PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)

Well, I am not ready to make a final call yet...but when I look at these two pictures, the first of a US Navy large nuclear carrier under construction, the second of the potential PLAN carrier...I am leaning towards the Chinese vessel not being a carrier.

Some very specific differences in the construction towards the bow of similar segments at similar construction times gives me this indication. I will emphasize that it is not a final determination on my part...but it is causing me to lean that way.

Maybe it's an LHD/LHA and not a CV?

Via the Secret-Projects Forum I was able to get a link to this image ... it shows the Liaoning's sister-ship, the RuN Admiral Kuznetsov - the Riga - under construction in 1984 !

Deino

I just used the new image and flipped + mirrored around a bit ....

I don't know what to make of it, Dino. The new construction looks big, and even assuming it's a military vessel, it could be anything from a CV or LHD to a new 40kt oiler or comprehensive supply ship.

YES ... and therefore - like Jeff already said so often - we need to sit and wait ....

Deino said:

YES ... and therefore - like Jeff already said so often - we need to sit and wait ....

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It is unlikely that DL, which its own history of building merchant and naval ships, will use the same methods of assembling the parts to a similar aircraft carrier so even if in the end this ship will look very much like Adm K it is unlikely that it will look similar at any time during the building process.
So we might see only much later that it will be an aircraft carrier or another large naval vessel, or sooner when it turns out to be a merchant vessel. Some under us might know how long it will take to build a merchant man of this size, I expect less than a year, so when the time for building a merchant vessel has passed and it is still unrecognizable we will at least know that we should remain interested.

Blackstone said:

Maybe it's an LHD/LHA and not a CV?

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There's no reason to suspect it is an LHA/LHD-- we shouldn't be going around thinking up alternatives just for the sake of it, rather it should be evidence or rumour based.
We have had rumours for years that DL would be building the first indigenous carrier, and the LHA/D would likely be built by HD (the same folks who built 071). The very reason we are watching this ship come together with so much scrutiny is exactly because of those rumours that it may be the carrier.

If, OTOH, it turns out that this ship has something that resembles a large well deck, then that might cause us to seriously consider it as an LHD. Or once the flight deck comes together and it is configured like an LHA or LHD rather than a CV then that could also make us suspect it.

But at the moment, with the suspicions that this is indeed a military ship, a CV is really the first and most likely type of ship it would be, because of all the rumours of recent years.
Sure, we can suggest it might be an LHA or LHD or AOR, but there's really no rumours backing these ideas and mentioning the possibility before any distinctive photo evidence suggesting it is premature.

IMO, either this is a military ship, in which case it is almost definitely a carrier, or it is a civilian ship.

Jeff Head said:

Well, I am not ready to make a final call yet...but when I look at these two pictures, the first of a US Navy large nuclear carrier under construction, the second of the potential PLAN carrier...I am leaning towards the Chinese vessel not being a carrier.

Some very specific differences in the construction towards the bow of similar segments at similar construction times gives me this indication. I will emphasize that it is not a final determination on my part...but it is causing me to lean that way.

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As we continue watching this ship I think the evidence we begin to accumulate from these photos should logically fall into two categories -- "does this definitively indicate this ship is being a carrier" and "does this still entertain the possibility of this ship being a carrier".

I use the word "definitively" because I think the blurriness of photos, and the relatively fast rate of updated photos that we will get, along with possible different construction techniques and order compared to say, the construction of US carriers, means we may end up seeing a lot of photos featuring some differences to the photos of construction of US carriers.... and we also need to remember that the original uploaders may even deliberately seek to obscure the actual details of a module, or maybe even hide parts of the shipyard or drydock altogether.
The aforementioned factors might end up giving us a whole book's worth of differences between the photos of the ship at DL and photos of USN carriers, but for the purposes of identifying whether the ship may or may not be a carrier, we should only be interested in the differences which cannot be reasonably explained by any of the aforementioned factors. I.e.: differences which definitively indicate that the ship we see cannot possibly be a carrier.

So for example, with the "empty bulkheads" that kroko pointed out a few pages back, I would not consider that as "definitively indicating evidence against a ship being a carrier," because a very reasonable explanation is that the shipyard might simply not have installed the subsystems or built up the insides of the ship enough. Over on CDF someone mentioned those "empty bulkheads" could be for the powerplant. Either way, far from definitive.
OTOH, if this ship that we see ended up having a waterline hull beam of a large civilian cargo ship far larger than what is expected for a carrier, or maybe having a very rounded bow, then I would consider those definitive evidence disproving the possibility that this ship is a carrier.

In the case of this specific suspected bow module, there are definitely some differences between the module and the pictures of USN carriers at the bow... however I'm not sure if the differences are definitive enough to disprove the possibility that it couldn't be part of a carrier. For instance, if the self-censoring blur was removed might that change things? And how big is the actual part of the module itself, is it only two decks or three decks high? Is it at the same position as the USN carrier section in the pictures, or is it slightly more forward, say closer to the actual bulbous bow? Is the lack of double hull reinforcement near the keel and sides in the suspected module actually not there, or is it just the sectioning of the hull module and the angle of the photo (and deliberate self censorship of the interior of the module) which makes it appear like it isn't there?

I don't have the kind of engineering background that you and others may have, so if you see anything that can definitively indicate the photos as not possibly being part of a carrier, then I would be grateful.
But if we only see some differences between a part of a module compared with a US carrier under construction, which may potentially be explained by any of the aforementioned factors, then that IMO is not very useful for the purposes of definitively indicating that the ship is not a carrier.

Bltizo, as I said...it is too soon to tell definitively.

But the interior section of the US Naval carrier shows definitive compartmentalization moving forward toward the bow as you would expect. The Chinese vessels appears to be accommodating a large interior vacant section that looks to have an access corridor down the center on the lower portion...as if to monitor or maintain the large vacant area. Typically, such compartmentalization is built into the modules of the carrier as they are brought together, and not added after the fact.

In addition, on the bottom of what we know to be the US carrier you can clearly see the double hulled/strengthened structure along the bottom and part way up each side, which is typical of large US CATOBAR carriers. It is clear that the lower section of the Chinese carrier has no such additional structure. Once again, that type of structure is normally built directly into the modules and not added later.

Time will tell us definitively in the end, but these are some tell tale signs for me at this stage.