Aircraft Carrier for PLA Navy

NewsMax.com ^ | Monday, Sept. 23, 2002 | Dr. Alexandr Nemets

[mitchbert]

Hmmm. So they said it would be a floating casino and now it turns out they're going to use it as an aircraft carrier to menace their neighbors.

Why am I not surprised by this? People have to wake up. China is a dangerous and ruthless nation that considers America an enemy. They are not our friend by any definition of the word.

[Gunslingr3]

"Hmmm. So they said it would be a floating casino and now it turns out they're going to use it as an aircraft carrier to menace their neighbors.

Why am I not surprised by this? People have to wake up. China is a dangerous and ruthless nation that considers America an enemy. They are not our friend by any definition of the word."

Keep in mind this is a carrier with about half the capability (air contigent) of any of the TWELVE carriers fielded by the USN.

It will be silently followed every day of it's seagoing life by a SSN waiting for orders to kill it. I'm not afraid.

[CaptRon]

Hmm. Big target.

[Poohbah]

Let's parse this, folks:

This vessel is essentially a hulk. It has no engineering plant; ripping the ship open to insert an entire engineering plant is not going to be easy. If it isn't a nuclear plant, then a LOT of space is going to be needed for bunker capacity.

In the end, it's a piece of crap, of questionable hull integrity, with a notional engineering plant, and it's going to operational in less than four years.

Sure thing...

[Southack]

Well, the Chinese navy could simply tow the carrier around to wherever they need it (grin)...

For $20 million, it would probably make a good investment in offshore floating condos/apartments. Tow it to Hong Kong, Tokyo, or San Francisco.

Heck, it's probably cheaper to pay the $20 million and build out rooms on that old hulk than it would be to convince San Francisco bureaucrats to issue permits for new Bay apartments.

It's probably got enough room for the equivilent of 10 stories worth of condos, too.

[steveegg]

I have some news for NewsMax. The aircraft mentioned are NOT, repeat NOT S/VTOL (incorrectly labeled VTOL) aircraft. Rather, they are conventional aircraft with a navalized tailhook and holdback bar (the latter used for takeoff instead of the catapults familiar to the USN). If they were S/VTOL capable, then Russia wouldn't have dumped the old Kiev-class carriers (roughly equivalent to the British Invincibles).

That having been said, they're rather capable aircraft. Assuming that a couple of squadrons were made and survived the Cold War, that'll solve China's naval air force. However, if they were lost or otherwise converted back to normal planes, it'll be much harder for the ChiComs to get aircraft that'll work (you don't just hang a tailhook on the back of a plane and land it on a carrier, and the engines need to have sufficient push to get it off the deck without a catapult to help).

[steveegg]

Further parsing:

There's plenty of room for bunkerage on an aircraft carrier, especially since it's not going to be steaming over to Los Angeles. As for the engineering plant, I'll have to check with my shipbuilding friends as to how long it would take to put a new plant in there, but considering that we're not entirely sure that the original nuke plant was ripped out, we can't discount the fact that it can go under its own power inside of 4 years (after all, the ChiComs do have a couple of nuke subs).

The fact that it was able to be towed from the Black Sea to China shows that it does have decent hull integrity. That having been said, I wonder what a spread of Mk48 ADCAPs will do to said integrity (sadly, that's about the only thing left in the arsenal that'll put a decent dent in its hide).

IF it's operational, I see it as capable of providing a one-time secondary attack axis. I won't go further into what mix of aircraft I'd expect to see (let's just say that if they're smart, it, and the 18 SS-N-19 Granit missiles that it carries, would provide a devastating 2 punch).

[Poohbah]

There's plenty of room for bunkerage on an aircraft carrier, especially since it's not going to be steaming over to Los Angeles.

Said bunkerage will come out of fuel and ordnance capacity, reducing operational effectiveness and on-station time.

As for the engineering plant, I'll have to check with my shipbuilding friends as to how long it would take to put a new plant in there, but considering that we're not entirely sure that the original nuke plant was ripped out, we can't discount the fact that it can go under its own power inside of 4 years (after all, the ChiComs do have a couple of nuke subs).

Said subs being radiological accidents waiting to happen (as are XUSSR naval reactors, assuming it's installed, which it probably AIN'T).

The fact that it was able to be towed from the Black Sea to China shows that it does have decent hull integrity.

And that the tow crew didn't push their luck. Sadly, the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea are some of the nastiest storm areas known to man.

That having been said, I wonder what a spread of Mk48 ADCAPs will do to said integrity (sadly, that's about the only thing left in the arsenal that'll put a decent dent in its hide).

A Harpoon or a Paveway would make more than a "decent dent." Any aircraft carrier is Disneyland for a fire--and Russian ships do NOT include much DC gear.

