00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread

[taxiya]

and would point towards 004's powerplant being less advanced than the Ford. Considering the best estimates put the 004 at around Ford's size, not wildly above it, and 004's reactor boxes already appeared larger than Fords through satellite imagery.

It doesn't mean so. Ford would benifit from a larger auxiliary plant too. The issue is not how advanced (reliable) an reactor can be, it is about what more one can do once in that situation. So long as a ship has auxiliary power, the bigger the better (provided there is room).

BTW, I agree that the funnel might be too big for my suggestion.

 

[AndrewS]

So Im guessing this mean that the 9 carriers by 2035 rumor is now dead.

It's more than a rumour. It made its way into an official Pentagon report presented to Congress.

 

[AndrewS]

This conjecture is inherently absurd. Even assuming the the oretical peak capacity of the two existing shipyards (DL and JN)—completing hull construction in the dock or on the slipway within 24 months, followed by an equal period for outfitting and another 18 months for sea trials and acceptance—it is practically impossible to complete a '3+3' carrier buildup within the next decade.

Furthermore, neither shipyard is capable of immediately laying the keel for the next hull the moment the previous one is launched. Currently, there is no evidence suggesting that China will adopt a tandem construction model similar to that of Dry Dock 12 at Newport News Shipbuilding. Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact that the Type 004, as the first large nuclear-powered carrier, will likely require a significantly more extended outfitting and debugging cycle.

There's still a few more years before it makes sense for the Chinese Navy to build lots of aircraft carriers.

1. Currently, the Chinese military would struggle to secure the 1st Island Chain, and there's no point building lots of aircraft carriers to do this, as land-based aircraft are a much better option.

We can see that Chinese 5th-gen fighters are still ramping up production levels, and it will still be another ~5 years (~1000 fighters) before they are confident enough in the 1st Island Chain.

2. It will also take a few years for suitable aircraft carrier design(s) to be developed/tested, before commencing serial production.

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So in the 2030-2035 period , they could plan on 2 shipyards building 4 carriers. We have previously seen 4 Forrestal-class carriers launched in a 5 year time period.

That just means 2 aircraft carriers from now until 2030.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

It's more than a rumour. It made its way into an official Pentagon report presented to Congress.

Why are you guys still so hung up on that report?

That same report claimed that China is still importing GT25000 engines from Ukraine in 2024-2025, and that China still has even fewer ballistic missiles than Iran, to start with. This is yet to mention how they've decided to exclude most of the PLA developments in 2025 from a report called "CMPR 2025", among other deficiencies.

In fact, I would suggest dropping that report from the discussion entirely. The level of professionalism expected from the report has not been met since CMPR 2024, if not earlier.

 

[AndrewS]

According to @水雷屋 on Weibo, based on the insider information that he has gathered so far (from some related suppliers involved in construction projects), there should be no such thing as a so-called "Type 003 #2 ship, i.e. sister ship to Fujian" in the south (Jiangnan). Otherwise, there would be no reason for its hull sections/modules to remain unseen until now.

View attachment 169098

Remember that the Fujian was originally designed with steam catapults in mind, before it switched to EM catapults midway through construction.

So you wouldn't want to build another Fujian sister ship anyway.

An updated conventional aircraft carrier design would be better.

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Plus it doesn't make sense to have China currently building 2 new and different carrier designs.

There is likely only 1 carrier design team, so it makes sense to stagger construction to reduce the workload and allow for learnings from Type-004 to be applied to the next carrier (an updated conventional carrier launched before 2030?), so that serial production of aircraft carriers can begin ~2030.

 

[latenlazy]

So Im guessing this mean that the 9 carriers by 2035 rumor is now dead.

I wouldn’t exclude it categorically, just assign it low probability. There’s still a chance that more shipyards pick up construction for conventional carriers to fill numbers, if the intention isn’t to constrain future fleet count only to nuclear carriers.

 

[Syrida2887]

It looks like the flight deck has been hoisted and laid, and according to the current speed forecast, it may overtake the progress of 80 Big E within two months.

 

[Blitzo]

I thought it again about the smoke stack of Wuhan mockup. Could it be for GT auxiliary power plant for a CVN?

The "wierdness" of this mockup is the location of the smoke stack. It is too aft to have reasonable sized GTs to be installed there and drive the ship. If it is only auxiliary power plant, it would be small enough to be put there. If the ship is IEPS, driving the ship using GT during emergency isn't a problem either.

Why use GT for auxiliary plant? It can generate much more electricity than diesel plant as ford does. Ford's electricity plant is made primarily by steam from the reactor. Its auxiliary plant is from diesel which acts to smooth out electricity load during normal operation because reactor can not be quickly turned up or down. In an emergency like reactor shutdown, the diesel acts as the only source which would be very limited to lighting, basic communication and cooling and rebooting reactors, probably the ship can't move. With a larger GT auxiliary the ship can still operate to some extent including slow moving, lauching a few aircrafts for self-defence, recover aircrafts that are out of fuel.

Note, I don't necessarily propose the idea of this ship being fully IEPS because the steam turbine could be directly driving the shaft. I only suggest that the auxiliary plant drives the shafts through coaxial mounted electric motors. Also keep in mind that the aft location greatly reduces the chance of the main power plant being GT.

I think it is more likely that the smoke stack is not intended for the CVN in the first place, and is either part of the mockup itself for some reason, or as previously discussed done for consideration of a potential CV's island design.

At this stage the idea of the CVN having a smoke stack should be very low on the list of considerations and imo if it was some sort of mixed propulsion CVN that would have filtered through to us by now.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

SOYO responded to the news by @水雷屋 on Weibo.

No 003-mod CV is good news.

I’ve mentioned before that going with a minor modification of the 003 CV would yield very low returns, whereas going for a major modification of the 003 CV would essentially mean building a completely new aircraft carrier from scratch. Hence, it would be better to start with a new design altogether.

As for whether more conventionally-powered CVs will be built in the future, personally I think we may wait for the second half of 2027. The PLAN has a significant demand for CATOBAR CVs, and it is unlikely they will procure only one such carrier within the next 8 years. Therefore, the next aircraft carrier is expected to appear around the latter half of 2027. More concrete conclusions can only be drawn once new hull sections emerge.

If the PLAN is open to a conventionally-powered version of the PANG, then a cost-effective aircraft carrier could still emerge even as nuclear-powered carriers enter mass production. However, production orders would likely be placed at shipyards beyond Dalian (most likely to be Jiangnan).

 

[def333]

How this should be interpreted, that Jiangnan will not be building another carrier soon (which would be a real bummer), or that they will build one, but likely it will be a 004 sister rather than a 003 repeat?

Both the Shanghai and Dalian shipyards are building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.