I’m kidding, the A-4KU are definetely not war machines per se, they are in reality some sort of very fast moving “school benches”. the real naval fighters are to be chosen in som 5 years time.

You don’t really believe that yourself, do you?

The existing Dolphins possess four 650mm tubes in addition to six 533 mm tubes:

Wake up son

You really don’t have a clue about our Belgian friend, do you? By downplaying his knowledge on naval affairs this way, you probably have really provoked him. 😀

Perfect for what? Serving as a blast from the past as a historical carrier aircraft show coming soon to a place near you? Perhaps they could feature in a Vietnam war biopic on the shoot down of John McCain. 😀

Hardly. I heard it does better than the Oceanworld in the same city.

I read otherwise:

Dive the Minsk? Soviet-era 902-ft aircraft carrier for sale
Powered by CYBER DIVER News Network

by PAMELA PUN

End of the road for the 42,000 tonne relic of the Cold War or will the former flagship of the Soviet fleet live on as one of the world’s premier scuba diving attractions?

SHENZHEN, China (7 Dec 2004) — The scrapyard may be beckoning for the Minsk, a mothballed Soviet-era aircraft carrier whose previous date with the breaker’s yard was put off by a detour to a Shenzhen theme park.

Minsk Aircraft Carrier World, one of the hottest tourist attractions in Shenzhen, is seeking a ”white knight” to rescue it from bankruptcy after the financial shipwreck of its parent, D’Long International Strategic Investment.

Shenzhen officials have actively enlisted in the hunt for new investors, foreign or domestic, hoping the Minsk will cheat death again to occupy a place of honour in the the entertainment and tourism hub they plan to develop along the eastern shore of the Special Economic Zone.

Minsk World is reported to have defaulted on a 200 million yuan (HK$187.9 million) loan from China Construction Bank (CCB), one of the big four state-owned lenders. Since the Guangzhou Maritime Court froze its assets, it has been under the trusteeship of China Huarong Asset Management.

The chance to clamber over one of the world’s most formidable warships has attracted more than five million visitors and generated 450 million yuan in revenue since the theme park opened in September 2000.

Minsk World ranks among Shenzhen’s top four attractions, averaging 2,000 visitors on weekdays and as many as 5,000 per day at the weekend. The recent National Day holiday was a bonanza, with 110,000 visitors pushing through the turnstiles.

The admission fee is 110 yuan.

The 42,000-tonne, 275-metre-long carrier once carried 42 fighter planes as the flagship of the former Soviet Union’s Pacific Fleet. After the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia was unable to manage the upkeep, and the carrier was decommissioned in 1994. In 1998, it was purchased by an unidentified Chinese businessman after its weaponry was stripped off in South Korea.

It then passed to the theme park’s owner, D’Long Group, which is based in the northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Brothers Tang Wanxin and Tang Wanli, who set up the company, were seen as paragons of the new entrepreneur class until early this year, when their complex funding mechanism based on dubious stock transactions ground to a halt.

The park’s managers are playing down the crisis. A spokesman said management hoped to find new investors before March, when a court will hear CCB’s request to wind up the company.

http://www.cdnn.info/industry/i041207a/i041207a.html

Russia is rearming its troops to give them “only the latest arms realistically needed to provide security and parry real, not mythical, threats,” Ivanov said. “First of all is the fight against terrorism.”

😀 yeah sure, Mr Ivanov.