Small Aircrafts

Small Aircrafts - However, as commonly used, and in the most basic sense, small airplanes have generally been considered fixed wing aircraft that are not transport category airplanes (that is, fixed wing airplanes type certified to standards other than 14 CFR part 25).

Therefore, for the purposes of this site, small airplanes are fixed wing airplanes that are not transport category. Depending on the category, small airplanes can reach up to 19,000 lbs maximum takeoff weight. Note 2: As of February 12, 2018, the above SSD list with part 23-62 does not account for the amendment 23-62 errors yet.

Small Aircrafts

When the FAA Equivalent Level of Safety (ELOS) for the 23-62 errors is issued, there may be a few more SSDs introduced when compared to CS 23. Note 3: The above SSD pairings do not include the additional EASA High Performance and General Certification Review Items (CRIs) which add additional EASA Special Conditions, Equivalent Safety Finding (ESFs), deviations, and method of compliance (MOC) that may introduce additional

Small Airplanes Issues List Sail

differences in certification requirements, which could become another set of SSDs. When these EASA additional CRIs are part of the incoming project, the Small Airplane Standards Branch will evaluate them to determine if they impact the FAA requirements and if a new set of SSDs are required.

In order to ensure that certification issues are identified upfront for all small airplane projects, the Aircraft Certification Service, Policy and Innovation (P&I) Division maintains a product issues list of known certification-related issues that may require P&I involvement – ​​the Small Airplane Issues List

. The Small Airplane Issues List is intended to contain all known certification issues; however, new certification issues are identified periodically. For example, the first time a new design feature is certified on a small airplane, the design feature would not be on the Small Airplane Issues List, but would still require P&I involvement.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( LockA locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. What is a "small airplane?" 14 CFR part 1 defines a small aircraft as an aircraft of 12,500 lbs or less maximum certified take-off weight.

Therefore, any airplane, including transport category airplanes, could be considered small by the Part 1 definition if the airplane is less than 12,500 lbs. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( LockA locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website.

Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Is a small airplane the same as a General Aviation aircraft? No. General aviation aircraft are aircraft operated under 14 CFR part 91 rules, which could be any category of airplane, including transport category and rotorcraft.

Additionally, airplanes operated under 14 CFR parts 121 and 135, which may include small airplanes, are not considered General Aviation aircraft when operated under these rules. My airplane meets 14 CFR part 25 (transport category) requirements.

Does this mean I can assume it will meet small airplane (14 CFR part 23) requirements? No. The applicable design standards are based on the type and operation of the airplane. For example, differences in items such as pilot training and minimum aircrew requirements may result in more stringent flight deck design standards in 14 CFR part 23 airplanes than part 25. Therefore, the applicable requirements for each category of airplane should be reviewed separately.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'aircraft.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Shark Aircraft

Shark Aircraft - The previous record-holder, Shaesta Waiz, who has served as a mentor to Rutherford throughout the trip, earned the record at 30 years old after piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza around the world. "It's really nice being able to talk to someone who kind of knows what you are going through, knows what kind of challenges you are facing....

Every once in a while, I'll text [Waiz] and I'll say, 'You know I'm flying here now, what was your experience, do you have any tips?' in Southeast Asia apart from her and other worldrounders, so it's great having that person there that I can turn to if I need advice," Rutherford told AOPA while stuck in Alaska waiting on a renewed Russian visa.

Shark Aircraft

We make an overhead approach at the non-towered Warrenton-Fauquier Airport in Virginia and decelerate to 70 KIAS on downwind, then lower the landing gear and flaps. Once fully down, the flaps supply ample drag, and holding the recommended 60-knot approach speed at a descent rate of 500 fpm requires slightly more than idle power.

The 100-horsepower Rotax 912 ULS engine is a thoroughly known quantity. The Italian-made FP Propeller is a variable-pitch, composite model that the pilot treats as if it were a fixed-pitch propeller. There's no separate propeller control, and blade pitch adjusts automatically for optimum engine rpm during takeoff, climb, cruise, and descent.

We are very happy that he has had a safe journey and extremely pleased that Mack decided to avoid the Russian airspace, which is the most common route when circumnavigating the globe. Being Ukraine's neighbor we feel very strongly about the war and oppose it by all means possible.

At only 19 years old, Zara Rutherford became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe and the youngest person to fly solo around the world in an ultralight aircraft. In addition to her two Guinness World Records, she has also become the first Belgian to fly around the world alone.

SHARK UL is a two-person light aircraft, manufactured by Shark.aero s.r.o. and is type certified in Germany and The Czech Republic as an "Ultralight Aircraft". Designed for efficient, comfortable long-range, high-speed flight, it's a flight experience like no other, with its fighter-like design and performance without the cost of a fighter.

The Shark UL can be certified in the US as an Experimental-Exhibition Aircraft. The trip, which Rutherford had hoped to have completed by Christmas, was anything but "blue skies and tailwinds" for the young aviator. From hitchhiking in North Carolina to flying in minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit weather in Russia, Rutherford stayed the course.

The seat is incredibly comfortable and the Kevlar cockpit is surprisingly roomy. The rudder pedals are adjustable; the sidestick control with the hat-style trim switch falls neatly into my right hand, as does the left-hand throttle.

Although this was Rutherford's first solo circumnavigation, she was no stranger to flying over unfamiliar terrain and open water. Her father, a professional pilot who also served as flight operations and sponsorship chair for the mission, had taken Rutherford along on several trans-Atlantic flights prior to the teenager's successful adventure.

"One flight that we did was Texas to India, and that was really fun... So that is kind of some experience where it's really quality over quantity and has been really helpful on this trip," Rutherford told AOPA in October.

The Shark—like competitors Blackshape Prime (Italy), JMB Aircraft VL3 (France), Pelegrin Tarragon (Latvia)—is built under European regulations for "ultralight" aircraft that, somewhat surprisingly, are far less restrictive than U.S. rules for Light Sport aircraft. Europeans don't impose airspeed limits (120 KCAS in the United States), and they allow retractable landing gear and variable-pitch propellers, which aren't permitted here.

Ground steering requires differential braking, and soon we're aligned with the runway for takeoff. Even at nearly maximum gross weight on an 84-degree-Fahrenheit day, takeoff acceleration is smooth and quick, and Baron advises light back-pressure at about 25 KIAS, then holding a shallow nose-up attitude with the nosewheel off the ground.

The airplane flies off the pavement at about 40 KIAS after an eight-second ground roll that covers about 600 feet, against a five-knot headwind. But Baron usually begins by explaining that the Shark is, at heart, a sporty and efficient "twenty-first century airplane" made in Slovakia that uses lightweight materials and complex aerodynamic shapes to deliver a remarkably broad range of performance.

The Shark, for example, stalls at less than 45 knots, yet it cruises at 146 and can reach 159 knots in level flight. As Mack bought himself a second-hand Shark from one of our Danish customers we offered to provide him with technical support during his journey which he hasn't needed as Shark has proven once again it's amazing performance, endurance and reliability.

The wing is so low to the ground that it's easy to step directly onto the wing walk. Climbing into the cockpit is a simple matter of swinging a leg over the side rail, then lowering yourself into the carbon-fiber seat.

