CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
5 years
Intrepid
Major
First pictures from building process in the drydock second half of this year or first half of next year.
Great thanks. I need a new fix.
There's a logistics tipping point where supporting a floating air field on distant seas becomes tortuous. And the returns diminish. As it is US carriers don't go to sea with their max possible air group. Efficiency and size don't always have an easy relationship.
The new Ford class will ease some of the logistics burden. But I expect the Ford class will be the largest warship the U.S. will build. Technology and design improvements means we will probably see heavy aircraft carriers range top out in the low 80k ton range.
It's actually not as simple as 100k is truly optimal. The USN would say that because 100k is what they've got.
In the 1940s and 1950s, there was no SSBN, and to stay relevant in a world where the next war was expected to be all out nuclear Armageddon, the USN thought in terms of carriers large enough to fly bombers large enough to make strategic nuclear penetration strikes deep into enemy shore. This set the size of American carriers to around 75-80K tons range. This range was dictated by the need to fly large strategic penetration strike aircraft like the A3, a-5, or a few others that didn't make it off the drawing board, off the carrier deck.
In the late 1950s the first nuclear carrier Enterprise was outsized because she needed to shield 8 reactor rooms. So she topped out at 90K.
But the next 2 Carriers of the mid 1960s returned to around 80-85K. By this time Polaris missiles have been deployed to SSBNs, and nuclear strategic strike role for carriers faded. However, 80K remains a suitable size for deploying a good complement of tactical aircraft because although a few large strategic strike aircraft disappeared, largeish tactical aircraft like F-4 phantom and A-6 intruder now proliferated.
But in the late 1960s, the large remaining fleet of WWII era Essex class carrier devoted to ASW work was reaching retirement, and there was no budget to replace them. So the fleet ASW helicopters and planes must now operate from the large super carriers. To retain a reasonable tactical air wing and then an additional accommodate 8-10 ASW aircraft and another 8-10 ASW helicopters required more size. Hence carrier size went up with Nimitz class again to 90-95K tons. Nimitz was envisioned to carry 104 aircraft and helicopters.
When Reagan came in he made it a electoral selling point to expand the fleet from 12 super carriers to 15 super carriers. However, the administration put more emphasis on what was promised on paper than what can effectively deployed. So starting from the mid 1980s the number of carrier decks went up, but the number of planes per deck went down as aircraft procurement budget lagged carrier construction. The navy put out several motion concepts of what aircraft complement the carriers should have, those all involve around 95 aircraft per deck. but they were never achieved due to aircraft shortage before the end of the Cold War.
After the end of the Cold War, and the disappearance of very highly capitalized and sophisticated threats to American carriers disappeared, replaced by more diffuse threats. So the most niche aircraft were the fist to go. So large F-14, A-6, and S-2 disappeared from the flight deck and smaller but more versatile F-18 proliferated. But there were no funds to replace lost aircraft one to one, So a deck load went from about 85 aircraft, half of them large, to about 65-70 aircraft, all of them missiles. But the Nimitz design was established, and it was probably politically inadvisable for the navy to concede that a smaller carrier was really better optimized for the current air wing, lest the admission that smaller deck is better come back to haunt the navy if in the future larger deck is needed again. Hence Nimitz size of 100K is here to stay, despite the fact that each Nimitz now operate fewer and smaller aircraft than the class was designed for in the late 1960s, when the air wing was envisioned to be 104 aircrafts.
In the 1940s and 1950s, there was no SSBN, and to stay relevant in a world where the next war was expected to be all out nuclear Armageddon, the USN thought in terms of carriers large enough to fly bombers large enough to make strategic nuclear penetration strikes deep into enemy shore. This set the size of American carriers to around 75-80K tons range. This range was dictated by the need to fly large strategic penetration strike aircraft like the A3, a-5, or a few others that didn't make it off the drawing board, off the carrier deck.
In the late 1950s the first nuclear carrier Enterprise was outsized because she needed to shield 8 reactor rooms. So she topped out at 90K.
But the next 2 Carriers of the mid 1960s returned to around 80-85K. By this time Polaris missiles have been deployed to SSBNs, and nuclear strategic strike role for carriers faded. However, 80K remains a suitable size for deploying a good complement of tactical aircraft because although a few large strategic strike aircraft disappeared, largeish tactical aircraft like F-4 phantom and A-6 intruder now proliferated.
But in the late 1960s, the large remaining fleet of WWII era Essex class carrier devoted to ASW work was reaching retirement, and there was no budget to replace them. So the fleet ASW helicopters and planes must now operate from the large super carriers. To retain a reasonable tactical air wing and then an additional accommodate 8-10 ASW aircraft and another 8-10 ASW helicopters required more size. Hence carrier size went up with Nimitz class again to 90-95K tons. Nimitz was envisioned to carry 104 aircraft and helicopters.
When Reagan came in he made it a electoral selling point to expand the fleet from 12 super carriers to 15 super carriers. However, the administration put more emphasis on what was promised on paper than what can effectively deployed. So starting from the mid 1980s the number of carrier decks went up, but the number of planes per deck went down as aircraft procurement budget lagged carrier construction. The navy put out several motion concepts of what aircraft complement the carriers should have, those all involve around 95 aircraft per deck. but they were never achieved due to aircraft shortage before the end of the Cold War.
After the end of the Cold War, and the disappearance of very highly capitalized and sophisticated threats to American carriers disappeared, replaced by more diffuse threats. So the most niche aircraft were the fist to go. So large F-14, A-6, and S-2 disappeared from the flight deck and smaller but more versatile F-18 proliferated. But there were no funds to replace lost aircraft one to one, So a deck load went from about 85 aircraft, half of them large, to about 65-70 aircraft, all of them missiles. But the Nimitz design was established, and it was probably politically inadvisable for the navy to concede that a smaller carrier was really better optimized for the current air wing, lest the admission that smaller deck is better come back to haunt the navy if in the future larger deck is needed again. Hence Nimitz size of 100K is here to stay, despite the fact that each Nimitz now operate fewer and smaller aircraft than the class was designed for in the late 1960s, when the air wing was envisioned to be 104 aircrafts.
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WOW...that's some pretty deep historical insight....! Thumbs up.
So I imagine that instead of imitating USN PLAN will consider what its flattops need to do, how large they need to be, will there be CV(N) and LHD or ever more kinds. PLAN might well decide that smaller specialized flattops are the way to go - large CVN but smaller than those of USN with helicopters for communication, smaller ones for ASW helicopters or ASW plus UCAV's, LHD with helicopters and UCAV's. Could some be profitably fitted with nuclear propulsion? The same reactors as used in cruisers? Looking ten or twenty years into the future should provide provisional answers. Those answers will have been applied to the problem what should be the size of Types 002 and 003.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
I think PLAN will imitate US CVNs (loosely speaking) for the right or wrong reason as stated by Richard above. The USN and the US political machine have marketed supercarriers pretty darn well and that is essentially the gold standard for naval aviation and power projection.
In my personal opinion I think a 125-150k carrier is actually more practical for PLAN than it is for the USN.. At least in the foreseeable future. The domain of the PLAN is primarily SCS and westpac. Unlike the USN, they are severely lacking in FOBs and since their primary area of operations is up to the 3rd island chain a gargantuan carrier is actually more feasible. Take into account the size of the j15 or down the road perhaps a navalized j20, a good deck and larger hanger space is always welcome.
A 125k carrrier in terms of exterior size is not going to be significantly much larger than a 100k CVNs we see today. As we are all well aware displacement does not equate to corresponding dimensions. It would still be still practical but yet not big enough where it becomes a logistical and operational nightmare.