I’m not surprised that the carrier remained floating. Even if some compartments were opened up, you’d have to open up a heck of a lot of them to sink the whole ship, especially since it would have been lacking its usual considerable load of planes, fuel, personnel and support for them, and everything else that could be easily removed.
More problematic is that the compartments that got flooded are probably asymmetrically arranged, so the ship probably isn’t floating level in the water. That’s going to make recovery harder, and is also putting greater than normal stresses on the hull. If it didn’t need an overhaul before this, it almost certainly does now.
Plus, of course, while I expect that all of the parts of a ship are routinely protected against saltwater corrosion, that protection is probably a lot less on interior parts that wouldn’t ordinarily be submerged.
I’d tack on horrible geography to try and project significant naval power. They’ve always struggled with limited warm water ports. Icebreakers help but still increase costs and can reduce the flexibility to respond quickly in a crisis. Then there’s the issues of running the gauntlets of ground based missiles and airpower through the Bosporus or the Baltic Sea to break out into open water from some of the ports they do have.
That’s probably an understatement.
While not a NATO member, Sweden is formally a NATO partner. In polling, the plurality position in Sweden is now in favor of becoming full members of the alliance. Sweden’s been a reliable contributor to NATO missions. Their efforts to increase interoperability and planning for potential wartime contributions have gone up since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine a couple years back. They even signed a memorandum of understanding with NATO in 2016. It covered how they would host, or allow transit by NATO forces …just in case that ever came up. Sweden also reinstituted conscription last year and reestablished a permanent garrison on the strategically important Baltic Sea island of Gottland. Both those moves saw statements that pointed to growing security threats from Russia. Swedish neutrality has changed character quite a bit.
There’s a bigger open question hanging out there right now. Sweden’s elections in early September still haven’t produced a government. No party won a majority. The Moderate Party (a center-right party) leader is scheduled for a vote to possibly become PM next week. His coalition is all pro-NATO membership parties but not enough to carry the PM vote by itself. Coalition politics can be tricky. I still think it’s safe to say that if he becomes PM Sweden won’t be helping the Russian navy.
The Soviet era subs had a tendency to catch fire and/or sink regardless of where they were operating. The issue of Soviet subs violating Swedish waters, with the Swedes sometimes firing on them, was a running issue during the Cold War period. It’s even made it’s own page on wikipedia - Swedish submarine incidents. You’ll note the list continues after the Soviet era.
They can build large ships easily, but this through deck cruiser was a result of the fall of the soviet union and meddling by the powers that be. It was a beta design to test out where the Russians wanted to go with fixed wing naval aviation, instead of going with an LHD hull and nuke plant and doing something useful or going with a full flight deck pure carrier aviation with a nuke plant.
The Typhoon class boomer by comparison has the displacement of a WW2 heavy cruiser, so its not like they can’t build. They need to have a come to jesus talk and accept that they are and always will be a frigate navy from now on.
I was just thinking when it got reported, first who was the lucky guy that got to tell Putin and secondly, did 7th fleet get a call asking if they were involved in any way.
The Kutzetsov class and her Chinese clones are big, IIRC about the size of a Forrestral or Kitty Hawk class, but carrying a smaller air group due to carrying big arse Flankers. IIRC, they could have had a much smaller ship with the same size wing, if they had simply put smaller A/C on board or had a bigger wing on ship.
I mean why did you make such a big vessel and outfit her with a ski jump? Then again the Russkies ae iconoclasts in ship design, this is the same group who made the Kirovs with both a nuclear and a conventional powerplant, and I don’t mean they had different power plants in different ships, the had multiple power plants in the same chip. Their super carrier design had both a ski jump and a catapult (waist).
What I read said that the ballast-tank pumps were stuck in the on position when the power failed, so the dry dock essentially filled up with too much water.
If you consider the reputation for reliability in their nuclear power plants that feature might be more practical engineering than iconoclastic. It’s bad form to just leave your flagship dead in the water mid-ocean until a tug capable of towing the world’s largest surface combatant can get out to it.
What are the chief obstacles if the Russians request that the carrier finish her refit in newport news, or a chinese facility for that matter. I don’t think the Russians are at the point of using her for a sink ex.
And in other news, A Norwegian Frigate got into a fenderbender with an oil tanker, last I heard was that she was aground and salvage ops were ongoing, but no word on if the ship is going to be a yard write off.
Only in the same mundane way that ordinary boats are designed to “sink”, in that part of their structure is below the water’s surface and that they have some control over how much.
It was not designed to completely flood the ballast tanks and sit on the seabed 160 feet down. Since this is close to the common English sense of a ship “sinking”, there’s no need for qualification or euphemism. Normal operation of the dry dock can be called submerging or lowering.
I am additionally amused that the Wikipedia article on dry-docks has this in the “floating” section:
Just to clarify for those that don’t click through. It was already scheduled to be offline for two years. (The 2 yr clock started in Aug.) The drydock recovery timeframe is 6-12 months. Russia doesn’t have the ability to do that and needs international help so that’s a potential delay. The cite also says some work can continue without the drydock so the time isn’t a total loss and months of delay might still be possible…or wildly hopeful.
Sweden also reinstituted conscription last year and reestablished a permanent garrison on the strategically important Baltic Sea island of Gottland. Both those moves saw statements that pointed to growing security threats from Russia. Swedish neutrality has changed character quite a bit.
The issue of Soviet subs violating Swedish waters, with the Swedes sometimes firing on them, was a running issue during the Cold War period. It’s even made it’s own page on wikipedia - 