Russia's Sad, Smokey Aircraft Carrier Loses Second Fighter in Two Weeks

From Popular Mechanics

The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov has lost a second fighter plane in just three weeks. The latest incident, involving a Su-33 Flanker air superiority fighter, is also the second to involve a failure of the ship's arresting wires. The elderly carrier has experienced a string of malfunctions and equipment breakages in the past several years.

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According to The Aviationist, on Saturday December 5th the twin-engine Su-33 Flanker fighter was on its second attempt at landing on the carrier flight deck. The first attempt was a "bolter"-the fighter's tailhook had failed to snag an arrestor cable designed to grab the plane and safely land it on deck. Russian state media reported that the plane caught the cable on its second landing attempt but the cable snapped. The pilot ejected from the plane and was picked up by a Navy helicopter.

On November 14th, the very first day of the carrier's flight operations over Syria, a MiG-29K fighter bomber crashed while landing. In that incident, the MiG crashed after it was forced into a holding pattern by another arrestor cable failure. While the waiting for the carrier deck crew to sort out the mess the MiG abruptly lost power to both engines, and the pilot was forced to eject.

Arrestor cable failures are not uncommon-the braided steel cables are designed to stop a 40,000 pound Su-33 Flanker in just 350 feet. On American aircraft carriers, arrestor cables are replaced after every 100 or so successful landings. How often the Russians replace their cables is unknown, but there is growing evidence it doesn't replace them often enough.

Last week Jane's noted that satellites had detected the Kuznetsov's air wing, the 100th Independent Shipborne Fighter Aviation Regiment, on the ground at Humayim Air Base in Syria. This was likely due to to the MiG-29K crash. The Jane's report, dated November 28th, stated that all of the Su-33s were spotted on land. Either Kuznetsov's landing system had just been re-cleared for operations or the Russian government, embarrassed by the report, coerced the Navy into restarting carrier flight operations. Whatever the case, the carrier was obviously still not ready to go back to work.

In 2009 off the coast of Turkey, a problem with Kuznetsov's electrical system led to a fire that killed a crewman. The ship's propulsion system is unreliable, its steam boilers prone to breaking down so frequently an oceangoing tugboat shadows the carrier wherever it goes, and it is not uncommon that the aging carrier gets turned away at ports. Kuznetsov has lost approximately 12 percent of its airpower since arriving off the coast of Syria earlier this month. The way things are going, the number might go up.

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