Soviet Aircraft Carrier Ulyanovsk

Soviet Aircraft Carrier Ulyanovsk

Ulyanovsk (Cyrillic: Улья́новск) was the first of a class of never completed Soviet nuclear-powered supercarriers which for the first time would have offered true blue water aviation capability for the Soviet Navy. This was based upon the 1975 Project 1153 OREL (which never went beyond blueprints). The initial commissioned name was to be Kremlin, but was later given the name Ulyanovsk after the Soviet town of Ulyanovsk, which was originally named Simbirsk but later renamed after Vladimir Lenin's original name because he was born there.

It would have been 85,000 tons in displacement (larger than the older Forrestal-class carriers but smaller than contemporary Nimitz class carriers of the U.S. Navy). Ulyanovsk would have been able to carry the full range of fixed-wing carrier aircraft, as opposed to the limited scope in which Admiral Kuznetsov launched aircraft, by way of a ski jump. The configuration would have been very similar to U.S. Navy carriers though with the typical Soviet practice of adding anti-ship missile (ASM) and surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers. Its hull was laid down in 1988, but the project was cancelled at 40% complete along with a sister ship in 1991. Scrapping began on 4 February 1992.

The People's Republic of China is expected to build two nuclear aircraft carriers based on the Project 1143.7 Ulyanovsk class design for some of the PLAN future Chinese aircraft carriers.