PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Engineer
Major
They outline the positions of weapon elevators.
Why would they want weapon elevator to come up right next to aircraft spotted at blast deflector for immediate takeoff? It seems implausible aircraft would be armed there, and it would disrupt the flow of the deck if they have to cart weapons form that spot through a line of several aircraft waiting in line to take off to arming spaces further back, maybe next to the island.
In case they need it.
Unless of course they were spotting aircraft near there, off to the left to the starboard side.
The US Navy has similar elevators spotted around the deck. Some of them may be seldom used (as bd popeye says...and with as many years - decades - experience as he has on US Navy aircraft carriers, he would know), but if you need to use them, they are a good thing to have there.
steve_rolfe
Junior Member
With the recent launch of the Indian carrier 'Vikrant'
Do members here, think this will increase the enthusiam in Beijing to accelerte their own carrier aspirations?
Do members here, think this will increase the enthusiam in Beijing to accelerte their own carrier aspirations?
Blackstone
Brigadier
Beijing's carrier program will proceed on its own schedule, based on its need to counter USN and not the IN, so I don't believe Vikrant's launch will make much difference to the launch of the McLiaoning.
I believe the PLAN has known full well what India, Japan, Australia, etc. have all been up to. With the three carriers India will ultimately have (2 STOBAR and potetnially one CATOBAR) the three carrier type vessel Japan has with at least one more (22DDH), and potetnially another four after that (26DDH), and the two Australian Canberra vessels, you have a total of nine to thirteen aircraft carriers being built in the Western Pacific outside of China...and each country is building the necessary and capable escorts to go along with them.
So, you can bet the PLAN is aware of this...has been aware of these plans for some time...and has developed their own plan accordingly.
Now, the US is indeed building newer carriers, but the US Navy is not growing their inventory (if anything it will shrink), is it replacing older carriers and assault carriers as they introduce new ones...and clearly, the PLAN has had to consider that as well.
I guess my point is that the PLAN has already taken this into consideration when developing their own build plans. There are no surprises here. We on this fourm have been aware of all these builds for years and been talking about and theorizing about them. The PLAN's naval planners have probably had a lot more information about them than we do...all of these years...and the PLAN's carrier development plan will already be based on all of that.
Just my opinion.
I think it will have no effect on the naval policy maker's idea of the appropriate speed of Chinese carrier program, because I don't think anything thinks India will send these carriers through strait of Malacca to confront China, or India carriers would be able to make much of an material difference to the effectiveness of other navies that could confront the Chinese.
But I think India carriers will increase popular support for carriers in China. Contrary to western notions of what goes on in an alledgedly totalitarian state, national policy makers a step above naval policy makers in China are strongly influenced by popular opinion, just not in the way such influence is actuated in liberal democracies.
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Only the 3 Indian carriers are even nominally close to being in the league of the alleged new Chinese carrier.
Canberras are mainly amphibious vessels with at most a secondary sea control role suitable only for low or medium threat environment, the two Japanese DDHs also have at most a similar secondary sea control role, assuming the story that their decks were not capable of withstanding the exhaust from vectored nozzle of F-35 is false.
But only Japan has both the industrial capacity and technological capabilities to more or less match the Chinese in the long run. If Japan decides to follow their DDH with a full scale CATOBAR carrier, I would believe the Japanese can both built it well and bring it to efficient operation promptly. I have my doubts about how well built an Indian carrier would be and how long it would take before it is efficient and just how efficient is indian standard of efficient. Publically available photos of the bow ramp in the Vikrant clearly show precision fabrication was not available to those who made the sides of that ramp. Those metal plates look like they were hammered into shape by hand.
So I think in the long run, Chinese carrier strategy will be heavily influenced by what Japan does. But it won't be very significantly influenced by what India or Australia does.
If Japan announces she would follow her 2 28,000 ton DDH with 4 60,000 ton DDH, which I think is well within Japan's capabilities, then I imagine a fire would be immediately lit under the asses of Chinese carrier program. I imagine the Chinese would do whatever it takes to match the Japanese at least 1 to 1.
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