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Russia’s Aircraft Carrier Fire Follows Spy Submarine Fire and Carrier Crane Accident

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ThreeSix to ten people were injured in a fire that broke out onboard Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov at a dock in Murmansk, northwest Russia. 120 square meters (1200 square feet)600 square meters (6000 square feet) of the carrier were on fire.

In 2018, the same carrier had a 210 square foot hole after a 70-ton crane fell on it. In 2017, The Russian carrier started what was to be a 3-year program of repairs which was to cost $340 million.

The aircraft carrier was leaving an 80,000 ton floating dock after repairs. There was a 70 ton crane on the dock which fell and broke a hole in the aircraft carrier.

The loss of the 80,000-ton dock could delay modernization of other Russian navy ships.

In July, 2019, a fire broke out on a Russian research submarine and killed fourteen sailors in what is Russia’s worst submarine disaster since 2008. Losharik was a special missions (spy) submarine. Losharik is part of Russia’s deepwater intelligence gathering program, headed by the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, or GUGI.

6 thoughts on “Russia’s Aircraft Carrier Fire Follows Spy Submarine Fire and Carrier Crane Accident”

  1. I’ve only met one member of the 21st century Russian army.
    He was in Australia… because he had deserted.

    So that’s in keeping with what you heard.

    (Fun fact: He dislocated my knee during Jujitsu training and was just about panicking because one violence charge against him and he would be deported back to Russia where the army was presumably still looking for him.)

  3. This assumes that their nuclear stockpile has not deteriorated into decrepitude too… we can’t assume this but the question that’s got to cross their mind is, “if we launched all our missiles what percentage them would hit their target?” That’s got to scare them too…

  4. I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that this is much less of an issue with the navy than the army.

    A Russia with a weak army is a Russia with big problems. A Russia that has to worry about sub regions starting to break away. That be concerned about internal control. And that’s a Russia that could do something desperate.

    But the Navy is really only used for force projection. Even there, the force that actually is projected is usually directly over a land border into the nearest neighbours, not something an aircraft carrier is used for.

  5. In some ways this makes Russia more dangerous, not less. As their conventional military decays, they become ever more tempted to resort to nuclear blackmail to keep mattering.

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