Sailors transfer a J-15 fighter jet into the hangar bay during a training exercise on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning | Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China
Posted on 11/26/2018 2:08:33 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
China on Monday officially confirmed that it is building its third aircraft carrier which is stated to be "bigger and mightier" than the other two warships, a move by Beijing to bolster its blue-water navy capability to operate far from its shores.
A late entrant into aircraft carrier-led naval battleship formations, China launched its first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, in 2012, which was a refit of the former Soviet vessel bought from Ukraine.
Though Liaoning was operationalised and led trial expeditions into the Taiwan Straits, it was widely regarded as an experimental vessel used for mastering technologies, especially to operate the newly built J-15 planes from its deck.
Subsequently, China launched its domestically-built second aircraft carrier and commissioned it for sea trials last year. The yet to be named ship is expected to be put into service by 2020.
China has launched work of building its third aircraft carrier, official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
A "new-generation carrier" is being constructed at the shipyard as per schedule, the state-run China Daily reported quoting Xinhua.
The Xinhua article, which was intended to mark the sixth anniversary of the first take-off and landing by a Chinese fighter on the country's first aircraft carrier CNS Liaoning, the report said, without elaborating about the programme of the "new-generation carrier".
The Xinhua article is the first official confirmation that China is building a third aircraft carrier, it said.
The China Daily report referred to the speculation that the China State Shipbuilding Corp's Jiangnan Shipyard Group in Shanghai is building a "bigger and mightier" than the Liaoning and the second carrier.
An official at the China State Shipbuilding Corp's headquarters in Beijing, however, refused to comment on the issue.
Also, information officers of the People's Liberation Army Navy could not be reached, the report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.in ...
Sailors transfer a J-15 fighter jet into the hangar bay during a training exercise on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning | Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China
I see they even imitated our color-keyed crew system for different work teams. Why not? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The hard part is learning to operate fighter aircraft 24/7 in all weather, not building the ships. Twenty or thirty countries have viable shipyards that could build any type of ship imaginable. Only one has an effective fleet of aircraft carriers.
They can’t operate like we do. And for all their talk about being a blue water navy, the truth is that their carriers can’t operate far from their shores. They all have ski jumps and can only launch fighters. How effective can a carrier be with no airborne radar or electronic warfare? Not very, we’d be hitting them from a thousand miles outside their range in a fight.
An aircraft carrier group is a very expensive and complex system of systems. The logistics alone will take massive resources. I don’t know if China completely understands the whole scope of the effort to maintain a carrier fleet.
China is taking over ever more, of our manufacturing.
All that crap we buy from them? All of it, makes them better, and better, and better at making things.
The more they take over from us, the better they become.
Meanwhile, we are losing ever more, of our own capabilities.
Not good.
Just saying...
They do have Naval Airborne C2 assets. EW is not far behind. They copy, almost down to the rivet, everything we have in our inventory so I would not be surprised to see a Chinese variant of the EA-18G rolling off of the lot in the near future.
It’s the new reality, China builds a third carrier, Russia sinks it’s only one.
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