China launches sea trials of its first carrier

"Xinhua said the first sea trial was in line with the schedule to rebuild the carrier, which China bought from Ukraine more than a decade ago."

"Defense experts say China plans up to four carriers in all, with preparations under way at a Shanghai shipyard."

So it took them ten years to refurbish a carrier? How long wiil it take to build four new ones and how effective will they be?

time for the u.s. to also develop a carrier killer missile. there would be a very good market for them in asia.

fds, missiles and torpedoes capable of sinking or at least disabling carriers have existed for years.

Defense experts say China plans up to four carriers in all, with preparations under way at a Shanghai shipyard.

For what purpose? I could understand 2 at the most for "defence" (what country would attack China unless provoked?) , but not 4. And the costs of operating and maintaining them will be enormous.

With any luck, they are setting themselves up for a regime change. Good riddance.

paulinusa

So it took them ten years to refurbish a carrier? How long wiil it take to build four new ones and how effective will they be?

do you want to under estimate China or you really don't know their nature of foreign policy - 'only announce anything when we are fully prepared'. prove- even when their hackers already infiltrated almost every important resource they didn't own it cause they are still unprepared for backlash.

Who is going to train their pilots to fly off of it? The Americans have lots of experience, the Chinese have none. No experience at all about carrier ops. Expect to hear about all sorts of accidents.

YuriOtani,

Who is going to train their pilots to fly off of it?

Here is a great chance for Japan to help country relations by training China on the implementation of their military.

YuriOtani

Who is going to train their pilots to fly off of it? The Americans have lots of experience, the Chinese have none. No experience at all about carrier ops. Expect to hear about all sorts of accidents.

The Indians maybe, or they may even hire a few ex Russian navy pilots. These days money can buy anything in Russia so that wouldnt be that hard.

However l think most of the train would have been done already, they built a mock up of the carrier deck years ago for training purposes so most of the training would be done already one would think.

They may have the hardware, but by no means do they have the skill. The Battle of Midway comes to mind...

The mock up doesn't rock, rattle, nor roll which is the hard part for ship duty in general, especially difficult in landing the plane and Indian is not exactly ally with PRC. Hiring Russian pilot is probably the course PRC will take but they need a lot more then just pilots, people like engineers and technicians required to maintain, re-fuel, and reload ammunition to the plane on high seas are also needed and the trainees are going to take sometime to get use to not to mention all that during a combat simulation which is going to require a new sets of procedure protocols and manuals even before going into actual training.

Tatanka,

If you read the article it says the vessel will be used for training and research so they can build their own carriers. Incidently this is the 4th carrier they have had to study since the mid 80's they have also built a land based mock up of the deck to train on (much like the British had) and they have also developed jet trainers for carrier training. Also the Brazilians have reportedly been training them on their carrier in exchange for information. So the skill level while way behind the US is building and its not like they are going to go to war with it any time soon.

If you want to see the mock up of their carrier go to google earth and enter these coordinates. Actually looks quite good.

30°25'22.61"N,114°15'44.15"E

If the carriers they are building turns out like the bullet trains they reverse engineered the world will not have to worry for a few more years...

Probably gonna launch hundreds of armed drones off it.

It would be fitting payback it they use it to launch spy planes just outside U.S. territorial waters.

The kings of slacking, stealing, bribing and cutting corners... god save us. If the Titanic can sink so can this. I served on the Indy and Hawk... I just cannot see the Chinese landing aircraft with hundreds of guys playing their role on a flight deck yet alone steer a ship with flight ops. Though we will not hear about all the crashing birds/migs on the deck unless the whole gray bees nest sinks.

Tatanaka, What do you mean The Battle of Midway comes to mind. At that moment in time China could barely stand on its own feet, let alone deploy a naval task force to the middle of the pacific.

SRowan, I think he is implying the Chinese have no skill, as he believes the Japanese had none at Midway.

In fact, the Japanese were devasting at the early stages of the battle. And if not for sheer luck and tenacity, those outdated obsolete Dauntless dive bombers would have been torn to shreds like everything else that approached the Japanese. Those dive bombers were accurate when they were not getting blown out of the sky though, and by luck, they weren't.

Just goes to show, don't underestimate your enemy. Certainly fear of the Chinese is over-blown though.

weasel:

" That's very odd, as they are quite capable of reverse-engineering a PS3, or building fake Apple stores in less than two weeks. "

Hmm.... and here I thought an aircraft carrier is a tad more complex thatn a playstation game. Silly me.

China is still a decade (possibly more) away from having an operationally ready aircraft carrier battke group.

Small carriers are effective in supporting troop landings and for anti-submarine patrols. If you want to carry a big stick in this day and age, you need a carrier group, which requires knowledge of carrier tactics. I remember when Viktor Belenko, the Russian MIG 25 pilot who defected to Hakodate airport back in the 1976 was later hired by the US as a consultant and allowed to come aboard a US carrier. After watching an exercise involving 45 minutes of takeoffs and landings, he remarked to the captain,"The Soviet navy has nothing close to that kind of capability." But anything that floats can certainly be sunk with the right technology and tactics.

China is still a decade (possibly more) away from having an operationally ready aircraft carrier battke group.

I lived in China and there was a saying that one Chinese engineer was worth 5 Americans.

blusafetypin

I lived in China and there was a saying that one Chinese engineer was worth 5 Americans.

Absolutely. It would certainly only take one Chinese engineer to copy what 5 American engineers developed. No surprise there.

I lived in China and there was a saying that one Chinese engineer was worth 5 Americans.

Do engineers know how to fly fighter jets off carriers?

underestimate your opponents at your own peril................but then most of you are not in the military, never mind.

So it took them ten years to refurbish a carrier? The chinese engineers didn't just copy and paste the original soviet design blueprint to their ship, Hence the major structural differences between Varyag and her sister the Admiral Kuznetsov. They have said refurbishing a carrier is longer than building one from scratch.

The mock up doesn't rock, rattle, nor roll which is the hard part for ship duty in general, especially difficult in landing the plane Well today's dominate U.S naval aviators didn't developed without some growing pains, hundreds of planes have crashed and pliots and deck crew killed since carrier operations begun. I expect the early PLANAF aviators to encounter same problems.

I have heard on a few documentaries that US pilots to their 1st carrier landing AFTER they are deployed to the carrier.

All training is done at the air-base. In short their 1st real carrier landing is when they arrive for operational duty.

Good luck to the Chinese.