On October 30, 2018, Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Huge Floating Dry Dock Has Accidentally Sunk while Russia’s aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov was aboard.
See Details here: Russia’s Only Aircraft Carrier Huge Floating Dry Dock Has Accidentally Sunk
Floating drydock holding the Admiral Kuznetsov sank following a power supply failure, causing one of the dock’s cranes to fall onto the carrier’s deck, leading to warship repair plant workers being injured. The incident left a 4×5-meter hole in the vessel’s flight deck.
Now Russian Navy is considering prematurely decommission of its only aircraft carrier after then the PD-50 floating drydock that housed it sank
Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, may be decommissioned if the Ministry of Defense and industry wouldn’t resolve the question of the replacing the PD-50 floating drydock needed to complete the repair of the ship hull, was reported by newspaper Izvestia, citing a source in the Russian Navy.
Now the largest Russian Navy surface combatant ship is waiting for the decision of its fate near the wall of the 35th Repair Plant in Kola Bay near Murmansk.
Russia does not own a suitable replacement for PD-50 built-in 1980 in Sweden for the Soviet Navy.
Moreover, the project of the Russian aircraft carrier and before the tragedy caused a lot of controversies.
Even before the PD-50 accident, a number of observers questioned the utility and expense of refurbishing the Kuznetsov.
“In general, we need to critically review the domestic concept of the employment of carrier strike groups since Russia has undertaken to use the Admiral Kuznetsov to accomplish such missions,” Oleg Vladykin suggested in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Editor of the Moscow Defense Brief journal Mikhail Barabanov was dismissive of Kuznetsov’s upgrades.
“Since Kuznetsov is not so much a combat platform as a training platform, deep modernization for her is an obvious excess.”
At the moment, Russia does not have the technical and financial possibilities to restore its old aircraft carrier and also to build a series of new ones
