Re: Ideal chinese carrier thread
There is at least five years of fitting out if China started today to make that ship operational. Carriers take a decade to build, and this one was only seventy percent complete when sold to China. Now this hull is so old it will require a lot of existing equipment to be ripped out to be overhauled or replaced and the entire electronics and armament package will have to created from scratch and installed. I seriously doubt China will be able to obtain the same equipment used on Kuznetsov, doing so would give it a weapons system fit unique in the Chinese Navy making the logistics support and training for this one ship a unique nightmare, so China will have to design and fit something very different from what the ship's original designers. This won't happen quickly.
The PLAN has had it in their naval shipyards since 2003, and she was in for extensive dry dock work in 2005.
We do not know what has happened to her internally in that time, but we do know that work has gone on in her internal spaces throughout this time period.
Externally, they have completey re-outiftted the hull, painted her, and completely revitalized the deck, including what appeared to be a zinc chromate primer and then the final non-skid surface in 2006-2007.
Lots of work has been done...we just do not know how much, particularly internally.
Here's a good site I put together regarding it:
