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Well, in their hay day they had the Moskva Class, the Kiev Class, and the Kuznetsov, with its second ship, the Varyag, almost complete when the wall came down.

So, that would be Moskva (2), Kieve (4) and Kuznetsov (1) with the second almost complete. They were about to have eight when they went down...but in all truth, particularly the Moskva class were very antiquaited and weak compared to the US inventory at the time.

But that was part of Reagan's plan...catch us, keep up with us if you can. They couldn't, and bankrupted themselves trying.

I don't know if it was ever tactically important for the Soviets to have aircraft carriers. An aircraft carrier is useful primarily for projecting force. Most of the countries that the Soviets wanted to project force with were within range of their land based bombers anyways. We needed them because the areas that we wanted to project force were across the oceans.

As far a control of the seas, there are more efficient units. Both we and the Soviets heavily invested in submarines because as WWII showed, they are extraordinarily effective at that role. It is critical to note that most of both of our submarines were designed for control of the sea type roles, unlike many submarines that are made. That is because they are nuclear powered and can remain submerged for extended periods of time. Neither of our submarine roles were purely defensive.

I believe that if all our nuclear heck ever occurred between us and the USSR, the submarine war would determine who would be the surviving power. Since that didn't occur, the aircraft carrier seems to determine who is the superpower now. We can now project force anywhere in the world. The Russians can't. Because we were prepared to not go to nuclear war, we have taken the power role today.

A reason why I think many countries don't build carriers is because to have an effective force you must have a large force. Any country would probably need about 10 carriers to be able to project power worldwide. But for the cost of 10 carriers, you could probably build 20-30 nuclear submarines, or 50 diesel subs. If you don't have the money, it is may be a wiser decision to go for a control of the seas aspect than for a projection of force aspect. Only due to the fact that we have such a massive economy can we do both (with our military spending equal to about half that of the entire world).