Quite a shame tbh, the Ulyanovsk was one of those great "what ifs" in history. Had the hull been in a more completed form. It would have been highly possible for Russia or , you guessed it, China to purchase it and completed it.
We are so used to catapult carriers being a NATO thing only that we are sometimes surprised to know that the Soviets were also tantalizingly close to having it themselves too.
Indeed. If the shipyard had been in Russia and not Ukraine, the Russians might have kept her. After the fall of the USSR the ships were in a foreign country, one that needed cash to keep shipyards and other industries going. Varyag was afloat and not particularly 'in the way' but Ulyanovsk was on a valuable slipway which was needed for new commercial construction, and as Russia had little prospect or intention of 'stumping up the readies' anytime soon the decision was made to scrap the hull and free up the slipway.
Ulyanovsk was an evolution of the Kuznetzov design, larger, which meant an extra lift could be fitted (portside aft, clear of the angle as on US Carriers), Nuclear power (which pushed size and cost up anyway), a ski jump forward and two catapults in the waist. The shape of the bow ski jump strongly suggests it wasn't an integral bow ramp as with the Kuznetzovs, but actually a superstructure built on top of a conventional flat deck. The implication was that the Soviets were happy with ski jump launches for the present, but had an eye to using catapults in place of the ramps longer term, following USN practice. The Ramp would then be removed and two forward catapults installed.
Because the ship was essentially an enlarged Kuznetzov, it gives a guide to how an evolved Chinese variant of Liaoning might look...
