The Russian Navy has no plans to operate an aircraft carrier in the immediate future, as it now appears that the Admiral Kuznetsov will head to the scrap heap rather than back to sea. Instead, the Kremlin may be focused on how to combat America’s carriers, with far smaller surface combatants that could be deployed as “sea terminators” to hunt down the flattops.

Just as the carrier proved to be deadly to the one-feared battleship, a Russian official is claiming its Project 22350 frigates, Admiral Gorshkov-class, could be just the platform to send the US Navy’s nuclear-powered supercarriers to the bottom of the sea.

“Project 22350 frigates are the carriers of high-precision missile weapons – not only Kalibr [cruise] but also Tsirkon [hypersonic] missiles. The frigate is a sea terminator, a universal soldier that can hunt down enemy nuclear-powered submarines from a safe distance,” Alexander Stepanov of the Institute of Law and National Security within the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration told Russian state media news agency

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