Type 076 LHD/LHA discussion

I was just thinking and I am starting to feel that it is more likely that the 076 will not have an angled deck.

The main reason I am leaning this way is because having a through-deck landing approach would allow bolters significantly more runway length to get back airborne again. This would be significantly more relevant for more traditional UAV designs with props and straight wings that favours endurance over speed and thrust in design choice, which would likely struggle with a shorter angled deck even on the 003. Even more so if you want to recover such UCAV with munitions.

This would give the 076 a unique niche role within a battle group, able to launch and recover UAVs no other ship can. And while the straight deck design would obviously limit operational tempo, it’s less of an issue since you would not send 076s to do high tempo combat ops by itself, in which case it would operate as a component of a proper CSG and provide supplementary support to the CSG rather than try to function as a light carrier. Also, since the 076 would be operating primarily UAVs, worse case they can treat those UAVs as disposable and not even worry about recovery for high risk missions.

A high-resolution version of a recently shared image.

SINCHIKI said:

Maybe it's like this....
View attachment 130879
Wait...I can't send my picture...
Why does the system prompt that my file is too large?


（Alright, I've reduced the image size, so it can be uploaded now.）

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Yea, no lol, that's why I said this ship makes no sense. You cannot land like that w/o clearing the frekin deck which makes it extremely inefficient for combat operations and very very low sorties which is antithetical to what a carrier does.
The only thing I can postulate is launching fixed wing is an extremely secondary mission profile for this ship OR we got it wrong and it may still very well have an angle deck.
Or if it's only designed for fixed wing UCAVs they don't expect recovery in times of war... it'll either be lost due to enemy fire or deliberately crashed into the sea.

Another new shot. Posted by @鎏鎏岁月 on Weibo.

kwaigonegin said:

Yea, no lol, that's why I said this ship makes no sense. You cannot land like that w/o clearing the frekin deck which makes it extremely inefficient for combat operations and very very low sorties which is antithetical to what a carrier does.
The only thing I can postulate is launching fixed wing is an extremely secondary mission profile for this ship OR we got it wrong and it may still very well have an angle deck.
Or if it's only designed for fixed wing UCAVs they don't expect recovery in times of war... it'll either be lost due to enemy fire or deliberately crashed into the sea.

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What if intended UAV has VTOL capability? Enough space for liftsystem since there's no cockpit, cable could be insurance, People who designed this make a living out of it so let's be a bit patient

This ship make sense if you think of it as firstly an amphibious assault ship with drone support capability added to it, rather than thinking along the idea of USS America which is more like a light aircraft carrier with marine strike jets for attacks on targets far inland from shorelines. F-35B on USS America can also be used for air covers in their air to air which mean US Marine Corp can act independently from US Navy's aircraft carriers.

The flight deck of type 076 is mainly for use by transport helicopters (Z20 and Z8C/G/L) and their escorts (Z10/Z21). Attack and recon drones are added capabilities to be used to support beach assaults.

Even if the catapult is long enough to launch J35, the landing strip is still far too short for safe landing. Morever, I find it surprising that no one care about the spine injury likely suffered by the pilots due to suddent impact caused by such short landing strip.

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lcloo said:

This ship make sense if you think of it as firstly an amphibious assault ship with drone support capability added to it, rather than thinking along the idea of USS America which is more like a light aircraft carrier with marine strike jets for attacks on targets far inland from shorelines. F-35B on USS America can also be used for air covers in their air to air which mean US Marine Corp can act independently from US Navy's aircraft carriers.

The flight deck of type 076 is mainly for use by transport helicopters (Z20 and Z8C/G/L) and their escorts (Z10/Z21). Attack and recon drones are added capabilities to be used to support beach assaults.

Even if the catapult is long enough to launch J35, the landing strip is still far too short for safe landing. Morever, I find it surprising that no one care about the spine injury likely suffered by the pilots due to suddent impact caused by such short landing strip.

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Landing strip is the length of the ship, which is longer than the landing strip on the Ford class.

The biggest problem for me is the single catapult and the off center landing.

lcloo said:

This ship make sense if you think of it as firstly an amphibious assault ship with drone support capability added to it, rather than thinking along the idea of USS America which is more like a light aircraft carrier with marine strike jets for attacks on targets far inland from shorelines. F-35B on USS America can also be used for air covers in their air to air which mean US Marine Corp can act independently from US Navy's aircraft carriers.

The flight deck of type 076 is mainly for use by transport helicopters (Z20 and Z8C/G/L) and their escorts (Z10/Z21). Attack and recon drones are added capabilities to be used to support beach assaults.

Even if the catapult is long enough to launch J35, the landing strip is still far too short for safe landing. Morever, I find it surprising that no one care about the spine injury likely suffered by the pilots due to suddent impact caused by such short landing strip.

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Comparing is a bit futile when USS America are made to be used far from the US mainland for ''projecting power'' while most Chinese ships are still used way more like defensive systems/regional control used mostly near China mainland.

If China become a wandering warmonger on the other side of the globe, I could think about the need of something like j-35 onboard but presently I cannot even see the need of that capability.

eprash said:

What if intended UAV has VTOL capability? Enough space for liftsystem since there's no cockpit, cable could be insurance, People who designed this make a living out of it so let's be a bit patient

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Sure, however to my knowledge there is no advanced heavy VTOL UCAV in PLAN inventory at the moment or even in late stage development.