There are reports that the Russian Navy may soon scrap its notional flagship, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. Since the 1990s, the Kuznetsov has been the only remaining aircraft carrier in the Russian fleet. Built in the final days of the Soviet Union, the ship has an unenviable record of repeated breakdowns and casualties. It has been out of service for repairs and upgrading since March 2017.
The Kuznetsov was ordered in 1981, commissioned in 1990, but was not fully operational until 1995. Between bad boiler tubes, combustion problems, and burning Mazut, a Russian version of Bunker C, the carrier is notorious for belching a vast cloud of black smoke whenever underway. Given its fuel and chronic boiler problems, the Kuznetsov is often referred to as having a “weak heart.”
Beyond the oily smoke, the carrier’s operating history has been troubled. The ship has never been deployed for longer than six months and was famously followed by oceangoing tugboats during all of its sea voyages in case the ship breaks down. There were reports that in a 2011 deployment, the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet kept close by so it could rescue crew, in case the Admiral Kuznetsov happened to sink.
During a deployment to Syria in 2016, one MiG-29K/KUB multirole fighter crashed due to a faulty arresting wire. A Sukhoi Su-33 air superiority fighter also plunged into the Mediterranean Sea when an arresting cable snapped during the landing.”
In its most recent shipyard period, the ship has been plagued by accidents, multiple fires, and the embezzlement of funds, among other issues, including having a floating drydock sink beneath it.
Adm. Sergei Avakyants, the former commander of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, told Izvestia that the Russian Navy “does not need aircraft carriers in their classic form in the long term.” Describing aircraft carriers as “a thing of the past,” Avakyants said that they “can be destroyed in a few minutes by modern weapons.”
“It is a very expensive and ineffective naval weapon,” Avakyants continued. “The future belongs to carriers of robotic systems and unmanned aircraft. And if a decision is made not to continue the repairs, the only thing left to do is to take the Admiral Kuznetsov, cut it up for scrap metal, and dispose of it.”