PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)

The program is still moving forward very slowly. By now they should have more than 16 J-15's and qualified equal amount of pilots. So materially they should be able to field a full deck. But we haven't seen it yet. That photo of 7 Flankers on the deck was a PS. But then again we are not getting a lot of photo's and videos from the Liaoning lately. We know there were at least 4 or more production planes on her deck back in january of this year and now there maybe even more. Unless we can get more videos, photos and news from the Liaoning we just don't know what the status is of the program.

Well...it is true we are not getting as many pics as we would like...but all in all, the PLAN is moving forward with their carrier and carrier program at their own pace.

Compared to her sister ship, which has been active and in service for many years witht he Russian Navy, the PLAN Liaoning, CV-16 is out to sea and exercised MUCH, MUCH more often than the Russian Kuznetsov.

Interesting ... Jane's does not yet believe it to be a new carrier !

I think given what little one can see in that particular picture, it's more accurate to say that particular component layout can be anything. It might be a star destroyer for all we can tell.

I'm not even sure what a carrier's initial construction looks like... and one also needs to consider variance in construction methods (though an expert opinion would be needed)

One would hope publication like jane's would pay a shipbuilding expert to analyze the photo. On the other hand, wasn't a newly erectedt fence with guards shown around the dock?

Totoro said:

One would hope publication like jane's would pay a shipbuilding expert to analyze the photo. On the other hand, wasn't a newly erectedt fence with guards shown around the dock?

Click to expand...

The quality of Janes varies greatly, and more often than not they (along with many other western PLA observers) miss the nuance.

Does anybody know what the white dots are for?

Reading the British 'Warships' publication today.............they summize that the image of the so called carrier is more than likely to be a helicopter carrier, than a fully fledged aircraft carrier.
The magazine came to this view, by judgement of the vessels size at the current construction time. It was just a guess, but their's is as good as anyone's at this point in time, until we see further development of the vessels construction!

Can you link the article?

IFit is a helo carrier, and IF the dots do correlate with future ship's dimensions in some way - that'd suggest a 300m long helo carrier with deck width of 40+ meters. That would make it by far the biggest lha/lhd/helicopter carrier in history, probably a ship over 60.000 tons.

OR the dots don't mean much and it's a smaller helo carrie. OR dots are meaningful and it's a proper aircraft carrier. OR dots don't mean much and it's not a military ship of any kind.