Jokes aside, one does not simply build a nuclear powered supercarrier out of the blue. The Fujian is clearly designed to be an advanced learning step towards the future class of nuclear-powered supercarriers. There are lessons for all involved: ship crew, navy pilots, designers, ship builders, logistics, etc.
Their first carrier was built in Ukraine and they got it to get some practise with a vessel of that class.
The second carrier was built by themselves but it was heavily based on an above design they already had experience with. They've started collecting proper ship-building and designing experience here.
The third carrier, Fuijan, is a first original fully domestic design with a mix of new ideas and old and proven technologies (conventional propulsion) to keep the complexity manageable.
Their fourth carrier is supposed to be a first proper nuclear-powered super-carrier and it will use the lessons learned on Fuijan.
During the Punic Wars, Rome came in at a huge disadvantage as they basically had no navy. Carthage was able to run circles around them at sea and Rome could do little about it.
During one battle however, Rome managed to capture a Carthaginian ship mostly intact. Carthage being effectively Phoenicians were the best ship builders of their time. One of the methods they used to design ships quickly and effectively was that each part of the ship had directions on it on how to assemble it into the ship (basically IKEA directions written right onto every ship board).
Rome then used those directions and the deep pockets of their treasury to assemble an entire navy in a matter of months. Yes, Carthage still had the experience advantage, but not the numbers advantage thanks to the stolen tech. After a handful of battles it became clear the numerical superiority Rome had was too great and Carthage had to go on the defensive and start losing territory.
So we can lambast and belittle China for simply stealing everyone else's technology, but it still must be taken very seriously.
Not only that, they actually installed a device called a corvus (crow) on their ships. It was basically a gangplank with a heavy weighted hook. It would drop on enemy ships and break through and hook onto the deck so that the ship couldn’t physically sail away, and allow Roman marines to board and fight a land battle.
It was however bad for stability and made ships unbalanced and liable to sink in stormy weather. The Romans eventually stopped using it when they got good enough at naval battles (or conquered enough seafaring peoples like the Greeks to fight those naval battles for them).
Thats basically ancient Japan's tactics. Ironically they had an incredibly powerful land army, but a terrible navy. It led to their eventual downfall when they tried to invade Korea in the 1500s (also a genius commander like the world had never seen before using that advantage to essentially single-handedly win the war)
You need to read his story. He never lost a ship under his command and essentially crippled the much larger Japanese navy.
His most remarkable battle was when he used the last 10 or so Korean ships remaining in the whole Korean navy to destroy dozens of Japanese ships using cannons and the sea currents to his advantage.
I can’t explain everything, it’s worth going down the rabbit hole and reading his Wiki and all the battles.
As others have mentioned, Yi Sun-Sin. Probably his most famous battle was pretty insane. He used his knowledge of some tricky tidal behavior to win a fight outnumbered at minimum 10:1. Yi had 13 combat ships under him while the Japanese had a lower estimate of 133 (upper estimate in the 300s) ships. The battle was won without losing a single Korean ship
I believe the highest praise he's earned in recent-ish history is when somebody complimented a Japanese admiral, comparing him to UK's Nelson (considered one of the greatest admirals in history) and Yi. The admiral's response was
> It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea's Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal
Given the historical animosity between Japan and Korea, its high praise indeed
That, and the Ming dynasty deciding to bankrupt themselves to support the Joseon dynasty. It's interesting to see that one of the most well regarded chinese emperors by the koreans is also considered one of the worst in the eyes of the chinese.
They also aren’t old enough to have seen the pattern repeat itself (with variation).
Japan was lambasted for stealing tech, then after a while they started innovating.
USA also had a massive propaganda push at the time. Japan being the next superpower and overtaking the US economy was a common sentiment in the media (wait this sounds oddly familiar...). Movies, TV, etc. commonly portrayed Japanese as a secondary language in a dystopian future.
Of course Japan was still a US ally, and not a ideological threat (only economical and to an extent political), but it's pretty crazy to see the exact same textbook being used on China now.
Yeah, but before that everyone tought of Japan's products as "shit"
I remember some products that had to be labelled as "Made by Occupied Japan" or something like that even if they were made by the same factories of Japan before the end of WWII, because it was understood that under the supervision of the US their products were better, otherwise those products had no chance in the US.