Once buckled into the four-point harness, the side-hinged canopy folds over and latches securely into position. A sliding window on the left side of the canopy supplies ventilation on the ground. Specifications Powerplant | Rotax 912 ULS, 100 hp

Propeller | 2-blade constant-speed FP or WoodComp Prop Airframe parachute | Magnum 620 Length | 25 ft Height | 7ft 10in Wingspan | 26 ft Power loading | 13.2 lb/hp Seats | 2 Cabin width |

26 in Empty weight | 650 lbs Max ramp weight | 1,320 lbs Max gross weight | 1,320 lbs Useful load | 670 lbs Payload w/full fuel | 448 lbs Fuel capacity, std 27 gal (24 gal usable) or 40 gal (37 usable)

Baggage capacity | 48 lbs Fuel | 91 Octane E10 gasoline This airplane is set up to be a trainer, so it's rigged for relatively heavy aileron breakout forces that dampen the ailerons, but it creates an artificial feel that I find objectionable.

It takes significant force to break the ailerons out of the neutral position, and they get lighter as deflection increases. Other Shark models aren't rigged this way, and I'd much prefer lighter and more linear aileron forces in nontrainer models.

Pitch forces are light but linear, and they're just about ideal. I pitch for 80 KIAS and bring up the landing gear with a toggle switch on the top left corner of the instrument panel. The gear cycles in about three seconds, and we accelerate to a cruise climb of 110 KIAS.

At 3,000 feet I level off and let the airspeed rise to 140 KIAS while fuel consumption is steady at 5.5 gph. When flying alongside the photoship at 110 KIAS, the Rotax sips fuel at less than 4 gph.

The trailing-link main landing gear looks particularly forgiving, and the wide chord of its low wings seems designed to tolerate a broad range of loads that can shift the airplane's center of gravity fore and aft.

From the cooling "gills" on the side of its engine cowl to the highly swept and pointed vertical tail, the Shark has design elements to fit its name. But the diminutive airplane hardly seems like a fearful predator.

Limiting and Recommended Airspeeds VA (design maneuvering) | 90 KIAS VFE (max flap extended) | 65 KIAS VNO (max structural cruising) | 159 KIAS VNE (never exceed) | 180 KIAS VS1 (stall, clean) | 30 KIAS

VSO (stall, in landing configuration) | 28 KIAS The elevator has enough authority to hold the nosewheel off the ground well after the mains have touched down, and doing so provides aerodynamic braking. We touch down at about 55 KIAS and roll about 500 feet with light braking during rollout with no wind.

Shark ranks among the fastest aircraft in its category and has held world speed records for over 10 years. It reaches a maximum speed of 300 km/h, has a range of 2000 km and consumes 7 liters of gasoline per 100 km.

SHARK.AERO has already produced and delivered more than 120 aircraft to 22 countries. Her VFR-only Slovakian Shark aircraft featured a fuel-efficient 100-horsepower Rotax engine capable of cruising up to 140 knots. The Shark, which proved to be quite dependable throughout the 32,300-mile circumnavigation, was reportedly an easy choice to make for the earthunder.

"It is the fastest microlight in the world... It's just a very safe [airplane that is] efficient fuel wise," Rutherford previously told AOPA. After 155 days of VFR-only flying, weather delays, pandemic complications, and visa hang-ups, Rutherford achieved just what she had set out to do: The teenager departed on a solo flight around the world on August 18, 2021, with the

mission to reduce the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math careers in addition to "show[ing] young women that they can be bold, ambitious and make their dreams come true," Rutherford stated. "The revisions to Part 23 here and in Europe have opened a streamlined path for aircraft just like this," Oord said.

"That would be a much better fit, and ultimately easier than trying to change U.S. Light Sport aircraft regulations.” When Baron retired from Navy flying in 2016, he set out to find an airplane that could re-create the feeling of flying a Beech T–34 Mentor, the fixed-wing aircraft he flew during training.

"Some of my happiest times in the Navy were flying solo in the T-34," he said. "I wanted to find something like that without the expense of operating a warbird." "The first question I always get is, 'What is it?'" said Jonathan "J.B."

Baron, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot who owns this Shark—the first imported to the United States from Europe—and serves as the sole U.S. dealer. "The next questions are, 'Is it a Light Sport aircraft?' and 'Did you have to build it yourself?'"

But in true Rutherford fashion, the already accomplished aviator has her eyes set on another significant challenge—becoming an astronaut. "I'm really doing it one step at a time because it is a lot of work and chances are slim," Rutherford said previously.

It's unfortunate that U.S. LSA rules include the arbitrary 120-knot top speed and prohibitions against performance-enhancing variable-pitch props and retractable gear. The FAA has stubbornly resisted any changes to the existing rules. But if the new Part 23 opens the door to sleek, fuel-efficient, category-defying aircraft like the Shark, it can't happen soon enough.

U.S. pilots appreciate speed and efficiency as much as Europeans—and airplanes like the Shark could make American skies feel like the speed-limit-free autobahn. Shark Aero, the Slovakian company that manufactures the Shark, doesn't have CS-23 certification, so Baron's Shark is registered as an Experimental-Exhibition aircraft in the United States, which requires him to send the FAA a fax whenever he flies away from

his home airport at Warrenton, Virginia, to attend aviation gatherings elsewhere. Engine information is displayed on a 10-inch Dynon Skyview with a split screen for the primary flight display and moving map. A lightweight Becker com radio is clear and easy to hear, along with the voice-activated intercom.

Performance Rate of climb, sea level | 1,200 fpm Max level speed, sea level | 159 kt Cruise speed @ 90% power, 6.5 gph (max continuous) | 159 kt @ 70% power, 5.5 gph (fast cruise) |

140 kt @ 55% power, 4.5 gph (economic cruise) | 127 kt Service ceiling 13,500 ft G limit | +4/-2 G The Shark is a revelation because it shows that vast improvements in speed and efficiency are available at the light end of the general aviation market.

The Shark and its Euro brethren squeeze more out of 100 horsepower than I would have thought possible—and even more performance is sure to become available with bigger engines, such as the only slightly heavier 135-horsepower Rotax 915 iS engine that first flew in April

2017. The result is a growing niche of small, sleek, efficient, thoroughly modern, factory-built aircraft with astonishing speed and range. The Shark, for example, can cover almost 800 miles at 146 knots, and more than 1,000 miles at 108 knots.

The Blackshape Prime, VL3, and others deliver similar performance. David Oord, AOPA's senior director of regulatory affairs, said the most likely path to bring Shark-like speed and efficiency to the U.S. pilots is through Part 23 reform.

Europe has adopted streamlined certification standards under what it calls Certification Specification 23 (CS-23), which was designed to make it less expensive and time consuming to certify airplanes there. The FAA has reciprocal agreements with European aviation regulators, so airplanes approved under CS-23 could fly here without restriction.

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Rudy 35 Aircraft

Rudy 35 Aircraft - But that wasn't the only way the YF-118G team got creative in their approach to building this new aircraft. They also leveraged cutting-edge single-piece composite structure designs that eliminated many of the body panel seems that can compromise an aircraft's stealth profile.

