Fellas...
This is just laughable.
Simply buying an aircraft carrier does not move a country towards being a naval power. Sure, China's laying down the chips (money) for a carrier is reason to take note, but you know how many years it took the US Navy to get to this point in history with carrier aviation. We are still the ONLY navy that does strike-level tempo carrier ops day/night and anywhere in the world. [edit: France, GBR do limited strikes with their carriers].
Just love those retarded "ski-jump" carriers, they GUARANTEE you wont get to US-level carrier aviation. Those should be called "rebate-aircraft carriers" or something more appropriate. Sure they can launch and land jets, but when has a country ever done up-tempo ops and launched a strike package against another country from a carrier like we do, say in Afghanistan? I can tell you that answer, ZIP, ZILCH, NADA. Why? Because it took us soo many decades to learn, but even through the price (loss of carriers in WWII, deaths of pilots and deck crew in later years), we stayed with it for all those decades. Its not just a "naval airshow" for us, like an ex-Soviet MayDay parade in Red Square, its an every day/night operation for us.
I mean the best that any other country has shown in practice is GBR, when they had their Faulkland Islands campaign against Argentina in the early 80s. And thats nothing compared to what a US carrier can put in the air in a short time.
I say, let them dump their money into that floating hulk-turned casino-turned aircraft carrier and see what comes of it. The only thing they could possibly do with it is THREATEN Taiwan with the POTENTIAL of carrier strikes. In a real world shooting war, that thing would become a missile magnet with no real air offensive power to justify it. Go ahead China, spend away!!
Just dont come crying to me when your planes try to "wave off" like this....
When this is the best anybody in the world has in comparison, I'm NOT worried. Yes, they have US style carrier landings (right down to the USNAVY cranials, float-coats, and personnel designation colors) but does anybody seriously think they can put strike packages in the air against an adversary nation? I dont.
BTW, here's a funny thought: why does Brazil need a carrier? Thats an awful lot of money just to have 1960s-level carrier ops? Is South America really that volatile? Maybe the afforementioned Faulkland Islands may HEAT UP again?? Maybe Argentina is getting "aggressive"??
Later
Sludge