CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I was factoring the date based on the information that had been given, not nexessarily sayng that it was my projeted date.
Probably not 6 years for sure...but 4 years given the larger carrier and given the newer technologies and completely different operating procedures may well be in the cards.
Time will tell.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
Another unit of the 003 class?
What information have we been given that would lead anyone to believe that it would be take 4-6 years to launch?
I don't like to share this kind of information with foreigners lol.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
This one at DL or at JN?
SinoSoldier
Colonel
Any idea if construction will be concurrent (or partially overlapping) or sequential?
Just to be sure ... the image on top is the recent one, the one below an older one?
Usually sea is being reclaimed for more land estate. Here we have an opposite example. Upside to a whole new huge basin is more pier estate for fitting out large ships like carriers. Perhaps even two such carriers could fit in such a basin, for various maintenance work in the future. And the basin can be closed and protected from both sabotage and espionage, more so than what protection 001 enjoyed when sitting pierside in Dalian.
Which brings me to the question: why haven't they just constructed a dry dock right there? So they don't even need to move the ship parts a lot, outside of the basin? There seems to be plenty of space for all of it. Yet they seem to have decided against the drydock. It seems way too late to construct a drydock, now that is has been flooded.
Perhaps a drydock could be made alongside the current assembly area. But wouldn't we have seen such construction by now? Seems like a lot of work to excavate a drydock and furnish it?
(additional cranes or small transport docks in the basin could be used to transport pieces)
Or how feasible would a large floating dock be? Similar to what Kuznetsov had in Russia? So the ship is fully assembled where it is now and then moved to a huge floating dock. Which is then flooded inside the basin, the ship is lowered into the sea and it stays right there in the basin for all the fitting out.
Some of these ideas are rather wild, I know. I'm just throwing them out there, to see if any will stick.
Usually sea is being reclaimed for more land estate. Here we have an opposite example. Upside to a whole new huge basin is more pier estate for fitting out large ships like carriers. Perhaps even two such carriers could fit in such a basin, for various maintenance work in the future. And the basin can be closed and protected from both sabotage and espionage, more so than what protection 001 enjoyed when sitting pierside in Dalian.
Which brings me to the question: why haven't they just constructed a dry dock right there? So they don't even need to move the ship parts a lot, outside of the basin? There seems to be plenty of space for all of it. Yet they seem to have decided against the drydock. It seems way too late to construct a drydock, now that is has been flooded.
Perhaps a drydock could be made alongside the current assembly area. But wouldn't we have seen such construction by now? Seems like a lot of work to excavate a drydock and furnish it?
(additional cranes or small transport docks in the basin could be used to transport pieces)
Or how feasible would a large floating dock be? Similar to what Kuznetsov had in Russia? So the ship is fully assembled where it is now and then moved to a huge floating dock. Which is then flooded inside the basin, the ship is lowered into the sea and it stays right there in the basin for all the fitting out.
Some of these ideas are rather wild, I know. I'm just throwing them out there, to see if any will stick.
Frankly I'm not even sure if the new "basin" is intended for anything other than transporting modules from the fabrication area to the drydock.
I am not sure if the carrier once launched from the drydock will be returned to the basin or not; I'm not sure if the basin is deep enough. That said, there certainly will be more than enough width to the basin to facilitate carriers docked on either side of the basin for certain fitting out work, and to still have enough room in the middle for transport of modules to the drydock across the yard.
It seems like to me it is possible that they've simply designed their "carrier workflow" to have the modules all be made into super blocks at that dedicated fabrication part of the yard, whereas the actual assembly of the super blocks and addition of the flight deck+island etc gets done at the drydock part of the yard. Who knows, maybe they decided that would be the most efficient way to go about it.