When the Soviet Union just collapsed, the Russian Navy was a veritable second navy in the world, with aircraft carriers, 10,000-ton missile cruisers, and nuclear submarines. At present, the Russian Navy seriously lacks large surface ships, especially aircraft carriers, and the Russian Navy has been left behind by many countries, and the gap between the Russian Navy and China and the United States is getting wider and wider. The U.S. Navy is about to usher in its 12th nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and China, which once purchased aircraft carriers from Russia, now has three aircraft carriers, and the technology used to build aircraft carriers and the performance of the aircraft carriers themselves are becoming more and more advanced.
Seeing that China and the United States have thrown themselves off a lot, the Russian Navy is certainly not a taste in its heart, and it is not willing to lag behind. Recently, some media quoted a retired senior general of the Russian Navy as saying that the Russian Navy is also going to be a supercarrier, preparing to build an aircraft carrier with a displacement of between 7 and 90,000 tons. In addition to disclosing the tonnage, the senior general also said that the Russian Navy's supercarrier will be equipped with a carrier-based version of the Su-57 stealth fighter. Looking at this configuration, it is still quite good, and it can indeed touch the threshold of the supercarrier. But the crux of the matter is whether Russia can create what it has planned.
The author believes that for the current Russia, the construction of a supercarrier can be described as "the ideal is very plump, and the reality is very skinny". At present, the Russian Navy does need a supercarrier, first, the combat capability of the aircraft carrier is not comparable to other surface ships, and the aircraft carrier has a certain strategic deterrent capability, which other surface ships do not have; Second, whether there is an aircraft carrier is an important indicator to measure whether a country and a country's navy is strong, and without an aircraft carrier, the country's navy is not a real powerful navy. So Russia needs a supercarrier very much, but it needs to be needed, and the current problem facing Russia is that it is almost impossible to build a supercarrier, and there are two main obstacles: lack of money and lack of technology.
We all know that the construction of large surface ships is very expensive, especially supercarriers, which is even more expensive, and the configuration is full, often more than 10 billion US dollars; In the case of average configuration and excellent cost control, five or six billion dollars may also be required. Now that Russia is at war with Ukraine, and at the same time it is being sanctioned by Western countries, on the one hand, it needs huge military spending, and on the other hand, there are fewer channels to obtain income, and in this situation, Russia does not have much budget for the construction of new aircraft carriers. There is not enough money, let alone the construction of a 90,000-ton supercarrier, or the construction of a missile frigate of several thousand tons, it is not easy. In recent years, the Russian Navy has not received several large-tonnage surface ships, and it is obvious that there is a lack of money.
It's hard to do without money, and it's hard to do without technology. The technical difficulty of building a super-large surface ship such as an aircraft carrier is very high, and Russia is very lacking in this area. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many shipbuilding technologies and talents were seriously lost, and today's Russian shipbuilding industry is no longer enough to support the construction of supercarriers. It took several years to repair and upgrade the old "Kuznetsov" aircraft carrier, and it has not been completed until now, not to mention that it is even more difficult to build a brand new one than to ascend to the sky.