Same happened with Taiwan and Korea, both became cheaper alternatives but of lower quality to japanese products. Now taiwanese semiconductors technology is better than japanese and Samsung is stupidly powerful as a company.
I'm not sure it's condescension most of the time. More like derision at their stealing of intellectual property.
But until they steal a culture of anti-corruption they're going to have an uphill battle on the world stage
To be fair, the Romans invented the Corvus, which is basically a plank with a big nail at the end. They dropped the Corvus on a Carthaginian ship and then sent the legions across it. Even today it would be terrifying to just be rowing around and then suddenly have a plank dropped on your boat and a legion emerge out of nowhere to take your lunch.
Romans never did quite match the Carthaginians navally, but they turned naval warfare into land battles at sea. Land battles is what the Romans were good at.
Yes, but Carthage was also undone by a panicky leadership and a reliance on mercenaries. The argument can be made that Hannibal lost because he was not properly supplied by Carthage and was abandoned by allies. China has the resources, but I doubt with its aggressive behavior many countries would willingly sign on to a defense pact. There’s a reason why even old American enemies are now buying American weaponry. They may not necessary agree with the U.S on everything but can agree on a possible looking threat. Lastly, china’s navy is surrounded by western allied nation of whom all have a bone to pick with it.
No doubt China has its back against the wall, but it has the advantage right now of playing with home field advantage. That means it's not just the US Navy vs the PLAN, but also the PLAAF and PLARF. Yes, the US does have many allies in the region which is critical, but mostly for purposes of having military installations the US can use. Nations like the Phillipines will be able to do little with their couple dozen F16s and nearly nonexistent navy. The exceptions here are Japan and South Korea, but Japan is still in the mentality of possessing a "self defense" force (although that's slowly changing). South Korea has recently seen and explosion in military production mostly in the form of arms exports from the Ukrainian War, but when push comes to shove they probably could spare little in a China conflict as they are mostly worried about the thousands of artillery guns pointed at Seoul.
> but Japan is still in the mentality of possessing a "self defense" force (although that's slowly changing)
I'd say a lot faster than you imply since they have already been refitting their '*helicopter destroyers*' to launch and recover F-35Bs for years (one just completed the first stage of its refit a few weeks ago and will now undergo sea trials). And last year they ordered hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US.
That is what I am saying. Additionally people are also forgetting that China is producing WAAAAYYY more educated mathematicians, engineers, scientists etc than the US. I am a teacher in the US and our kids are ignorant and apathetic. I know we produce a lot of top class talent in some areas and that not all Chinese students are super humans but the numbers difference between the US and China in terms of collective brain power will be apparent in the next generation I think. We will be outclassed. Probability states that they will innovate our technology faster than we can. Just some thoughts.
Every country in history does that, including the US. A country that chooses not to gain new technology when they can because they want to remain "fair" and "honest" is a country led by idiots and one that does not exist.
Well, at least for carriers itself they brought it fair and square.
Chinese didn't even think making a carrier was possible until the Aussies sold them HMS Melbourne.
You guys did it again with operation paperclip, everyone knows about the thousands of Nazi scientists that were settled in the US but most forget that in the same breath the US has also incorporated thousands of patents from medicine to steel construction to electronics and so on. This isn't a reproach though, even as a German I find this legitimate as "spoils of war".
And you can bet your ass that America would have done the same thing if a global computer network existed during our rise to power. Instead we did even more heinous things like shield nazi war criminals from trials so we could get their tech.
I know this is a populist talking point, but honestly, why would we not utilize their technology and knowledge?
You have two options:
1) Let knowledge be wasted, for revenge (or 'justice', or whatever).
2) Harvest it and advance humanity.
I think the leaders made the right decision. The damage was already done. They're not a **future** harm. It comes down to if you fundamentally value prosperity for all over revenge.
And drunk artists accidentally set the whole house on fire while trying to oil paint.
I.E Admiral Kuznetsov.
Russian Government literally have no way to maintain it. And even if the Chinese agree to repair it, there is zero chance the poor thing can make it all the way to China.
The Kuznetsov... what a joke it is. Some areas have been condemned and sealed off because they're so bad and unrepairable. I doubt it'll see active service ever again.
