Posted on 10/12/2009 9:48:33 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Chinese Carrier Strike
Posted by Douglas Barrie
at 10/12/2009 7:48 AM CDT
Chinese ambitions may be to give its carrier air wing an air-to-surface role from the outset, at least if what appears to be a mock-up of a naval Flanker is to be taken at face value.
Numerous images of an intriguing facility claimed to be at the Wuhan ship design institute have appeared on the internet in the past few days. The images show a building on which an aircraft carrier’s main superstructure is being fabricated, along with a large roof area that could be used to practise aircraft and helicopter deck handling.
The images show a Z-8 helicopter and a Flanker of some description. Whether both are mock-ups has yet to be determined.
The Flanker appears to be fitted with two large air-to-surface missile models – one under the port and starboard inboard wing stations. The dummy weapon may be part of the YJ-8 family, conceivably the YJ-83 anti-ship missile, though the quality of the imagery so far doesn’t provide conclusive identification.
Picture Credits CJDBY.net via China Air and Naval Power
Your take?
My take.
Why didn’t they just draw some lines on a tarmac? And bury the catapult equipment underneath.
If a pilot lines up incorrectly, he’ll either crash into the building or fake superstructure or fall off the roof onto the ground. You’ll loose a aircraft, a building and maybe a pilot.
That's how the Doolittle Raiders went about it, although admittedly they were purely interested in taking off and landing on a carrier was of no consideration to them.
Ironically, their plan was to...land in China.
I think the purpose is to teach aircraft handling to the deck crew, not to actually fly the aircraft off of the building.
Having the facility on top of a building lends a certain “realism” when you’re pushing around an aircraft with a tug.
The Chicomm carrier Shi Lang, ex-Soviet Varyag, won't utilize catapults. Ski jump bow if they ever get it operational.
This is clearly a full-size mock-up training facility IMHO for training crews in deck operation, handling, movment, positioning, etc.
My guess is that the building below the "flight deck" is outfitted to operate like a hanger and that they probably have an elevator between those spaces and the mock-up deck on top.
It is not highly unusual. Th US Navy has had similar installations.
The Chinese (PLAN) has another facility where they are training pilots in take off from a ski-jump which is seperate and completely functional in terms of the aircraft powering up and taking off from that airfield off a ski-jump from a "marked up" deck on the airfield.
ping
OK, so the ski jump aids in getting the aircraft into the air. How do they land?
At sea, the first new Chinese carrier (which is going to be the renovated Varayag and sister ship to the Russian Kuznetzov), they will use what is known at STOBAR, meaning Short Take-off, but Arrested Recovery. The ski-jump allows the short takeoff (also weight limited) and then they use wires to snag that aircraft when landing, just like we do.
Our system is known as CATOBAR, Catapault assisted Take-off but Arrested Landing. Ourselves, the French, and the Brazilians are the only navies in the world using CATOBAR.
It is the best for carrier air operations...but also the most expensive and demanding. The French have one, modern nuclear carrier using it. The Brazilains have one old, conventional French carrier using it for a very small air wing of A-4 aircraft.
We of course have 11 super carriers using it.
Thanks- interesting reading!
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If this is a design facility, then this makes sense if you are a Chinese Aircraft Carrier designer.
Believe it or not, it is not easy to design a sophisticated weapons system like this, much less figure out how to effectively integrate everything you need, while controlling weight, moment and balance. We develop systems like this over decades of experience and under actual combat conditions at sea. The Chinese have no place to do that, hence the mockups. This is not at all un-similar to facilites we have right now, like the Naval Air Engineering Center in Lakehurst New Jersey.
It takes an incredible amount of support equipment in order to maintain an aviation capability at sea. The more sophisticated you make it the more complex the problem is, especially if you are limited in the hull size that you want to base your platforms on. What looks good on paper is often useless at sea in actual conditions.
One of the reasons that the US is dominant in Aircraft Carriers and Aviation at Sea technology is because we committed to enormous hulls 45 years (or so) ago when we started developing the Nimitz Class hulls. That hullform didn’t change a bit until they decided to incorporate a bulbous bow on the USS Ronald Reagan, which effectively made the hull even larger and able to carry even more weight.
The size of these Chinese carriers, which are really Russian hulls they are trying to renovate for use, are for shallow water operations as opposed to Blue Water where we operate. The hull is not as massive as a Nimitz class, so they are limited right off the bat as to what they can carry.
We’ve been experimenting with carriers since WWII and every one of them has been a working laboratory that the US Navy has used to nearly perfect the science of Aircraft Launch and Recovery. We already know what works and what doesn’t and what the very real limits of the equipment we use. We arrest our aircraft with proven equipment while other countries have relied on VSTOL technology for landing and deck running for launch as opposed to catapulting, which the US Navy perfected too.
Our Carrier’s primary weapons are it’s aircraft. This vessel will also carry other major missile systems that need to be integrated with aircraft and helicopter ops. We put our antennas high atop an Island, while a vessel like this is no where near as tall so things fit much tighter and are physically located closer to turning rotors, jet exhaust and such. The Russians never did go for quality, preferring quantity instead. I would not be surprized if the Chinese found they had bought a real POS and have found out the hard way that you can’t just grab the Big Boy toys and go play...
So if this Chinese are building mockups of this caliber, it tells me that they are being very serious about proving the interaction between ships systems and aircraft under actual conditions, or as close as they can get to actual conditions, in an attempt to fix some basic design flaws in the original hull that severely limited what it could do. They can’t put to sea on their current design to do testing, because this is their current design...
Long winded, but I’ll betcha a burger I’m close to the mark....
Takeoffs use the in-line deck; and landings use the flat canted (to-port) deck.
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