Project 1153 Orel

Project 1153 Orel (Russian: Орёл, Eagle) was a planned 1970s-era Soviet program to give the Soviet Navy a true blue water aviation capability. The ship would have been about 75-80,000 tons displacement, with a nuclear power plant and carried about 70 aircraft launched via steam catapults. It was designed with a large offensive capability with the ship mounts including 24 vertical launch tubes for anti-ship cruise missiles. In the USSR it was classified as the "large cruiser with aircraft armament". It was cancelled in October 1978 as being too expensive, and a program of smaller Project 11435, more V/STOL-aircraft-oriented, was developed instead (in its initial stage, a version of 65,000 tons and 52 aircraft was proposed, but eventually a smaller ship was built).

Project Orel would have resulted in a program very similar to the aircraft carriers available to the U.S. Navy. While the project never saw fruition, it later resulted in the abortive Ulyanovsk program. The ship class was codenamed after the Eagle (Орёл), as all major Soviet ship classes were named after birds (see Russian ship naming conventions); the actual projected name of the class is not known.

See also

• List of ships of the Soviet Navy
• List of ships of Russia by project number

External links

• "Project 1143.7 Orel Ul'yanovsk class," GlobalSecurity.org.
• "A Brief Look at Russian Aircraft Carrier Development," Robin J. Lee.