CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

[Phead128]

GlobalTimes uses "EM catapults" and actively avoiding terms like "Chinese EMALS" when describing EM catapults on Fujian.

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On the other hand, GlobalTimes informally uses "Chinese AEGIS" to describe Type 052D AESA radar, portraying it as a peer of contemporary USN ships equipped with the "Aegis Combat System".

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From this, I can only conclude Chinese EM catapults don't want to be associated with shoddy reputation of General Atomic's EMALS or be considered a copy cat. GA's EMALS is plagued with reliability issues and low utilization rate. China's EM catapults work on a different principle with DC instead of AC and supercapacitors instead of flywheels. On the other hand, AEGIS is a proven system and worthy of peerhood or equivalence.

 

[Temstar]

I watched the live stream, first 1.5 hour is on carrier catapult history, PLAN history with catapults is in the last hour.
There were two points that were pretty interesting:

1. Acquiring HMAS Melbourne and its BS4 steam catapult was actually quite the unexpected windfall for PLAN, the BS4 was studied in detail and had the two earlier attempts at building carrier not being cancelled they may have been equipped with BS4 clones or derived steam catapults. Shilao showed off an internal manual (he double checked to make sure the book had a RRP, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to show this manual on air) from his collection with a section on workings of BS4:

At the time it would seem neither RAN nor UK or US thought China would go onto develop carriers and so didn't bother to remove the catapults from HMAS Melbourne. If something like the sale happened today they wouldn't make that mistake.

2. While reading through the last few pages with people saying Fujian's EM cats are powered by supercapacitors I recall having seen somewhere that that's not actually the case, and that Fujian's EM cats are in fact powered by flywheels too. In fact I recall somewhere on Weibo someone had a pretty official looking table listing the pros and cons between flywheel vs supercapacitors and it wasn't clear cut that supercapacitors are better. The team did specify in the stream that Fujian uses flywheels for the EM cats.

 

[Ironhide]

I watched the live stream, first 1.5 hour is on carrier catapult history, PLAN history with catapults is in the last hour.
There were two points that were pretty interesting:

1. Acquiring HMAS Melbourne and its BS4 steam catapult was actually quite the unexpected windfall for PLAN, the BS4 was studied in detail and had the two earlier attempts at building carrier not being cancelled they may have been equipped with BS4 clones or derived steam catapults. Shilao showed off an internal manual (he double checked to make sure the book had a RRP, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to show this manual on air) from his collection with a section on workings of BS4:
View attachment 122099
At the time it would seem neither RAN nor UK or US thought China would go onto develop carriers and so didn't bother to remove the catapults from HMAS Melbourne. If something like the sale happened today they wouldn't make that mistake.

2. While reading through the last few pages with people saying Fujian's EM cats are powered by supercapacitors I recall having seen somewhere that that's not actually the case, and that Fujian's EM cats are in fact powered by flywheels too. In fact I recall somewhere on Weibo someone had a pretty official looking table listing the pros and cons between flywheel vs supercapacitors and it wasn't clear cut that supercapacitors are better. The team did specify in the stream that Fujian uses flywheels for the EM cats.

where can we watch, link ?

 

[Temstar]

where can we watch, link ?

Paid members only:

Streams usually get uploaded to the Telegram group I hang out in some time within 24 hours. Once it's up I'll link it here.

 

[Ironhide]

Paid members only:

Streams usually get uploaded to the Telegram group I hang out in some time within 24 hours. Once it's up I'll link it here.

Okay, appreciate it

 

[P5678]

The EMALS (which should really have "TM" associated with it)

Just did a quick search at USPTO, looks like EMALS is not a trademark of anything.

 

[Blitzo]

Just did a quick search at USPTO, looks like EMALS is not a trademark of anything.

I'm not saying it is a trademark (otherwise we would be seeing it with "TM" now and then in general atomics marketing), but rather that for our purposes it is a product name.

 

[taxiya]

I am very surprised that many posts here saying that CV-18 uses supercapacitor as energy storage system. So I searched around and find that this notion is popular by many internet posters after CV-18's cat test.

The fact is that we only have official paper by Ma Weiming stating that his EM cat chooses flywheel. There is nothing else. So the notion of supercapacitor is for the moment baseless.

Members here should avoid spreading it without any new evidence to keep the standard of this forum high. At least people should put the notion as a question in the forum instead of taking it as a fact.

 

[taxiya]

I watched the live stream, first 1.5 hour is on carrier catapult history, PLAN history with catapults is in the last hour.
There were two points that were pretty interesting:

1. Acquiring HMAS Melbourne and its BS4 steam catapult was actually quite the unexpected windfall for PLAN, the BS4 was studied in detail and had the two earlier attempts at building carrier not being cancelled they may have been equipped with BS4 clones or derived steam catapults. Shilao showed off an internal manual (he double checked to make sure the book had a RRP, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to show this manual on air) from his collection with a section on workings of BS4:
View attachment 122099
At the time it would seem neither RAN nor UK or US thought China would go onto develop carriers and so didn't bother to remove the catapults from HMAS Melbourne. If something like the sale happened today they wouldn't make that mistake.

2. While reading through the last few pages with people saying Fujian's EM cats are powered by supercapacitors I recall having seen somewhere that that's not actually the case, and that Fujian's EM cats are in fact powered by flywheels too. In fact I recall somewhere on Weibo someone had a pretty official looking table listing the pros and cons between flywheel vs supercapacitors and it wasn't clear cut that supercapacitors are better. The team did specify in the stream that Fujian uses flywheels for the EM cats.

Maybe this is the table, it is from Ma Weiming's paper from 2016. I marked them in color, Orange: forbiding factors. Green: desirable. Blue: acceptable. It is clear that supercapacitor in the 2016s are not suitable for EM cat due to its low reliability, frequent need to replace and repair, short life. Some of the factors are unlikely going to improve over time because they are inheret disadvantages of supercapacitor (chemical degradation).

 

[iantsai]

The problem is the acronym is still the same.
EMALS regardless of how you want to break down the acronym, still is the name that is first used by General Atomics for their specific product.
At the present day, "EMALS" has yet to reach the level of ubiquity that something like "laser" or "sonar" or "radar" is.


The whole point is that "EMALS" currently IS the name of a product by a company, and adopting specific product names for PLAN equivalent systems leads to the risk of misinterpretation of origin, function and details -- and at worst will actively cause confusion.


Really, we should be taking extra effort to be more precise in nomenclature and use the extra effort to be more careful.

By calling the CV-18's catapults as "EMALS" you give the risk of making people wonder "is there a relationship between the CV-18's launch system and that of the USN/Ford class" and "are they both electromagnetic catapults or are they in a separate category themselves" and "do the Chinese call their systems by an English acronym as well".

Instead, imagine if everyone only ever started referring to CV-18's catapults as "EM catapults" or "EM cats" rather than "EMALS". It means that anyone reading it would automatically recognize that it was distinct and different from the EMALS product that they would already know about from General Atomics and the USN because that product is the one which emerged first and of course is more widely known.

I don't think this would be a trouble.

As long as we refer to EMALS by its full name, Electro-Magnetic Assisted Launch System, every time we mention it, the world will know that it is just an acronym for a concept. In fact, this acronym is the most appropriate, and any other way of writing it would be more complicated and unfamiliar to the public.

As for the American slur of "theft", why do you care? They do it every day, and it doesn't help even if you change the acronym.