00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread

[dingyibvs]

Tech advancement is transforming warfare at an increasing pace, stick to the Qing dynasty mindset at your own risk.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Tech advancement is transforming warfare at an increasing pace, stick to the Qing dynasty mindset at your own risk.

Thanks for illustrating my point.

 

[valysre]

I wonder what is underneath that cover they have erected in the drydock?

 

[AndrewS]

I agree that there are numerous challenges to my suggestions, but perhaps more effort should be made to address those challenges rather than sticking to conventional wisdom. For example, coordination can perhaps be streamlined by AI, scalability can perhaps be solved by automation, perhaps construction can be more aligned with commercial standards than military standards, it may even be barely manned or fully unmanned mini-carriers carrying CCAs.

Scalability is actually a key potential advantage of such a platform and design should be done to maximize it. Say if war breaks out in the medium term and half of each fleet's carriers are destroyed in major battles, how quickly can they be replenished? It would take quite a few years even for a great shipbuilding nation like China. A few dozen 10,000 ton mini-carriers that are basically 055 hulls with a flight deck attached? That can probably be done within a year. If research and planning was done ahead of the time like I suggest right now, these things can be pumped out like dumplings by a countless number of shipyards in a countless number of drydocks in China.

What IMO has been understated is where bottlenecks may be in a fully industrialized 21st century naval battle. It won't be the "fixed costs" you mentioned like maintenance crews, deck crews, etc. It won't even be the cost of fiat currencies in a war-time economy. It'll be the ridiculous time it takes to construct the capital ships because of the infrastructure it requires to build them.

To your point re: distributed warfare, your point is well taken. I agree that my suggested doctrine will need further refinement, and that surrounding mega carriers with mini carriers isn't exactly a good example of distributed warfare. The optimal doctrine will certainly need to be built up, but a doctrinal shift IMO needs to happen to take advantage of advancements of modern technology. Simply building bigger, better carriers smacks of building bigger, heavier armored battleships with bigger guns pre-WW2. This isn't unlike ground forces around the world so focused on better armored tanks with bigger guns pre-Ukraine. Modern advancements in AI, unmanned systems, telecommunications, modular construction methods, etc. all need to be exploited to the maximum to result in a revolution in naval doctrine, and mini carriers is just one such platform which possibly can fit into a new doctrine.

Look at final assembly times.

It's 9 months for a 40K ton Type-075 LHD to be assembled. A 13K destroyer isn't that much faster.

And remember that prior to final assembly, module fabrication can be conducted in parallel in many locations.

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So if China were faced with an urgent need for carrier aviation, the existing Type-076 design looks to be a better option than 10K ton mini-carriers.

Note that the Type-076 has a similar displacement to the French CdG carrier, which has an airwing of 30+ aircraft

 

[dingyibvs]

Look at final assembly times.

It's 9 months for a 40K ton Type-075 LHD to be assembled. A 13K destroyer isn't that much faster.

And remember that prior to final assembly, module fabrication can be conducted in parallel in many locations.

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So if China were faced with an urgent need for carrier aviation, the existing Type-076 design looks to be a better option than 10K ton mini-carriers.

Note that the Type-076 has a similar displacement to the French CdG carrier, which has an airwing of 30+ aircraft

That's certainly possible. I'm not married to the 10k ton concept, just want to discuss a doctrinal shift away from ever bigger carriers. Maybe an 076 analogue with say 10 J-35s and 20 CCAs can be a more efficient use of resources.

 

[jnd85]

That's certainly possible. I'm not married to the 10k ton concept, just want to discuss a doctrinal shift away from ever bigger carriers. Maybe an 076 analogue with say 10 J-35s and 20 CCAs can be a more efficient use of resources.

Ultimately, China has its own distinct calculus based on internally assessed needs, advantages, assessed risks, and percieved threats that we are simply not aware of. It is always hard to understand even one other person's reasoning, much less a whole nation's. Conversely, many decisions may not come down to any calculus at all, but rather the personal preferences of this or that person, and from the outside it is almost impossible to assess who will be in charge of what decision. From that perspective, I think it is sometimes helpful to just wait and see.

 

[Phantom Chuck]

Another, simpler addition to the explanations by @BoraTas and @ENTED64 in response to @dingyibvs:

All the costs and performance effectiveness considerations aside - Bar some rare, exceptional circumstances, larger warships are always going to be comparably better at sustaining wartime damages of similar magnitudes + Be able to make it out alive than smaller warships. This isn't just true for aircraft carriers, but applies for all surface warships.

Just take a look at WW2, which is when the latest large-caled naval battles were fought to date.

Speaking of the navies of the Allied Powers - While there have been some escort carriers (which mostly displace about the 10000-ton ranges at full load) that were lost to enemy actions, there have been no full-fledged fleet carriers (which displace at least 25000 tons at full load) commissioned after the start of the Pacific War that were lost to enemy action.

This is because larger fleet carriers have greater reserve buoyancies than smaller escort carriers (which is directly related to their larger hull volumes), meaning that they can actually take in more seawater before losing enough buoyancy and sink than their smaller counterparts. Their larger sizes also meant that damages caused by enemy munitions are always effecting smaller portions/regions of the larger warship (of which damage control teams can better isolate and control the damages) than smaller warships, where hits by the same munitions would result in damages to larger portions/regions of the smaller warship.

Other equally important factors include compartmentalization (e.g. watertight bulkheads and doors), distributed systems that are crucial for the basic operations of the ship (e.g. steering), and built-in redundancies are always going to be implemented to a greater degree in larger warships than in smaller warships too are fundamental towards ensuring their higher chances of survival.

