Carrier aviation for Soviet bastion defence

The ships belonged to a defensive concept that integrated carrier aviation with land-based aircraft and naval task groups. Soviet forces lacked the resources for an Anglo-American scale of distant carrier presence, so they sought to stop threats before they reached protected northern waters. Keeping ballistic-missile submarines inside a defended bastion reduced their need to cross heavily monitored passages such as the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. Kuznetsov's stronger fixed-wing air group extended an existing defensive system instead of reproducing a U.S. carrier force.