I know it's a reddit trope to keep saying China stole everything but lets not forget that they invented pretty much everything. These are not dumb idiots. They can make and invent shit themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
The Song dinasty was already using bombs and grenades against jurchen invaders by around the year 1100, another fun fact speaking of ships is the Song also had animal powered paddle wheel ships that spit a compound similar to greekfire (might even have been learned from the Byzantines trough the silk road)
To a certain extent, every technology builds on what came before. Companies that started with crappy iPod clones now make some of the nicest Android phones, packed with innovative features.
The real question isn't about China, it *should* be about *us*. The US is being left behind, not because of them stealing tech, but rather because we seem to have greatly slowed our innovation.
And, China is making strides ahead of the west in key areas like battery technology and solar panel manufacturing. [The most energy dense lithium battery was created by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.](https://physicsworld.com/a/lithium-ion-batteries-break-energy-density-record/) Most of the records for solar panel efficiency have been set by researchers in Australia, but manufacturing silicon solar panels requires incredibly precise control of the crystallization of the material. The silicon in solar panels is a thousand times less pure than what goes into a microchip, but they're making it on a billion times the scale. This requires incredibly sophisticated engineering, even if the science is done in Australia.
> What?? In what world is the US behind on military tech. We dont have public healthcare for a reason
You don't have public healthcare because you [already pay more](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/03/u-s-pays-more-for-health-care-with-worse-population-health-outcomes/) than other high-income countries.
Blame the middle men and unchecked capitalism. It's your system that should be changed, reducing the cost of your military won't help your healthcare system to cost less and be more affordable.
That was actually meant to be a bit of a joke. You weren’t meant to take that seriously. Shit.
The reason you don’t have affordable healthcare is because a few people want to make lots of money out of something you need.
Can everyone be careful what they say to Americans?
Australian navy also donated catapult system to them in their great wisdom. Similar system is now in testing in Fujian. That was the component which the Ukrainians didn’t know how to build and many western navies didn’t do either. Only the US has vast experience on them.
Oh it is more than the catapult--the entire deck was used to train China's first gen Navy aviators.
Edit: Also the arresting cable. Can't land a plane without them, so lets leave them right there on deck for the Chinese...
> Australian navy also donated catapult system to them
The 1970's and 1980's were a very interesting time in US/Australian relations. The sacking of Gough Whitlam was said to be orchestrated by USA after he threatened to close Pine Gap. It was under the Liberal (Right-Wing) government that replaced Gough Whitlam that HMAS Melbourne was sent to China to be scrapped. Had the US/CIA stayed out of our affairs, maybe HMAS Melbourne would not have been sent to China to be scrapped and maybe then China would not have delayed the scrapping to study the steam-catapult system for their future Aircraft Carrier design. Who honestly knows...
The weird part was, I was watching some video by a Chinese speaker, he mention when the Chinese FINALLY got around to dissemble the ship, the Chinese discover the steering (?) was wielded 15 degree off.
That means the whole issue of that carrier sinking multiple western ships by accident wasn't the fault of the crew...but bad engineering by papa Britain.
>That means the whole issue of that carrier sinking multiple western ships by accident wasn't the fault of the crew...but bad engineering by papa Britain.
Tbf, at least one of those incidents wasn't really the carrier's fault to begin with. The American destroyer turned the wrong way, putting it on a collision course. Then after being warned by the Melbourne, took no evasive actions until it was too late, and then when it did try to avoid a collision, it turned into the same path the Melbourne was trying to take to also avoid the collision. The Captain of the American destroyer was asleep at the time, and the people in charge were unqualified and inexperienced, and they would all be court marshalled later for negligence.
The ship had its Steam catapult and arresting cable intact. The Steam catapult was relative new tech (introduced in 1954), and it remained "High tech" until introduction of EMAL in...2010. (And EMAL apparently have a dubious success rate).
Fun thing about the first carrier: it's sister ship is still owned by the Russian navy, although they should really just scrap that embarrassment.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is officially in dry dock undergoing re-fitting and repairs. In practice it is rusting away since the Russian government doesn't have the will, budget or technology necessary to get it sailing again. Not that they should. The Kuznetsov has only completed a deployment completely on its own power once. In the mid 90s, in what was essentially a little showing off. Every deployment since has been troubled with mechanical issues, incidents and the ship eventually breaking down and needing to be towed back to port. Since its last deployment it has managed to sink the dry dock it was placed in and suffered a crane falling through the flight deck.
And if intel is to be believed the ship is too corroded and filled with mud to be safely deployed ever again. It is likely to just keel over and sink.
