Russia's shipbuilding is still much better than Turkey's, which is having trouble building a puny 3000 ton frigate despite significant import of components such as radar, gun, engines.
Aircraft Carriers III
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Russia's shipbuilding is still much better than Turkey's, which is having trouble building a puny 3000 ton frigate despite significant import of components such as radar, gun, engines.
-> We are talking about Russia and aircraft carriers, not Turkey. If you are trying to dispute my position on the Russian industry, then at least provide a credible source to proceed. But if what you are trying to achieve is to offend me with your uneducated opinion, then you're doing it wrong because I'm merely a resident of Turkey.
-> If you have something to add on the matter of Turkey, try this thread instead, where I kindly explained how you were wrong earlier... -> Turkey Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
With US's decline over the years, it is expected they cannot afford to operate 12 carries come 2030s, maybe 8 tops by then.
Russia has been acquiring naval bases abroad. They seem to want to project power to the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
I agree that carriers aren't necessary for a country like Russia but their government seems to think otherwise.
Even if it is not their top naval priority.
Germany is a bit of an oddball because their coastline is tiny and their defense posture since WW2 has been one where they don't use their forces abroad except in exceptional circumstances.
Progress has been painfully slow but the shipyards have improved and they increased self reliance on components like naval gas turbines and marine propulsion in general. Russia is presently building a Project 10510 icebreaker for example. It is to have close to 70 000 tons displacement, a length of 209m, beam of 47.7m, with two nuclear reactors of 315MWt power each. That basically puts it in the same size and motive power as a carrier. It is being built at Zvezda shipyard in facilities which only became operational a couple of years ago.
Prior to that Russia didn't have facilities to build ships of that size. The large shipyards in the Soviet Union were in Ukraine.
Russia, unlike what some people say, prefers to focus on the economy before their military. For example had they built cruisers instead of icebreakers they would have launched three of them by now. So things like icebreakers get higher priority than military ships.
Bigger warships are vulnerable. Smaller warships are harder to track and these days pack bigger punches.
I don't know, it seems a bit exaggerated to me for South Korea to build all these carriers just to protect a couple of rocks on the ocean.
Most of them aren't even that far away from South Korea mainland proper. If it was me I would just spend the budget on frigates, destroyers, and submarines.
Most of them aren't even that far away from South Korea mainland proper. If it was me I would just spend the budget on frigates, destroyers, and submarines.
South Korea is an ambitious nation. They are looking to build a blue water navy that can be deployed to places like the Gulf of Aden or Persian Gulf. It's a nation that is heavily dependent upon international trade and protection of those lanes of communication is important.
In the post-WW2 era we don't often see nations acting like past empires where they have independent security and exclusive trading networks due to the US providing the global platform to operate in. With the shale revolution, the US would be inclined to be less interested in the affairs of energy producers, primarily in the Gulf region relative to before. East Asian nations are heavily dependent upon oil from the Gulf region. With uncertainty in US commitment to the region's trade security, nations like South Korea would need the ability to act with initiative. Especially considering if US became a net exporter of energy, it can purposely cause some issues in the Gulf region to spike up regional prices.
Even in the event of conflict with North Korea or Japan, carriers would provide another attack vector beyond airbases within South Korea.