‘Ulyanovsk’ Would Have Been The Soviets’ Supercarrier

Russia scrapped the ship in the 1990s

Ulyanovsk under construction

by PAUL RICHARD HUARD

Had she ever sailed, the Soviet supercarrier Ulyanovsk would have been a naval behemoth: more than 1,000 feet long with an 85,000-ton displacement and enough storage to carry an air group of up to 70 fixed and rotary wing aircraft.

With nuclear propulsion, and working in conjunction with other Soviet surface warfare vessels and submarines, the supercarrier would have steamed through the oceans with a purpose.

Namely, to keep the U.S. Navy away from the Motherland’s shores.

But Ulyanovsk is a tantalizing “almost” of history. Moscow never finished the project, because it ran out of money. As the Cold War ended, Russia plunged into years of economic hardship that made building new ships impossible.

Ulyanovsk died in the scrapyard in 1992.

Builders laid the keel for Ulyanovsk in 1988, just as the Soviet empire began to break apart. The ship was such a large project that builders wouldn’t have finished her until the mid ’90s.

Construction took place at the Black Sea Shipyard in Ukraine—often called Nikolayev South Shipyard 444. It’s an old facility, dating back to the 18th century when Prince Grigory Potemkin signed orders in 1789 authorizing new docks to repair Russian naval vessels damaged during the Russo-Turkish War.

The famous Russian battleship Potemkin—scene of the famous 1905 naval mutiny and the subject of Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film—launched from the same shipyard.

Early in the Soviet period, the shipyard constructed battleships. During the 1960s and ’70s, workers built Moskva-class helicopter carriers and Kiev-class carriers at South Shipyard 444.

But none of these ships came close to Ulyanovsk.

The Pentagon’s rendering of the supercarrier. U.S. Department of Defense illustration via Wikimedia

Named after Vladimir Lenin’s home town, everything about the supercarrier was huge, even by Russian standards.

Her propulsion system would have comprised four KN-3 nuclear reactors, a model originally used to power enormous Kirov-class battlecruisers. Ulyanovsk could have easily reached 30 knots while underway.

The carrier would have carried at least 44 fighters on board: a combination of Sukhoi Su-33s and Mikoyan MiG-29s. Ulyanovsk’s two steam catapults, ski-jump and four sets of arresting cables would have made for a bustling flight deck.

The ship’s designers planned three elevators—each capable of carrying 50 tons—to move aircraft to and from the cavernous hanger deck. Plus, the carrier would have had helicopters for search-and-rescue work and anti-submarine warfare missions.

The Soviets planned a complement of 3,400 sailors—roughly half of the crew aboard an American Nimitz-class carrier, but sizable compared to other Soviet vessels.

That the Soviets even wanted a supercarrier was remarkable. The massive ships have never figured significantly in the Soviet or Russian naval inventory.

Currently, Russia has only one carrier—the significantly smaller Admiral Kuznetsov,launched in 1985. Multiple mechanical problems have plagued the ship ever since, and she hasn’t deployed in a decade. Most likely, she too is bound for scrapping.

But there was a logic behind Ulyanovsk. James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, explained that the Soviets wanted to create a defensive “blue belt” in their offshore waters.

The “blue belt” was a combination of land, sea and air power that would work together to thwart U.S. carrier and submarine forces. Russia could defend the homeland while providing safe patrol areas for ballistic-missile subs performing nuclear deterrent missions.

“Those ‘boomers’ need to disappear for weeks at a time into safe depths,” Holmes said. “Soviet supercarriers could have helped out with the air- and surface-warfare components of a blue-belt defense, chasing off U.S. Navy task forces that steamed into Eurasian waters.”

A port beam view of ‘Admiral Kuznetsov’ underway in the Mediterranean. U.S. Department of Defense photo

But pride and national honor also prompted the decision to build Ulyanovsk.

“There’s also the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses aspect to carrier development,” Holmes continued. “If the U.S. is the world superpower and the USSR wants to keep pace, then Soviet leaders want the same toys to demonstrate that they’re keeping pace. It sounds childish, but there are basic human motives at work here.”

“It’s not all about the roles and missions carriers execute,” he said. “It’s about national destiny and dignity.”

But by the mid ’90s, Russian naval vessels were rusting at their moorings, sailors served without pay and the United States stepped in to help deactivate Soviet-era nuclear submarines and provide security for the Russian nuclear arsenal.

“The Soviets weren’t dumb,” Holmes explained. “They wouldn’t spend themselves into oblivion to keep up with the Joneses, and as a great land power, they obviously had enormous claims on their resources to fund the army and air force. There was only so much to go around for ‘luxury fleet’ projects.”

“Bottom line, if you can’t afford to keep the existing fleet at sea, where are you going to get the money to complete your first nuclear-powered supercarrier, a vessel that will demand even more manpower that you can’t afford?”