I read recently that China's shipbuilding capacity compared to the US is literally 200 to 1. There is almost zero commercial shipbuilding capacity in the US and what little capacity there is, it's devoted to the US Navy. This in theory would be a disaster in a war as China would be able to replace their ships very quickly.
Ukraine, actually. And that's the part I genuinely don't get - they spent *years* and million$ of shady transactions and logistics (incl. paying Turkey to let it out of Bosporus), to get what's essentially a [crumbling pile of rust](https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/129mf3p/before_ussrs_unfinished_varyag_aircraft_carrier/) that had none of the relevant parts installed.
Surely building a big hull is the *easy* part of an aircraft carrier? (And China knows how to build big ships.) Learning how to *operate* one is the hard part, and buying an empty hull doesn't teach you that.
Presumably with good engineers you can learn a lot about what equipment should be there and how things work just from the hull and what's left.
* Launching and landing planes, recovery systems
* Armaments
* Lighting and marking for night operations
* Command and control integration
* Design of hangars and maintenance for aircraft
Not to mention getting the practice with logistics and supply chain to field an existing design will teach them a lot about how to make their own.
The biggest challenge isn't the hull-- it's the integration hell from managing maritime, and aviation technology that needs to coordinate in a relatively self-contained package.
"Original fully domestic design" would be a stretch for anything in China. Even when it's untested or newer ideas, they tend to be ones stolen from countries around the world.
I do appreciate the rest of your analysis and agree they are learning. But the curve is super high, and all three carriers so far have been just that practice and learning. They're not really useful as carriers in a functional sense. All three have a large number of spectacular failures and bad design.
The jump to nuclear carrier would depend on them learning enough to make an actual functional carrier in the first place. Currently, there isn't a lot of reason to think they've mastered that challenge.
I’d hesitate to claim that a fully nuclear carrier is a necessity to reach parity. That’s perhaps arrogant. The rest of their fleet is fossil fuel based, the planes are fossil fuel based, and China’s objective of projection is narrower to fellow Eurasian ports where it will enjoy access to fossil fuels with redundancy via Belt-and-Road.
This does not describe a true blue water navy with the ability to project power, and parity would require the Chinese navy to have what…11 carrier strike groups? The only other option for parity would be to take out the USN’s capabilities to project power which would be a catastrophic mistake and is currently highly improbable, if not impossible.
If there’s one lesson other nations should take to heart it’s that you don’t touch the United States’ boats.
You beat me to it. But to the previous comments point, if they're not projecting power globally then it is true they could hobble along on disel. Far from ideal but not a deal breaker for domestic defense and limited regional projection.
And to your point, yeah, no way the Chinese could project whole-globe power the way the US does. And no matter how much technology you steal, the mass manufacturing, logistics, command and control, and a million other aspects of a fully mature global military can't just be copied. These things rely on training and human learning. The biggest variable, I think, will be how much they can accelerate that with AI and robotics since the greatest bottleneck is trained and experienced professionals.
This is China's baby steps into blue water naval capacity. They're just learning to swim. Much like the j20, it's to increase their range of influence but still needs to truck back home for munitions and likely will only be deployed defensively on the edge of their air supremacy range.
They still have work to do, especially in radar. America has a dozen different flavors of radar suites for carriers destroyers cruisers and even our shitfuck LCSs are running a radar unit from SAAB
It's not, really.
More businesses and political groups have started to align with China.
In the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.
There's a noticeable group of pro-China/pro-Russia sentiment.
Japan is...well, never moved on with their problem with China(occupation) and Russia(Kuril). However, do have a weird population of North Korean Japanese.
It's still a long way to go, but things may change in the next decade.
And to be fair, in comparison to US, China is the best place to study further and more advanced political and economic studies/growth for Asian nations.
There's simply no running from that unless European nations and the US start offering more to attract them.
They don't need to go toe to toe with the US Navy, they just need to go toe to toe with what the US navy can put in the pacific at any given time.
The disadvantage of the US is that it has to cover 2 big oceans, or actually more if you consider their presences in other parts of the globe.
What the US navy can put in the pacific at any given time IS the US navy. It’s doctrine since WW2 is to be able to fight two separate wars on opposite sides of the globe, without breaking a sweat.
> The disadvantage of the US is that it has to cover 2 big oceans,
Against who? Oh just China.
I think we're underestimating the vast superiority of US diplomacy relative to China
The US Navy is planned and built with the capability of fighting two wars on two sides of the world, at the same time. What you are saying is a non issue.
