by78
General
If redundancy had been a critical requirement, they would have gone with zero. Use your head.
Type 076 LHD/LHA discussion
- Thread starter banjex
- Start date
If redundancy had been a critical requirement, they would have gone with zero. Use your head.
Just a wild thought. Any chance they are actually two shorter catapults going in opposite directions?
proelite
Junior Member
Even wilder. The ship can split in two to form a small drone carrier and a larger LHA. Each ship will have 1/2 of the catapult.
Funny!
It's not a particle accelerator.
I really am interested to see what sort of drones are to operate from this, and in what way. That huge catapult suggests quite heavy drones. At the same time, given the island getting in the way, the wingspan should not be anything out of the ordinary. GJ-11 related drones do appear as likely users. Without arresting gear, such heavy drones would be impossible to land on such a ship, even if they took up the entire deck to land. I mean even if we're talking about 50% lighter plane, without most fuel and payload, compared to the plane that took off.
Which sort of leads me to wonder - is it plausible that idea is to just launch the aircraft from the ship - but not land back on it? But i'm having trouble figuring out the benefits of such an idea. Surely if you can land the plane elsewhere then it's more efficient to have the plane take off from a land base as well? It's not like 076 will be able to operate a long way from China anyway. To survive, it'll have to remain without hundreds of miles off China.
Which sort of leads me to wonder - is it plausible that idea is to just launch the aircraft from the ship - but not land back on it? But i'm having trouble figuring out the benefits of such an idea. Surely if you can land the plane elsewhere then it's more efficient to have the plane take off from a land base as well? It's not like 076 will be able to operate a long way from China anyway. To survive, it'll have to remain without hundreds of miles off China.
Just a "what if", generated by the size of the trench. We know that choice of EM over steam cat for Fujian was made at a pretty late stage. So, "what if" a steam cat or two for Fujian was already manufactured when the switch to EM was made? And the steam cat is utilized on 076? Yes, you'll need a boiler or two to generate steam and additional piping. 
Why do you think it won't have arresting gear to begin with?
We have no indicators to suggest it won't have arresting gear, and from memory the 2020 rumours included arresting gear as part of the set of equipment.
Just a "what if", generated by the size of the trench. We know that choice of EM over steam cat for Fujian was made at a pretty late stage. So, "what if" a steam cat or two for Fujian was already manufactured when the switch to EM was made? And the steam cat is utilized on 076? Yes, you'll need a boiler or two to generate steam and additional piping.
Everything about this ship from the initial rumours we had about it in like 2020 was pointing towards EM catapults.
Using steam catapults would also not offer any commonality with the CV-18, and thus essentially be an obsolete orphan system.
Again, I don't see why this what if idea should be considered.
=====
We already have a fairly well established characteristic for this ship -- a LHD with an EM cat and arresting gear intended to operate relatively high performance UCAVs at minimum.
No need to bend backwards to come up with alternative scenarios unless new credible rumours or news emerges that it is actually indicated.
I assume both of you are partly serious rather than joking, which is how I interpret the posts by kentchang and proelite.
Last edited:
I don't know if it will have arresting gear. the line i wrote "Without arresting gear, such heavy drones would be impossible to land on such a ship" talks about plausibility of landing. It does not talk about plausibility of the ship having or not having arresting gear.
If anything, I am currently slightly more inclined to think there will be arresting gear. Simply because of the everything else I wrote, the fact such a large catapult is used and the fact that not landing the plane back on the carrier seems silly - I do think the remaining option of the ship having arresting systems is more than plausible.
Uhh I think it's more a case that our default assumption since 2020 should have been that 076 is likely to have arresting gear, and the idea of 076 not having arresting gear is like the idea that CV-18 won't be designed to operate fixed wing aircraft -- i.e.: theoretically within the realm of possibility in that the likelihood is greater than zero, but so infinitesimally small that it's not worth considering.
Putting it another way -- the only option is that the ship will have arresting gear, and it is far greater than "more than plausible" but more like "how can the lack of arresting gear even be seriously considered as of July 2024"?
If anything I'm more in awe of what kind of cognitive process led to the genuine entertaining of the idea that 076 won't have arresting gear.