http://rusnavy.com/news/navy/index.php?ELEMENT_ID=11640

One thing I’ve gathered from reading about Russian overseas(i.e. situated in other ex-Soviet nations) military facilities is that they often default or dispute over payments. Can’t blame the foreign governments for being put off.

IMHO the Russian Navy should have let the Sevastopol agreements expire and redistributed the Black Sea Fleet’s resources among their other, shrinking fleets.

Right the very opposite.

To stay the second world´s superpower, Russia needs to restore mainly the Black Sea Fleet and the Pacific Fleet to extend control and influence on Mediterranean Sea, Caucasus, and Pacific Rim.

What has little sense is the Baltic fleet, its only reason to have frigates and destroyers deployed with is to signal and remind Poland, Baltic and Scandinavian countries that Russia is in Kaliningrad and will ever be there, no matters what they would like.

I can not understand why this small batch of Su30 should be equipped with N-001 radar.

If this order is actually related to the larger one for Su35s, it would be sensible to provide the ordered Su-30s with the same Irbis-E radar slated to be inducted in service along with Su35s.

Having a Su30 allegedly acted as testbed for the Irbis-E test and development program, it would not be a real issue.

More likely than not the Mistrals will get a bunch of lousy Ka-226’s actually and Im not kidding. Kamov is lobbying for some FLIR equipped Ka-226 model for the Mistrals.

It won’t be a bad idea.

Ka-226 has roughly the same size of OH-58 Kiowa and of UH72 Lakota, it could cover several kind of missions, from observation and scouting to general liason and so on, still being far less demanding than a Ka-27 derivative.

I doubt in turn that Kasakta could find its way to any meainingful role, it’s to light to take the missions perfromed by the Ka-27 and its derivatives, it could be a useful general purpose medium helicopter but I won’t add another type for such missions.

Actually only on small vessels like a corvette or a light frigate the slight smaller size and weight of the Kasatka could be a meaningful advantage, and being almost all russian ships already sized both as helipad and hangar for the Ka-27 family, I can not see any reason behind its induction in service with Russian Navy.

Maybe it is related to a couple of political constraints.

First, nobody would like to tell to its own people that some soldiers died in an old russian built helicopters downed or crashed.

Whenever some casualties happen, the usual mantra is “we are doing our utmost to provide our troops with the best equipment available”.

Second, for the same very reason nobody would like to send his troops to embark or desembark from an helicopter lacking modern mutliaxis autopilots with preprogrammed approching and extraction routes, crash resistant seats, full spectrum defensive aids (IR Jammer, MWS, LWR, RWR and so on) modern Link 11 and even 16 terminals, redundant GPS and INS navigation systems and so on.

It has barred until now most of the western helicopters fleets from any active deployment to Afghanistan.

If you take out of the equation the so-called “zero casualties war” factor, you can start to see the pros in the Mi-17 choice.

Cutting the F-35B would just increase costs and could create a wave of cancelations in the Lightning Orders. As it would case doubt over the entire program. In short its not going to happen……..

Actually, even if I do not think really conceivable any termination of the B variant, it would ease the burden of the overall development program’s costs, giving a chance to many partner to get an affordable bill at the end of the story, and saving the A from some order’s reductions.

The real cancellation, until now, has already happened, with the UK suddenly dropping the B to move to the C version.

I’m still wondering if, perhaps, the UK’s MoD officials got off the records some confidential hint from either LM or the USA’s DoD, prompting them to make the shift.

I was under the impression that the flight test program should end in the first months of 2012, to be followed by the certification campaign, both civilian and military.

If it is true, actually the flight test program will accelerate in 2012 even if for just an handful of months, and then it will be over.

The main requirement for any future russian aircraft carrier will be to be able to embark the main combat aircraft in service with VVS, better to say a naval deriative of the main combat aircraft.

Because the backbone of VVS is going to be formed around Pak-Fa, Su-34 and very likely a fair amount of Su-35, the resulting scenario is of a naval combat aircraft close to or in excess of 30 tons MTOW.

There are only to ways to design an aircraft carrier able to operate such aircrafts:

either russian go for a nuclear power plant and catapults, and they could be able to design something displacing no more than 50K tons, more or less, or they have to design something on the lines of teh Kuznetsov, maybe swapping the boilers with TAGs.

The main question would be if, opted for a nuclear propulsion, with all the operating and dismissing costs, it would make sense to limit size and displacement to the bare minimum mandatory to operate such kind of aircrafts.

I would bet that the answer, if they will be still quite cash strapped, will be something on the size of Kuznetsov or only slightly smaller, and on the other hand, if they will have enough funds it will be some nuclear aircraft carrier incresing in size and displacement during the design process to end again close to the Kuznetsov displacement but with far greater sortie generating capabilities.

In the mean time, Kuyznetsov will provide for a decade the much needed training platform for a reasonable cost, and it will be anyway a far better investment than the restoring of the Kirov cruisers.

What is your definition of operationally relevent?. 6 GR7’s at Kandahar may not meet your definition but the troops of the ground were very happy to have their presence.

When a ‘daily sortie’ amounts to a launch, 5-10min transit, a med alt PGM delivery profile and RTB can you compare that to a 2.5hr sortie, to do the equivalent job, from a carrier bound Super Hornet or -35C 400nm offshore?. You said it yourself….logistics is simply a matter of getting enough C-130 flights into the austere strip. Do that and you get the sorties.

If you are able to support even a small detachment of fixed wing attack A/C by C-130 flights, it does mean you have near zero, or even more likely exactly zero air opposition.

This fact means you have little or no requirement for a STOVL top notch combat aircraft in such scenario.

By the way, wich scenario depict aircraft carriers being on theatre but 400 NM away?

Please don’t tell us Afghanistan, 400 NM is the longest line between western border to Iran and eastern border to Pakistan, even having just Kabul airport able to operate fast jets, they will be hardly more than 300 NM away from any troublesome spot in the Country.

The difference is between asking the USN for a couple of Burkes, a few LCS’s and an SSN against asking the USN to provide a full carrier strike group!. That is a BIG difference. It means that, in a modest threat scenario, the USMC CAN operate independent of the big flat-tops even if they have to send an extra LHA to do it….against not having the F-35B where they have no ability whatsoever to operate without the presence of a USN carrier.

I see, the difference seems to be between being just one service within U.S. armed forces and being the U.S. armed forces.