You are also conveniently forgetting all of the US allies in Asia.
China’s navy is improving, sure, but it’s still not remotely close to the capabilities of the US Navy.
America has 11 fleet carriers, 10 Nimitz and the Ford. At any given time about 1/3 of these ships are deployed, 1/3 are readying for deployment and 1/3 returning from deployment. The deck space for the USN carriers is twice what all other navies have.
Then theres 9 smaller, helo carriers America has. If all out naval conflict erupts China is absolutely going to get bodied. No contest in a 1v1 here.
ITT: people who don't know that China is the largest commercial shipbuilder in the world. We'd have a lot more ships with fronts falling off if we were to go by the comments here.
I think people see the cheap consumer crap and allegations of tech theft and think it's impossible for china to design and produce ultra complicated technologies.
But the truth is the reason consumer goods are so cheap is the western market WANTS shitty quality goods because they rather would want something affordable. And the reason they steal tech designs is because it makes it easier to catch up to western quality, the US stole TONS of British tech in the late 19th century for the same reason.
China is chock full of incredibly smart and motivated people, and if you're anti china it actually does a disservice to yourself to underestimate their potential.
The funny things is on the consumer front they can make stuff just as good. Us companies that pay for crap, get crap. US companies like Apple that pay for quality, get quality from China
This. Common misconception that all china just makes poor quality stuff. Incorrect. American consumers demand low quality stuff and china is happy to oblige. If a company wants to pay for it, high quality is available. Apple is the perfect example.
They're capable of anything. They have, on one side, cheap Chinese finger cuffs you find in a Dollar Tree to a $2,000 DGI drone that's leading in its class of drone technology.
That's true, but you can't also ignore the quality of their infrastructure either.
They absolutely cut corners and don't have equal Standards for a lot of things.
Not everything China makes is of poor quality, but a lot of things are.
Thank god western capitalists never cut corners. They just forget to put some bolts on their aircrafts worth milions of dollars due to sheer greed and lust for money.
You don't need nuclear power in most applications. US fleet carriers are nuclear power but the amphibious assault ships which for everyone else would be their carriers are diesel.
In the entire world only other nuclear power carrier is from France. It causes their navy headaches the last time it had to go into maintenance since it took out their only operational carrier for years. The reason the sister ships (there were originally going to be 3 ships total) got canned was because the cost of the single carrier was too much for the French politicians. On top of that that carrier had design compromises to fit the reactor in which makes flight operation less than optimal.
To add to that, Britain has just built and launched two brand new carriers and opted for those to be diesel to remove cost and complexity.
Despite having significant local expertise operating a fleet of nuclear submarines and having Rolls Royce with their expertise in small nuclear reactor tech.
Remember a carrier needs escorting. Everything that escorts the British carriers needs diesel, even in NATO deployment. And to top it off, they need fuel for the planes they fly anyways, so why bother with the headache of nuclear power. When you need resupply for your escort and air wing anyways, just combine that in logistics.
The Fujian is comparable to the Midway in size. Diesel is perfectly acceptable, especially when it gets you a carrier *right now*. The only unknown is how it's gonna work with the electric catapults, going to be demanding a lot of power with those things.
US is focused on power projection globally, so for them nuclear was a no brainer. Whereas China seems more focused on Taiwan/Asia so they may not see a need to go after the more expensive nuclear tier.
I know how it sounds but trust me, nuclear carriers are no joke. As they cost serious money and require a ton of extremely experienced staff watching everything like a hawk. Meanwhile China “could” still get what it wants just using standard diesel.
With that said, I don’t really see China rushing to kick out nuclear carriers unless they suddenly decide to project power further out of its neighboring area indefinitely.
Their next carrier is supposed to be nuclear. The hard part for China isn’t the nuclear part it’s the carrier part. They’ve been running nuclear power plants for forty years now with a better safety record than Japan.
Any conflict in Taiwan would potentially involve all the first island chain nations and the trade routes through the South China Sea. It's not just about getting to Taiwan, but rather projecting power to the rest of the region in a wider conflict.
operating a nuclear powered ship requires years of training for hundreds of people. the US has been doing it for decades and still has problems occasionally
The next one will be nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_004_aircraft_carrier
Anyway there are certain advantages to conventional propulsion. You can refuel anywhere and it's cheaper to maintain. The British HMS Queen Elizabeth that went into service in 2014 uses gas turbines and diesel engines too.
