A Russian naval flotilla of seven ships, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and battle cruiser Peter the Great, steamed through the English Channel today under the watchful eyes of the British Royal Navy. The squadron is on a voyage from Severomorsk, the home of the Russian Northern Fleet, to the coast of Syria to help provide air support for the regime of Bashar Assad against the forces of Syrian rebels and Daesh fighters.
The deployment is viewed as more of a politically symbolic show of force than a meaningful military contribution. The Kuznetsov carries just 15 Su-33 and MiG-29 fighter/bombers and is capable of only limited flight operations. This will provide meager augmentation for Russian aircraft already operating from Syrian airbases.
This will mark the carrier’s first combat mission, although it has been deployed to the Mediterranean Sea four times previously, in 1995, 2007, 2012, and 2014. The U.S. Sixth Fleet monitored the Kuznetsov‘s 2012 voyage closely, out of concerns that the aged and problematic vessel might suffer mechanical troubles sufficient to cause it to sink, requiring a complex rescue operation. Such concerns were validated when the Kuznetsov‘s boilers “blew out” off the coast of France on it’s return voyage, and the ship had to be taken under tow by an accompanying Russian ocean-going tug.
The present squadron also includes a tug, a practice that appears to have become standard Russian Navy procedure in recent years.
Funny; there idea of “efficiency haze” is different than what I recall from the U.S.
Navy…