Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

The Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier, Soviet designation Project 1143.5, is a class of conventionally-powered aircraft carriers currently operated by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Originally designed for the Soviet Navy, the Kuznetsov-class uses a combination of a ski-jump and arresting gears for the launch and recovery of high-performance jet aircraft, representing a major advance in Soviet naval aviation over the previous Kiev-class, which did not have full-length flight deck and could only launch VSTOL aircraft. The official classification for the ship class by the Soviet Union and Russian Federation is "Heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser", which permits the ships to transit the Turkish Straits without violating the Montreux Convention.

Due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the three Kuznetsov-class ships were built over a protracted period of almost four decades. Two ships were originally laid down at the Nikolayev South Shipyard in the Ukrainian SSR, to be followed by the Ulyanovsk-class nuclear-powered supercarriers. Only the lead ship, Admiral Kuznetsov had been commissioned when the Soviet Union dissolved, and the ship then served in the Russian Navy. Construction of her sister ship Varyag, which was only two-thirds-complete at the time, was abandoned until 1998, when a now-independent Ukraine sold the uncompleted ship to a Chinese company registered in Macau for use as a floating casino, along with a complete set of design blueprints. After a protracted towed journey through three different oceans, Varyag arrived at the Dalian Shipyard and was eventually completed and commissioned in 2012 as China's first aircraft carrier, the Type 001 aircraft carrier Liaoning. China subsequently constructed a third ship to a modified Type 002 design, commissioning Shandong in 2019.