Dominate South Asia

The deck is wide. This aircraft carrier, no, the heavy aircraft carrier cruiser, is more than 300 meters long. Standing on the wide deck, you can feel how huge this steel sea monster is.

A person standing on it will feel his own insignificance.

Muhammad looked at the leaping deck in front of him and sighed in his heart. At the beginning, he almost converted Pakistan's aircraft carrier into a leaping deck. Now it seems that this is not correct.

The leaping deck almost starts to tilt upward from the middle of the runway to the bow, which is the most tilted. In this way, the front end of the deck has no other use except for allowing the aircraft to take off. Unlike the US aircraft carrier, the front end can be used as a helipad. This is a huge waste of space.

In addition to this waste, another point is that the bridge of this aircraft carrier is very large, almost twice that of the US aircraft carrier. Compared with the lower deck where there is no sunlight, everyone likes to live on the upper bridge, so most of the space on the upper deck is used to accommodate the officers on the warship.

If the bridge is reduced in size, at least two or three more aircraft can be parked on the deck. You know, it is much more efficient to operate the aircraft directly from the deck than to use the elevator to transfer the aircraft from the lower hangar.

With a standard displacement of 46,500 tons and a full load displacement of 61,300 tons, this aircraft carrier far exceeds the previous Kiev-class aircraft carrier and reaches the standard of a heavy aircraft carrier.

"How does Pakistan's Endeavour compare to ours?" Muhammad was looking at the island and sighing when he heard Marshal Ogarkov's words.

Although this is just an ordinary greeting, it is still inappropriate. Who can say that their equipment is poor? Although Pakistan's aircraft carrier is an old-fashioned aircraft carrier, after several improvements. The displacement has only increased to 40,000 tons, but it is still the pride of the Pakistan Navy.

"This aircraft carrier has a large displacement, but it does not use a catapult." Muhammad said: "This will make it difficult for fighters to take off."

Catapult! Muhammad is certainly proud of himself. Although Pakistan's aircraft carrier is old, it uses a steam catapult! The current Soviet aircraft carrier uses a jump deck.

Jump deck. It is a lazy shortcut. The British did not have enough financial resources to build large aircraft carriers, so they decided to develop small aircraft carriers. The steam catapult was too heavy, so they came up with such a jump form. Only the Soviets in front of them can use the jump on medium or even large aircraft carriers.

Hearing Muhammad talking about the catapult, Makarov's eyes lit up. Makarov has been struggling with the problem of steam catapults for a long time.

"Our carrier-based aircraft. Can take off without using a catapult." Just after Muhammad finished speaking, a technician said: "Our aircraft. Has an outstanding thrust-to-weight ratio, and can take off successfully using only a ski-jump runway."

Hearing this, Muhammad suddenly cried out in his heart, bad, he just said this, and as a result, he re-provoked the internal contradictions of the Soviets.

Globally. Only the Americans have catapults, but it is not that the Soviet Union cannot develop them, but because of the smoke bombs released by the Americans.

The Americans listed the bad aspects of the catapult, which are complex in structure, prone to failure, and steam consumes a lot of energy, which is not worth the loss. Therefore, the Americans like the British-style jump deck very much.

The Americans successfully fooled the Soviets. There are many experts in the Soviet military who think that catapults are not necessary. Among them, the main ones are aircraft designers. They think. If the aircraft uses a catapult to implement forced accelerated takeoff, the aircraft structure needs to be strengthened. The strong acceleration will make the body bear huge force, and strengthening will reduce the performance of the fighter and greatly increase the failure rate of the aircraft.

Even with your ass, you can guess what these people are thinking. They don’t want their aircraft to undergo large-scale changes, especially the Su-27! Due to the problem of nose counterweight, this type of aircraft had to reduce weight, and even the beams were punched with holes. To put this type of aircraft on board, the added weight was enough to be a headache just to withstand the impact of landing, not to mention taking off. Continuous strengthening would make the fuselage very bulky and its air combat capability would be greatly reduced.

In order to study aircraft carriers, the Soviets built a large carrier-based aircraft land simulation training system at the Saki Air Force Base on the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. It includes facilities such as the Т-1 ground skid deck, carrier-based aircraft landing arresting device, and command and control system. From the outside, it is exactly the same as the upper layer of the aircraft carrier. Moreover, in order to simulate the wind and waves encountered by the aircraft carrier at sea, the entire deck can also be shaken left and right under the action of the hydraulic cylinder on the lower layer. The entire system was officially put into use in 1982, and the Soviets named it "Nitka". It can be used to study technology and train pilots.

