| Last week a Russian naval aircraft carrier battle group limped back to port after the biggest and most ambitious naval exercises in the mid-Atlantic ever performed by our Navy... The North Atlantic's high seas badly battered our ships. Several were reported to have taken on water, and by the time the battle group sailed past Norway to its home base off the northern Kola Peninsula, the Kuznetsov was oozing fuel into the sea, leaving an oil slick. The sailors of the Kuznetsov were all first-time conscripts, while the officers and pilots were old hands close to retirement age. Which young and aspiring top gun pilots would want to join an air wing that gets to fly off an aircraft carrier deck once in seven years? |