Russian aircraft carrier: shipyard laytime and speculation

Shortly before Christmas, it happened after all: another fire broke out on the Russian aircraft carrier "Admiral Kuznetsov", which was undergoing repairs and modernisation in Murmansk, but this time it was brought under control quickly and without any significant personal injury. This sort of thing happens during shipyard layovers and it wouldn't really be worth reporting if Moscow didn't want to present proud flagships, newbuildings, launches and commissioning at home at a time of bad news from Ukraine (see reports on this elsewhere). After all, the somewhat hapless progress of work on the largest warship and only carrier of the Russian Federation, which has now been going on for five years, is not exactly playing into Moscow's hands. Just think of the PD-50 floating dock that sank, the carrier it contained, the first major fire on board almost exactly three years ago and endless lists of unfinished and incomplete repairs.

Soon to be recommissioned?

The work is being delayed, it is said, but 2024 is the year in which the carrier is to be resurrected in operational freshness and resume its fleet service for another ten to fifteen years - by which time, however, the basic structure will already be 40 years old. It is no secret that the longer a ship lies in the shipyard and the older its keel, the more difficult it is for the crew and logistics to manage the inherent risks and keep it afloat, let alone get it sailing and keep it operational. A certain amount of scepticism is not entirely unfounded.

Chinese "Varyag" conversion "Liaoning". Photo: Chinese Navy PLAN

Alternative solution?

Now the ultra-nationalist wing (Sergey Karginov, Liberal Democratic Party) in Moscow is even voicing an option to buy back the former Ukrainian "Varyag", the planned sister ship of the "Kuznetsov" from Soviet times. The flight deck cruiser (so named because of the entry/exit restrictions in the Black Sea), which was more than half completed in Mykolayiv, was finally sold to a Chinese citizen for 30 million dollars in 1998 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and long negotiations. The hull was transferred to Dalian in north-east China, where it was initially used as a casino for three years (politically unspectacular and internationally unsuspicious) and then, after ten years of reconstruction, put into service with PLAN in 2012 as the skijump aircraft carrier "Liaoning". Back in its "homeland", the carrier was then to bear the name "Vladimir Zhirinovsky", the founder of the party and an avowed hater of Ukraine, and be deployed as the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.

Beautiful views that will even make some Chinese people smile a little!