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The Red Navy had planned to acquire four fleet aircraft carriers, and so accordingly planned to build navalized versions of the MiG-29 and Su-27 for carrier operations. Work on a navalized Su-27 actually went back almost to the very origins of the Su-27. T10S prototypes were modified to test features of navalized variants in an incremental fashion. The first test flights, from a dummy land-based carrier deck at Saki in the Crimea, featured aircraft fitted with small canard wings for better low-speed approach handling, improved short takeoff performance, and enhanced combat maneuverability. Tests then went on to aircraft fitted with arresting gear, and then to tests of aircraft with carrier landing systems. The carriers were to be fitted with "ski-jump" takeoff ramps, rather than catapults, and one of these navalized Su-27 prototypes made an initial takeoff from a land-based ski jump in August 1982. In operational practice, an Su-27 was to take off a carrier deck by building up full thrust against a tilt-up blast deflector panel until the aircraft sheared restraints holding it down to the deck. The fighter would then accelerate up the deck, hit the ski jump, and bound into the air. This unusual scheme was devised because the Soviets had no experience in building aircraft carrier catapults, and didn't want to delay introduction of the carriers while puzzling around with a new and demanding technology. These modified prototypes led to specific prototypes for the navalized aircraft, designated "T10K". The T10Ks had canards, an arresting hook, and carrier landing systems, as well as a retractable inflight refueling probe to allow the aircraft to take off with a reduced fuel load and top off in flight. However, they did not have the ruggedized landing gear required for carrier landings and lacked folding wings. Pugachev flew the first T10K in August 1987, though that particular aircraft was lost in a mishap in 1988. The production navalized "Su-27K" featured the required heavier landing gear, with a long two-wheel nose gear assembly, and folding wings, with drooping outer ailerons and inner double slotted flaps for low-speed carrier approaches. The Su-27K began carrier trials on board the carrier TBILSI in November 1989, again with Pugachev at the controls, leading to introduction to formal carrier operations in September 1991. A total of 26 Su-27Ks were in service by the early 1990s, with two of them upgraded from prototypes. Abandonment of plans for the four-carrier force in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR meant that the need for building more Su-27Ks vanished. The KUZNETZOV, as the TBILISI had been renamed after the end of the Soviet Union, made a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1996, giving the Su-27K its first taste of ocean operations. NATO assigned the Su-27K the codename "Flanker-D", while the Sukhoi OKB calls the aircraft the "Su-33".