> You can refuel anywhere
Refueling isn't the issue. Nuclear carriers only need to be refueled at most every few years. It's one of their advantages.
The problem is everything else. You have to up your security to ensure only certain personnel can get near the reactor.
Loads of countries have a major dislike of nuclear power and won't let nuclear vessels into their waters. Making it harder to resupply with allies.
As others have mentioned, one of the key drivers for the UK going for conventional fuel is that they have to resupply fuel regularly anyway: for the planes. You might be able to do multiple laps of the planet in your nuclear carrier without refueling - but your planes won't be doing much. And your escort ships need diesel too.
it's not actually that unusual, the two British carriers also aren't nuclear. The US has the infrastructure at lots of ports to support them, and experience in portable nuclear reactors to keep them running, maintained and updated. for everyone else it's usually a lot cheaper to just use traditional fuels
You can’t just build a nuclear vessel overnight, much the same way that if you asked the US to rebuild its 1950s commercial shipbuilding industry and all the supporting wares it’s probably take 20 years to do so. Also China isn’t capable of and doesn’t have plans in the short-term to control the entire ocean - whether or not Fujian is nuclear doesn’t actually matter much if it’s never more than a week from home.
China’s plan is to build a bit more capability with each carrier. First they bought one from Ukraine so they can learn how to operate one - then they built one to the same design so they can learn how to build a carrier, and now they’ve constructed the Fujian so they can learn how to design and build a CATOBAR ship. The next logical step is to figure out how to stick a nuclear reactor onboard a carrier, at which point they’ll start rolling CVNs in classes rather than a series of one-off designs
The US Navy is roughly 150 years older than the PLA Navy. There isn’t a single 70 year old Navy capable of building an aircraft carrier except them. India and ROK would be runner ups.
They didnt take the sea and shipbuilding knowledge passed down through generations of a seafaring people though. And Norwegians were very much a part of the danish-norwegian (technically danish I guess) navy. Shit can be replaced. The first one cant.
No need for that. If they can just keep Japanese aircraft, away, the seas around Taiwan and the gateway through Indonesia protected for oil supplies from the middle east they are good.
If a ship wanted to disappear in the Indian Ocean it wouldn’t be that hard, turn off AIS and reduce speed to mitigate wake and it’s be really difficult to find you, far less breathing room in the straight of malacca since you are visually in range of anything.
One of these days Im going to have to sit everyone in America down at the table so I can say in sobering terms, eye to eye to them....
"You motherf\*ers are gifted at flight, ok. Its your secret national power. You invented flight, the Pan Am flying boats, the 707 to the 787, the B-52, F-22, Blackbird, Blackhawk, Chinook, Aurora, the f\*ing moon, the f\*ing sound barrier, everything. Just accept that America is unquestionably good at it".
Of course America's carriers are better. And of course America has a ridiculous carrier-combat record. Anything involving flight, America will be disproportionally good at. The national character naturally fits with the risk/adventure/reward of flight.
I don’t know what ChatGPT hell that article crawled out of but their information isn’t very accurate. For one, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers displace 100,000+ tons, not 87,000.
Fujian is a remarkable achievement for the PLAN, but they will need ten to fifteen years to even have an adequate understanding of how to effectively operate a blue water aircraft carrier. This includes everything from crisis handling, damage control, maintenance and air operations. That’s before even thinking about tactics. And nighttime air operations in rough seas while underway? Lol. Good luck.
That looks like a very serious ship. The question I have is where is it that China intends to project power that is far enough away that it cannot get there from the shore? Australia comes to mind.
The fact that the PRC is investing so much in carriers could be good news for America. There has been talk about whether the PRC has the ability to sink American carriers. If the PRC really has a reliable way to do that, then they would know carriers are a thing of the past and wouldn’t be wasting money building their own.
Carriers are there to project power, meaning you can be miles away from your closet base and still carry out strikes using your air power. Just because you can sink the enemies carriers doesn't make them obsolete. During ww2 USA sunk a lot of Japanese carriers and made them irrelevant for Japan, but USA still used them regardless and quite effectively
There are many ways to sink aircraft carriers and it’s not like a secret or anything. The whole point of aircraft carriers is to project naval power to other areas of the globe.