IF it's operational, I see it as capable of providing a one-time secondary attack axis.

My estimate: a ZERO-TIME attack axis.

I won't go further into what mix of aircraft I'd expect to see (let's just say that if they're smart, it, and the 18 SS-N-19 Granit missiles that it carries, would provide a devastating 2 punch).

Sure. Of course, if they shoot at decoys, they're hosed.

[11B3]

By 2006, that thing will have a small squadron of tactical nuke UCAVs with the battle group's name on it. It's big enough to target from low Earth orbit as well. (You can't tell me that those platforms aren't up there already.) Even if the US were to go back to fighting naval battles as we did in WWII (which is about the capability that the ChiComs will have), the learning curve for the ChiComs to actually use that ship with any proficiency will be many years. Indeed. It is the equivalent of handing a Vulcan to a gang-banger - it may be tough looking, but if you don't know how to shoot it it's no threat.

[skeeter]

Who believed the story about a 'floating casino'?

Still, I wouldn't want to be a sailor assigned to this floating bulls eye.

[Tallguy]

You nailed that one! This puppy is not going to have much range since oil-fired boilers and fuel-oil bunkers are going to be installed. Something has to give, like aviation gas, weapons stores, watertight bulkheads, crew space, etc.

All of this adds up to a small, short-range carrier with a reduced air wing component. This will be a training vessel, and not much more than that.

[Consort]

..The Varyag is a Kuznetsov Class carrier.

[steveegg]

Kindly see the link in #15. That source is one that I trust (even if the person running that site is rather arrogant). It seems that the Varyag wasn't meant to be nuke-powered and is roughly the size of the Forrestal. Also, compared to the Forrestal's 80 aircraft and 4,600 crew (and nothing outside of a few AA guns left over from WWII), it would have 30 aircraft, 1,500 crew, and a heap of missiles.

Given that it also is designed to defend itself with SAMs (roughly equivalent to the Sea Sparrow), it'll be a feat to get close enough to use a Paveway, and a Harpoon simply doesn't have enough uumph to do much, at least if it doesn't hit something explosive like a magazine or a bunch of avgas (why, oh why did we get rid of the TASM?).

I seem to remember that the WWII-era PacFlt didn't think the Japanese capable of using aircraft carriers effectively. I only hope that the current PacFlt doesn't make the same mistake.

[steveegg]

Tactical nukes? I don't think so, though if I were CINC-PacFlt, I'd have a couple of subs traling it. By 2006, the ChiComs will have enough nukes that are deliverable to the US to make a nuclear carrier strike politically unacceptable.

Given that its most-likely use is a single-shot weapon (much like the Soviet Navy doctrine), most aspects of carrier training won't necessarily need to be done. All that would really need to be done is takeoffs using the holdback bars and low-level overwater attacks. The remainder (navigation and firing the Granits) is merely a matter of scale.

[Poohbah]

Kindly see the link in #15. That source is one that I trust (even if the person running that site is rather arrogant). It seems that the Varyag wasn't meant to be nuke-powered and is roughly the size of the Forrestal. Also, compared to the Forrestal's 80 aircraft and 4,600 crew (and nothing outside of a few AA guns left over from WWII), it would have 30 aircraft, 1,500 crew, and a heap of missiles.

You're far too easily impressed--there is more to a warship than a collection of statistics. Those missiles are one salvo only. 30 aircraft? Sheesh. Better to just buy another few hundred SU-27s.

Given that it also is designed to defend itself with SAMs (roughly equivalent to the Sea Sparrow), it'll be a feat to get close enough to use a Paveway, and a Harpoon simply doesn't have enough uumph to do much, at least if it doesn't hit something explosive like a magazine or a bunch of avgas (why, oh why did we get rid of the TASM?).

First, an aircraft carrier is not much beyond being a floating JP fuel farm and bomb magazine. One Harpoon will make a very bad mess, especially with the latest warhead (adapted from the Kormoran warhead, designed to ignite massive CONFLAGs).

Second, the SAMs have their limits. It took more than one weapon to take down a WW2 carrier; a salvo of HARMs to take out the fire controls, followed by Skipper/Paveway-armed strikers.

As for why we got rid of TASM: it never worked as advertised. It was too easy to kill on arrival in the search box, and its search pattern was too small.

I seem to remember that the WWII-era PacFlt didn't think the Japanese capable of using aircraft carriers effectively. I only hope that the current PacFlt doesn't make the same mistake.

Actually, the WWII-era PacFlt had a healthy respect for Japanese NAVAIR. However, China has HUGE problems with its Navy--tacking on a carrier is a very bad idea for a fleet that has no area air defense.

[hosepipe]

A good submarine target...

[hosepipe]

People's Liberation Army Navy - http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/row/plan/index.html

People's Liberation Army Air Force - http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/agency/plaaf.htm