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Satellite images suggest new Chinese carrier close to launch

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By JON GAMBRELL and DAVID RISING

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Hopefully, China will hire enough Russian trainers to help them get enough pilots ready for deployment on the carrier.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The US has had battle experience involving carrier operations since WWII. China has had a rudimentary carrier for only a couple of years. Their Navy won't have parity with us in the near future.

The finest technology that money can steal from us.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

RodneyToday  10:26 am JST

Waste of money. Hypersonic missiles and satellite based technology is the future.

And cyberwar technology now makes it 'cleaner', to a point. Yet many if most wars the US has been involved in for at least the past 30 years or more were almost all or depended heavily on air (and sea) power - Bosnia, Kosovo, ISIS, Libya (both times), Desert Storm (at first), Operation Desert Fox (a one week exclusively air strike war in December 1998, against Iraq AGAIN) and others.

But China, being the large land empire that it is, has never been a major naval contender. Still, this isn't something to dismiss or blow off.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

China understands that without their own organic air power their combat ships are not survivable against attacks from navies that can bring combat air power with them. If you want to fight in blue water beyond the range of shore based air power there is no substitute to aircraft carriers. Without them a carrier equipped enemy can have its way with your ships.

The hypersonic stuff is a lot of hype, especially for naval warfare. Ships move and you might be surprise just how fast modern combat ships can move. Hypersonic weapons can be hard to shoot down, but the faster the weapon goes the harder it is for that weapon to find a target and hit it. Low flying subsonic weapons can be more difficult to detect than high flying hypersonic weapons. They can give less warning time to the ship being attacked and be just as difficult to hit. But the reason you have seen western navies across the board stick to subsonic cruise missiles is they find and hit their target more reliably and cost a lot less. The US Navy has been testing things like solid fuel ducted rocket ramjets since the 1950s with Project Rare and things like ALVRJ. The USAF has ASALM which nudged the Mach 5 threshold for hypersonic flight. Both of these were 1970s prototypes. But to find a moving target at sea in a busy shipping lane when you are moving that fast is very hard to do. The subsonic stuff works much better and because they are so much less costly you can shoot more. With hypersonic missiles a lot of them are not going to find targets because there isn't enough time to sort through all the ships, classify them (you don't want to waste a missile and hit neutral shipping) , select a valid target and maneuver to hit it.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Hopefully, China will hire enough Russian trainers to help them get enough pilots ready for deployment on the carrier.

This new Chinese aircraft carrier has catapults. The Russians have no experience with these. At this point the Chinese have more experience operating aircraft carriers than the Russians do. They have a better training establishment too.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

This is proven.

No, it is propaganda from Pro-Putin people and more organized Russian disinformation.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1087910880/biological-weapons-far-right-russia-ukraine

Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/25/fact-check-claim-us-biolabs-ukraine-disinformation/6937923001/

Ukraine war: Fact-checking Russia's biological weapons claims

https://www.bbc.com/news/60711705

But none of this has anything to do with China's newest carrier.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Send in the redheads, black cats and see if the ship can be renamed after launch! Sailors are a superstitious group.

I hope the Chinese Navy learned from the mistakes that Russia made after they stole a Ukrainian carrier. https://youtu.be/e7bvtXx5pZ0 The Russian Navy mismanagement of the carrier reduced the service life ~50% due to foolishness. The carrier actually travels with a tugboat to tow it to port when it can't move on it's own.

And always remember that "the needs of the CCP come first", before you, your family, your province. /s That was actually on the front page of a Chinese newspaper.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

What? Russia stole an aircraft carrier from Ukraine? Nonsense.

I think he means the Chinese stole it. When they bought the hulk from the Ukrainian yard it sat incomplete in they told the world they were going to turn into a hotel and casino. That was the excuse they used to let the Chinese take it through the Turkish Straits, otherwise the Montreux Convention would prevent a nation that doesn't have a coast on the Black Sea from bringing that size of a combat ship through the straits. Remember the Russians called them "Cruisers" and they had big missile launchers flush with the flight deck to get around the Montreux Convention prohibition of aircraft carriers transiting the strait, and puts a 10,000 ton limit on foreign warships transiting the strait. China had to lie to be able to tow it home.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Why is China so hectic about building an aircraft carrier after another when AI-guided missiles and killer drones seem to be moving into the mainstream these days? Look at the war in Ukraine.

You have no idea how hard it is to sink a modern aircraft carrier. The Russian cruiser sunk in the Black Sea might be a good argument for an aircraft carrier. Absent any air cover it was vulnerable to missile attack. Also consider the radars and defensive missiles on that cruiser were obsolete 1980s systems.

Those Neptune cruise missiles do not have a very long range. Air launched missiles tend to have even shorter ranges. For an attacking ship or aircraft to get close enough to launch their cruise missiles at a carrier strike group they would have to fight their way through the air wing defending the strike group. Those F/A-18's and F-35's can intercept those missile shooters long before they are close enough to attack the carrier or her escorts. In post Cold War interviews Russian TU-22 and TU-95 pilots considered attacking a US Navy carrier strike group to be a suicide mission. They knew that without fighters to defend them the defending US Navy air wing was going to destroy them long before they could launch their weapons. Also do not discount the buzz saw of defending missiles the US Navy brings with it, from SM-6 that outrange most cruise missiles to ESSM and RAM. After the air wing chews an enemy force up they have to survive all those missiles to get to their launch point. Those missiles are also very good at knocking down all kinds of missiles. The US Navy trains against targets, basically cruise missile surrogates they can shoot down in exercises, like BQM-74, AQM-37 (Mach 4 screamer) and GQM-163 Coyote, a Mach 2+ sea skimmer.