Producing aircraft with no substantial seams, or tiny gaps between body panels attached to the aircraft, remains one of the more challenging aspects of stealth aircraft construction. In fact, some argue that it's something Russian stealth fighter programs continue to struggle with to this day.

Rudy 35 Aircraft

Unlike Lockheed and Northrop's high-performance stealth fighters that benefitted from direct tax funding, McDonnell Douglas alone was picking up the tab for their new stealth aircraft's development. In order to be sure all that money didn't go to waste, they tapped Alan Wiechman to head up the effort.

Throughout the 1990s, a team of engineers from McDonnell Douglas' Phantom Works developed and tested a unique stealth fighter shrouded in the secrecy of Area 51, known to most as the Bird of Prey. Unlike most stealth programs, the Bird of Prey, developed under the alias "YF-118G," wasn't aiming for operational service, but elements of the design and production process are still working their way into Uncle Sam's hangars to this very day.

This bird belongs to VRM-30, part of the Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Wing-- in fact, the name of the wing commodore is painted just to the right of the pilot's window. 'Rudy' is the radio callsign of the squadron.

On September 11, 1996, the Bird of Prey took to the skies over Groom Lake (also known as Area 51) for the first time with Air Force Colonel Doug Benjamin at the helm. Much like its Bird of Prey namesake that would cloak to hide from enemy starships, Boeing's Bird of Prey relied on stealth rather than impressive performance to get the job done.

Once completed, the aircraft's strange shape and aggressive posture evoked thoughts of the looming warship operated by Star Trek's warrior race the Klingons, earning it the name Bird of Prey after the ship first depicted in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock."

“F-35 aircraft were unable to fly nearly 30 percent of the May – November 2018 time period due to spare parts shortages,” the GAO said, noting that the Department of Defense has a “repair backlog of about 4,300 F-35 parts.

" Oh wow! A prototype airplane, devoid of any combat sensors, avionics, weapons, or other developmental or manufacturing costs associated with producing a full rate production aircraft, and whose sole purpose is to demonstrate Stealth was built for less than $100M?

Wow thats totally the same thing as a cheaper plane than the F22 or F-35. In the annals of aviation history, Wiechman's name doesn't pop up as often as other legendary engineers of the day like Clarence "Kelly" Johnson.

In fact, Aviation Week ranks him as perhaps the "lowest profile" engineer among their list of "Secret Pioneers of Stealth Aviation." But widespread recognition isn't always a good measure of accomplishment, and indeed, Wiechman's contributions to stealth aviation are so numerous, that he received a Technical Achievement Award from the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) for his work in Low Observable aircraft design before

the Bird of Prey was even declassified. "Mr. Shanahan told us that he did not say that the F-35 aircraft was 'f—-d up.' He told us that the F-35 aircraft is 'awesome,' the report states."Mr. Shanahan told us that he said the F-35 program was 'f—-d up.'"

After the Korean War, Rudy left the Navy to attend the University of Illinois, where he did research in Aviation Psychology and honed his interest in the field of flight simulation. The more he worked with that early generation of pilot training devices, the more he realized that there had to be a better way.

In 1958, putting together everything he had learned in the Navy and the University, Rudy built his first flight simulator at home in his garage and Frasca Aviation was founded (the name later changed to Frasca International to reflect the emerging character of the business).

Those who knew Rudy admired his friendly, outgoing personality, his sense of humor, his strong work ethic and his faith. He had a way of always looking for the good qualities in people. He treated others with respect and took great interest in getting to know people.

Frasca employees knew he cared by the way he asked about them and took interest in their work. He had a quick wit and loved to laugh. Rudy was truly larger than life. His contributions to the aviation industry will not be forgotten.

Like the Bird of Prey, the X-45A was a product of Boeing's Phantom Works, but unlike its Klingon cousin, the X-45A was designed to fly autonomously. According to Boeing, the X-45A's design was largely derived from the Bird of Prey program, with the UCAV adopting elements of its predecessor's radar-defeating angular design and unusual dorsal intake.

Boeing has also credited some of the design techniques leveraged for the Bird of Prey in their development of the X-32, which ultimately lost out to Lockheed Martin for the Joint Strike Fighter contract just one year after the Bird of Prey program was shuttered.

Work began in 1992 under the innocuous enough-sounding name of YF-118G. Wiechman's team at the Phantom Works had to be budget-conscious, so as they went about designing their new stealth aircraft, they leveraged a then-novel approach of rapid prototyping.

Rather than designing physical prototypes, subjecting them to testing, making changes, and fielding new prototypes for further testing, the Phantom Works team used computers to aid in their design work, simulating performance to the best of the era's computing abilities.

As a result, they were able to produce prototype components that were far closer to the finished product than previous approaches would allow. Col. Benjamin brought the aircraft off the ground and left its landing gear extended, identifying the first of a number of problems.

Throughout wind tunnel testing the platform had performed well, but all of the tests were conducted with the landing gear retracted. Benjamin soon realized the drag created by the gear was at least three times worse than they had anticipated.

The aircraft suffered from stability issues as well, which were slowly and meticulously worked out in subsequent flights. In the following three years the team would execute 37 more successful flights with the single Bird of Prey prototype they'd constructed, flown by Benjamin and two Boeing test pilots, Rudy Haug and Joseph W. Felock III.

Nearly 30% of the US military's F-35 stealth fighter jets were unable to fly during a months-long period last year due to a shortage of spare parts, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Rudy was born on April 19, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of six children of Anthony and Jenny Frasca. He and his wife Lucille (Matern) married in 1955 and moved to Champaign, Illinois where Rudy started his business and where they raised their eight children together.

Shanahan's comments were detailed as part of an ethics investigation by the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General into allegations he was promoting the interests of his former employer, Boeing, and repeatedly disparaging the company's competitor, Lockheed Martin, which is the primary contractor for the F

-35 fighter jets. This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales.

Number 8860726. In 1999, Boeing's Bird of Prey took flight for the last time, but that wasn't quite the end of its story. The breakthroughs and lessons learned throughout the program soon found their way into another platform that made its first flight just months before the Bird of Prey was finally unveiled to the public in 2002;

the X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. Although Rudy had a great love for aviation and much success in the industry, his true love was his wife Lucille who was always his strongest supporter. Rudy's greatest pride was his eight children and eighteen grandchildren.

Ultimately, Shanahan was cleared of any wrongdoing as investigators determined his "comments about the F-35 program were substantive, related to the program's performance, and were consistent with comments about the F-35 program made by other senior government officials."

Many of you are missing the point. Development costs are a substantial part of the cost to build any aircraft. To design and build a mostly full-scale test aircraft on that budget is very unusual and impressive.

This wasn't just any aircraft but cutting edge, which makes this accomplishment all the more impressive. Not only had the Phantom Works team proven that they too could build a stealth aircraft, they had managed to do it all for under $67 million.

Adjusted for inflation to today's currency, that means Wiechman's Phantom Works successfully designed, prototyped, and flew a clean-sheet stealth platform for around $111 million, or less than the cost of buying a single F-35B today. After decades of focus on fielding faster, higher-flying aircraft as a means of defeating enemy air defenses, the Nighthawk served as a pivot point for the very direction of aviation technology and air warfare doctrine among the world's most powerful nations.

