Cold War
Because the Soviet Navy never constructed a large aircraft carrier fleet during the Cold War, as the U.S. Navy possessed, the Soviet Navy was unique in deploying large numbers of bombers in a maritime role for use by Naval Aviation. The Kiev class of Soviet aircraft carriers was deployed in the late 1970s and carried up to 30 aircraft including Yak-38 VTOL fighters. The next class of Soviet aircraft carriers, named the Admiral Kuznetsov class, supported more conventional aircraft such as the Su-33 and the MiG-29. Land-based aircraft such as the Tupolev Tu-16 "Badger" and Tu-22M "Backfire" bombers were deployed with high-speed anti-ship missiles. The primary role of these aircraft in the event of war was to intercept NATO supply convoys traveling to Europe from North America.
Read more about this topic: Soviet Naval Aviation
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or war:
“A largess universal, like the sun,
His liberal eye doth give to everyone,
Thawing cold fear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)