In later generations, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and this system naturally stayed in Ukraine. As a result, the Russians had to come here to rent it if they wanted to train naval carrier-based aircraft pilots.

In order to develop aircraft carriers, the Soviets also started the development of catapults. In 1982, the booster equipment began to be developed. First, a 1:10 catapult model was made. In mid-1983, the first real catapult was built. In 1986, this booster equipment began to be installed in the "Nitka" aircraft carrier land test system. The length of the ejection cylinder was 90 meters. After two years of testing, in the future, in 1988, this catapult passed the national cross-departmental joint acceptance test, and the Soviets completed the development of the catapult.

Now it is 1987, the catapult is still under experimentation, and the argument about the catapult is also chattering.

Aviation personnel believe that their aircraft can take off without a catapult. That thing is purely a burden, and the pilot will be quite uncomfortable when taking off by catapult.

And the engineering and technical personnel of the Black Sea Shipyard gradually tend to the opinions of aviation designers and believe that catapults are not needed.

But at the same time, the aircraft carrier designers and the military of the old Neva Design Bureau severely refuted the "catapult is useless theory". The two sides argued endlessly.

The military has a clearer understanding that catapults can enable carrier-based aircraft to have real combat capabilities, and ski-jump takeoff is just a shortcut that reduces performance.

Even Gorshkov, who resigned as the commander of the navy in 1985, said: "If we do not provide our carrier-based aircraft with the ability to launch catapults, we will not be forgiven by history."

Unfortunately, the current Tbilisi and the second Riga do not use catapults. Only the third ship, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier "Ulyanovsk", plans to equip two catapults on the angled deck. Later, with the collapse of the Soviet building, it ended in vain.

The person in front of him may be a ski-jump faction in the Black Sea Shipyard, or an aviation designer to coordinate aviation issues on the aircraft carrier. Facing this person, Muhammad knew in his heart that if he wanted to convince them, he needed to speak with facts and data.

"We use catapults to allow the Tomcat fighter to take off from the aircraft carrier with full fuel when fully loaded, that is, with six Phoenix missiles, four Sparrow missiles and two Sidewinder missiles, and cruise in the 600-kilometer defense circle around the aircraft carrier for half an hour. When returning, there is still one-tenth of fuel. When we mount four Phoenix missiles, our cruising time can be increased to 45 minutes." Muhammad said: "What about your ski jump deck? Can it allow your carrier-based aircraft to take off with full fuel and full load?"

What a joke, the Su-27K, which was replaced with a four-redundant digital fly-by-wire and added front canards, and later named Su-33, has an external load of 6,500 kilograms, but relying on the ski jump deck on the bow of the aircraft carrier to take off, the maximum weight should be no more than 26 tons. If the weather conditions at sea are bad, the take-off weight should be reduced. Even if calculated based on the takeoff weight of 26 tons, the Su-33 can only carry about two tons of external load with 60% fuel, which is the weight of 8 air-to-air missiles used for basic air combat.

The powerful size of the Su-33 prototype is wasted. It can neither be fully fueled nor fully loaded, which completely restricts the combat effectiveness, shortens the air time of this heavy fighter, and greatly reduces the weight of weapons carried. Compared with land-based fighters, it is also incomparable.

"We can refuel by accompanying the flight." N.S. Chernyakov, a technician of the Sukhoi Design Bureau, is coordinating the construction of the aircraft carrier here. He is not afraid of the Pakistani president. If you want to increase the amount of bombs, you can reduce the fuel before takeoff and hang more bombs. After taking off, use another fighter to fully load the fuel, and refuel your partner after flying up, so that this fighter has more fuel.

"That's right." Muhammad nodded: "Ten fighters will be launched, five for combat and five for refueling. Half of the aircraft on your aircraft carrier are refueling aircraft."

After Muhammad finished speaking, the other party's face was embarrassed. This method can only be a tricky method. In actual combat, if it is like this, it is really inappropriate.

"Besides, the use of the leaping method also seriously limits aircraft with insufficient engine performance, such as carrier-based early warning aircraft. Even if the ski-jump takeoff can fly, the air time is greatly shortened. If you want to continue, you still need a refueling aircraft." Muhammad emphasized the word refueling aircraft.

Even the twin-engine propeller "Yak"-44 designed specifically for aircraft carriers, which the Soviets believed, can complete conventional takeoffs without catapults, but, unsurprisingly, this method will limit the aircraft's fuel capacity, and the aircraft cannot take off with full fuel. (To be continued ~^~)