Is this the front end of the flight deck?
View attachment 71151
Yep, that could very well be the edge of the deck. I'm getting the edge to be around the same spot when I use 129 m as distance from the edge of the deflector to the edge of the deck.
When I measure the distance from the bow edge to some imaginary line right after the stern edge (Estimate of just a few meters of overhang of the currently visible stern edge) I get the following figure for the overall length: 316 m.
Now, the important thing there is that the same catapult lengths were used on 003 estimate as we can see both on Ford and Nimitz class.
While it's possible 003 will feature shorter catapults, perhaps like those on CVN65 Enterprise, which were 109 m from deck edge to deflector - even though they operated fairly heavy planes like F-14, I am somehow doubting Chinese ones will be that short. While they don't have to be quite as long as ones on Ford/Nimitz, J-15 and likely KJ600 do need quite a bit of catapult run. And future proofing the design for heavy aircraft is always prudent, as the carrier might have to operate for the next 40 years.
If the bow-to-deflector distances are 120 m from the deck edge to the deflector, and if we're indeed looking at the deck cut out locations for deflectors, then that might suggest overall carrier length of just 306 m.
Of course, all that is give or take a few meters. As the stern overhang isn't even know. It might be very miniscule.
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