PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)
- Thread starter bd popeye
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I'm sure delft is correct,...And how many of those aircraft are designated for training purposes? or will the first three be the training aircraft. I just hope the PLAN will get on with it's CV programme.
It takes more than the space at the yards.
You have to have the right equipment, the right technical expertise, and the logistics chains feeding those yards from the suppliers.
My point was not that it is impossible for China to build more...it is simply that it is likely that at this point, at the most, they would build two simultaneously and how neat it would be to see that.
Time will tell.
I like the ammenties for the crew. Much better than the USN in my day and slightly better than the USN these days. Actually the crew berthing is years ahead of the USN..
This is what USN crew berthing,E-6 and below, looked like in my day.
All berthing on CVN-78 for enlisted will be similar to this^^^ only 36 sailor berthing..
I don't think I have suggested that a slipway of 300m is equal the capability of building a carrier. The fact is only that China have 7 ship yards that can build very large ships, coupled with the fact that most if not all of them have built navel vessels in the past should make a convincing case for capability.
Also, to build a hull of a large warship is no more challenging than a large commercial ship. Fitting out would be, but pure construction is not. welding and machining of naval grade steel is the same and specialist equipment like sonar domes are modular prefabricated.
Lets put it this way, if WW2 Japan and USA can chuck out carriers with technology of that era, what makes you think that fully modern Chinese yards cannot? They might not be able to build a Nimitz or similar, But it doesn't mean that they cannot build a Tarawa or a Kitty Hawk. So the question is purely what do you consider a carrier; if these yards can fit a sensor and weapon suite on a destroyer; would a destroyer level of command and control suite on a 300m hull to support ~40 aircraft be considered a sufficient aircraft carrier? <- this is purely academic, but my point is only that it is not as absolute as you portray.
Re Jets, for the sake of argument, do you need an air wing for the carrier if it is for export? Point being, you do not need an aircraft to build an aircraft carrier. Who would buy and what the terms are is another question.
1. The current reality is even though china had overtaken all other rivals in total tonnage of merchant ship construction, china has not ascended to the top even with complex specialty merchant ship construction. South Korean and Japanese ship builders remain the preferred vendors of complex specialty merchant ships despite higher prices. This indicates events ought the nominal capacity of Chinese ship building industry is vast, it capacity to build the the sort of merchant ship most closely approximating large warships in complexity remains much more limited. Large naval vessels are structurally orders of magnitude more complex than large commercial vessels, even specialty vessels like dredgers, pressurized container vessels, etc. The number of hull components and sub assemblies required to assemble a large warship is much greater, and the precision of alignment required to assemble them on the slip way are also correspondingly greater and even the most complex merchant ships. So China's immediate capacity to produce large complex warships like full fledged carriers is not nearly as great as it vast merchant tonnage output might seem to suggest.
2. The hull sub assemblies of naval warships must accommodate vastly more equipment, must be built to much greater standards of damage tolerance, and water tightness, then most assemblies on commerical ships. So the manufacturing of assemblies themselves would be much more labor as well as skill intensive. The ability to tackle this type of subassembly is not seen in how many 300 meter slipways a shipyard might have. Not every yard with a long slip way can even begin to tackle building a carrier.
3. Regarding the comparison with WWII construction rates, You can take your reductio to an even more rhetorically impressive absurdum, and mention how many sailing warships Britain turned out a year during napoleonic wars. And yes, I do believe a full equipped modern Chinese ship yard would have inordinate difficulties matching that rate of wooden ship of the line production. The same with building WWII steam powered carriers with riveted plate on frame construction involving with large iron casting components such rudder posts and propeller brackets. Modern techniques are for modern designs, and limit rates at which modern designs are built. No, modern techniques can't replicate products of obsolete techniques at same rate obsolete techniques had been able to produce obsolete equipment. But the key is what modern ptechniques produce will not be obsolete. And no, obsolete techniques, on whatever scale, can not speed up the production of modern designs.
4. As to China's theoretical rate of building carriers without planes, who will china sell 5-6 empty carriers at once to? I suspect given the dislocation building 7 carriers simultaneously would impose on China's entire maritime industrial base, they probably stand to make more money leaving their industrial base as is and use it to build and export a far larger number of merchant ships.
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Here is a video I found of the Su-33 taking off with atleast six missiles. So J-15 should be able to equal that if not carry more.
