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My understand is that Black Sea states do not have a tonnage limit, which is how they get around it. If France loaded some anti-ship missiles on the Charles de
by steve19 10y ago
My understand is that Black Sea states do not have a tonnage limit, which is how they get around it.
If France loaded some anti-ship missiles on the Charles de Gaulle carrier, it could be called a missile cruiser (with planes) but would violate the tonnage limit (its about 50% heavier than the tonnage limit of the treaty).
The treaty is doing what it was designed to do, I think, by limiting non-Black Sea ships through the strait.
- HillRat 10y agoIf I recall correctly (it's been a while since I looked at the Convention and the specific implementation verbiage), aircraft carriers are explicitly verboten, but, as you say, non-riparian states also have a tonnage limit on capitol ships which further limits freedom of transit. (Plus some further restrictions on submarines, but those aren't germane here.) In addition, if the US, NATO or France attempted to unilaterally redefine a carrier as a non-carrier capitol ship for purposes of navigation, it would be considered a hostile diplomatic act by Russia, so that also sets limits of its own sort. During the Cold War, of course, it wasn't as important an issue, Turkey being the only NATO Black Sea state (note: since I'm not looking at a map right now, that might not be completely correct). No NATO carrier was going to transit the straits except in a case of war, at which point the Convention would be the least of our problems.
- idlewords 10y agoNo, aircraft carriers are not specially excluded. But the tonnage limit excludes them in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_...
- int_19h 10y agoAircraft carriers are specifically excluded from the "capital ship" category, and said category does not have the tonnage limit for Black Sea states. Hence why USSR created this thing - because it is a missile cruiser (that just happens to double as a carrier), it's a capital ship, so it can be as large as it needs to be.