Does China have any analogues of vertical take-off aircraft? Here I am watching the F-35 take off from the Japanese JS Kaga, effectively turning the helicopter carrier into a full-fledged aircraft carrier, and no catapults or kilometer-long springboards are needed. The conventional Type 075 could be like this if there were similar aircraft:
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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They are working on a STOVL fighter along with probably a tiltrotor transport. These would be deployed on 075s and 076s in the future.
No, not such aircraft in use.
There's likely been prototype and testing, but since it has not been inducted in actual usage, it might at best, be a possibility that comes in the future (no guarantee).
Also, the 076 might be able to land and launch aircrafts like the J35 or even flankers like J15.
076 is not efficient nor safe to recover large manned aircraft due to straight deck and a seemingly smaller baracade with only 3 arrestor cables for catching aircraft. Its very likely only for drones while manned aircraft would be landing vertically while taking off via catapult.
Why try to turn an lhd into a bad mini carrier with terrible vtol planes which have lots of issues with reliability and cannot carry much fuel and weapons.
China should instead build more carriers and better carrier based planes.
For China in the first island China, carriers are not even that necessary. They can use land based planes. Carriers are only useful in the deep ocean or when you want to launch some kind of far away military intervention. Even there carriers can be dubious if fighting against any country with competent air force.
Carriers are only useful for Bombing poor countries with no air and missile force.
Why then did the British use Harriers in the same war in the Falklands during the Cold War? Why did such a powerful state as the Soviet Union build "aircraft cruisers" (actually small aircraft carriers) and Yak-38 for them? There are not many heavy aircraft carriers, large and small ships good complement each other. You yourself say that full-fledged aircraft carriers are too expensive, heavy and redundant for the first chain of islands, but the fleet of Type 075s converted to small aircraft carriers is exactly that. Small carriers are cheaper and more numerous.
Again, carriers are useful in bombing countries who lack good air defense and good air force. How many countries have 100 planes in their air force? Very few.Why then did the British use Harriers in the same war in the Falklands during the Cold War? Why did such a powerful state as the Soviet Union build "aircraft cruisers" (actually small aircraft carriers) and Yak-38 for them? There are not many heavy aircraft carriers, large and small ships good complement each other. You yourself say that full-fledged aircraft carriers are too expensive, heavy and redundant for the first chain of islands, but the fleet of Type 075s converted to small aircraft carriers is exactly that. Small carriers are cheaper and more numerous.
So, they are very useful in imposing a superpower will on the world stage and China certainly wants that kind of influence as well.
But the most important use of a carrier is providing air cover in the high seas. Without a carrier, your navy is essentially stuck nearby your coast relying on ground based air cover.
So a true blue water navy that wants to fight and win in the deep pacific and Indian ocean will need carriers and China is building it for that reason.
But again, lhds are poor substitutes for proper carriers in both scenarios I mentioned.
HMD
The word "effectively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. While STOVL fighters look good on paper, they have to make a lot of sacrifices to performance to function at all. Just look at the F-35B. It's a single engine fighter with low payload and low range. It's not at all the kind of plane that the Navy would want, and you'd only want to use it if there's no alternatives.
A ship like JS Kaga can only carry about 6 of these planes so it's a very far distance from being a full-fledged carrier. And generally speaking, the only reason to have light carriers is that some countries can't build and operate full sized carriers. China is not one of these countries, so this does not apply to them. The other reason is that you are running so many military operations that you need more carriers than you have access to full-sized ones. The only country this applies to is the US - China has no interest in expeditionary wars so it doesn't need undersized pseudo carriers. And if the PLAN really wants some pseudo-carriers, they can just stick some J-35s on 076 and call it a day.
For your actual question, China is exploring the concept of STOVL fighters, but there's no indication that they have built any demonstrators yet. I suspect that they will find this technology limiting enough that they won't do much with it.