Type 076 LHD/LHA discussion

kwaigonegin said:

I'm not sure what geopolitics or foreign policies has got anything to do with this.

Regardless of what role this ship will play, the fact is when you built a warship you design it to be the most efficient and deadly as you can base on the given parameters.

I think we all agree this ship has a catapult. So that tells me it was designed to launch fixed wing aircrafts. When you launch something, it has to be recovered. Unless it isn't in which case then sure this design makes perfect sense.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind on how PLAN intend to do recovery of fixed wing aircrafts on a straight deck ship.

As I've said in my previous posts it would be extremely inefficient because you have to clear the deck.

You would have zero launches during that time and then have to move the planes and helos to launch proceeding any recovery. If you have to recover 2,3,4 aircrafts that is a LOT of time and energy wasted not being able to launch anything.

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Even super-carriers do cyclic operations IRL, so simultaneous launch and landing isn't something that a smaller carrier need. The CDG doesn't have that ability for example.

My guess is that with a 45m beam, they can dedicate the middle of the deck to landing. Even with the landing strip in use they have 3 quadrants of the entire deck for helicopter operations. Aft port behind EMALs, aft starboard behind island, and fore starboard in front of island.

i.e. The following design only has a 41m wide deck, and it's supposed to be have full CATOBAR capabilities.

proelite said:

Even super-carriers do cyclic operations IRL, so simultaneous launch and landing isn't something that a smaller carrier need. The CDG doesn't have that ability for example.

My guess is that with a 45m beam, they can dedicate the middle of the deck to landing. Even with the landing strip in use they have 3 quadrants of the entire deck for helicopter operations. Aft port behind EMALs, aft starboard behind island, and fore starboard in front of island.

i.e. The following design only has a 41m wide deck, and it's supposed to be have full CATOBAR capabilities.

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Yes of course you can clear a small path right through the middle but that is very unwise and inefficient. Trust me I know aircraft handling and positioning in carriers.
This is especially true for the 076 as the cat is on the port side so you basically have to move helos and aircrafts all over the already dangerous and crowded deck space and reset everytime there is a landing.
You are also under the assumption that the trap will work 100% of the time which it won't. If the plane misses the wire it will crashed straight into everything else.
Also another reason for angled decks is to mitigate crashing into the island as the approach vector of the incoming plane is already pointed away from the Island and other planes.

kwaigonegin said:

Yes of course you can clear a small path right through the middle but that is very unwise and inefficient. Trust me I know aircraft handling and positioning in carriers.
This is especially true for the 076 as the cat is on the port side so you basically have to move helos and aircrafts all over the already dangerous and crowded deck space and reset everytime there is a landing.
You are also under the assumption that the trap will work 100% of the time which it won't. If the plane misses the wire it will crashed straight into everything else.
Also another reason for angled decks is to mitigate crashing into the island as the approach vector of the incoming plane is already pointed away from the Island and other planes.

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Carriers were had straight decks up until 1950s. If they made it work with 100 planes, the PLAN can make it work with 10 drones of similar size.

proelite said:

Even super-carriers do cyclic operations IRL, so simultaneous launch and landing isn't something that a smaller carrier need. The CDG doesn't have that ability for example.

My guess is that with a 45m beam, they can dedicate the middle of the deck to landing. Even with the landing strip in use they have 3 quadrants of the entire deck for helicopter operations. Aft port behind EMALs, aft starboard behind island, and fore starboard in front of island.

i.e. The following design only has a 41m wide deck, and it's supposed to be have full CATOBAR capabilities.

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Sorry the deck width on this ship is 57m, but it lands and recovers medium to heavy fixed wing aircraft such as F-35C, F-18s, and J-15s.

sutton999 said:

lastest speculation
View attachment 130932

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Your design will sink the ship almost immediately out in the sea. The supposed deck area in your design is larger and more out of the hull than an angled deck, but without the island being more outwardly located. The ship will naturally list even in static water.

