Posted on 04/26/2017 7:08:21 PM PDT by blam
SINGAPORE—China's launch of its first homegrown aircraft carrier on Wednesday could be the beginning of a financial train wreck, according to carrier design and construction specialists.
Unless seriously revised, China's plans for its future carrier force could become a major financial difficulty for the country. The resources poured into aircraft carriers are a massive budgetary burden, even in the United States, according to Andrew Marshall, former director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment.
China's first "indigenous" aircraft carrier, assigned the hull number of CV-17, is expected to be named the Shandong and will be slightly larger at 70,000 tons than the CV-16, China's first-ever aircraft carrier.
The CV-17, characterized by the Chinese as a "homegrown" design, is an upgraded version of the Liaoning. The Soviet-built Liaoning, however, was not developed either in China or with China's naval requirements in mind. Ukraine sold the unfinished ship in 1998 to Chinese middlemen "pretending to have no connection to the navy," according to one China military analyst in Washington. "This was done under the ridiculous pretense that the carrier would be tied up at the docks in Macau to become a floating casino painted in battleship grey."
The ship was eventually towed to the Dalian shipyards, where it underwent more than a decade of re-fitting as the People's Liberation Army Navy worked to develop aircraft for carrier-based use.
This new carrier will be "just enough different from the Liaoning that the PLAN will enjoy minimal benefits—if any—and no synergism from having two similarly-designed ships," according to a U.S. aircraft carrier design specialist who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. The troubles that the Chinese will have with their carrier fleet "are only going to multiply geometrically if they follow through on their previously declared plans for future ships."
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(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
I’ll have what you are smoking. Thought people on FR are the most educated and informed.
I think what central va is saying is that China is playing the long game.
I didn't say it would happen today so it is my fault. The ChiComs long range plan is to be the worlds sole industrial power. It may take 50 years but they will one day crank out ships at a pace no other navy will be able to keep up with. I see what they are doing. They are slowly and methodically de industrializing the west.
Sorry. I agree but then they will be bankrupt. We have over what 95 years of perfecting carriers and they have just started, so look at another 50 years for them by then we will have moved on to even more advance technology.
I agree with you on the long-term bit: China (along with Japan and South Korea) have monopolized the big shipbuilders club for a long time now. The West is nowhere those three in overall tonnage being built.
I was gonna say ... can I say it? ... SHIP WRECK!
It doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you only got ONE shipyard that is capable of making a CVN you can only make one CVN at a time. And what if another CVN is damaged and their is already one under construction in our single big CVN capable dry dock? I ask all of you wanna be CNOs; what then?
I don’t understand your argument. at present, the Chinese have zero shipyards that can build a cvn, as evidenced by the only acceptable standard known to us; having done so.
they also have zero cvn designers, zero cvn designs, zero fleet ready reactors, zero qualified crews, zero hours of sustained combat air ops, and zero proven supply chains.
any infrastructure is preferable to a non-existent infrastructure, including ours.
Everybody says that but I see no evidence of it.
They are pursuing this goal at a great cost to their "citizenry" ( if citizen is even a concept there ) ... because of the insane levels of air pollution that this incurs. Beijing is regularly, especially in the winter, enveloped in smog of a density that is unthinkable in the U.S. I consider it an outrageous crime that this easily observable fact passes without notice here, while we whiplash ourselves with rhetoric of clean air etc. etc. etc.
When I say easily observable, I am refering to the "Modis Orbit Swath" ( this Google search will give you the site ) global images, which survey the globe twice over daily, once each with two satellites, named Terra and Aqua.
The extreme pollution of eastern China, including Beijing and industrial areas to the southwest, is shocking. It is visible in the form of a thick gray covering which flows like a liquid among China's industrial valleys, as this problem is exacerbated by the mountainous topography.
A casual perusal, persisently pursued, will reveal many egregious examples. I'll give you a link to a recent image, although I can't link to it, because who knows why these days:
https://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/single.cgi?image=crefl1_143.A2016337033500-2016337034000.2km.jpg
Beijing is near the top right of the image, under the northern tip of that gray tongue. Note the density of it to the south, as well as that inland valley covered by its own emanations.
I say again, it's incredible that this passes without notice when we are bombarded with hysterical declamations against our pollutions. And then they swing it against us with, "Oh, China is beating us."
And what are *we*?
^^^
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