That may be so for the SU-33, but it is not so for the J-15.
CV-17 Shandong (002 carrier) Thread I ...News, Views and operations
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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I'll repost a previous paragraph that I've written before:
"I believe what catapults offer is the ability to more reliably launch heavily loaded fighters under a variety of conditions (including minimal head wind) as well as if a fighter's engine fails during a launch, thus making a catapult safer and more flexible in launching fighters compared to ski jumps.
Catapults also of course are the only reliable way to launch aircraft like fixed wing AEWC, which a ski jump likely cannot do.
Catapults therefore offer a far greater margin for safety and flexibility when launching heavily loaded planes than ski jumps, but that does not mean ski jumps cannot inherently launch heavily loaded planes"
In other words, if we want to compare the most obvious advantages of a CATOBAR vs STOBAR carrier, it is probably not a simple case of:
CATOBAR:
-can launch heavy strike jets
STOBAR:
-can't launch heavy strike jets
And it's more like:
CATOBAR:
-can launch heavy strike jets under a wide variety of conditions in a reliable manner (such as including an engine failure on a twin engine jet)
-can reliably launch fixed wing AEW&C
-other benefits such as increased bow deck area for parking planes, relative to a STOBAR carrier
STOBAR:
-can launch heavy strike jets under some conditions with sufficient wind-over-deck but cannot launch in as wide variety of conditions as a CATOBAR ship
-can't reliably launch fixed wing AEW&C
-reduced bow deck area for parking planes
I appreciate that everyone, especially media, likes to simplify things down, so we end up with mantras like "jets launched from ski jump carriers can't conduct strike missions because they can't take off with heavy loads," but in reality it's probably a far more nuanced situation than that, and it's probably better said as "jets launched from ski jump carriers can conduct strike missions if they are launched from the ship under the right conditions, however the conditions for launch are more stringent than a catapult carrier including with likely greater risks for fighters if they experience engine failures during launch".
Unfortunately the second sentence doesn't look as snappy on paper...
Take all that together, and obviously it is logical for why the Chinese Navy would want to move towards CATOBAR carriers, because a reliable CATOBAR carrier still offers greater all around capabilities and flexibility than an equivalent STOBAR carrier.
Equation
Lieutenant General
The advantage of cats is the launch area is much smaller. To launch heavy strike aircraft and radar aircraft with just a ski you need a large part of the carrier's deck. So for a given deck area cats allow more aircraft to be handled. When the cat is build into the ski ramp the advantage is even larger.
Exact clearly less room available in a STOBAR during air operations lauching
Intrepid
Major
With numbers and names we are allways wrong. Remember: "Varyag" isn't "Shi Lang". Surprise! It was named "Liaoning".
Lol, speak for yourself
I never believed the ex-Varyag would be named the "Shi Lang" -- it was such a needlessly political and inflammatory name, I don't think why anyone took it seriously. If anything it seemed like one of those names that certain western defence commentators would've coined because of some ill conceived notion of the Chinese military's supposed central focus on Taiwan... where in reality all Chinese Navy ships have had politically neutral, non-inflammatory geographic names instead.
And I don't think anyone made any serious predictions about ex-Varyag's pennant number either...
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