[video=youtube;R3Dmhzu0mMg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Dmhzu0mMg[/video]
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[video=youtube;R3Dmhzu0mMg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Dmhzu0mMg[/video]
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As per my previous statement, I disagree, as an engineer who build very large buildings, there is no difference in technical challenge for building a 300 meter tall tower and a 700 meter tall tower (which by the way, uses laser guided location beakons so that the tolerance of floor slab is ~50mm - which is pretty darn good for such a tower and this is in china) . This is similar to ships as well because the humans handling the tools and positioning are the same.
The fact is ship building is based on sections that are jigged rigged. if your bulkhead is right and your keel is aligned, everything will fall into place. It is not that hard, especially with how far china has gone with CAD/CAM (unlike the British whom needed the american help on the CAD program for the Vanguard)
Unless you have some facts to show that the hull of a warship is harder to build - I repeat that more complex is not more harder - this point of yours is moot.
damage tolerance - what is that? generally it is a better material used and welds. the former you go back to the jig rig, HTS steel construction is the same as regular steel; for the latter welding is the same.
Water tightness? - that's a design issue, a watertight bulkhead in a commercial ship will not leak as in a military ship. the only question is to what pressure and how many bulkheads - which are both design issues and have nothing to do with the Yard's assembly.
Re: subassemblies, why is this harder? it is only more labor intensive. if the part is CAD/CAM and Jig rigged, it will literally pop together and the worker just have to weld it together.
Read my post again, my statement is purely on a technical standpoint; if you have a 80s technology, then you can build a 80s carrier. Were the kitty hawks level of technology riveted? who said anything about replicating ancient technology or to use obsolete technology to build modern designs?
this is what I said:
The question is if they can build the carriers or not, not if they can arm them with air wings. It doesn't matter if they are building 5 carriers at once or whatever, what matters is that if one shipyard which is building a carrier is compromised, (riot/strike/terrorist-bombed etc) another one of these ship yard can be immediately tasked for building a carrier.
Also, I don't know who would buy a carrier, thats not the point and as I have already said I don't know; so please read my post carefully.
I think what Lezt is saying, is that China has those six or seven shipyards with drydocks large enough to accommodate a carrier, and that drydock size is arguably the most important determinant of whether a shipyard can build a carrier or not.
I think there is nothing particularly wrong this this statement -- after all, skilled workers can be taken in from other shipyards with experience, modules can be pre fabricated and floated to a final drydock for assembly ala what the UK is doing with CVF, if the final shipyard with the drydock doesn't have enough space.
Whether China will ever make use of its potential carrier building capacity is another question entirely, and the ease of those large shipyards to start building carriers is also an even bigger one.
If you don't want to see it as "China has the potential capacity to build 7 carriers simultaneously," then see it as "China has 7 potential carrier construction/assembly sites providing redundancy and emergency expansion capacity".
Or, maybe we can say "it is better to have seven carrier sized drydocks at shipyards around the country instead of three".
How important having the shipyard and drydock infrastructure is depends on the scenario, but I don't think anyone would disagree with my above statement.
I think there is nothing particularly wrong this this statement -- after all, skilled workers can be taken in from other shipyards with experience, modules can be pre fabricated and floated to a final drydock for assembly ala what the UK is doing with CVF, if the final shipyard with the drydock doesn't have enough space.
Whether China will ever make use of its potential carrier building capacity is another question entirely, and the ease of those large shipyards to start building carriers is also an even bigger one.
If you don't want to see it as "China has the potential capacity to build 7 carriers simultaneously," then see it as "China has 7 potential carrier construction/assembly sites providing redundancy and emergency expansion capacity".
Or, maybe we can say "it is better to have seven carrier sized drydocks at shipyards around the country instead of three".
How important having the shipyard and drydock infrastructure is depends on the scenario, but I don't think anyone would disagree with my above statement.
Lezt, as regards these particular statements.
1. Building a large vessel IS NOT like building a large building. The stresses and environment they have to exist in are far, far different. Though there are similarities (of course), there are also wholly separate expertise, methodologies, and concerns that do not lend themselves to the other.
2. Building a large commercial vessel IS NOT like building a large warship. The complexities and requirements go up by an order of magnitude.
While it is good that China has seven facilities that have yards and perhaps dry docks that are large enough to accommodate carriers, as I indicated earlier, this does not mean they can build carriers. The equipment, the expertise, and the logisitics all must be in place at each facility to make that a reality. It is not easy at all to put that in place in all of those facilities concurrently or simultaneously.
Possible? Of course...but far too taxing in the current environment, and with the current state of technology necessary to make a combat ready vessel built to military combat standards. So...also very highly unlikely.
As I also said, it will be tremendous if China builds two at once as has been rumored.
We shall have to wait and see..
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