00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter AETHER
- Start date
Different. I personally think Chinese carriers will grow well past the size of US carriers. US carriers didn't grow beyond 100,000 tonnes not because of tactical considerations. It was to conform with the limits of the Panama Channel. Growing carriers beyond 100,000 tonnes would be an easy shortcut for China to match USN's per carrier sortie numbers. I think the 004 will be bigger than the Fujian. There is no point in further complicating deck and hangar operations by cramming more aircraft when you can just build a bigger ship.
I'll be different but don't expect anything drastic.
Can you please make sure to post the original image as an attachment as well instead of just as a link?
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Anyway, I think these artworks are obviously not particularly high effort, and the depiction of configuration and details may or may not have certain bearing to the final actual arrangement of the eventual 004/X CVN.
The configuration of the "CVN" between the two angles does seem to have a degree of consistency between them like smaller island, placement of island, overall configuration.
It looks like the elevator placement is ala Ford (two starboard in front of the rear placed island, and one in the aft/port location).
But that sort of configuration is also something that many fan artists have made and also something that many of us have surmised as a reasonable and likely configuration of the 004/X CVN, so this doesn't necessarily mean anything. Interesting nevertheless.
The J-35 is also missing a rudder which is weird how someone would just miss to draw that which is why i believe it might be some AI assisted type of art
The thing is: Both Dalian and Jiangnan have proven themselves to be capable of building proper aircraft carriers (a CATOBAR supercarrier at that for the later).
Coupled with news from previous months and years, I believe there already is 100% confidence that Jiangnan is capable of building a CVN in the coming years. Dalian, meanwhile, I'd say 70-80%.
That aside, how sure are we that China's 4th carrier, i.e. CV-19 will be nuclear-powered CVN i.e. 004, instead of the conventionally-powered CV i.e. 003/003A/sister ship of Fujian?
This is because all the PLAN CVN illustrations that we have seen so far have the pennant number of 20, not 19.
These pictures don't change anything about our existing predictions (or rather, lack of predictions) for the carrier that will follow up CV-18 Fujian will be conventional or nuclear.
I would add, that even if these pictures had "19" on the drawings instead of "20" it still wouldn't change anything because we do not know what the actual significance of this art is, and we also technically do not know if the carrier in the art is conventional or nuclear, because while the island positioning and size looks more consistent with nuclear, we cannot rule out conventional either.
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I'll put it to everyone in this thread to keep in mind now and also into the future -- what we are waiting for now is categorical ruling out of the null hypothesis.
The null hypothesis is: "It is possible that the carrier "19" they will build after CV-18 Fujian may be conventionally powered".
What we are awaiting for, is strong evidence to rule out that null hypothesis, aka we await evidence to rule out the very possibility that the carrier "19" after Fujian could be conventionally powered.
The threshold for that kind of evidence is high, for example it would require something like many Chinese language PLA watching insiders all unanimously agreeing that "19" will be a CVN. Or it would require something like official PLA or PRC media outright stating that "19" would be nuclear powered. Or alternatively of course, if those things are not attained, then we'd have to wait till the actual construction of carrier "19" to look for definitive imagery that can rule out its possibility as being conventionally powered (e.g.: no smoke stack at all in the island).
So I'd advise people to wait more patiently, because we probably aren't going to definitively know if carrier "19" will be conventionally powered or nuclear powered for quite a while. Right now we are in the slow, tepid accumulation of circumstantial indicators stage, and it is important to avoid jumping the gun in making big calls that then need to be back pedalled by others.
lcloo
Captain
I had the same impression too, it took me quite some time to look again and again. The canted tail is there, it is just the angle that made it looked like just a thin white line.
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Dalian should have 100% confidence building the 100,000-ton, nuclear-powered CATOBAR carrier now. Much of the potential challenges and risks would be in design (701 Institute) and subsystems (EMALS, nuclear reactor, power plant , etc.). Construction of the hull and integration of the subsystems are much less of a challenge now. Dalian has everything it needs to do so.