The Nighthawk was slow and cumbersome compared to the F-15s and F-16s in Air Force hangars, but in a world where America's smallest fighter carried a radar cross-section of 82 square feet, the F-117 carried a radar cross-section

of only slightly more than a tenth of an inch (0.11 inches). For all intents and purposes, the F-117 Nighthawk was practically invisible to enemy radar. Rudy Frasca founded Frasca International in 1958. The flight simulator manufacturer started his aviation career when he began taking flying lessons at the age of 14 and soloed shortly thereafter.

In 1949, Rudy joined the Navy and was stationed at Glenview Naval Station, where he worked as a flight instructor teaching pilots on the early Link trainers. "F-35 aircraft performance is falling short of warfighter requirements – that is, aircraft cannot perform as many missions or fly as often as required," the GAO found.

"This lower-than-desired aircraft performance is due largely to F-35 spare parts shortages and difficulty in managing and moving parts around the world." Tokyo plans to make the planes the mainstay of its fleet, with 147 in house or on order.

South Korea and Australia also fly the F-35 in the Pacific, and Singapore has said it wants to buy the jets. But perhaps the most lasting contribution this incredible and exotic airframe has made to America's defense apparatus was in its audacity and subsequent success.

While most stealth programs are known for their high cost, the Bird of Prey went from a pad of paper to the skies over Area 51 for less than the cost of a single F-35 today.

"Because of Wiechman's work, the United States gained a 15-year lead over potential adversaries that it has not relinquished, and the effectiveness of his designs and products has been thoroughly proven in combat operations," the award read.

Today, there are no platforms in service that can draw a direct lineage to Alan Wiechman's unusual Bird of Prey, and that may be part of the reason it's not a frequently discussed facet of the American stealth technology race that came at the twilight of the Cold

There is. But for a short time in the 1990s, the Phantom Works proved that it doesn't always take a bottomless budget and twenty years' worth of delays to produce a stealth fighter, and that's a lesson America has struggled to learn in the decades since the

Bird of Prey prowled the skies over Area 51. Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told investigators from the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General that he called the F-35 fighter jet program "f—-d up," but made clear that he wasn't referring to the aircraft itself, which he

said was "awesome," according to a Department of Defense report released Thursday. The design took a holistic approach to stealth, reducing radar, infrared, visual, and acoustic signatures through its shape, the use of flexible or movable covers to conceal gaps, and by burying its engine deep within the fuselage behind a curved inlet duct and in

front of an infrared and acoustic defusing exhaust outlet. Rudy was a benefactor for many aviation organizations and had a special place in his heart for collegiate aviation (NIFA, SAFECON & UAA). Numerous awards have been bestowed upon him for his personal efforts and the companies contributions to the simulation industry.

Soviet Aircraft Carrier

Soviet Aircraft Carrier - Such fears were actually well-founded and justified, as just two years earlier, Admiral Kuznetsov suffered a fire at sea while deployed to the Mediterranean, resulting in the death of a sailor onboard. In addition, the flattop – which had notoriously and routinely belched black smoke into the air – spilled hundreds of tons of fuel into the sea while refueling.

Sea power that might have been: the battle cruiser Izmail. Whatever the ostensible plans for the remains of Minsk might be now, it is clearly all-but-abandoned. There is one video of the ship on YouTube, that an individual shot in 2019 using a camera on a quadcopter drone.

Soviet Aircraft Carrier

There are no signs of activity on or around the ship whatsoever. Binhai Aircraft Park remains open and pictures show the ex-Kiev to be, at least on the surface, well maintained. The same cannot be said of the former Minsk, which, along with the aircraft on display, looked to be in an increasingly dilapidated state even before Minsk World shut down for good in 2016. The park was closed after government officials decided to reclaim the land

Disclosure Statement

it sat on for other purposes. The Russian Baltic Fleet has announced that it carried out a series of simulated missile strikes of its nuclear-capable Iskander system. This is not the first time that the Russian exclave – roughly the size of Northern Ireland and wedged between Nato and EU members Poland and Lithuania – has made the headlines as part of Russia's sabre-rattling.

If there was any real competition to Minsk World, it could have come from Binhai Aircraft Park in Tianjin, China, some 100 miles southeast of Beijing, which is where Kiev went. Q-5s are also on display on that ship, as are mock-ups of Yak-38s.

In 2011, the company that owns that park announced plans to turn that former carrier into more of a floating luxury hotel with at least five presidential suites. Once a highly inter-mixed area with a population of Germans, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews, it was ethnically cleansed of most of its German population by Stalin.

This was followed by a systematic campaign of Russification which sought to erase all traces of German heritage. The Minsk was first laid down in a Soviet shipyard, situated in what is now Ukraine, in 1972. It was the second ship in the Kiev class and was commissioned into the Soviet Navy in 1978.

Post Cold War

Stalin's Aircraft Carriers By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D. June 2012 Before Minsk World opened, some experts and observers had suggested that the purchase of the carrier by a Chinese company was some kind of subterfuge to assist in the establishment of a carrier capability for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

Kiev had also been sold to another Chinese firm with the stated aim of turning it into a tourist attraction. Around the same time, a more shadowy firm based in Macau, with ties to the PLAN, had bought Kuznetsov's unfinished sister ship Varyag from Ukraine, saying it planned to convert into a floating hotel and casino.

The ship, which had been repainted sometime in the intervening years with the hull number "16," the same as that on Liaoning, was subsequently moved to where it sits now near Shanghai, arriving there between 2017 and 2018. There had been plans to

establish a new Minsk World, but that has not come to pass, although it is not entirely clear why. It is worth noting that there has been a massive aircraft carrier replica, reportedly meant to be a near-full-scale mock-up of the American supercarrier USS Nimitz, that people can tour at the Military Education Center near Dianshan Lake, close to Shanghai

, since 2002. Want more 19FortyFive military, defense, and national security, as well as politics and economics analysis from the best experts on Earth? Follow us on Google News, Flipboard, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Also, sign up for our newsletter.

You can also find our code of publishing ethics and standards. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us with any questions. The ex-Minsk's present home sits just off the Yangtze River to one side of the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge in Nantong, China.

Its immediate neighbors are farms and associated agricultural facilities. Looking at satellite imagery of the site, to the immediate north of the Lagoon, there is what looks to be a viewing platform with a walkway leading back to various structures and a tented pavilion.

All of this looks to be part of equally abandoned work on a planned theme park that was to feature the aircraft carrier at its center, but which never opened. In light of Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, this signal should not only be read as one of defensive intent on Moscow's part but also as a potential sign of things to come: the next missile launch from Kaliningrad may not be a simulation.

An attempt was made to get Baku, by then renamed Admiral Gorshkov, back into service. However, in 2004, that ship was sold to India and it subsequently an expensive and drawn-out conversion process that turned it into a more conventional short-take-off-but-arrested-recovery (STOBAR) carrier with a full flight deck and

ski jumping. With limited immediate options to rehabilitate those two ships – the shipyards where they were built and that had the facilities necessary to conduct major repairs on them were now in the independent country of Ukraine – and the equally poor state of Kiev, the decision was made to

sell them off as scrap. By 1995, Minsk and Novorossiysk had made their way to South Korea to be broken. The fate of Kiev was more complicated and we will come back to that later on.

