Russia's Super Strange Kiev-Class Aircraft Carriers: Submarine and Carrier-Killer?
Kyle Mizokami [2]
At the tail end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union produced a number of unique aircraft carriers. Known as the Kiev class, the carriers were the Soviets’ initial foray into the world of fixed wing naval aviation, and the only Soviet carriers to become fully operational. The story of the Kiev carriers is also the story of a land power forging a path to become a naval power, seeking to realize a fleet that could challenge the mighty U.S. Navy.
The Kiev-class aircraft carriers had their origins in the tenure of Admiral Sergei Gorshkov [3]. Appointed by Nikita Khrushchev to the position of Commander in Chief of the Soviet Navy in 1956, Gorshkov served in that position for a remarkable twenty-nine years. He oversaw the expansion of the Soviet Navy from a strategically insignificant force in the years after World War II to a well-balanced one that could project power into the Third World, a problem that became obvious during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviet Navy had no long-range striking forces it could send to meet the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.
Source URL (retrieved on August 20, 2017):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-nato-feared-russias-kiev-class-aircraft-carriers-21972
