J-15 and j-20 are approximately F-14 or A-5 sized. In themselves they do not call for larger carriers then the Nimitz. The only justification for a larger carrier would be it somehow is advantageous to carry a larger air wing. We already know Nimitz is capable of supporting an mixed air wing of 95 medium and large tactical fixed wing aircraft plus about 10 medium/large helicopters. To justify an even larger carrier requires a belief that the optimal air wing per flight deck is more than 100 fixed wing aircraft.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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The need for China is not deep strike or CAS as needed for regime change. It is inducing USN to remain far from China and to protect SLOC. So the aircraft used on the large flattops will mostly be fighters and accompanied by a small number of radar aircraft and later probably ASW aircraft. But helicopters and possible counterparts to V-22 can be based on smaller flattops. That makes operations simpler and easier which is very important when you don't have a tradition of many decades. Good reason for PLAN to think for itself and not accept an inappropriate Gold Standard.
It will make a CBG larger but China can point to its smaller CVN's to impress smaller countries that it isn't equipped for regime change. And it can have more CVN's than USN and still say it is less aggressive.
It will make a CBG larger but China can point to its smaller CVN's to impress smaller countries that it isn't equipped for regime change. And it can have more CVN's than USN and still say it is less aggressive.
Deterring the US means being able to strike at their forward bases in the pacific. Naval strike capabilities aren't only useful for regime change.
For the next 20 years, unless it was truly a Pearl Harbor style unexpected sneak attack in times of peace, the chances that Chinese carriers can conduct a successdul strike against a US base in Japan or an US island territory, let alone escape intact to remain useable national assets, is nonexistent. If china were to succeed in striking at these bases in times of war, it would be with ballistic missiles in the near term and ballistic missiles, long range cruise missiles and bombers firing stand off weapons in the medium term.
For the next 20 years, the role of Chinese carrier would be to ensure sea control in areas that would be at the distal end of the operating ranges of land based air power of one of the SCS nations, or to confront the Japanese navy if Japan were to pursue independent aggressive action outside of Japanese-US security treaty, or to act as a fleet in being to inconvenience American fleet operation within 1000 miles of Chinese shore, or to mop up an American task force that may have been damaged by shore based air power.
For the next 20 years, the role of Chinese carrier would be to ensure sea control in areas that would be at the distal end of the operating ranges of land based air power of one of the SCS nations, or to confront the Japanese navy if Japan were to pursue independent aggressive action outside of Japanese-US security treaty, or to act as a fleet in being to inconvenience American fleet operation within 1000 miles of Chinese shore, or to mop up an American task force that may have been damaged by shore based air power.
Why must Chinese carriers have to conduct a sneak attack to be useful in a naval strike scenario?
The role of a mature form of Chinese carrierborne air power in any future high intensity conflict scenario will very much be operating in conjunction with land based air power, land based missile power, and of course other elements of the conventional surface and sub surface navy. In the context of conducting strikes against forward US bases, the role of a carrier will include everything from supplementing land based air power in strikes, to providing organic CAP to the task force, to conducting forward based fixed wind AEW&C missions to provide ISR for the mission, all in conjunction with the aforementioned capability of land based bombers, strike aircraft, air superiority fighters, and IRBMs/SRBMs and LACMs.
Because in the next 20 years, the US will deploy substantially larger number of carriers with larger air wings in any conflict with china. Hence Chinese carriers operating outside of effective range of land based fighter cover is unlikely to operate effectively, and also unlikely to survive for that matter, to say nothing of their chances if they were indeed to operate inside the range of American land based air cover. I think it will take china 30-40 years to match the US navy.
That's all nice and well but I think the post you were responding to (latenlazy's, above) wasn't talking about "how long will it take China to match the US Navy" but rather asking "what the role of Chinese carriers will be in the context of a naval strike against US forward bases in the pacific", which in turn I think we can logically expand slightly to be "what the role of Chinese carriers would be in the context of an overall high intensity conflict in the westpac".
So, to answer my partially rhetorical question in my last post, I think your insinuation that the role of Chinese carriers in a naval strike scenario (or indeed in a larger high intensity conflict scenario) being only limited to a "sneak attack" situation is flawed and incorrect.
It's not either or between carrier strikes and missile strikes. The latter complements and enables the former. This is one tactical mistake that seems very common in assessments of China's military strategy coming out of D.C. It's not like China is building military capabilities just for the next decade. Their white papers make it very clear their time horizons are much longer.
Edit: Even if the scope of their carrier program is limited to what you're describing though, successfully contending with the US and its allies 1000 miles from the Chinese coast probably requires the power projection of a carrier strike group. That far out, the keystone of American power is those forward bases. You're not going to be able to successfully attack those just using long distance stand off air power and surface launched missiles. That far out the pK for your missiles drop substantially, and your strikes become exponentially vulnerable to countermeasures.
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I too find many of the thinktankland and defence media rationale of China's carrier aspirations as a bit oversimplistic.
tbh it should really just be common sense that if you're trying to hit a well defended target, a strike is more likely to be successful when your attack is multi-domain, and it doesn't require that much common sense to realize that for the Chinese military, a significant part of that eventual combined fires will likely be enabled through a mature carrier based airpower.
Too much singular fixation on "asymmetry" and "A2AD". "Thinktankland" tries to approach China strategy from the standpoint of where and how a technically and economically inferior opponent can leverage and exploit weaknesses to stay competitive. While there's nothing inherently faulty about this approach, I think they often develop myopia being too impressed with themselves about novel concepts, and forget to look at China's military development holistically. Specifically, I think what the US common defense analysis on China often misses is that: 1) Asymmetry is most useful for resource constrained adversaries, and China is no longer resource constrained. 2) For adversaries that aren't resource constrained strategic choices aren't diametrically exclusive, and asymmetric approaches that stem from pursuit of cost efficiency, by virtue of their cost effective nature, can be *layered* onto other approaches. 3) China is not the Soviet Union, even though many treat the two as substitutes of one another in their thinking.
The US defense community primarily tries to understand China's strategy for a potential China-US conflict through the standpoint of how China tries to deter the US, but China primarily thinks about a potential conflict with the US from the standpoint of how it can beat and supplant the US decisively in the entirety of the Pacific theater, which requires a lot more than beating US naval groups. There's a misunderstanding of doctrine and strategic objectives on the part of many US observers that skews and misleads their analysis. While maybe not an entirely fair characterization, one could maybe simplify the reason for this as China respecting their potential adversary a lot more than vice versa. China's answer to US CVGs probably shouldn't be symmetrical, but that doesn't mean that's all China should or is aiming to build for.