The E-2D gives the carrier group a huge radar horizon, far greater than any surface radar, allowing the carrier to detect adversary forces and head them off a huge ranges (you will notices the Chinese have developed their own E-2D copy, the KJ-600). Having such a powerful radar in the air permits things like Standard missiles to be launched from ships that cannot see the attackers but those defending missiles can be guided to targets by the E-2D, or an E-3 AWACS or even the ground based radars used by Patriot and THAAD. Last they allow the carrier to launch very long range strikes while staying far enough away from an enemy to avoid detection. Just as ground forces are naked to attack without their own air cover, naval forces are just not survivable against air power unless they have an aircraft carrier and can bring their own air force along with them.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The 003 wil not be able to match the USS Ford class or Nimitz class, through it(003) was still a conventional one instead a nuclear one. It will be like a "Jumbo Kitty Hawk" A.C. But China is eye on a long term duel, perhaos the 005,006 and so on will nuclear powered. The "Mao TseTung class" CVGN will be commenced in 2030 or beyond, maybe!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

@Rodney: "Waste of money"

NO! I dont think so. The aircraft carriers were used to project of power to very far overseas.

Scenario: A distant African country producing iron ore exports to China, there was a coup-de-tat, the pro-China leader being kidnapped and a large group of Chinese being taken as hostages. China send in an armada of warships with A.C. toppling the rebels and rescued all hostages. Here is the big value of Aircraft Carrier!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

As projections of colonial 'power', aircraft carriers may have utility. As 'warships', they are just floating coffins for the many thousands of young people pathological political and military monsters trap inside of them. "At the start of any war, the generals are fighting the last war" paraphrases an observation made by many who pay attention to such things. Psychopaths are generally 'conservative' and look backwards to guide them through time. Large concentrations of resources in a small footprint with the reconnaissance, targeting, and destructive capabilities now available has become just a convenience to one's enemies and the future is to dispersed, highly redundant, highly co-ordinated 'swarms' of multi-purpose units with extremely low profiles and maneuverability. 'Tanks' were once thought to be the perfect land weapon but by the 1980's, the survival time of a tank on the European battlefield was estimated to be 18 minutes...great against civilians but hard on armies depending on them. The so-called American naval 'battlegroups', carriers with escorts, will have in the face of tactical NUKES carried on hypersonic missiles and supercavitaing torpedoes an even less lifespan, and will ALL be hit simultaneously ('close' only counts in horseshoes AND nukes). They will all be gone in the first hour of the next MAJOR war.

That China is wasting large resources on these dinosaurs rather than spending the money on perfecting effective tactical VTOL interceptors and attack aircraft that can be deployed on numerous smaller craft with other capabilities as well is just a failure in their admiralty. A 'wolfpack' of, say, twenty fully submersible, multi-function vessels disseminated over a wide area but acting in concert, in a fleet of, say, twenty such 'wolfpacks' carrying tactical aircraft, ASW drones, reconnaissance drones, crews composed of sailors and Marines, plus whatever bells and whistles could be packed into them would provide both tactical and strategic dominance to any nation whose foreign policy depends upon homicidal intent. But the age of 'concentrated resources' is over and a hundred thousand plus U.S. casualties in the first hour after America makes a fatal misstep in its constant provocation should not have to be the way that that is proven.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Desert Tortoise,

In post Cold War interviews Russian TU-22 and TU-95 pilots considered attacking a US Navy carrier strike group to be a suicide mission.

You haven't touched on killer drones and AI-guided missiles. Isn't a traditional fleet formation vulnerable to such weapons?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Hypersonic missiles and satellite based technology is the future.

of course not, or better to say, not that alone. You finally need only or also enough feet on the ground. Afghanistan is the sample for that, Taliban had only the many feet, all others who tried, even the biggest like Soviets or US, had the technologies and only died or shamefully surrendered. Now guess, which continents or countries in the future have those overwhelming populations to invade and run over everything , and even more dangerous, have both , the big population and technologies like hypersonic or space based armament. The prospects for the West are, considering that, already near or below zero.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Why is China so hectic about building an aircraft carrier after another when AI-guided missiles and killer drones seem to be moving into the mainstream these days? Look at the war in Ukraine.

The carrier-centered task force is said to have been an idea developed by the IJ Navy 80 years ago when they attacked Pearl Harbor, but isn't the idea obsolete today in these hi-tech ages?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Waste of money. Hypersonic missiles and satellite based technology is the future.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

I hope the Chinese Navy learned from the mistakes that Russia made after they stole a Ukrainian carrier.

What? Russia stole an aircraft carrier from Ukraine? Nonsense.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

(By satellite technology I meant all that cyber stuff I don’t understand. I’m not an engineer, (just a researcher.)

As a pacifist, I would prefer dialogue, but small guns vs guns, is far better than nuclear or biological weapons which USA and Germany and Poland were developing in numerous biolabs in Ukraine. This is proven.

wouldn’t it be great if these aircraft carries had helicopters that could deliver aid, food, water, medicine to any disaster in the world?

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

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