Air Defences of Soviet Warships

Major Soviet warships certainly have extremely
comprehensive and heavy air defences, with
multi-layered SAM systems right down to
their bristling gatling guns.

Soviet battlecruisers and carriers would appear
to have totally stand-alone air defense systems,
in contrast to American carrier groups which
rely heavily on CAPs and the Aegis ships.

Once the attacking missiles get past the Tomcats
and Standards, I can think of just about three
Phalanxes facing their incoming direction – one on
the Aegis ship, and maybe two on the carrier –
hardly comforting last ditch defences in the case
of a saturation attack.

I once talked to an ex-RAF officer at the
Defence Services Asia exhibition in Kuala
Lumpur some years back.

He related that one of the scenarios they
simulated in war games during his days in the
RAF was an attack on a Soviet warship, Kuznetsov
or Kirov class, I think. He said that they had to
use no less than 36 Buccaneers, presumably armed
with Sea Eagles or LGBs, to take out the boat.
I forgot to ask him about their losses in that
simulation, but the fact that they had to use
that number of aircraft must mean they had not
gotten off lightly.