More issues plague Russian Aircraft Carrier

ATS,

After a bombing raid in Syria, an Su-33 plunged into the sea after a FAILED landing. The cause seemed to be the failure of the arresting cables. The pilot ejected safely.

This is the second incident thus far and not a good one on the international stage.

I know that the USN has its fair share of issues, but this shows the disparity between our militaries and how our equipment is maintained. You military folks remember motor pool mondays? Whelp...I'm sure the US Navy has something similar.

What are your thoughts and opinions ATS?


References:

www.msn.com...

a reply to: Arnie123


The Su-33 looks like a heavy plane. Is the problem as simple as that?

a reply to: Aliensun

Possibly with a number of factors involved.

Poor maintenance
Poor routine
Poor equipment

Heavy plane as you say, coupled with all that would result in the arresting line failing and the loss of military equipment.

US looses an average of a couple of planes when a carrier is on deployment. That was the stats when I was in the USMC and deployed on one in the early 90's. We are the only country that lands at night from what I recall which is when many of the incidents happens. Seldom hear about it in the news. We lost one. Pilot died, tossed the debris overboard. It was never in then news. I remember once a pilot even landed on the wrong carrier. Fairly comical event. Very stressful environment, even during peace time. Long hours, no days off. Believe I worked over 90 days at one point without a day off.

a reply to: LifeMode

I have no doubt, I even make mention of it within my thread.

However in this day and age, a lot does get reported, from this article to the embarrasing and expensive Zumwalt breaking down.

a reply to: Arnie123

This is why they do "shake downs" and "workups". To find any problems with the design or construction. Don't read anything into it. This has been going on as long as they have been building ships. The USS Nautilus had trouble with leaks in it's secondary cooling system. The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) had problems with her turbines and reduction gears.

Naval Aviation is inherently dangerous. In the late 60's they put monitoring equipment on some pilots to measure stress. They found that there was more stress on a pilot during a night landing than when they were attacking a target with heavy anti-aircraft fire.

There is one important thing to learn from this. If we ever go to war with Russia, don't worry about their aircraft carriers, sink their tugboats.

a reply to: JIMC5499

Thanks and I appreciate your response. As with another poster said, it seems night ops is pretty harrowing. But the fact that we can do them is pretty cool, so as long as the equipment is good?

a reply to: Arnie123

The one that really gets you are night "blue water" ops. That is when you are so far out in the ocean that you have to land on the ship because you don't have the range to divert to land. That's scary even in a helicopter. We were out one night, the ship was under EMCON (radio and radar silence), we were down to 15 minutes of fuel and couldn't find the ship. We got lucky and found a frigate and were able to hoist up a fuel hose and refuel while hovering behind her.

As I said before NAVAIR is dangerous. We lost a helo, at night, when the pilot became disoriented and literally flew it into the water. One of the fixed wing aircraft reported "four in the raft" so we thought that every body got out OK and slowed down our response a little bit for safety. I was about 10 feet away from hooking on a float to keep the aircraft from sinking when it went under. I later found out that there were five people in the aircraft. The guy who didn't get out was a friend of mine. His daughter was born a month later. In a week that will have been 33 years ago.

The Russians and Chinese will learn, but, it will be an expensive education in both money and lives.

I don't care what nationality they are, I am always glad the pilot is safe, the pilot is someones son/father/husband/uncle.

a reply to: pikestaff

Absolutely, OP wasn't construd in trying to bring hate, rather a look at common failings. Especially when its a nation with very few aircraft carriers, eyes tend to be on them. Regardless, nobody lost their lives in this incident and that is a plus.

a reply to: JIMC5499

Whoa, cutting it close with that fuel? Is that common practice?

After reading about the whole brazilian flight crash and them running fuel to its max, I would think this practice is pretty dangerous.

a reply to: Arnie123

No. It was a very dark night. We were navigating by course and speed, out of range of any land based navigation systems (long before GPS). We were not where we thought we were and neither was the ship. Before you launch you are given the ship's PIM (Planned Intended Movement) information. Accumulative error had us 40 miles Southeast of where we thought we were, while the ship was about 20 miles Northwest of where it was supposed to be.

The only really concerning thing with these accidents is that both involved broken cables. You HAVE to ensure that those cables are in good condition, and keep taking care of them. The Navy rule is that they're replaced if they look like they need it, or after a certain number of landings. They push it sometimes, but there aren't many cable break accidents. You can't stop them all, but two in a couple weeks is bad news.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Are these cables really expensive? Funding isnt an issue, but parts and maintenance perhaps?

You make an excellent point that both times it was the same issue. Either poor maintainance or something else. Didn't the carriee break down on the way to the med? Needed to be tugged in?

Do you agree that the media is portraying it as falling apart? That is the impression I am getting.

The US replaces their cables after 100 landings. They get good enough at stripping one of the cross deck pendants, such that they never go past about 101 traps per cable, plus the pre-ops inspection for damage wires.

I actually have a small section of the cable, since they end up with a few of those throughout a deployment. It takes extreme attention to detail, as well as the right resources to make that as safe as possible. I made 2 deployments and we lost 0 aircraft on both. (lost one in workups). The diligence was always valued. Based upon the lack of so many lessons learned, I'd imagine most any other country would do worse WRT a safety record for embarked air operations. It's hard, it's expensive. If you're not fully committed to it, there will be failures.

They can engineering a strong enough cable and arresting system, in order to reduce these mishaps. It's just an inherently dangerous business.

Is it the cable that is snapping here? Or is it the point where the cable is secured to the ship/frame or wherever it is secured to? I am sorry, I don't have much knowledge in this department.

a reply to: LordOfDestruction

Interesting question, the article said failure, perhaps I missed it when the exact cause was specified.

a reply to: cosmania

Was that just part of the mentality on keeping a good maintainance record on the carrier? Things like this would be of importance.

If an LMTV broke down, Ill be looking for who signed off on the 5988Es.

a reply to: Arnie123

The Russian Navy has had a serious funding problem in the last 15-20 years. So many of their ships and subs are just sitting and corroding away in ports. They're trying to get going again, but it's going to take time, and a lot of money. The Kuznetsov was commissioned in 1990. She's getting up there, and has had problems from the go. It's not easy to build a carrier, even for an experienced navy like Russia's.

a reply to: Arnie123

You don't have a large margin of error if the cable breaks. If you don't react almost immediately, you're going in the water. It's a good idea to make sure your cables are in very good shape. In addition to possibly losing an aircraft, those cables, when they snap, are capable of cutting a person in half as they shoot back across the deck.

This was off the coast of Virginia in March.