Chinese Aircraft Carrier

[Tregarth]

Food for thought. Please see the follwing news reports

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13705204

also

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13693495

Does anyone know if there is a Chinese member of this forum?  

The second link is perhaps more thought provoking than the first.

Tregarth.

[SpazSinbad]

Hmmm, I am wondering if you know that the Chinese have an agreement with Brazil to train their initial Nav Aviators with them but in the meantime the Chinese have built several land facilities with ski jumps for training. Have not heard about the Brazil angle since last year.

http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-on-varyag-news-from-brazil.html

[Sludge]

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

[Sludge]

On a good note, check out this Y/T of French pilots landing on a US carrier...  everyone always wonders what an F-16 would be like landing on a carrier.  Well, IMO, this is a very close approximation... at 0:32, freeze the frame and you'd have to do a double-take to verify those aren't Vipers.  The difference is the Rafale is a twin-engine bird, but look at the alpha on approach, also very Viper-like.  The landing at 2:00 is very impressive.  I wonder what the CAG LSOs did for the IFLOLS (hook to eye values, basic angle glideslope) and what the conditions (WoD, carrier speed) were... that would be interesting to find out.

Also, the French definately some capable aircrews.

Later
Sludge

[wilycoyote4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Varyag
dunno how accurate the info is but seems a good read

googling Dalian Russian carrier --- or some such phrase --- brings up plenty
using Google Earth you see it, I did several years ago.

http://www.whatsondalian.com/news-9-aircraft-carrier-varyag-converted-from-russian-kuznetsov-docked-in-dalian.html

The carrier has been in Dalian harbor since Feb 2001.

http://theamericanaudacity.blogspot.com/2011/01/china-ready-to-launch-shi-lang-aircraft.html
Two carriers are to be built by the Chinese.

[SpazSinbad]

The Chinese PLAN Head Honcho has admitted the carrier is only for training. What may be a worry will be purpose built carriers later. Yes the Chinese are on a long learning curve and they know it. However lots of information shows that they proceed slowly and carefully.

http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/06/chen-bingde-talks-aircraft-carriers.html

"Chen Bingde Talks Aircraft Carriers Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Chen Bingde, the chief of China's military general staff, has publicly discussed the ex-Varyag aircraft carrier in public for the first time in a Hong Kong daily....

...There is little new to learn from this report, but we can conclude that the ship is very close to sea trials because it is being discussed openly. There are more than a few rumors in China the ship will conduct sea trials over the July 4th weekend.

The interview reinforces opinions that are already common, specifically that the ex-Varyag will be a training carrier used for learning carrier operations. Varyag was a cold war era designed Russian aircraft carrier, so the Chinese are going to learn carrier operations from one of the worst designed large aircraft carriers in the world. That is probably why the aircraft carrier is described as a symbol rather than a capability in the interview...."

Until the UK stopped conventional carrier ops they had quite a fleet before during and after WWII.

Brazil is an emerging nation wanting to protect its sea and Amazon River assets. Learning NavAv from scratch is what they are doing on the cheap. Who knows the future for them in that region.
_____________________________

Some Carrier NavAv development history after WWII in this small (175Kb) PDF:

NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANGLED-DECK AIRCRAFT CARRIER
Innovation and Adaptation
by Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark D.Mandeles

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/afe51317-dabb-4379-b802-79eb1d9815fc/The-Development-of-the-Angled-Deck-Aircraft-CarrieMike

[fael097]

idk, nations need to defend themselves I guess.
Brazil is running a contract to buy a big lot of carrier capable planes, and the 3 choices are super hornet, rafale, and gripen. technology transfer is also on a clause.
that carrier was bought from france also, so I guess it's not that bad.

of course it would never put up against well trained navys, but it's pretty capable of defending themselves against neighbour nations. who knows, there are a lot of crazy leaders and dictators out there. chavez looks like a crazy sob.

[Tregarth]

I must admit I had not expected so many responses when I posted this.

But for Asian nations that thought of China "projecting power" (to use a USN phrase) with one or more aircraft carriers will be a worry.  The Varyag may not amount to much but if the Chinese can co-operate with Brazil (one of the BRIC nations which have avoided the US / European financial crisis and so can spend money on military expansion) and learn about carrier operations, using an ex-NATO carrier, then the balance of power in the Pacific will shift.

I would not be so sure about dismissing the speed with which the Chinese learn.  Indeed I would suggest the only thing the CIA does consistently when it makes forecasts about China's capabilities is underestimate their speed of progress.  The RN/USN advanced slowly because they had to invent the procedures.  All the Chinese have to do is copy them and avoid the earlier mistakes.

Because of the Cultural Revolution the development of China was impeded.  The leaders have now changed and are eager to push China to the front of the Asian theatre, and aircraft carriers are one way, amongst others, of doing it.  The population of China is 1.3 billion and growing, I am sure they will be able to find a few hundred people who can deck land a fighter.

Does Australia still have carrier?

Tregarth

[SpazSinbad]

Australia for a while had two similar carriers but the first one HMAS Sydney was and remained a straight deck, serving in the Korean War. It was never modified and became a  utility ship ferrying troops and supplies to the Vietnam War but scrapped soon after. The RAN ended up with a single 'light fleet carrier' HMAS Melbourne built just after (& during) WWII so that it was modified before being handed over to the RAN - the first with the three things, angled deck, steam catapult and mirror in 1956-7, operating F.A.W. Mk.53 Sea Venoms then A4Gs until ops stopped in 1982. Ship sold to China for scrap, where it became a source of information for the future.

In a few years the RAN will have two new LHDs that are larger than HMAS Melbourne (by a small amount). Notionally they will operate only helos but will retain the ski ramp (from original Spanish design) so at least they could host USMC Harriers/F-35Bs and I'm certain there will be agitation for the RAN to get back into fixed wing when that happens. Even without the ski jump these aircraft could get airborne but it was deemed too expensive to modify the original design to be rid of it.