Ideal chinese carrier thread

[man overbored]

I will confess my disappointment that the Freestyle never made it into fleet use. I was very interested to see if it would pan out. I will also confess we had a grudging respect for the Sovs when they showed he world STOBAR. Not the ideal solution since it restricts payload quite a bit, but still quite a surprise to see a big ol' honking Flanker do a free deck run and launch over a ski jump. Some of their dodgy landings made for good watching as well! As fellow naval aviators you don't want to see the next guy crash and burn but watching them prang the occasional aircraft with no injury is fine ( kind of like auto racing ). Operationally their carrier remains a dud, but is probably as effective as the Charles de Gaulle assuming equal air groups ( big assumption, my nod goes to the French by dint of greater sea time ). Both carriers have miserable power plants too. When all is said and done I will bet money that in exercises the British version of the new carrier out performs the French version of that same hull with a higher daily sortie rate and a more forgiving place to fly from in bad weather. Kuznetsov with Flankers vs Queen Mary with F-35's? The RN would be unbeatable in that face off.

 

[Jeff Head]

I will confess my disappointment that the Freestyle never made it into fleet use. I was very interested to see if it would pan out. I will also confess we had a grudging respect for the Sovs when they showed he world STOBAR. Not the ideal solution since it restricts payload quite a bit, but still quite a surprise to see a big ol' honking Flanker do a free deck run and launch over a ski jump. Some of their dodgy landings made for good watching as well! As fellow naval aviators you don't want to see the next guy crash and burn but watching them prang the occasional aircraft with no injury is fine ( kind of like auto racing ). Operationally their carrier remains a dud, but is probably as effective as the Charles de Gaulle assuming equal air groups ( big assumption, my nod goes to the French by dint of greater sea time ). Both carriers have miserable power plants too. When all is said and done I will bet money that in exercises the British version of the new carrier out performs the French version of that same hull with a higher daily sortie rate and a more forgiving place to fly from in bad weather. Kuznetsov with Flankers vs Queen Mary with F-35's? The RN would be unbeatable in that face off.

Well, a couple of advantages that the French surely have are, 1) The have a much stronger AWACS capability than either the RUssians or the British, 2) They are launching off of cats and have a lot of experience with it so their aircraft weapons/fuel loads are enhanced in terms of weight and mix, and 3) as regards the Russians, the French are capable of conducting night operations where the Russians, as far as I understand, have not mastered it yet..

Anyhow, did you see the following thread? It's about the latest major deployment of the Kuznetsov and the pics are really nice. Have a look see.

Russian Carrier Strike Group conducting manuevers in med and Atlantic

 

[Obi Wan Russell]

Jeff Head said:
I believe the PLAN has removed those ASM silos forward on the Varyag and could well have made use of that space. Though the missile launchers appear to be gone, we cannot be sure that the space has been made use of...but they have certainly had plenty of time to do so.

Having studied available plans and photos of the Varyag, I'm of the opinion that the Missile silos are too far forward to actually interfere with the hangar space itself, though they are taking up valuable internal volume better used for other things, which could have the knock on effect of increasing hangar volume. There are several compartments in between the forward hangar bulkhead and the silos and removal of the latter could free up space for re arrangement of these compartments which in turn would allow the hagar bulkhead to be moved forward, allowing for structural issues of course.

 

[Jeff Head]

Jeff Head said:
I believe the PLAN has removed those ASM silos forward on the Varyag and could well have made use of that space. Though the missile launchers appear to be gone, we cannot be sure that the space has been made use of...but they have certainly had plenty of time to do so.

Having studied available plans and photos of the Varyag, I'm of the opinion that the Missile silos are too far forward to actually interfere with the hangar space itself, though they are taking up valuable internal volume better used for other things, which could have the knock on effect of increasing hangar volume. There are several compartments in between the forward hangar bulkhead and the silos and removal of the latter could free up space for re arrangement of these compartments which in turn would allow the hagar bulkhead to be moved forward, allowing for structural issues of course.

Well, unless and until we get good photos or word from exactly what work has gone on internally (and this is just one of a myriad of questions regarding that), we can only judge by what we see externally.

Clearly the launch tubes have been covered over on deck and will not be used. Given the amount of work that has gone into her externally, and the amount of time they have had her, I presume that the tubes have been removed and good use made of that space.

