The Fleet That Has To Die -- Weekly Standard
Last year at the annual 27 July celebrations of Naval Fleet Day, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, boasted that the Russian Navy would add six aircraft carrier battle groups to its complement of warships. Construction of these ships, he said, would begin in 2012 with three of the carriers to be assigned to the Northern Fleet and the other three to the Pacific Fleet.
At the time, Russian government officials were riding high on $150 or higher per-barrel oil prices that they were convinced--like most oil-rich kleptocracies around the world--would last forever. The picture is a bit different today with Russia suffering some of the worst effects of the world economic downturn and world oil prices less than half of what they were 12 months ago.
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My Comment: I voiced the same observation a year ago .... Russia cannot sustain what they have .... forget about building a carrier group, let alone 6 of them. There were 3 reasons for this observation.
(1) They do not have the budget for it.
(2) They do not have the expertise to build a carrier group within the time allotted, nor the personnel to sustain it.
(3) Demographically, Russia has a declining population. They cannot have the the numbers that they need to sustain their arm forces at the levels that they want ..... let alone 6 carrier groups.