PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Lieutenant General
A little OT Chinese steel and steel pipes are well known and highly used for it's quality in the natural gas and oil industry.
She has clearly been used for training. There is nobody who would deny that. It is their first carrier. They have to train all the personnel, the pilots, the entire logistics train, the maintenance people, their command and control personnel...all of it.
But that does not mean it cannot and will not be used for standard naval operations, even combat operations if necessary.
She is fitted for it in terms of sensors, weaponry, air wing, and stores to conduct combat at any time she needs to. And of course she is capable of it, and would be used for it.
Her exercises in SCS and other places already allude to this.
She is the PLAN flagship right now. as far as I am concerned...and understandably so.
They could build a carrier for training only, that would not be capable or competitive in any combat scenario. It would be a lot cheaper. Less power. Less hanger space. Inferior sensors. Little or no self defense, etc., etc. But the PLAN did not choose to do that.
The US used to keep an older Essex class carrier for training. But determined that they did not need it now because the system trains the people adequately itself. I believe the Chinese are building that same type of model.
Yes, mostly GMAW and SMAW.
Arc spark spectrometry was already pretty advance in the late 80's, today they are so portable they are used on NASA's probes on Mars and China's lunar rover on the lunar surface. They pretty much know the content of the metal's make up to 0.0010% accuracy in less than a minute which is like they can detect if you spit into an Olympic size swimming pool !
I remember when Noranda sent their research team to alloy a new metal in our furnances and they were shocked to find out we had a mass spectrometer on site. They made us sign an agreement not to test their metal and posted guard on our lab 24/7 ...LoL
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Basically any defensive weapon can become an offensive weapon like the US missile defense shield that the Pentagon is crusading around to install in eastern Europe can become a first strike weapon as well. The word defensive is only used to justify to local taxpayers to fund a larger defense budget based on fear.
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Completely OT and also untrue, and a true Apples and Oranges kind of comparison.
A carrier by its nature, when outfitted with J-15 aircraft that are designed to be able to carry strike at sea, or land attack munitions, is an offensive weapon. Even if also used for training.
A defensive missile, like the AEGIS system, is located well away form borders and installations of any OpFor. It is designed specifically to shoot down incoming offensive missiles, and its own missiles are not suitable for any offensive missions.
There are those who use an argument that by shooting down offensive missiles in any appreciable numbers they therefore eliminate the threat and open the door for a first strike by the side with the defense and are therefore offensive themselves.
This is completely convoluted thinking.
Those systems are specifically not numerous enough or suited to the types of saturation attack that would occur in an all out war between large nation players...they would amount to a drop in the bucket.
But they would be effective against small attacks of one or a few missiles...which is what they are designed for.
But as I said, this is all completely OT here on the PLAN Carrier page.
I will let these two posts stand for a day or so, and then they will both be deleted as OT. Please do not take threads OT like this in an effort to make points about completely separate systems.
Thanks.
Engineer
Major
People often make the mistake of comparing some niche products from country X to the averaged industrial capabilities of China. The above is one such occurrence. There are other reasons to import specialty steels other than "China can't make them". Some components requiring specialty steels have to follow rigorous manufacturing standards originated from another country. It is not feasible to have a steel mill in China to apply for licenses in another country just for that one batch of steel.
Building a carrier is not just about steels and welding. There needs to be machines to cold-work and hot-work the steels, and technologies that make those aforementioned machines. There must be dedicated cranes, and technologies that could make those cranes. It is an entire industry. The only countries that have the complete industry are the former Soviet Union and US. The former no longer exists, and China isn't going to get any help from the latter.
Welding difficulty typically increases with increase in metal's strength. Most likely, India doesn't have the necessary welding technologies to weld the highest grade steel, or the labor force isn't skilled enough to use these technologies. Whether India has shaping machines powerful enough to overcome the strength of the steel plates is another big question. What you described sounds like an exercise which traded off steel strength for workability.