Their ability to sink one is basically a ballistic missile. If it can either be shot down or dodged, it’s mitigated. Not sure what the guidance situation is on it though.
Your taking a huge bet that you’ll get past the subs and all the other contingencies protecting any carrier TBH.
So unless you’re a peer nation, odds are you’ll never get the chance to fire.
Carrier killing missiles aren't short range (the H-6 is \~3700 miles) and given China's primary objectives are all shore focused well inside their support range, don't require any naval platform.
All air defense can be overwhelmed with enough volume.
And in the event of war with Taiwan, the US Marine Corps will be deployed under a newly revised force deployment plan that leans heavily on light modular vehicles that are often equipped with… drumroll please…
A metric shit ton of anti-ship missiles. Enjoy, Fujian!
Jokes aside, one does not simply build a nuclear powered supercarrier out of the blue. The Fujian is clearly designed to be an advanced learning step towards the future class of nuclear-powered supercarriers. There are lessons for all involved: ship crew, navy pilots, designers, ship builders, logistics, etc. Their first carrier was built in Ukraine and they got it to get some practise with a vessel of that class. The second carrier was built by themselves but it was heavily based on an above design they already had experience with. They've started collecting proper ship-building and designing experience here. The third carrier, Fuijan, is a first original fully domestic design with a mix of new ideas and old and proven technologies (conventional propulsion) to keep the complexity manageable. Their fourth carrier is supposed to be a first proper nuclear-powered super-carrier and it will use the lessons learned on Fuijan.
You have to give it to China, they do know how to assimilate technology.
After years of stealing tech from adversaries/rivals
During the Punic Wars, Rome came in at a huge disadvantage as they basically had no navy. Carthage was able to run circles around them at sea and Rome could do little about it. During one battle however, Rome managed to capture a Carthaginian ship mostly intact. Carthage being effectively Phoenicians were the best ship builders of their time. One of the methods they used to design ships quickly and effectively was that each part of the ship had directions on it on how to assemble it into the ship (basically IKEA directions written right onto every ship board). Rome then used those directions and the deep pockets of their treasury to assemble an entire navy in a matter of months. Yes, Carthage still had the experience advantage, but not the numbers advantage thanks to the stolen tech. After a handful of battles it became clear the numerical superiority Rome had was too great and Carthage had to go on the defensive and start losing territory. So we can lambast and belittle China for simply stealing everyone else's technology, but it still must be taken very seriously.
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing; I wasn't familiar with the Romans stealing Carthaginian ship tech.
There was a joke that Romans were terrible at naval battles, so they found a way to make land battles on ships. By mainly doing boarding actions.
Not only that, they actually installed a device called a corvus (crow) on their ships. It was basically a gangplank with a heavy weighted hook. It would drop on enemy ships and break through and hook onto the deck so that the ship couldn’t physically sail away, and allow Roman marines to board and fight a land battle. It was however bad for stability and made ships unbalanced and liable to sink in stormy weather. The Romans eventually stopped using it when they got good enough at naval battles (or conquered enough seafaring peoples like the Greeks to fight those naval battles for them).
Thats basically ancient Japan's tactics. Ironically they had an incredibly powerful land army, but a terrible navy. It led to their eventual downfall when they tried to invade Korea in the 1500s (also a genius commander like the world had never seen before using that advantage to essentially single-handedly win the war)
Who was the commander
Guessing they mean [Yi Sun-sin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin)
You need to read his story. He never lost a ship under his command and essentially crippled the much larger Japanese navy. His most remarkable battle was when he used the last 10 or so Korean ships remaining in the whole Korean navy to destroy dozens of Japanese ships using cannons and the sea currents to his advantage. I can’t explain everything, it’s worth going down the rabbit hole and reading his Wiki and all the battles.
As others have mentioned, Yi Sun-Sin. Probably his most famous battle was pretty insane. He used his knowledge of some tricky tidal behavior to win a fight outnumbered at minimum 10:1. Yi had 13 combat ships under him while the Japanese had a lower estimate of 133 (upper estimate in the 300s) ships. The battle was won without losing a single Korean ship I believe the highest praise he's earned in recent-ish history is when somebody complimented a Japanese admiral, comparing him to UK's Nelson (considered one of the greatest admirals in history) and Yi. The admiral's response was > It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea's Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal Given the historical animosity between Japan and Korea, its high praise indeed
That, and the Ming dynasty deciding to bankrupt themselves to support the Joseon dynasty. It's interesting to see that one of the most well regarded chinese emperors by the koreans is also considered one of the worst in the eyes of the chinese.
