Much is currently being done by the Russian Navy in its naval aviation and submarine arms. This is even seen as a comeback to the Russian Navy in a groundbreaking event for Russian naval history, sending Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, to the Mediterranean Sea. This is the first combat operation for a Russian or Soviet aircraft carrier and the intent is to show that Moscow is up to date with a very robust presence in the area by sea.
Since 2013, the Russian Navy has had a constant presence in the Mediterranean of ten or more warships on rotational deployment from its Northern and Black Sea Fleets. Presently, the naval group by the Russian navy assigned to stay in the Eastern Mediterranean comprises six warships and three or four support vessels. The main Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea, supports this naval group.
In October 2016, after modernization, Admiral Kuznetsov sailed from Severomorsk, accompanied by the battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky, the destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov, and anti-submarine ships. In what could be another gesture to display its growing interest in the region, one of its defense ministries announced plans to alter its naval facility in Tartus, Syria, into a permanent base. En route to its primary target—Daesh terrorists—the Kuznetsov is likely to dock and conduct anti-piracy and anti-terror exercises with a nuclear submarine and Tu-160 long-range strategic bombers in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Kuznetsov frequently harbors an air wing of Su-33 air superiority fighters and Ka-27/29 anti-submarine warfare helicopters. Although scheduled to modernize the ship and replace the Su-33s with modern MiG-29Ks, the Russian Navy has done very little to alter Kuznetsov since its commission into service in the early 1980s. The addition of four advanced MiG-29K jets strengthened the ground-attack potential of the Kuznetsov wing in Syria, while modernizing the weapon delivery system of the onboard Su-33 ground attack should make this plane more capable of delivering unguided ordnance with precision.
So, despite its age and rather modest upgrades, Kuznetsov remains a stand-in for the potency of Russian naval power. Displacing up to 58,000 tons, the 305-meter vessel supports an air wing of up to 40 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. It is in line for major refit work, including removing its anti-ship cruise missile launchers to provide further hangar space for fixed-wing aircraft, although those plans have now been deferred. Upgrades for the ship’s electronics systems and its air defenses were also in the offing.
The Russian Navy is looking ahead to future construction of the new aircraft carrier and aircraft carrier-type warships under Project 23000E “Storm class”. This 330 m vessel of the 100,000 tons class will carry an air wing of up to 90 fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, including navalised T-50s. This new future carrier, developed by Krylov State Research Center and Nevskoye Design Bureau, is potential to endow Russia’s navy with significant capacity acceleration for sure.
The thing here is that building such a ship is not an easy task. The only shipyard which can place this work is the Nikolayev shipyards, which belong to Ukraine. The likely alternative is the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, which refitted the Kiev-class aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov as India’s Vikramaditya. “Construction work is going to start in 2019,” said Sevmash officials.
On the other hand, the Mediterranean houses a strong naval force of NATO, consisting of Italy, France, and Spain with the US NATo 6th Fleet. Including the carrier groups of all other forces, currently, R-91 Charles de Gaulle, CDG of France, would seem to be the only one made available up to the support of the Mediterranean. The US is centering its efforts on the Indo-Pacific and does not have any aircraft carrier deployed permanently in the Mediterranean Basin. Still, with the induction of two of the Royal Navy QEII class carriers and their associated air group of 24 F-35B joint strike fighters, carrier availability is forecast to improve.
The return of Russian naval aviation goes further than the Kuznetsov. The vessels of this air group—only recently sent on combat sorties over Syria—constitute only a small fraction of the country’s naval aviation. The bulk of Russian naval aviation is currently in the process of a renaissance, with new machinery arriving in the air groups of the Baltic and Northern fleets.
The real force of Russian naval aviation are land-based aircraft, including the Su-30SM and Su-34 Fullback, which will replace the older Su-24 Fencers. Amounting to 60 or more of the Soviet-era Tu-22 Backfire medium bombers, these are Moscow’s principal strike aircraft. These also remain under Long-Range Aviation control, but they are still assigned the anti-ship maritime strike role.
Added to these are several large, long-range antisubmarine aircraft of the Tu-142 Bear-F variety and maritime patrol and submarine hunting Il-38 May aircraft, with new versions likewise now being upgraded. Ship-based antisubmarine work is covered by Ka-27 Helix helicopters.
The 2010 Mistral saga, which originally meant the French sale of two big Mistral-class amphibious ships to Russia, is a bright example of the failures and potentials along the way of Russian naval aviation. Even though the deal was canceled in 2014, the prepayment by Russia was fully returned and doubled in rubles. The money paid for the program works on the Ka-52K helicopter development was fully returned after Egypt bought these helicopters for its new ships separately.
In sum, the Russian naval aviation is numerically small but part of the overall wave of modernization within the Russian military. That is mainly a land-based one but still retains formidable capabilities both for conventional and nuclear wars, denoting Russia as a powerful naval nation in the Mediterranean and around the world.