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WHY CHINA'S NEXT AIRCRAFT CARRIER WILL BE BASED ON SOVIET BLUEPRINTS
China has at last that it has a new aircraft carrier under construction, the first to be built in China and the second in the People's Liberation Army-Navy's order of battle.
The PLA Navy appears to have embarked on a substantial carrier program, probably with the intention of creating four and perhaps up to six carrier battle groups (Chinese commentators have publicly the need for at least three units in order to have an effective carrier capability). The rehabilitated ex-Russian carrier Liaoning, designated Carrier 16, has been the start of this effort, although its reliability has yet to be confirmed.
Experience gained with the ship will be used to evolve the follow-on units which are entering production. However, the challenge involved with these new carriers will not so much be the build, but the design. That the first new-build carrier will be in most respects a copy of the Soviet designed Liaoning should be no surprise. This is China's only practicable course of action if it is to get another unit into service in good time.
The PLA Navy was able to extract of the Liaoning from the Ukrainian vendors. These will have to be the foundation of the present activity because China is now facing the same reality that has dogged the efforts of all the major navies of the last century. The greatest restraint on naval expansion in the industrial age has been neither budgets nor disarmament treaties. It has in fact been the lack of drafting expertise to translate the design concepts of naval architects into the detailed compartment-by-compartment drawings that allow the shipbuilders to do their work (arguably, this has been a key problem for Australia with the new Air Warfare Destroyers). The scale of the effort involved is demonstrated by the report that the Liaoning's documentation amounted to many tons of paper.
More here:
China has at last that it has a new aircraft carrier under construction, the first to be built in China and the second in the People's Liberation Army-Navy's order of battle.
The PLA Navy appears to have embarked on a substantial carrier program, probably with the intention of creating four and perhaps up to six carrier battle groups (Chinese commentators have publicly the need for at least three units in order to have an effective carrier capability). The rehabilitated ex-Russian carrier Liaoning, designated Carrier 16, has been the start of this effort, although its reliability has yet to be confirmed.
Experience gained with the ship will be used to evolve the follow-on units which are entering production. However, the challenge involved with these new carriers will not so much be the build, but the design. That the first new-build carrier will be in most respects a copy of the Soviet designed Liaoning should be no surprise. This is China's only practicable course of action if it is to get another unit into service in good time.
The PLA Navy was able to extract of the Liaoning from the Ukrainian vendors. These will have to be the foundation of the present activity because China is now facing the same reality that has dogged the efforts of all the major navies of the last century. The greatest restraint on naval expansion in the industrial age has been neither budgets nor disarmament treaties. It has in fact been the lack of drafting expertise to translate the design concepts of naval architects into the detailed compartment-by-compartment drawings that allow the shipbuilders to do their work (arguably, this has been a key problem for Australia with the new Air Warfare Destroyers). The scale of the effort involved is demonstrated by the report that the Liaoning's documentation amounted to many tons of paper.
More here:
China will not blindly follow the 'Soviet Blueprints'. China will absorb it, digest it, and improve upon it.
For a starter, and most importantly, unlike the Soviet construction method, the construction of 001A is in modular form. To name a few, for example internal and external communications, armaments, propulsion, accommodation etc. are vastly different from the former Soviet or Russian's. The Chinese aircraft carrier 001A is constructed to the requirements of the PLAN (after gaining enormous practical experiences from Liaoning..) and in accordance with design principles of the Chinese naval architects ,engineers and scientists....
For a starter, and most importantly, unlike the Soviet construction method, the construction of 001A is in modular form. To name a few, for example internal and external communications, armaments, propulsion, accommodation etc. are vastly different from the former Soviet or Russian's. The Chinese aircraft carrier 001A is constructed to the requirements of the PLAN (after gaining enormous practical experiences from Liaoning..) and in accordance with design principles of the Chinese naval architects ,engineers and scientists....
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