Posted on 03/14/2006 1:43:37 AM PST by Dyaus Pitar
Hong Kong: The Chinese military is currently planning to build an aircraft carrier, a pro-Beijing daily in Hong Kong reported Friday.
"The Chinese army will conduct research and build an aircraft carrier and develop our own aircraft carrier fleet," People’s Liberation Army Lt. Gen. Wang Zhiyuan was quoted as saying in the Chinese-language Wen Wei Po.
"An aircraft carrier is a very important tool for big countries defending their interests in the sea. China is a big country with a long shoreline. An aircraft carrier is necessary to defend our interests in the sea," he said.
It would be China's first aircraft carrier and would likely be deployed to join other warships currently in the South China Sea, the newspaper said.
(Excerpt) Read more at india-defence.com ...
They built a Great Wall...but was that to keep others out or keep their own people in?
Hopefully they do it about as well as france.
Can't do any worse.
China already has an aircraft carrier, it bought the Varyig from the russian commies. Oh wait, it was just sitting there rusting since the chicoms couldnt figure out how to make it work, so they turned it into a hotel iirc. On a serious note, it took a Briton who invented the steam catapult to finally allow the USA to make its dominant carrier fleet of today. Point being that building a modern carrier requires the confluence of many industries and chicoms are not there yet. All this aside, carriers are actually a quickly fading asset in relation to tomorrows conflicts. We simply will not send one into the strait of hormuz out of fear of losing one. They are good and still extremely usefull, but their time is coming to an end.
Actually, they'd have to build 3 carrier groups if they wanted to have one available constantly. Pretty darn expensive. At best (worst), that doesn't look to be happening before 2020 or so.
Right now, the LAST thing we need to face is a Chinese navy filled with aircraft carriers bought and paid for by Americans courtesy of "globalization".
A lot of folks here are scoffing at the notion of Chinese carriers - I wouldn't. We could well be seeing the beginnings of the next "Cold War".
It will be more dangerous with the Chinese than the last one was with the Soviets.
I don't really buy the argument that the Chinese will be more dangerous than the Soviets, at least not yet. They have a long way to go before that becomes a possibilty and the Chinese government isn't likely to retain its current form given the societal changes that are required for it to compete against the US.
Time will tell though.
In the current age, a carrier without an effective missile defense is simply a future barrier reef.
We should sell 'em a demilitarized Enterprise. The Chicoms will go broke trying to make it work, and creating an air group for it.
And of course the carrier will be outfitted with a stolen American Aegis battle management system. So much of the tech for a carrier group will likely be stolen from the US, you might as well just paint a freaking American flag on the thing.
A Chi com carrier is just two tomahawks away from being an attraction for scuba divers.
Someone tell me again that story about how free countries never go to war. Something about China and free do not seem to me to ever belong in the same sentence.
Click on the Logo above for info on how Red China is rapidly growing its modern navy.
Now, I'm far from an expert in modern military affairs, but it seems to me that he who has the most, and most accurate guided missles, rules the roost.
Even as a thousand Communist Chinese Sunburns and Yakhonts can blow our carriers out of the Taiwan Straits, surely we'll always have enough missles to sink all their ships, right down to the clunkiest little junk.
If the near-term objective is to unify with Taiwan, land-based aircraft are the cheaper way to go and would do the job nicely. An aircraft carrier would be a huge investment to risk losing when it only marginally contributes to the invasion operations.
Now, if we're talking about dominating the South China Sea -- that's a different ballgame.
I volunteer to man the chum bucket on the escort boat...
But, there you go.
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