Seriously what is the obssession with an angled deck and mini-carrier concept, even in front of the visible shape of the hull pointing to the opposite?

Guys, I think by now it is pretty obvious how the 076‘s deck layout will look like, so - at least I - see no reasons at all to again and again discuss any pros and cons of possible other alternative configurations, to suggest one would know better to use of design this ship than the PLAN like these endless discussions on why the PLAAF should better equip the J-20 with guns or without the tail!

This all is just useless and irrelevant to the topic!

kwaigonegin said:

I'm not sure what geopolitics or foreign policies has got anything to do with this.

Regardless of what role this ship will play, the fact is when you built a warship you design it to be the most efficient and deadly as you can base on the given parameters.

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This kind of thinking is exactly how we ended up with 38 ton and €4 million wheeled APCs in Europe

BoraTas said:

This kind of thinking is exactly how we ended up with 38 ton and €4 million wheeled APCs in Europe

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HahaHa but NO! Try again. Those became expensive due to red tape and the constant scope creep. And I'm sure being an EU product a lot of politicking were involved as well.

proelite said:

Carriers were had straight decks up until 1950s. If they made it work with 100 planes, the PLAN can make it work with 10 drones of similar size.

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There were very good reasons angled decks were added to aircraft carriers in the modern era. If the 076 has no angled deck but has a catapult then how are the aircraft the ship launches over the catapult recovered to the ship? The Chinese are not fools and given the extreme operational difficulties of landing high performance aircraft that require catapults to launch without an angled deck then that indicates to me that the Chinese have some other plans in mind. What plans? Perhaps an as yet unseen aircraft or drone that can land either in a very short distance or perhaps even vertically. If the aircraft are to be landed on the straight deck, is there any sign of the arrestor infrastructure required?

kwaigonegin said:

HahaHa but NO! Try again. Those became expensive due to red tape and the constant scope creep. And I'm sure being an EU product a lot of politicking were involved as well.

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The example I would have used is the USN getting rid of FFGs for a full Burke and Tico surface fleet.

Naval warfare is a team game, and stacking your entire lineup with only one type of player, even if they are the full roster of the best players in that position in the game, is almost certainly not going to make an invincible team.

You need attackers and defenders and enablers. Not everything needs to be armed to the teeth, and with economics and resource scarcity realities, you cannot have both quality and quantity. Not against a near-peer adversary.

But in a weird way your original sentiment supports my point more than your own. If you want a light carrier, why are you wasting literally the lion share of your LHA’s internal volume on stuff that has nothing to do with carrier ops? How does a well deck and vehicle hanger and hotel facilities for hundreds of marines contribute to making a carrier do its primary mission and launch and recovering fixed wing aircraft better?

If you do take out all the stops and build a no-compromise light carrier, you will find you end up spending substantially most of the cost of a supercarrier and only be able to manage a fraction of a true supercarrier’s capabilities because you lack that magic minimum displacement and deck area threshold. If you are spending 70-80% of the price tag of a supercarrier to deliver 40-50% of the capacity, you are better off spending a little extra and get the supercarrier in the first place.

The 076 is not intended to be a mini-carrier, which is why is not designed as one. Its primary mission is to give China all of the options and tools foreign military bases would give it without needing to invest in setting up a global network of foreign military bases.

If you look at American foreign military bases operational capabilities as benchmark, you will see that an 076 meets or exceeds the majority, if not overwhelming majority, and can carry out basically the full spectrum of missions short of full scale invasion.

The catapult is to give it quality not quantity, in that it can launch a small number of medium to heavy UCAV with full fuel and weapons load. The through-deck landing approach gives it significantly more runway for slow heavy drones to get back airborne again in case it misses the wires.

Is it inefficient in sortie generation? Sure, but then how many sorties do you think a hull with a well deck and vehicle deck as well as hanger can actually sustain in the first place?