A Syria Deployment Exposed Russian Aircraft Carrier’s Chronic Troubles

Russia has admitted that the fate of its sole aircraft carrier, the troubled Admiral Kuznetsov, is most likely either the scrapyard or an unlikely sale to another country. The move is hardly surprising in light of the ship’s 2016 deployment to Syria’s Mediterranean coast, an attempt to flex Russia’s military muscles that ended up exposing the vessel’s myriad problems.

“We believe there is no point in repairing it anymore. It is over 40 years old, and it is extremely expensive … I think the issue will be resolved in such a way that it will either be sold or disposed of,” Andrei Kostin, the chairman of Russia’s state shipbuilding corporation, told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper in July.

While Kostin clarified that no final decision has been made, it has been clear for a decade now that the Admiral Kuznetsov is more trouble than it’s worth. In 2016, it failed to even serve as a symbol of Russian power projection when Moscow dispatched it to Syria.

In late October 2016, the carrier was photographed emitting its characteristic and ominous-looking black smoke as it steamed through the English Channel en route to the Eastern Mediterranean. The voyage came one year after Russia intervened in the civil war in Syria, where Russian warplanes based on the Syrian coast bombed cities in support of Syria’s embattled dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

As the Kuznetsov set off for Syria, media reports noted that if the 15 fighters on its deck joined its counterparts flying from Hmeimim Airbase in Syria’s Latakia, it would mark the carrier’s first-ever combat role.

However, even before the carrier appeared off the Syrian coast, it was readily apparent that the few fighters it could carry mostly lacked ground attack capabilities. Unlike American carriers, the Kuznetsov launches fighters with a ski-jump on the bow rather than a catapult. Consequently, its Su-33 fighters take off with limited fuel and payloads and were only configured for air-to-air combat, making them ill-equipped to join in the horrific bombing of Syria’s second city, Aleppo, at the time.

The Kuznetsov also carried a smaller number of more advanced MiG-29KR carrier fighters of the kind Russia developed for the Indian Navy, which, incidentally, lost several in a spate of accidents. Unlike the Su-33, the MiG-29KR can conduct bombing attacks, but the Kuznetsov carried so few that they would make little discernible difference over Syria.

Things quickly went wrong. A MiG-29KR crashed attempting to land on Kuznetsov on Nov. 14 before it even made it to Syria. Then, after it arrived off the war-torn country’s coast, one of its Su-33 crashed into the sea in another landing accident on Dec. 5.

Of course, accidents happen. The USS Harry S. Truman lost three of its F/A-18 Super Hornets in separate incidents earlier this year during the U.S. air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. However, the Kuznetsov carries a fraction of the aircraft that the U.S. carriers like the Truman do, and significantly less advanced fighters at that. Consequently, the loss of the MiG-29KR and Su-33 marked approximately 13 percent of its fighter wing.

Worse, satellite images revealed shortly after that the majority of the Kuznetsov’s fighters had landed at Hmeimim rather than demonstrating their ability to conduct operations from the carrier off the coast—proof of concept for an aircraft carrier rather than an aircraft transport. With no less than four MiG-29KRs and Su-33s left on her deck, the Kuznetsov briefly operated with fewer combat aircraft than a typical U.S. Navy Wasp-class landing helicopter dock, which carries F-35Bs or AV-8B Harrier jump jets.

The troubled ship headed home in January 2017. Needless to say, its deployment hardly even succeeded as a symbolic projection of power for Moscow. That was hardly surprising considering that on an earlier Mediterranean deployment in December 2011, the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet closely tracked the Kuznetsov in case another inevitable malfunction resulted its sinking.

The Russian carrier would spend seven years in a shipyard being overhauled, leading to speculation by 2024 that it may never have another deployment, especially given that its MiG-29KRs were reassigned for land-based missions.

With Kostin’s remark, it seems the Kuznetsov is destined for scrap as it’s hard to conceive of any country wanting to buy such a decrepit, accident-prone, and maintenance-heavy warship from a country sanctioned for invading its neighbor.

Although one never knows. It’s somewhat amusing to recall that in 2021, former Turkish Rear Admiral Cihat Yayci suggested Turkey should obtain the Brazilian Navy’s former flagship, the carrier NAe São Paulo. The oldest active aircraft carrier at the time, the Brazilian vessel also suffered chronic mechanical problems and ultimately spent less than a year at sea.

Commissioned by France as the Foch in 1963, Brazil acquired the vessel from France in 2000 and eventually concluded it was easier to sell it for scrap than invest millions more in trying to keep it operational. It sold it for scrap to Turkey, prompting Yayci to suggest that Turkey buy it and use it for naval training. (Ultimately, Turkey revoked the vessel’s permission to dock after concluding it was packed with asbestos. Brazil later scuttled it in the Atlantic Ocean.)

More perversely, speaking almost five years after the Kuznetsov’s disastrous Syria deployment, Yayci even suggested that Turkey look into acquiring Su-33s “as an aircraft alternative that we can use with the ship.” However, Russia only ever built a few dozen Su-33s in the 1990s, meaning any Su-33s Turkey acquired would have been secondhand and probably lack a reliable supply of spare parts.

Unsurprisingly, Turkish officials dismissed Yayci’s proposal on feasibility grounds as would any country today considering buying the Kuznetsov for anything other than scrap metal, presuming said countries don’t have a Yayci-type figure guiding the ship of state.