For Russia, however, Kaliningrad's main significance is military as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier". As a military base, the region adds significantly to Russia's strategic depth and is a critical asset for Moscow in its anti-access area denial (A2AD) capabilities in the Baltic Sea, potentially undermining Nato's freedom of maneuver across the Baltic states and parts of Poland

. Kaliningrad is one of currently 46 oblasts (administrative regions) of Russia, but the only one that does not have a land border with another part of the country. The roots of the territory reach far back in history and are closely connected to the fate of East Prussia and its capital of Koenigsberg.

Founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, it is often associated with German militarism. But it's equally famous for the philosophers Immanuel Kant, who lived his entire life in Koenigsberg, and Hannah Arendt, who spent part of her childhood there.

The former Novorossiysk was ultimately scrapped in South Korea in 1997, but protests by South Korean environmentalists prompted the sale of the ex-Minsk first to a Chinese shipbreaking company, Guangdong Ship Dismantling, and then to Si Ke Investment Company, Limited.

Si Ke, established by Chinese entrepreneurs who had made their money primarily through video game arcades, bought the ship with the express purpose of building a theme park around it. They paid approximately $4.3 million at the time, close to $7.3 million in 2021 dollars, for what was left of the Minsk.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the new Russian Navy took possession of all four ships, but found them difficult and costly to operate and maintain. Minsk had already been effectively put into mothballs sometime between 1989 and 1990 due to "severe engineering problems," according to the 1993 edition of Combat Fleets of the World.

In 1993, Novorossiysk also suffered a major engine room fire. The list of aircraft carriers of the Soviet Union and Russia includes all aircraft carriers built by, proposed for, or in service with the naval forces of either the Soviet Union or Russia.

Although listed as aircraft carriers, none of these ships (with the possible exception of the never built Ulyanovsk) was or is a true aircraft carrier. Specifically, they were ASW helicopter equipped ships or aircraft-carrying cruisers, including the FADMSU Kuznetsov, the only carrier still in service with the Russian Navy.[citation needed]

The "city of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it" (approximately one-third of East Prussia at the time) fell to Stalin. The Russian leader renamed it in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, who had been chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet – the head of state of the Soviet Union – at the time of his death in 1946.

"Previously, China didn't have aircraft carriers. People find them mysterious and are curious about them. Even though China's first aircraft carrier [the Liaoning] has now gone on sea trials, it will be quite hard for the public to ever visit it

," Liu Chang, a marketing manager at Binhai Aircraft Park told The Guardian newspaper at the time. "I guess people can come here to fulfill their curiosity." Stefan Wolff receives funding from the United States Institute of Peace.

He is a past recipient of grants from the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programs 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme.

He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Foreign Policy Center in London and Co-Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions. Minsk is rusting away, seemingly abandoned, in the middle of a man-made lagoon some 50 miles northwest of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

It's a visual that feels better suited to a movie or video game set in a cyberpunk dystopia or an Earth where nature has reclaimed areas in the aftermath of some kind of apocalypse. It looks to be a sad and lonely fate for the ship, which was already spared the scrapper's torch once by Chinese businessmen in the 1990s.

Moreover, if there was a further escalation of the war – potentially involving Russian moves against Estonia and Latvia with their relatively large ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities – Kaliningrad would be an important launchpad for Russian operations.

So Russian military exercises in Kaliningrad are a signal of Russian capabilities and a way of exerting more pressure on the west - just as the EU was agreeing to its sixth package of sanctions. Minsk was assigned to the Soviet Navy's Pacific Fleet and had a largely uneventful service life in the twilight of the Cold War, as did her sister ships Kiev and Novorossiysk.

A fourth Kiev class carrier, Baku, was commissioned in 1987. It featured a new phased array radar, improved electronic warfare capabilities, launchers for four more P-500s, and turreted 100mm guns in place of the twin 76mm weapons, among other additions,

which often led to it being described as the sole example of a distinct subclass. How the ship, which had previously been the centerpiece of another amusement park in Shenzhen, just to the northeast of Hong Kong, some 750 miles away from its current location, got to where it is now, is something of a saga.

In recent years, Kaliningrad has also seen its economic value grow as one of the nodes in the multimodal trade networks connecting Xi'an in central China through Central Asia and Russia to the European market along the New Eurasian Land Bridge corridor of the Belt and Road

Initiative. At the same time, this has made the region more vulnerable in the context of the war in Ukraine and western sanctions imposed on Russia. As it turned out, despite assessments from experts that it would be too onerous to return Varyag to any sort of operational state, the PLAN did formally commission that ship in 2012 as the Liaoning, and it remains in service to this day.

There's no indication one way or another that the acquisition of the Minsk, along with the actual opening of Minsk World, was in any way part of some larger plan on the part of the Chinese government to conceal its aircraft carrier ambitions.

"Their target group is different," an anonymous advisor to the Minsk World project had told The Washington Post in 1999 when asked if there was a concern about competition from a future hotel and casino created from the Varyag.

Inert weapons, or mock-ups thereof, including missiles, bombs, and torpedoes, as well as other Soviet militaria were also displayed. Exhibits covering the Chinese military were also added. As seen in the video below, song-and-dance numbers were also regularly held at indoor and outdoor stages installed on the ship.

All told, the future of what is left of the Minsk looks bleak. It remains to be seen how much longer the present owners will let the ship languish in its man-made lagoon before making some final decision about its fate.

The longer it sits there, exposed to the elements with no real care given to its condition, the more likely it is that its next destination will be a scrapyard. Befitting this description, the Kievs had launchers for eight P-500 Bazalt anti-ship cruise missiles, also known to NATO as the SS-N-12 Sandbox, and two turrets with twin 76mm guns, among other weapons.

This was all in addition to their air wings, which typically consisted of a dozen Yak-38 Forger jump jets and a slightly larger number of Kamov Ka-25/27/29 helicopters. Kuznetsov also had a similar anti-ship missile capability, with launch cells built right into its flight deck, as you can read more about here.

The region recovered from its Soviet legacy after the fall of communism, benefiting from the special economic status it was granted by the Russian government in 1996 and from improving links with the EU in the years afterwards.

The Iskander missile system was first introduced to the region in 2016 and then upgraded in 2018, as part of a Russian strategy to counter Nato's deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defense shield in Europe. There have also been regular military exercises involving Russia's Baltic fleet, which is headquartered in Kaliningrad, including Zapad-21 in the autumn of 2021 and a series of war games since the invasion of Ukraine.

soviet aircraft carrier ww2, soviet aircraft carrier ulyanovsk, list of russian aircraft carriers, russian aircraft carriers, russian aircraft carriers in service, soviet aircraft carrier wows, soviet union aircraft carrier, soviet aircraft carrier kiev

Rudy 35 Aircraft

Rudy 35 Aircraft - But that wasn't the only way the YF-118G team got creative in their approach to building this new aircraft. They also leveraged cutting-edge single-piece composite structure designs that eliminated many of the body panel seems that can compromise an aircraft's stealth profile.

