Whether China seeks to achieve some form of local/global hegemony remains to be seen, but regardless of whether it does or not, it remains a fact that carriers are tools of power projection, not defense. Even if China does not seek any form of hegemony, it will have use for carrier groups to project its foreign and military policy to distant seas and shores, especially as its economic interests become more and more globalized.
PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Sure, but it cannot try to "occupy" the Worlds oceans as USN has been doing ever since WWII so nuclear propulsion is much less useful. It might well be that PLAN will wait for the development of Thorium ship reactors and go for a larger number of carriers smaller than the 100k USN standard ( for a given investment ) when it does develop nuclear carriers.
Definitely offensive. The British were retaking the islands from an established Argentinian presence on and near the Falklands.
Whether nuclear carriers are a priority for China remains to be seen. If it is not on the 002, then clearly it is not a priority for them. Maybe they will end up with 3 non-nuclear carriers for near seas ops and 3-4 nuclear carriers for more distant ops. This would probably be enough to provide a continuous 2 carrier on-station presence for China.
MwRYum
Major
Seriously people, by now the 001A construction almost reach the flight deck level, and if there's gonna be catapult of whatever designs, we should see the groove space for it by now - and there's none.
Besides, the land facility only recently reach the final phase of construction. Thus, no catapult would make it in time for the 001A design deadline and certainly won't be in time to redo the design to put one on now - as something like that can translate into 12-months delay at the very least, even if you consider in Chinese "workaholic tendency" (y'know, the kind of thing the Chinese "party line" love to blah blah blah over).
So give it up, people, no catapult on 001A.
Besides, the land facility only recently reach the final phase of construction. Thus, no catapult would make it in time for the 001A design deadline and certainly won't be in time to redo the design to put one on now - as something like that can translate into 12-months delay at the very least, even if you consider in Chinese "workaholic tendency" (y'know, the kind of thing the Chinese "party line" love to blah blah blah over).
So give it up, people, no catapult on 001A.
Define "priority".
This is surely off-topic, but I think You should check Your historical reference ....
Whatever longmarch meant by it; I was responding to his post. Ask him.
Why? HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible were the two British carriers that deployed from British bases in the North Atlantic in response to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. They kicked butt, took numbers, and then sailed back north after the Brits beat the Argentinians. How is this not a prime example of carrier power projection?
And that may be why it is the ONLY ship in her class. The next class CVN of USN uses more dedicated carrier reactors.
Another example is French "Charles de Gaulle" which uses K15 from submarine. And I heard it has or had problems.
So simply upscaling or using submarine reactors seems not being a good idea.
But I will not rule out the possibility of 002 being nuclear because I don't know how far China's marintime nuclear power plant program has gone since the first 091 sub in the 1970s. It is more than 40 years now.
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