Your choice to believe this. The left position is beyond the fool line. You need space for the just landed aircraft and the departing aircraft - and you have one aircraft on the right take-off position because otherwise it makes no sense to use the additional left position. I do not believe that they will use both forward positions while landing is in progress.
They clearly will not have an aircraft parked in the port position when an aircraft is coming in. They will use the starboard position when that is happening. They would then move an aircraft that is already prepared into the port position as soon as the landing aircraft clears. It would require a short interval to do so.
Again, as I stated, this would occur in a emergency, combat situation. IE, you have your own strike package recovering but find that an enemy strike is inbound and need to launch rapidly to intercept it and reinforce your existing cap. They train for these contingencies so they can be able to respond in those conditions...which will not be common, but will be critical should they arise.
Good deck handling skills will allow for that in case they need it.
Otherwise, in other simultaneous operations, which themselves are fairly rare, they will simply use the starboard position as aircraft come in, and they will time the landings and launches to allow for the traffic.
Blackstone said:
The Canadian article reflects opinions of many military experts in the West, such as Aaron Friedberg and George Friedman, that PLAx is a "40 meter" military force; which is a derogatory term meaning PLAx looks good from 40 meters distance, but the closer one gets, the worse it is. Is it wishful thinking or sound analysis?
Blackstone, my father was a World War II Naval officer who saw significant combat in the PTO. He used to tell me that when the war started the US Navy had a lot of strategists who believed that the Japanese Navy was a paper tiger and that the US Navy would clean up the Pacific with them if there ever was a war.
He also told me that that thinking had infected a number of vessel and task force commanders at the time. He said it took a good 12-18 moths for all that to be weeded out. And in the mean time we lost a lot of ground and a lot of vessels. By the time it was weeded out, the US had a set of commanders, leaders, and strategists who operated under the presumption that they were fighting a very dangerous and committed adversary and that plans had to reflect that.
Today we have similar thinking compared to what the pre-World War thinking of the Japanese was. I choose to skip that step and make presumptions on the side of being more prepared for an adversary who just may clean my clock unless I am very careful, and just as prepared and committed myself.
Anyhow...in answer to your question. Yes, there are those in the west who want to believe this. I think if it is far too presumptuous, underestimates a committed adversary, and is foolhardy. But that's just me.