Producing aircraft with no substantial seams, or tiny gaps between body panels attached to the aircraft, remains one of the more challenging aspects of stealth aircraft construction. In fact, some argue that it's something Russian stealth fighter programs continue to struggle with to this day.

Rudy 35 Aircraft

Unlike Lockheed and Northrop's high-performance stealth fighters that benefitted from direct tax funding, McDonnell Douglas alone was picking up the tab for their new stealth aircraft's development. In order to be sure all that money didn't go to waste, they tapped Alan Wiechman to head up the effort.

Throughout the 1990s, a team of engineers from McDonnell Douglas' Phantom Works developed and tested a unique stealth fighter shrouded in the secrecy of Area 51, known to most as the Bird of Prey. Unlike most stealth programs, the Bird of Prey, developed under the alias "YF-118G," wasn't aiming for operational service, but elements of the design and production process are still working their way into Uncle Sam's hangars to this very day.

This bird belongs to VRM-30, part of the Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Wing-- in fact, the name of the wing commodore is painted just to the right of the pilot's window. 'Rudy' is the radio callsign of the squadron.

On September 11, 1996, the Bird of Prey took to the skies over Groom Lake (also known as Area 51) for the first time with Air Force Colonel Doug Benjamin at the helm. Much like its Bird of Prey namesake that would cloak to hide from enemy starships, Boeing's Bird of Prey relied on stealth rather than impressive performance to get the job done.

Once completed, the aircraft's strange shape and aggressive posture evoked thoughts of the looming warship operated by Star Trek's warrior race the Klingons, earning it the name Bird of Prey after the ship first depicted in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock."

“F-35 aircraft were unable to fly nearly 30 percent of the May – November 2018 time period due to spare parts shortages,” the GAO said, noting that the Department of Defense has a “repair backlog of about 4,300 F-35 parts.

" Oh wow! A prototype airplane, devoid of any combat sensors, avionics, weapons, or other developmental or manufacturing costs associated with producing a full rate production aircraft, and whose sole purpose is to demonstrate Stealth was built for less than $100M?

Wow thats totally the same thing as a cheaper plane than the F22 or F-35. In the annals of aviation history, Wiechman's name doesn't pop up as often as other legendary engineers of the day like Clarence "Kelly" Johnson.

In fact, Aviation Week ranks him as perhaps the "lowest profile" engineer among their list of "Secret Pioneers of Stealth Aviation." But widespread recognition isn't always a good measure of accomplishment, and indeed, Wiechman's contributions to stealth aviation are so numerous, that he received a Technical Achievement Award from the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) for his work in Low Observable aircraft design before

the Bird of Prey was even declassified. "Mr. Shanahan told us that he did not say that the F-35 aircraft was 'f—-d up.' He told us that the F-35 aircraft is 'awesome,' the report states."Mr. Shanahan told us that he said the F-35 program was 'f—-d up.'"

After the Korean War, Rudy left the Navy to attend the University of Illinois, where he did research in Aviation Psychology and honed his interest in the field of flight simulation. The more he worked with that early generation of pilot training devices, the more he realized that there had to be a better way.

In 1958, putting together everything he had learned in the Navy and the University, Rudy built his first flight simulator at home in his garage and Frasca Aviation was founded (the name later changed to Frasca International to reflect the emerging character of the business).

Those who knew Rudy admired his friendly, outgoing personality, his sense of humor, his strong work ethic and his faith. He had a way of always looking for the good qualities in people. He treated others with respect and took great interest in getting to know people.

Frasca employees knew he cared by the way he asked about them and took interest in their work. He had a quick wit and loved to laugh. Rudy was truly larger than life. His contributions to the aviation industry will not be forgotten.

Like the Bird of Prey, the X-45A was a product of Boeing's Phantom Works, but unlike its Klingon cousin, the X-45A was designed to fly autonomously. According to Boeing, the X-45A's design was largely derived from the Bird of Prey program, with the UCAV adopting elements of its predecessor's radar-defeating angular design and unusual dorsal intake.

Boeing has also credited some of the design techniques leveraged for the Bird of Prey in their development of the X-32, which ultimately lost out to Lockheed Martin for the Joint Strike Fighter contract just one year after the Bird of Prey program was shuttered.

Work began in 1992 under the innocuous enough-sounding name of YF-118G. Wiechman's team at the Phantom Works had to be budget-conscious, so as they went about designing their new stealth aircraft, they leveraged a then-novel approach of rapid prototyping.

Rather than designing physical prototypes, subjecting them to testing, making changes, and fielding new prototypes for further testing, the Phantom Works team used computers to aid in their design work, simulating performance to the best of the era's computing abilities.

As a result, they were able to produce prototype components that were far closer to the finished product than previous approaches would allow. Col. Benjamin brought the aircraft off the ground and left its landing gear extended, identifying the first of a number of problems.

Throughout wind tunnel testing the platform had performed well, but all of the tests were conducted with the landing gear retracted. Benjamin soon realized the drag created by the gear was at least three times worse than they had anticipated.

The aircraft suffered from stability issues as well, which were slowly and meticulously worked out in subsequent flights. In the following three years the team would execute 37 more successful flights with the single Bird of Prey prototype they'd constructed, flown by Benjamin and two Boeing test pilots, Rudy Haug and Joseph W. Felock III.

Nearly 30% of the US military's F-35 stealth fighter jets were unable to fly during a months-long period last year due to a shortage of spare parts, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Rudy was born on April 19, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of six children of Anthony and Jenny Frasca. He and his wife Lucille (Matern) married in 1955 and moved to Champaign, Illinois where Rudy started his business and where they raised their eight children together.

Shanahan's comments were detailed as part of an ethics investigation by the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General into allegations he was promoting the interests of his former employer, Boeing, and repeatedly disparaging the company's competitor, Lockheed Martin, which is the primary contractor for the F

-35 fighter jets. This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales.

Number 8860726. In 1999, Boeing's Bird of Prey took flight for the last time, but that wasn't quite the end of its story. The breakthroughs and lessons learned throughout the program soon found their way into another platform that made its first flight just months before the Bird of Prey was finally unveiled to the public in 2002;

the X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. Although Rudy had a great love for aviation and much success in the industry, his true love was his wife Lucille who was always his strongest supporter. Rudy's greatest pride was his eight children and eighteen grandchildren.

Ultimately, Shanahan was cleared of any wrongdoing as investigators determined his "comments about the F-35 program were substantive, related to the program's performance, and were consistent with comments about the F-35 program made by other senior government officials."

Many of you are missing the point. Development costs are a substantial part of the cost to build any aircraft. To design and build a mostly full-scale test aircraft on that budget is very unusual and impressive.

This wasn't just any aircraft but cutting edge, which makes this accomplishment all the more impressive. Not only had the Phantom Works team proven that they too could build a stealth aircraft, they had managed to do it all for under $67 million.

