Nation: Now the Minsk

Few signs of the growing power and diversity of the Soviet armed forces are more striking than the U.S.S.R.’s development of aircraft carriers. Though the Soviets built two helicopter-carrying warships in the 1960s, it was not until 1976 that they produced their first true carrier, the 38,000-ton Kiev. Last February came her sister ship, the Minsk, and two more of the same class are being built.

While the Minsk was cruising off Japan last summer, Japanese photographer Mitsuo Shibata, flying in a rented plane, spotted Moscow’s newest carrier and took this revealing set of aerial pictures near Miyako Island in the Ryukyus. With the Minsk he found the Petropavlovsk, a Soviet cruiser that carries a new type of missile apparently designed to shoot down cruise missiles.

The Minsk generally carries 15 Forger Yak-36 VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) planes and 20 Kamov Ka-25 helicopters. The Forger rises and descends on a vertical column of air blown downward by two jet engines. Western analysts have not yet fully evaluated its functions, but it seems to carry antisubmarine weapons and both air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. The copters appear to be designed primarily to attack submarines, but also have equipment that can guide surface-to-surface missiles launched from the carrier itself. The vessel has four launchers that can fire missiles with a range of 300 nautical miles and can launch antiaircraft missiles.

The Kiev and Minsk are thus multipurpose warships: their principal mission seems to be antisubmarine warfare, but they and their aircraft can attack surface ships. Jane’s Fighting Ships, the authoritative British guide to the world’s navies, notes that possession of a carrier force gives the Soviet Union “an intervention capability in so-called peacetime.” Jane’s believes that no more carriers of the Kiev class will be built after the first four, but expects a new class of larger Soviet aircraft carriers to begin appearing on the high seas in the early 1980s.