PLAN Carrier Strike Group and Airwing

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

Jeff Head said:

Well, let's suppose that they have already started building the Liaoning II. They could finish it in the next four years, and commission it 2 years later...and have it operational two after that (supposing that things go well with both the 1st Liaoning and the J-15).

Let's further suppose that with everything going well with the 1st Liaoning and the J-15, that they settle on a CATOBAR design and their go forward policy six years from now (as the Liaoning II is commissioned) and start building that CATOBAR design. Aggressive but doable if everything goes well.

Give them five years for building the first of class CATOBAR, which means that they launch it eleven years from now, and potentially have it operational in fifteen.

Now, this makes some hefty suppositions, that the 2nd STOBAR is already building and that nothing but positive, good things happen and they stay on course that whole time.

But, the Chinese could do this in the next fifteen years and have two Liaoning type carriers and one full up CATOBAR carrier in that time frame. That's the soonest I see it happening now.

If they experience any difficult problems, that all gets pushed back.

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For the indigenous stobar (001A), I'm not sure it will take two whole years for the ship to be "operational" (for instance, being able to launch and arrest aircraft etc) but it may take that long to be "fully operational" as in having a fully competent crew and airwing that can do high rate sorties reliably.

There is an idea that the CATOBAR carrier (002) may start building before 001A is finished/commissioned, because Dalian is building 001A and JNCX is building 002, which may shave off quite a few years from the 15 year estimate.

Aside from that, I agree with everything.

SinoSoldier said:

The US was able to build two carriers every three months during the fight with Japan. So it's not a case of sophistication, industry, or capital.

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The US was in a wartime economy. Also, are you seriously comparing a WWII carrier to a modern supercarrier?
It's like saying boeing could build 1 B-24s an hour and over 600 a month, and that somehow should carry forward to today that the US can surely churn out similar numbers of B-2s in similar time frames.

And it's exactly a case of sophistification of the product, the industry of the country, and the capital available to fund it, all interacting with each other which determines the production rate.

Unless China decides to go to war in the next decade, they are going to take it as slow and safe as they can practically make it. They're going to avoid risk like the plague.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

Educated guess would be 2025-2028 before PLAN's first CATOBAR is sailing the high seas. Their 2nd CATOBAR would follow suit possibly 4-5 years after that. I am guessing they will stagger their built. I guess I'll check back on this post again in 15 years to see how off I am LOL

good odds by 2030 PLAN will have 2 STOBARs and 1 CATOBAR commissioned with another one close to completion. By 2040 they will most likely have their first CVN commissioned and another one building to replace Liaoning soon after.
Long term prediction is by 2050, PLAN will have 3 (possibly 4) CVNs and 2 CVs and a STOBAR. Liaoning would be scrap metal OR she may finally become that floating casino in some twist of fate! At any rate by then I may have gone to meet the good Lord so who cares...

That is of course me totally pulling things out of thin air because if there's one thing certain bout predicting the future is it is quite impossible to predict. 15 years ago if you'd told me china would in 15 years build airplanes that is on parity or better than the F-15s and F-16s I would've laugh.. same with destroyers that are similar to the Burkes. I'm refering to the J-20, J-10B and 054D of course.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

SinoSoldier said:

The US was able to build two carriers every three months during the fight with Japan. So it's not a case of sophistication, industry, or capital.

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The Essex class heavy fleet carrier represents only 0.05% of WWII GDP, compare to roughly 0.1% contemporary GDP a Nimitz represents.

And the US, in maximum war time mobilization, commiting 30% gdp to military spending, building the Essex class simultaneously in 5 different shipyards at once, only managed to commission 15 of the during the war, or roughly 1 every 3 month.

The other carrier classes built in WWII were either converted merchant ships or converted light cruisers, not at all comparable to true fleet carrier.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

Air Force Brat said:

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

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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.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

Jeff Head said:

Sorry, IMHO, no.

I have a lot of respect for what the Chinese/PLAN are accomplishing and can accomplish and have been watching carefully now for going on fifteen years.

The numbers I listed are probably the most optimistic you can expect...and they are very optimistic. More likely add years to my schedule.

One thing is for sure...time will tell and reveal all of this regarding the Chinese carrier build schedules and time frames.

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Our main difference is you think that COTABAR studies will start 6 years from now, I think it is already in design stage. That is why I am pretty sure we will see COTABAR much earlier than your guess.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

foxmulder said:

Our main difference is you think that COTABAR studies will start 6 years from now, I think it is already in design stage. That is why I am pretty sure we will see COTABAR much earlier than your guess.

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But that is not what you said in your first post to me. You said "Divide all the time scales you gave by 2." And THAT is what I responded to.

If they are already building a CATOBAR, then simply substitute that in for the STOBAR I mentioned and all the numbers I gave will remain roughly the same. But I seriously doubt that their first indigenous carrier will be a CATOBAR.

Of course they are in the design phase for the CATOBAR now, but I believe they will settle on that design in the time frames I have mentioned. If they do so earlier, they may start building it a year or two earlier, but then you simply apply the type of time line I mention to whenever it starts, not divide it by two.

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

Eventually China will have to face two carrier strikes group or maybe even three

One from East coast of India and one or two from Japan, this means all three Chinese fleets must be able to deploy a carrier at any one time meaning each fleet need two carriers, I would say a CV and CVN for each fleet and Liaoning as the 7th "training carrier"

CV should have 36 fighter aircraft and CVN 48 aircraft, Liaoning with the standard 24, meaning China will need 23 x 12 naval carrier fighter air wings, that's the carrier fleet

They should add a amphibious ready group to each fleet with the intention to lift both 1st and 2nd marine brigades of full strength of 12,000 marines from the South China Sea

To lift 12,000 marines not all at anyone time they would need 9 x Type 071 LPD and 3 x LHD, LHD is in the class of the USS Wasp which can carry 1,000+ marines is 40,000+ tons

So I would say a amphibious flotilla in each fleet consists of 3 x LPD, 1 x LHD and rest made up of those Type 072 III LST

Add to each fleet 3 x DDG Flotillas, 3 x FFG Flotillas, 1 x CG Flotilla and 3 x Corvette Flotillas to each fleet that's 10 Flotillas per fleet or 40 warships

Add three oversea naval Flotillas consisting of 1 x DDG, 2 x FFG and a replenishment tanker

All this would keep Chinese shipyards busy until 2025 with all carriers constructed beyond that, this is just my vision but what a fleet that would give China

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

Thanks to Pointblank for finding this great video of a UK training simulation presentation for the UKs new F-35B aircraft for the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales aircraft carriers:

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

There seems to be plenty of time. The Europeans told Kerry and he agreed, said radio news bulletins today, that the the assault will await the outcome of the UN investigation, which may take weeks, "to strengthen the position of the US". The outcome will include information about the quality of the nerve agent and perhaps even source of it.
The ships will have a nice time there, waiting. In the mean time the war will continue.
Btw Kerry has again promised to provide evidence to the European countries. And to others? Is he afraid his evidence will be shot down?

Re: PLAN Carrier Construction

I think so long as US and China do not become overtly hostile, then for the foreseeable future china will only seek and maintain numerical superiority over Japan or India individually, but will not seek numerical superiority over both combined. China being in the middle, will have an easier time relying on interior lines of communication and movement to meet each threat in turn with superior individual might than India or Japan would have relying on exterior lines of movement to meet china with superior combined might.

If US and China becomes hostile, then china would be in a very bad situation, both militarily and diplomatically.