Adjusted for inflation to today's currency, that means Wiechman's Phantom Works successfully designed, prototyped, and flew a clean-sheet stealth platform for around $111 million, or less than the cost of buying a single F-35B today. After decades of focus on fielding faster, higher-flying aircraft as a means of defeating enemy air defenses, the Nighthawk served as a pivot point for the very direction of aviation technology and air warfare doctrine among the world's most powerful nations.

The Nighthawk was slow and cumbersome compared to the F-15s and F-16s in Air Force hangars, but in a world where America's smallest fighter carried a radar cross-section of 82 square feet, the F-117 carried a radar cross-section

of only slightly more than a tenth of an inch (0.11 inches). For all intents and purposes, the F-117 Nighthawk was practically invisible to enemy radar. Rudy Frasca founded Frasca International in 1958. The flight simulator manufacturer started his aviation career when he began taking flying lessons at the age of 14 and soloed shortly thereafter.

In 1949, Rudy joined the Navy and was stationed at Glenview Naval Station, where he worked as a flight instructor teaching pilots on the early Link trainers. "F-35 aircraft performance is falling short of warfighter requirements – that is, aircraft cannot perform as many missions or fly as often as required," the GAO found.

"This lower-than-desired aircraft performance is due largely to F-35 spare parts shortages and difficulty in managing and moving parts around the world." Tokyo plans to make the planes the mainstay of its fleet, with 147 in house or on order.

South Korea and Australia also fly the F-35 in the Pacific, and Singapore has said it wants to buy the jets. But perhaps the most lasting contribution this incredible and exotic airframe has made to America's defense apparatus was in its audacity and subsequent success.

While most stealth programs are known for their high cost, the Bird of Prey went from a pad of paper to the skies over Area 51 for less than the cost of a single F-35 today.

"Because of Wiechman's work, the United States gained a 15-year lead over potential adversaries that it has not relinquished, and the effectiveness of his designs and products has been thoroughly proven in combat operations," the award read.

Today, there are no platforms in service that can draw a direct lineage to Alan Wiechman's unusual Bird of Prey, and that may be part of the reason it's not a frequently discussed facet of the American stealth technology race that came at the twilight of the Cold

There is. But for a short time in the 1990s, the Phantom Works proved that it doesn't always take a bottomless budget and twenty years' worth of delays to produce a stealth fighter, and that's a lesson America has struggled to learn in the decades since the

Bird of Prey prowled the skies over Area 51. Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told investigators from the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General that he called the F-35 fighter jet program "f—-d up," but made clear that he wasn't referring to the aircraft itself, which he

said was "awesome," according to a Department of Defense report released Thursday. The design took a holistic approach to stealth, reducing radar, infrared, visual, and acoustic signatures through its shape, the use of flexible or movable covers to conceal gaps, and by burying its engine deep within the fuselage behind a curved inlet duct and in

front of an infrared and acoustic defusing exhaust outlet. Rudy was a benefactor for many aviation organizations and had a special place in his heart for collegiate aviation (NIFA, SAFECON & UAA). Numerous awards have been bestowed upon him for his personal efforts and the companies contributions to the simulation industry.

Soviet Aircraft Carrier

Soviet Aircraft Carrier - Such fears were actually well-founded and justified, as just two years earlier, Admiral Kuznetsov suffered a fire at sea while deployed to the Mediterranean, resulting in the death of a sailor onboard. In addition, the flattop – which had notoriously and routinely belched black smoke into the air – spilled hundreds of tons of fuel into the sea while refueling.

Sea power that might have been: the battle cruiser Izmail. Whatever the ostensible plans for the remains of Minsk might be now, it is clearly all-but-abandoned. There is one video of the ship on YouTube, that an individual shot in 2019 using a camera on a quadcopter drone.

Soviet Aircraft Carrier

There are no signs of activity on or around the ship whatsoever. Binhai Aircraft Park remains open and pictures show the ex-Kiev to be, at least on the surface, well maintained. The same cannot be said of the former Minsk, which, along with the aircraft on display, looked to be in an increasingly dilapidated state even before Minsk World shut down for good in 2016. The park was closed after government officials decided to reclaim the land

Disclosure Statement

it sat on for other purposes. The Russian Baltic Fleet has announced that it carried out a series of simulated missile strikes of its nuclear-capable Iskander system. This is not the first time that the Russian exclave – roughly the size of Northern Ireland and wedged between Nato and EU members Poland and Lithuania – has made the headlines as part of Russia's sabre-rattling.

If there was any real competition to Minsk World, it could have come from Binhai Aircraft Park in Tianjin, China, some 100 miles southeast of Beijing, which is where Kiev went. Q-5s are also on display on that ship, as are mock-ups of Yak-38s.

In 2011, the company that owns that park announced plans to turn that former carrier into more of a floating luxury hotel with at least five presidential suites. Once a highly inter-mixed area with a population of Germans, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews, it was ethnically cleansed of most of its German population by Stalin.

This was followed by a systematic campaign of Russification which sought to erase all traces of German heritage. The Minsk was first laid down in a Soviet shipyard, situated in what is now Ukraine, in 1972. It was the second ship in the Kiev class and was commissioned into the Soviet Navy in 1978.

Post Cold War

Stalin's Aircraft Carriers By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D. June 2012 Before Minsk World opened, some experts and observers had suggested that the purchase of the carrier by a Chinese company was some kind of subterfuge to assist in the establishment of a carrier capability for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

Kiev had also been sold to another Chinese firm with the stated aim of turning it into a tourist attraction. Around the same time, a more shadowy firm based in Macau, with ties to the PLAN, had bought Kuznetsov's unfinished sister ship Varyag from Ukraine, saying it planned to convert into a floating hotel and casino.

The ship, which had been repainted sometime in the intervening years with the hull number "16," the same as that on Liaoning, was subsequently moved to where it sits now near Shanghai, arriving there between 2017 and 2018. There had been plans to

establish a new Minsk World, but that has not come to pass, although it is not entirely clear why. It is worth noting that there has been a massive aircraft carrier replica, reportedly meant to be a near-full-scale mock-up of the American supercarrier USS Nimitz, that people can tour at the Military Education Center near Dianshan Lake, close to Shanghai

, since 2002. Want more 19FortyFive military, defense, and national security, as well as politics and economics analysis from the best experts on Earth? Follow us on Google News, Flipboard, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Also, sign up for our newsletter.

You can also find our code of publishing ethics and standards. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us with any questions. The ex-Minsk's present home sits just off the Yangtze River to one side of the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge in Nantong, China.

Its immediate neighbors are farms and associated agricultural facilities. Looking at satellite imagery of the site, to the immediate north of the Lagoon, there is what looks to be a viewing platform with a walkway leading back to various structures and a tented pavilion.

All of this looks to be part of equally abandoned work on a planned theme park that was to feature the aircraft carrier at its center, but which never opened. In light of Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, this signal should not only be read as one of defensive intent on Moscow's part but also as a potential sign of things to come: the next missile launch from Kaliningrad may not be a simulation.

An attempt was made to get Baku, by then renamed Admiral Gorshkov, back into service. However, in 2004, that ship was sold to India and it subsequently an expensive and drawn-out conversion process that turned it into a more conventional short-take-off-but-arrested-recovery (STOBAR) carrier with a full flight deck and

ski jumping. With limited immediate options to rehabilitate those two ships – the shipyards where they were built and that had the facilities necessary to conduct major repairs on them were now in the independent country of Ukraine – and the equally poor state of Kiev, the decision was made to

sell them off as scrap. By 1995, Minsk and Novorossiysk had made their way to South Korea to be broken. The fate of Kiev was more complicated and we will come back to that later on.

For Russia, however, Kaliningrad's main significance is military as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier". As a military base, the region adds significantly to Russia's strategic depth and is a critical asset for Moscow in its anti-access area denial (A2AD) capabilities in the Baltic Sea, potentially undermining Nato's freedom of maneuver across the Baltic states and parts of Poland

. Kaliningrad is one of currently 46 oblasts (administrative regions) of Russia, but the only one that does not have a land border with another part of the country. The roots of the territory reach far back in history and are closely connected to the fate of East Prussia and its capital of Koenigsberg.

Founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, it is often associated with German militarism. But it's equally famous for the philosophers Immanuel Kant, who lived his entire life in Koenigsberg, and Hannah Arendt, who spent part of her childhood there.

The former Novorossiysk was ultimately scrapped in South Korea in 1997, but protests by South Korean environmentalists prompted the sale of the ex-Minsk first to a Chinese shipbreaking company, Guangdong Ship Dismantling, and then to Si Ke Investment Company, Limited.

Si Ke, established by Chinese entrepreneurs who had made their money primarily through video game arcades, bought the ship with the express purpose of building a theme park around it. They paid approximately $4.3 million at the time, close to $7.3 million in 2021 dollars, for what was left of the Minsk.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the new Russian Navy took possession of all four ships, but found them difficult and costly to operate and maintain. Minsk had already been effectively put into mothballs sometime between 1989 and 1990 due to "severe engineering problems," according to the 1993 edition of Combat Fleets of the World.

In 1993, Novorossiysk also suffered a major engine room fire. The list of aircraft carriers of the Soviet Union and Russia includes all aircraft carriers built by, proposed for, or in service with the naval forces of either the Soviet Union or Russia.

Although listed as aircraft carriers, none of these ships (with the possible exception of the never built Ulyanovsk) was or is a true aircraft carrier. Specifically, they were ASW helicopter equipped ships or aircraft-carrying cruisers, including the FADMSU Kuznetsov, the only carrier still in service with the Russian Navy.[citation needed]

The "city of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it" (approximately one-third of East Prussia at the time) fell to Stalin. The Russian leader renamed it in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, who had been chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet – the head of state of the Soviet Union – at the time of his death in 1946.

"Previously, China didn't have aircraft carriers. People find them mysterious and are curious about them. Even though China's first aircraft carrier [the Liaoning] has now gone on sea trials, it will be quite hard for the public to ever visit it

," Liu Chang, a marketing manager at Binhai Aircraft Park told The Guardian newspaper at the time. "I guess people can come here to fulfill their curiosity." Stefan Wolff receives funding from the United States Institute of Peace.

He is a past recipient of grants from the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programs 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme.

He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Foreign Policy Center in London and Co-Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions. Minsk is rusting away, seemingly abandoned, in the middle of a man-made lagoon some 50 miles northwest of the Chinese city of Shanghai.

It's a visual that feels better suited to a movie or video game set in a cyberpunk dystopia or an Earth where nature has reclaimed areas in the aftermath of some kind of apocalypse. It looks to be a sad and lonely fate for the ship, which was already spared the scrapper's torch once by Chinese businessmen in the 1990s.

Moreover, if there was a further escalation of the war – potentially involving Russian moves against Estonia and Latvia with their relatively large ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities – Kaliningrad would be an important launchpad for Russian operations.

So Russian military exercises in Kaliningrad are a signal of Russian capabilities and a way of exerting more pressure on the west - just as the EU was agreeing to its sixth package of sanctions. Minsk was assigned to the Soviet Navy's Pacific Fleet and had a largely uneventful service life in the twilight of the Cold War, as did her sister ships Kiev and Novorossiysk.

A fourth Kiev class carrier, Baku, was commissioned in 1987. It featured a new phased array radar, improved electronic warfare capabilities, launchers for four more P-500s, and turreted 100mm guns in place of the twin 76mm weapons, among other additions,

which often led to it being described as the sole example of a distinct subclass. How the ship, which had previously been the centerpiece of another amusement park in Shenzhen, just to the northeast of Hong Kong, some 750 miles away from its current location, got to where it is now, is something of a saga.

In recent years, Kaliningrad has also seen its economic value grow as one of the nodes in the multimodal trade networks connecting Xi'an in central China through Central Asia and Russia to the European market along the New Eurasian Land Bridge corridor of the Belt and Road

Initiative. At the same time, this has made the region more vulnerable in the context of the war in Ukraine and western sanctions imposed on Russia. As it turned out, despite assessments from experts that it would be too onerous to return Varyag to any sort of operational state, the PLAN did formally commission that ship in 2012 as the Liaoning, and it remains in service to this day.

There's no indication one way or another that the acquisition of the Minsk, along with the actual opening of Minsk World, was in any way part of some larger plan on the part of the Chinese government to conceal its aircraft carrier ambitions.

"Their target group is different," an anonymous advisor to the Minsk World project had told The Washington Post in 1999 when asked if there was a concern about competition from a future hotel and casino created from the Varyag.

Inert weapons, or mock-ups thereof, including missiles, bombs, and torpedoes, as well as other Soviet militaria were also displayed. Exhibits covering the Chinese military were also added. As seen in the video below, song-and-dance numbers were also regularly held at indoor and outdoor stages installed on the ship.

All told, the future of what is left of the Minsk looks bleak. It remains to be seen how much longer the present owners will let the ship languish in its man-made lagoon before making some final decision about its fate.

The longer it sits there, exposed to the elements with no real care given to its condition, the more likely it is that its next destination will be a scrapyard. Befitting this description, the Kievs had launchers for eight P-500 Bazalt anti-ship cruise missiles, also known to NATO as the SS-N-12 Sandbox, and two turrets with twin 76mm guns, among other weapons.

This was all in addition to their air wings, which typically consisted of a dozen Yak-38 Forger jump jets and a slightly larger number of Kamov Ka-25/27/29 helicopters. Kuznetsov also had a similar anti-ship missile capability, with launch cells built right into its flight deck, as you can read more about here.

The region recovered from its Soviet legacy after the fall of communism, benefiting from the special economic status it was granted by the Russian government in 1996 and from improving links with the EU in the years afterwards.

The Iskander missile system was first introduced to the region in 2016 and then upgraded in 2018, as part of a Russian strategy to counter Nato's deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defense shield in Europe. There have also been regular military exercises involving Russia's Baltic fleet, which is headquartered in Kaliningrad, including Zapad-21 in the autumn of 2021 and a series of war games since the invasion of Ukraine.

soviet aircraft carrier ww2, soviet aircraft carrier ulyanovsk, list of russian aircraft carriers, russian aircraft carriers, russian aircraft carriers in service, soviet aircraft carrier wows, soviet union aircraft carrier, soviet aircraft carrier kiev