SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge China now launching/recovering aircraft from its own CATOBAR aircraft carrier
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That really does look like it was made by AI to me. | |||
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Member |
That caption is in Japanese, but it was abbreviated. The official term for both Chinese and Japanese is "航空母艦". Roughly translates to "Aviation Mother Ship" If the middle two characters are isolated and taken literally, it becomes "Sky Mother". | |||
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Wait, what? |
Everything I’ve heard about the new carrier, much like the Chinese economy, their building quality, their self aggrandizing projects at home is not stellar. And like others, I’ll wait until they’re doing launches and recoveries in heavy open seas in the dark before drawing any lasting conclusions. The Chinese like to march and posture; that’s all I see at the moment. “Remember to get vaccinated or a vaccinated person might get sick from a virus they got vaccinated against because you’re not vaccinated.” - author unknown | |||
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| Member |
It's a curious design as this ship layout only has 3 catapults, and the bow cats are really long, as you pointed out cat-2 interferes with the waist recovery area. The last US carrier with less than 4 cats was Midway and she operated just 3, and ultimately 2 in her last years. Will be interesting to see what kind of launch-rate they can maintain as I don't believe any of their 3 carriers have ever gone to sea with a full air wing and conducted a full-spectrum of operations.
PLAN are pretty anal about appearances lending to an odd 'too clean' look to their ships, whereas ships that actually go to sea and operate have a certain amount of...'character' to them. Also, I don't believe they've operated a full air wing on any of their carriers thus all these PR videos and images released show a very spacious flight deck. I had a Navy vet friend of mind point out a curious observation, he noticed PLAN ships don't have a lot of visible lifesaving & DC gear. | |||
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His Royal Hiney |
They're smart and they can also steal IP. I think the OP missed the main message of the video. First, I would hope they've been able to launch and recover planes with their very first aircraft carrier unless they were planning on doing kamikaze runs. Second, I see they still had to manually attach the planes to the catapult system prior to launch. The big message I think they want to sent is they have they own E-2 Hawkeye which gives our side Airborne Early Warning, command and control, and battle management. I don't know if I'm right if I remember that the fire systems on board the fighter planes can be controlled directly by the electronics systems on the AEW. I also don't know how much of that Chinese Hawkeye is just for show and actually no-go. "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946. | |||
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| Left-Handed, NOT Left-Winged! |
First, U.S., European, Japanese, and Korean auto manufacturers set up shop in China to get access to the Chinese market because their tariffs and structural impediments to imports effectively double the cost of imported vehicles. If you want to sell in China at a price people will pay, you have to build in China. It wasn't "cheap labor". High end cars like Ferrari, Rolls, Lamborghini can sell at imported prices because they are status cars and the rich will pay. Second, these are all 50/50 joint ventures with a Chinese company, so profits are split and the non-Chinese side gets half. It's more about increasing your global footprint to mitigate risk, get an incremental profit increase, and to prevent the locals from dominating the Chinese market and then exporting to your home country. My company has JV's in China, and despite good sales volume equivalent to US/Europe, they contribute much lower profits overall. None of the majors have been "kicked out". COVID resulted in many expats leaving and going back to their home countries, and leaving it up to the locals to manage things. China didn't really learn EV's from U.S. and Euro companies, the Chinese government heavily subsidized everything so that China would be a leader in EV's. They overcapacitized and overbuilt and now there is a glut of unsold EV's and they are dumping them anywhere they can. The companies that build the production lines are seeing a sharp dropoff in business now. The shift to EV's was overhyped and now that western consumers are pushing back by not buying them, our manufacturers are moving back to ICE. China? Not sure what they will do as all these new EV companies don't have ICE to fall back on. Such is central planning, China bet the farm on EV's and for a while there the western governments are all in on making the transition, which would have benefitted China immensely. Imagine that? But THE PEOPLE said no, and finally Trump called bullshit on the climate alarmists. China has improved a lot since my first time there in 2011. But they have a massive population bomb that is starting to burst, young people don't want to have kids, there aren't enough jobs, and lots of layoffs recently. As for their aircraft carriers they run on conventional propulsion and can't go more than a few hundred miles off the coast, and significantly less during actual combat. They cannot project any force, only defend the coast, which could be done by land based aircraft from bases. So what's the point? IT'S ALL SHOW AND NO GO. | |||
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| Member |
Big message is: - Their electromagnetic catapults work. - Their J-15T and J-35 5th gen fighter is operational from its intended platform - Their KJ-600 AEW aircraft is also operational and its at least a direct physical copy of a E-2, all the way down to the false tail components. The E-2 is quite formidable in its capabilities, we don't know much about this KJ-600. Wonder if its interior is just as uncomfortable for the crew as it is for a Hawkeye crew. | |||
