PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)

15 year old said:

Well yea of course but they are both not operational yet. Z-20 probably still has around 2-3 years before it goes into service. That is probably why China is holding up on a LHD. They are waiting for the choppers.

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Possibly, but it makes more sense to have the ship ready first before the airwing, because it's going to take a while to simply know how to run the ship.

OK here goes,

they could have built one earlier (30k tonne heli carrier), but they were limited in their helicopters (yes they could have bought russian choppers). Now that their own helicopters are coming on stream, they can now start with the ships. Each takes a few years to get up to speed, for the ship it is building. For the helicopters it is getting the design right, fixing bugs, then starting serial production. So maybe the chinese decided to wait a few years with their heli carriers, so that they come on stream at roughly the same time indigenous anti submarine helicopters are ready

In the past 3,5 months of this year the Liaoning has only been at sea for 16 days as far as we know. Since her commissioning she has been at port for 3/4 of the time. And we haven't seen any night ops yet. The carrier program is definitely moving in the slow lane. My guess is that the PLAN is saving money for when the air wing embarks. Only then could we perhabs see longer sea trials and more frequent voyages.

Franklin said:

... saving money for when the air wing embarks. ....

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my 5 Cents - the planes arn't ready, so they're sitting in the port and waiting for more fighters ....

Sczepan said:

my 5 Cents - the planes arn't ready, so they're sitting in the port and waiting for more fighters ....

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Could be..however.. In my opinion the could be at sea right now conducting much needed training.

Said to be a screenshot of the MV that was onced talked about in this thread.

A glimpse of the entire video can be watched here.

The Liaoning seems to have returned to Dalian for some maintenance work

xiabonan said:

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The Liaoning seems to have returned to Dalian for some maintenance work

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Or is it to make more modifications?

Here's a couple of pics I had not seen before. It's of J-15 "554" lining up and taking off from Liaoning.

Nice pics.

Those are indeed pictures we haven't seen before. Are those pictures from the latest sea trial or are these pictures older and are from previous sea trials ? If these photo's are from the latest sea trial then its is disappointing not to see night ops.