CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
MwRYum
Major
Well it certainly won't make it in time for the ongoing situations anyway...
I think it appears slow because many people visiting this site or others frequently want to see something new. In reality, these first in class are usually slow, better slow than forcing fast concurrency build resulting in a large batches of Ford, LCS, zumwalts...
The first time a Chinese shipyard is building a conventional CATOBAR carrier.
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The PLAN reportedly had issues with the electromagnetic catapults early on, a new technology for them. I wholly expect China is going to stumble a few times while they develop their carrier program, especially with types 003 and 004. It's to be expected to a degree.
Now if 2025 rolls around and it's still sitting in drydock there's definitely a problem.
Now if 2025 rolls around and it's still sitting in drydock there's definitely a problem.
It looks like it's going to be launched next year so it doesn't seem that slow IMO for a completely new design with completely new technologies.
On average carriers have been launched 3-4 years from being laid down in the US. I think Shandong was 3 years from keel being laid down to launch. For Type 003 it looks like 5 years if it was laid down in 2017, 7 years if it was really laid down in 2015.
Not sure which estimate of it being laid down is more accurate but if it was laid down in 2017 then 5 years isn't bad at all considering the leap in capability.
Launch is not exactly a gate-check of success nor is it a good indicator of construction completion. At the very least, you need to include the outfitting time. But in all honesty also the trials and debugging time. In my book, the most basic gate-check would be the date of delivery to PLAN. But even then, you cannot be confident that everything has been sorted out. Look at Gerard Ford: it was delivered in 2017 to the USN, but construction is still ongoing on that ship.
I think it is slowed because it is a long term project, China faces some acute and a rapidly evolving threat environment that a new, partially built carrier of a new kind couldn’t possibly be brought to operation efficiency fast enough to affect. So the completion of this ship is given a lower priority. It can be completed when the threat environment stabilizes and long term policies can be formulated.
Yea but then if you compare it to Ford as you sort of did in the last sentence, Type 003 is not late at all. From keel lay down in November 2009 to now April 2021 it's still not in operational service.
So Ford is >11 years so far and Type 003 is 4-6 years so far (depending on when keel was laid down). And with Type 003 expected to launch next year and possibly commissioning happening 2 years after you're talking about 7-9 years.
Comparatively speaking the Type 003 isn't all that late is all I'm saying.