As Biden visits Asia, China launches South China Sea drills

It’s not wise to intimidate China. They are already moving assets to become sanction proof.

Aircraft Carrier without catapults was a very serious hindering of combat efficiency. The Sukhois were very heavy aircraft, the ski jump takeoff could has a limit of the aircraft's takeoff weight. We hope the third A.C. 003 with catapults will be greatly improving this drawback.

Aircraft Carrier without catapults was a very serious hindering of combat efficiency. The Sukhois were very heavy aircraft, the ski jump takeoff could has a limit of the aircraft's takeoff weight. We hope the third A.C. 003 with catapults will be greatly improving this drawback.

I was still on active duty as a Navy pilot when the Kuznetsov was commissioned. Back then she was called the Tbilisi. The Russians tried but could never figure out how to make a steam catapult work. We knew they had a prototype cat at Baku but never made it work right. They could not figure out how to maintain full steam pressure throughout the length of the run and they never made seals that stayed together. But we had to give the Soviets grudging respect for their ski jump workaround, and for figuring out arresting gear and being able to land those big Flankers on what are comparatively small aircraft carriers. The ski jump does indeed limit the payload of those aircraft (it also limits their daily sortie rate because the landing area intrudes on the take off runs), but the Soviets were not intending to use Tbilisi / Kuznetsov the way the US Navy uses an aircraft carrier. It was intended to defend the USSRs ballistic missile submarine sanctuary in the Barents from marauding US and Norwegian P-3C anti-submarine patrols. For that mission a Flanker with a light payload of a few air to air missiles was more than sufficient.

I recall Soviet Navy (VMF to use their initials) helicopters coming up behind our aircraft carriers to see how the FLOLS (Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System, a British invention btw) worked. They would slowly approach the stern trying to figure out how the "Meatball" worked to give the pilot a glideslope to follow. We would try to shoo them away from the stern but they were determined to learn. Their version looks and operates much like its western counterpart. But unlike the Russians, the Chinese appear to have working steam and EMALS catapults at a test site and we see photos of J-15 and J-20 aircraft with a very American looking launch bar on the nose landing gear. There is CATOBAR aircraft carrier under construction in Shanghai right now so in a few years China will join the US and France as the only nations operating CATOBAR aircraft carriers.

It’s not wise to intimidate China. 

But it is ok for China to try to intimidate its neighbors? And these neighbors are proscribed from taking measures to deter Chinese aggression? Just give up and get crushed under the Chinese jackboot? Sorry but I would rather stand up to the Chinese than cower from them.