Master Delft, I would respectfully disagree that the Soviet Union has always been defensive, "paranoid schizophrenic" yeah, I am thinking of the purges of their own people under Stalin, a very aggressive stance in the cold war, and the ruthless murder of political opponents, and the famous winter vacations to Siberia, not to be rude, but they seem rather willing to supply arms to Ruthless Dictators????? might give me pause for thought, so as we get back to our discussion of the PLAN Carrier Construction, it would prolly help to stick to the hardware, and yes, sailors and airmen alike want good equipment that give them a chance of survival against the elements, and triumph over their enemies, if it shines up nice and can be used for better purposes so much the better. brat
OT
Let's keep to external matters. The Soviet Union drove out Western interventionists in the 1920's, in Europe the British forces in the North and in the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian, in Siberia the Japanese and the US. RN was able to cut out Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that had been part of the Russian Empire, Finland for just over a century, the others much longer. Poland was able to take half of Belarus. In the thirties it defended itself against Japanese aggression and supported the Spanish Republic against Franco's fascists which were supported by Italy and Germany. In 1938 they were prepared to support Czechoslovakia together with Western powers but UK and France preferred the Munich agreement. In 1939 while the the USSR was at war with Japan ( Khalkhin Gol ) Germany prepared to invade Poland. Because UK had been unable to get Poland to accept Soviet support ( see
) and an accord with Germany would pull the fangs from the Strike North faction in Japan the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 and occupied the Eastern Belarus speaking part of Poland. This increased the approach road to Moscow for the German army significantly. In preparation for the expected German assault the Soviet Union took Bessarabia from Romania, part of Karelia from Finland and occupied the three Baltic states. In 1941 the Soviet Union occupied Iran together with UK.
This is getting too long. After WWII the US sponsored very many more dictators than the USSR. Think of those in South Korea, on Taiwan, in South Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Zaire, Portugal, many in South America &c. And while the interventions of the USSR in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan were objectionable they can more easily be defended than for examples the US interventions in Vietnam, Lebanon ( twice ) or Granada.
Indeed let's get back to hardware. In general ships belonging to a certain class will be larger when they are built later. Dreadnoughts started in 1906 with 12" guns. They were soon succeeded by 13,5" and then 15" super-dreadnoughts and only the last were maintained by RN after WWI. On a longer time scale those of us acquainted with Forester's Hornblower novels will likely remember the ship rigged sloop Hotspur with 20 9-pounder guns. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has a model of a similar ship but with 6-pounder guns from 1719 that is called a frigate. But in the case of aircraft carriers I see a possibility that future ships will be smaller than 100k. For many of its tasks a smaller ship is adequate and cheaper. It just depends on how important those tasks are considered to be where the larger ship is significantly superior. And that greatly depends on the geo-strategic position of the country owning the ship. For example a small country like the UK is probably better served by three 30k flattops than by two 65k ones that cost about the same. So my question is what is the optimum size of Chinese carriers? The US is now building two sizes, 100k and 40k. Will China too go for two sizes?
Addendum: by going for a smaller ship they might shave a year of the building time and start collecting experience with the new flattop that much earlier. As always its just a matter of countless compromises.
