New Carriers

Indian NAvy aquires maritime assets
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Citi ... 653665.cms

PLAN possible carrier trianing with Brazil
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cac ... 047b455e72

The PLAN is also renting NITKA in Ukraine.

That is interesting since there both two different types of carrier training. One being STOL and the other Cattapault, it will be interesting to see what kind of carrier they actually produce.

Ok this posting is gonna be about Frigates

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090619/155299296.html

Ok Americas Oliver Hazard Perry frigates are old and not upgradeable anymore, The LCS is supposed to be the stop gap weapons system. Now the LCS relies heavily on its Helos to preform ASW and some surface to surface missons. It has no organic sonar and is limited heavily in ship to ship fighting. I mean what where they thinking not putting sonar on this class. I know it can reach some pretty fast speeds. But this vessel will replace OHP frigates, it will serve in MEU task forces, so it wont always be balls to the wall at 50 knots. It must have been designed to fight pirates and thats it. Will this Russian frigate easily eliminate the LCS and the aging OHP frigates.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/29631/fresh-deal-gorshkov.html Indias carrier

http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20090909/156073350.html India slated to take delivery of Mig-29K

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20091009/156412003.html Russia buys mig-39k to replace SU-33

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090227/120342249.html Russia to build CVN

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090303/120404573.html Another CVN article

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyl ... 0920091006 Article about Italy's new carrier

Just a couple of articles to keep up to date.

China apparently has begun builing a mock-up of the Varyag deck for crew training purposes.

Also the Russian CVN article is outdated. Right now the VMF is looking at purchasing several Mistral class ships, with a production license. Combined with the purchase of the MiG-29K, and statements that the MiG-35 will be used to fill the LFI requirement (rather then a 5th generation platform) lead me to think that there is a big question mark over the idea of a Russian carrier.

Here are the picture of the Varyag deck mock up if you are interested.











And a few more recent ones, supposedly from yesterday.









For works on the actual Varyag, in the past two months, the forward part of the island was removed, then rebuilt.

September


October

Wow I hadnt seen those before, thanks.