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Honky Lips |
Glad to see that while the Russians who built that ship and gave up on it, the Chinese just can't be held back from making a piss poor design work in calm weather without any pressure. _____________________________________________ Proverbs 3:31 "Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways." | |||
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| Member |
If it’s all show and no go all the manufacturers wouldn’t have gotten together and explained their plight to get Trump to hit them with massive automotive tariffs. Keep believing what you will I’ll trust people that have seen the remarkable change in capabilities from just 5 years ago from in person walk arounds. | |||
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| Member |
You're referring to their first carrier which they bought from the Russians and refurbished it. This is their THIRD carrier, an indigenous design and first full flat-top. Nothing publicly released if they can do this | |||
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| Left-Handed, NOT Left-Winged! |
The Chinese Navy and their Aircraft carriers are all show. They cannot project power, they can't function more than a few hundred miles from the shore. Why even think about building a conventionally powered carrier today? But they did... Chinese EV's are quite good from my experience riding in them. Long term quality and crash worthiness? No idea, but based on experience I would be cautious. Due to government subsidies, they overbuilt and have a ton of EV's they need to dump. Again, central planning - they wanted to be the world leader in a technology that we are now seeing most western consumers do not want to buy. The tariffs are strategic to avoid dumping and to force China to absorb all the costs of overbuilding. "In person walkarounds?". No I've worked on several new JV startups in China in the past decade and a half. And I work closely with the equipment suppliers that have built all those EV battery and E-motor production lines. | |||
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| Member |
This seems like something you don't learn overnight. Looks "dangerous" as hell to me. God bless the US Military. | |||
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| half-genius, half-wit |
I wish them great lack of success. We have eighty years on them in this tactic. One off? One one? 'Gerald Ford says' hold my beer................. | |||
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| half-genius, half-wit |
Nailed it. | |||
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Member |
Sure, no threat, they'll never advance past this stage. In the meantime, they are successfully launching two to four rockets into space every week. "With unknown payloads." Surely, Shirley, all beneficent, all for the good of all mankind.  | |||
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Member |
Seems none of you learned the lesson from WWII and Japan. “Those planes can’t fly straight” etc etc. Other countries have excellent engineers, planners and soldiers. China could build 60 carriers a year if they wanted, iterating each one. | |||
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| Left-Handed, NOT Left-Winged! |
China can't even build a machine tool that can make the parts they need for such things. They still buy machine tools from Japan and Germany or the US. China can do a lot of things but it's strange they cannot make viable precision machine tools. | |||
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Character, above all else |
Almost 115 years ago Eugene Ely first piloted an airplane from the deck of a ship. 15 months later he turned to Lt. Theodore Ellyson and said "Hold my beer and watch this", then proceeded to land an airplane on a ship. Since then, there's been thousands of lesson's learned about shipboard aviation operations and power projection, and many are written in blood. A metric shit-tonne of ongoing training, both for pilots and the deck crews, is required to mitigate the plethora of known dangers. This commitment to training requires a lot of money and resources to be successful on a scale that leads to the level of credible power projection that actually means something when foreign policy is being forcefully implemented. So 115 years after the first shipboard launch, Naval Aviation is still learning new lessons, including about the newer technology that's supposed to make things safer and better (Magic Carpet, for example). That's a lot of years and lessons learned for the PLA Navy to experience, digest, and execute before their new carriers become an effective fighting force. "The Truth, when first uttered, is always considered heresy." | |||
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| Member |
Thank you for that post. I need to re-read your Magic Carpet link a few times to digest it. Carrier launch and landing technology is amazing. Oh, that whole flight and deck crew coordination is pretty amazing too. | |||
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Coin Sniper |
That looked amazing like US Navy carrier ops, right down to the aircraft. Something doesn't feel right unless they built an exact copy and copied all flight ops. I recall an old friend who had served as an officer on a US Carrier once told me that if we gave any country, a fully functional, stocked and ready to sail Nuclear Carrier, with every instruction manual and video.... it would take them a decade to be able to put her to sea and other 5 years to be able to launch and recover aircraft. Ops have manuals but everything is handed down from crewman to crewman as the experienced move up and new come on board he said. Pronoun: His Royal Highness and benevolent Majesty of all he surveys 343 - Never Forget Its better to be Pavlov's dog than Schrodinger's cat There are three types of mistakes; Those you learn from, those you suffer from, and those you don't survive. | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge China now launching/recovering aircraft from its own CATOBAR aircraft carrier
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