This holds true during WW2 (and the same for WW1 as well for surface combatants), and is still very much holding true today. Moreover, compared to the unguided dumb bombs and rockets back then, current and future warships today are facing guided subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic missiles with pin-point accuracies today and going forward.

Therefore, the suggestion of "building smaller carriers that field only single-digit fighters for better attrition sustainment and distributed warfare" makes no sense. Building multiple such carriers just to have them easily sunk by only one or couple enemy hits is not smart - That's called needlessly sending men to die and material to be lost for no attainable gain, plus unnecessarily wasting finite money and resources which would otherwise be spent for better and more effective options.

Most WWII era escort carriers were built on merchant hulls, It doesn’t take much for a fleet carrier built to naval standards to prove more durable than escort carriers.

The most important reason why no US fleet carriers completed during the war was sunk was rapid implementation of wartime lessons regarding damage control practices, not necessarily because wartime fleet carriers were bigger and therefore fundamentally more robust. in fact the largest and most robust carriers the U.S. navy had during WWII were not the wartime constructions, but the pair of converted battlecruisers, the Lexington and Saratoga. They were substantially larger than the wartime Essex class, and more heavily armored. But Lexington was lost early in the war due to being blown up after some poor damage control practices. But the lessons learned from the loss of Lexington was immediately implemented, and saved the Yorktown from suffering similar fate just a month later at Midway. The Yorktown water later sunk by Japanese submarine torpedoes, but that’s A different story, She did not suffer uncontrollable fire, and she did not blow up. The lessons learned from Lexington was also responsible for survival of several U.S. carriers that were hit by the Japanese in late 1942 and early 1943.

the Japanese, on the other hand were slow to absorb and lackadaisical in implementing wartime lessons regarding carrier damage control, Their later carriers were no smaller nor less robustly built then U.S. wartime carriers, but many of them were lost to uncontrollable fire or detonation of aviation gas or aircraft munitions Because faults with their damage control design detail and practices.

 

[AndrewS]

That's certainly possible. I'm not married to the 10k ton concept, just want to discuss a doctrinal shift away from ever bigger carriers. Maybe an 076 analogue with say 10 J-35s and 20 CCAs can be a more efficient use of resources.

This has been discussed before some years ago.

My view was that the [ship cost per deployed aircraft] would be similar for a fleet carrier and a 40K Type-076.
But of course, the Type-076 does have a lower top speed, and carries fewer supplies.

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Given that CCAs cost $20-30 Million, they aren't really expendable.

So I think there is a place in the battle network for a truly expendable drone such as a Valkyrie (<$3Mn), which can still deploy 500kg of payload.

It's difficult to justify space for these on a fleet carrier.
But a Type-076 hullform could supplement a fleet carrier, and specialise in large numbers of these expendable drones.

And in an air battle, the side with the most drones, wins.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Instead of mini carriers, perhaps small one time use recon drones that can be launched from strike length VLS would be a better use of resources. The role of these drones would be to search for enemy fleets, and relay the position of the enemy fleet back to the task force.

 

[00CuriousObserver]

I think there is a real need for medium sized carriers, something in the 50k to 65k ton range. While Yankee has said not to dismiss possibilities based on size, I personally don't think "mini carriers" are suitable.

Such a carrier operating in the Arabian Sea, supported by PLAAF over Pakistan, would be valuable even in a WESTPAC HIC.

In their recent stream, Yankee and Ayi discussed a hypothetical Type 077 medium sized aircraft carrier at length. Their comments are based entirely on personal analysis and not on any insider information. Essentially, even if a Type 077 is never built, the "mental gymnastics" around it are still meaningful and worthwhile.

• The development of larger gas turbines isn’t just "for fun", but rather it opens up new operational possibilities worth exploring. And it's incorrect to say that only steam turbines are suitable for large carriers; gas turbines are viable as well.
• In certain air wing configurations, an angled flight deck isn't strictly necessary. For example, if the air wing consists solely of J-35s and one type of UAV, a straight-deck carrier could still be effective. It's important to avoid rigid thinking, that the lack of an angled flight deck doesn't gatekeep the ship from being a real aircraft carrier.
• There's also export potential here. If a country is interested in a hypothetical J-35E (not J-35AE), such a small STOBAR carrier, even one without an angled deck, could be very sufficient.
• For the PLAN's surface combatants, having consistent and reliable aviation cover would be a significant advantage.
• Deploying a larger carrier to a region like the Middle East, even a carrier like the Liaoning or Shandong, would carry heavy political implications and is actually far from straightforward. A Type 077 would face far fewer constraints.
• Strategically, there are also clear advantages. Given China's limited carrier fleet in the near term, deploying a Type 077 for distant missions would be far less risky than sending a Fujian or larger vessel, especially if conflict were to erupt in the WESTPAC. A smaller carrier also imposes fewer constraints on shipyard selection and production timelines.
• You can think of the "Type 077" as a kind of "multirole aircraft carrier", in that it is efficient at handling "lower leveled" missions, while still being competitive in the higher end missions.
• The PLAN is currently between major shipbuilding phases. The teams behind the 075 and 076 need a new challenge to explore. The 076 remains highly experimental and far from perfect. Building a second one may not be the optimal next step, as opposed to having it serve as an intermediate step for the next generation of PLAN ships.

That said, these discussions around mini and medium carriers are getting off topic. Maybe once there’s solid confirmation on the 004, the mods could consider splitting this into a thread focused on future (conventional) PLAN carrier development.