

P.s. surprised they didn't put a trip-barreled 18inch turret on it as well.

10:48 RBU has 2 variants either 6 or 12 barrels, not 10.

Hi Sub, this is like the Mullet of Warship's. Business in the front and Party in the back.

Airframe stress loads are so different for use on flipper ships than cat ships that one plane can't work with both. Between launching and arresting the flipper planes have to be beefed up to take the stress in two different directions.

Mig29k does have FBW and that top photo of mig landing is not on kuznetsov but ins vikramaditya

It sounds funny to hear a flattop designated a destroyer or cruiser, but understandable in this case, to allow passage through the Dardanelles. I still wonder how they got the Turks to buy in... When I look at the ahead or astern photos, that huge overhanging island makes me wonder what's packed into the port side to keep it from instantly turning turtle to starboard. 🧐

Question: will the Lioning be given to the original purchaser now that they have the 003 aircraft carrier?

Da, we make the world's biggest LCS.

I don't get why they didn't take their best working type of ship as a template, put two of them together and then add on until it looks like an aircraft carrier. It would remove so many possible points of failure.

The Black Sea capital ship construction was in Mykolaiv, in mainland Ukraine along the Southern Bug River. Thus it was clearly built in Ukraine, not Russia. Furthermore, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Kuznetsov class was built in Mykolaiv in 1982. Thus even if had been built in Crimea it would still not be Russian built. It was Ukrainian built. Also fair to say Soviet built. But not Russian. Russia stole numerous capital ships during the fall of the Soviet Union, some sailed out of Ukrainian ports by Russian sailors with Ukrainian sailors forced off. It was an opportunistic grab of post Soviet naval assets. The poor maintenance of all post soviet Russian large surface vessels is related to the fact that they had insufficient expertise or facilities to properly maintain them.

I’m surprised at the inaccuracies and I’m only 3.5 minutes into the video. Normally your videos are much better at separating facts from myths. First, Dalian shipyard is in China, not Russia. As pointed out elsewhere, the shipyard is in Mikolaiv, which is in Ukraine (then the Ukrainian SSR). Kuznetsov wasn’t designed for the Yak-38, but the Yak-141, a later VTOL; I believe the prototype crashed when the ship was first commissioned. The Su-27K (K for korabel or ship in Russian) was different enough from other Flankers that it was designated the Su-33 [edit: you point this out at 11:50]. The MiG-29K came later, too. Last fun fact: NITKA is an acronym but the word means ‘thread’ and pilots talked about threading the needle. All this besides the point because old Kuzya has been in overhaul since 2017 and will be for at least another year or four.

5:20 by the 'numbers'? no no no. "Long", "Thicc". Thats all that is needed.

In the rear of the kuznetsov it has 6 more Granit missiles

RU: calls it a cruiser due to Montreaux UK: call its carrier a through-deck cruiser because MoD being cheap JP: call its carrier a multi-purpose operations destroyer due to Article 9 (who wrote that?)

Interesting that you mentioned the Su-25 doesn't look anything like the A-10. It looks a lot like the YA-9 though which was Northrop's prototype for the A-X program just two years before the first flight of the Su-25.

That's "Bass Drum" as in "bass guitar" (pronounced: bās'), not "bass fishing". "Boy, you couldn't find your bass with both hands"! 😂