But time will tell. I am still thinking that between late-2008 and mid-2010 we will see something very definitive with the Varyag.

 

[man overbored]

I have seen these photos before, but of course they are still interesting. I definitely noticed the lousy paint adhesion on the port side. The Russians are still not there, they cannot even get the most basic things correct. One of the things I like to show friends are photos from a day we encountered the Admiral Spiridanov in the vicinity of Dlego Garcia in 1986. This was the Soviet's first Pacific Fleet Udaloy ( and the first Soviet ship in the Pacific with top plate which was of interest to my then girlfriend an intel officer ), fresh from the yards and already the paint was down to primer on the bow and missing paint and running rust was visible on the superstructure as well. Open portholes on the hull tells us the ship does not have any air conditioning and poor to no NBC protection. In the IO a lack of AC would be pure misery. Then I show a photo of USS Chandler I took on the same flight, tied to a pier on Diego Garcia. Older ship that travelled a similar distance but no rust and perfect paint ( and US warships long ago ceased to have portholes as AC appeared during WWII on large ships and was universal by the 1960's and the need for good NBC protection, portholes a major weak link ). That is professionalism and the Russians are not there.

 

[Roger604]

the domestic naval flanker program is well under way. If my interpretation of avic1 articles is correct, then they are assembling their first one right now and probably will finish sometimes this year. I think they did get those two su-33s for studying purposes.

That's great news. Everybody's been expecting the naval flanker to fly soon. Good thing they just went ahead without keep trying to negotiate with the Russians.

This would be even better news if they can start testing it on the Varyag in time for the August 1 parade in 2009!

 

[tphuang]

That's great news. Everybody's been expecting the naval flanker to fly soon. Good thing they just went ahead without keep trying to negotiate with the Russians.

This would be even better news if they can start testing it on the Varyag in time for the August 1 parade in 2009!

oh, there is no way that's going to happen. It will take probably 2 or 3 years after this to get the prototypes out and done with the flight testing and such. Then, it will take another 3 to 5 years for them to achieve basic level competence on the carrier. So, look to 2015 for the first operational carrier.

 

[man overbored]

There is at least five years of fitting out if China started today to make that ship operational. Carriers take a decade to build, and this one was only seventy percent complete when sold to China. Now this hull is so old it will require a lot of existing equipment to be ripped out to be overhauled or replaced and the entire electronics and armament package will have to created from scratch and installed. I seriously doubt China will be able to obtain the same equipment used on Kuznetsov, doing so would give it a weapons system fit unique in the Chinese Navy making the logistics support and training for this one ship a unique nightmare, so China will have to design and fit something very different from what the ship's original designers. This won't happen quickly.

 

[Jeff Head]

There is at least five years of fitting out if China started today to make that ship operational. Carriers take a decade to build, and this one was only seventy percent complete when sold to China. Now this hull is so old it will require a lot of existing equipment to be ripped out to be overhauled or replaced and the entire electronics and armament package will have to created from scratch and installed. I seriously doubt China will be able to obtain the same equipment used on Kuznetsov, doing so would give it a weapons system fit unique in the Chinese Navy making the logistics support and training for this one ship a unique nightmare, so China will have to design and fit something very different from what the ship's original designers. This won't happen quickly.

The PLAN has had it in their naval shipyards since 2003, and she was in for extensive dry dock work in 2005.

We do not know what has happened to her internally in that time, but we do know that work has gone on in her internal spaces throughout this time period.

Externally, they have completey re-outiftted the hull, painted her, and completely revitalized the deck, including what appeared to be a zinc chromate primer and then the final non-skid surface in 2006-2007.

Lots of work has been done...we just do not know how much, particularly internally.

Here's a good site I put together regarding it:

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[F40Racer]

Sorry, I neve saw this response. I will respond now.

Having the approach come in from the angles as the aircraft do, the heading of the vessel to take advantage of the headwind, from whatever direction it was originating from, and the design of that aft superstructure itself, could all go a long ways in significantly reducing or eleminating any harmful turbulence to non-harmful levels.

[qimg]http://www.jeffhead.com/dragonsfury/PLAN-CV-DFS-XDeck.jpg[/qimg]

Very interesting design. If this ship is based on container/tanker design, I guess it is possible (at least in the fiction world) to build larger versions of this ship. Some supertankers are over 300,000 tons in displacement. China's shipyards are capable of building really big oil tankers and container ships.