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Originally Posted by JSLTIGER
Um...I hate to nitpick here, but even if he is 30 years old, he's (the Russians refer to their ships in the masculine) still a decent carrier, and he's bigger than many of the ones European nations have these days. Just because he's 30+ years old doesn't mean he's toothless.
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Actually, it is not a very good carrier. Because of the lack of a catapult, only the good low-speed performance of the Su-33K and MiG-29K allows it to be a CTOL carrier (the plane makes up for the carrier). The French carriers carry a similar number of aircraft on >20000t less displacement. Yes, part of that is because of its requirement to be a cruiser as well, but it doesn't quite have enough defensive armament to "go it alone" with only its point defence suite, so it'd need escorts just as much as a full-time carrier, and the SS-N-19 missiles were apparently placed in a way that blocked off further extension of the hangar, limiting the space available.