Russian Carrier Plans Part One
On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:25:11 -0800 (PST), Weatherlawyer
wrote:
I believe they got the details of nuclear physics handed to them
gratis. They built better rockets than the US too. A mixture of
ideology and money can indeed work wonders but when push comes to
shove their engineering ability is bloody good.
At the top end they can be quite good. But, as a rule, their
maintenance SUX and the old USSR used to build a lot of something
because a lot of it wouldn't work if the "balloon" should ever go up.
They relied very heavily on large cadres of draftees for "grunt work"
and used the equivalent of senior petty officers and warrant officers
to actually fix stuff. If they maintain this model (right out of
Tsarist times) then their success is likely to be limited.
They are better at keeping secrets too so who knows what they have
brewing while who doesn't know what the US and the Europeans have?
I don't think their "secret keeping" ability is all that red-hot
anymore! ;-)
A successful carrier aviation program is a very expensive, very
intensive thing. It takes a long time to build it up. You can read
all the books about carreir aviation ever written (including CV NATOPS
manuals) and still not know all of the "how to's."
And it's not enough to train pilots and aircrews; all those "colored
shirt" guys need training and experience, too. A flight deck during
flight ops is, perhaps, the most dangerous industrial venue in the
world. When flight ops are secured it's only modestly safer.
Then there's the interesting drills that occur during respots. And
the ever-present threat of "hanger rash."
Choregraphing the "ballet" that every CV does several times a day
during FLTOPS takes a lot of knowledge AND experience.
In my day ('68-'92) the Soviet Navy never did all that well on UNREPS.
Did they ever get any better?
Again, if they want to spend the money to build the ships and planes
and escorts and develop the expertise it CAN be done. I don't know if
20 years is a reasonable window or not. I guess we'll have to just
watch and see what happens!!!
|