Rome stole and assimilated everyone's tech they came in to contact with. The western empire lasted 500 years because of it.
Legitimate strategy. Having a bureaucracy so advanced the empire could function without a competent emperor helped too
Yup. The argument can be made that Carthage standardized the design and building of its ships.
it’s a very common observation of mine that people who have condescending attitude towards the copying that China does, are not historically inclined.
They also aren’t old enough to have seen the pattern repeat itself (with variation). Japan was lambasted for stealing tech, then after a while they started innovating.
USA also had a massive propaganda push at the time. Japan being the next superpower and overtaking the US economy was a common sentiment in the media (wait this sounds oddly familiar...). Movies, TV, etc. commonly portrayed Japanese as a secondary language in a dystopian future. Of course Japan was still a US ally, and not a ideological threat (only economical and to an extent political), but it's pretty crazy to see the exact same textbook being used on China now.
Yeah, but before that everyone tought of Japan's products as "shit" I remember some products that had to be labelled as "Made by Occupied Japan" or something like that even if they were made by the same factories of Japan before the end of WWII, because it was understood that under the supervision of the US their products were better, otherwise those products had no chance in the US. Same happened with Taiwan and Korea, both became cheaper alternatives but of lower quality to japanese products. Now taiwanese semiconductors technology is better than japanese and Samsung is stupidly powerful as a company.
i mean it was entirely the way the US operated as well for most of the 1800s to early 1900s
I'm not sure it's condescension most of the time. More like derision at their stealing of intellectual property. But until they steal a culture of anti-corruption they're going to have an uphill battle on the world stage
Which country has a culture of anti-corruption?
Carthago delenda est
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
And those that learn it have to watch as everyone else repeats it!
To be fair, the Romans invented the Corvus, which is basically a plank with a big nail at the end. They dropped the Corvus on a Carthaginian ship and then sent the legions across it. Even today it would be terrifying to just be rowing around and then suddenly have a plank dropped on your boat and a legion emerge out of nowhere to take your lunch. Romans never did quite match the Carthaginians navally, but they turned naval warfare into land battles at sea. Land battles is what the Romans were good at.
Yes, but Carthage was also undone by a panicky leadership and a reliance on mercenaries. The argument can be made that Hannibal lost because he was not properly supplied by Carthage and was abandoned by allies. China has the resources, but I doubt with its aggressive behavior many countries would willingly sign on to a defense pact. There’s a reason why even old American enemies are now buying American weaponry. They may not necessary agree with the U.S on everything but can agree on a possible looking threat. Lastly, china’s navy is surrounded by western allied nation of whom all have a bone to pick with it.
No doubt China has its back against the wall, but it has the advantage right now of playing with home field advantage. That means it's not just the US Navy vs the PLAN, but also the PLAAF and PLARF. Yes, the US does have many allies in the region which is critical, but mostly for purposes of having military installations the US can use. Nations like the Phillipines will be able to do little with their couple dozen F16s and nearly nonexistent navy. The exceptions here are Japan and South Korea, but Japan is still in the mentality of possessing a "self defense" force (although that's slowly changing). South Korea has recently seen and explosion in military production mostly in the form of arms exports from the Ukrainian War, but when push comes to shove they probably could spare little in a China conflict as they are mostly worried about the thousands of artillery guns pointed at Seoul.
> but Japan is still in the mentality of possessing a "self defense" force (although that's slowly changing) I'd say a lot faster than you imply since they have already been refitting their '*helicopter destroyers*' to launch and recover F-35Bs for years (one just completed the first stage of its refit a few weeks ago and will now undergo sea trials). And last year they ordered hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US.
That is what I am saying. Additionally people are also forgetting that China is producing WAAAAYYY more educated mathematicians, engineers, scientists etc than the US. I am a teacher in the US and our kids are ignorant and apathetic. I know we produce a lot of top class talent in some areas and that not all Chinese students are super humans but the numbers difference between the US and China in terms of collective brain power will be apparent in the next generation I think. We will be outclassed. Probability states that they will innovate our technology faster than we can. Just some thoughts.
Every country in history does that, including the US. A country that chooses not to gain new technology when they can because they want to remain "fair" and "honest" is a country led by idiots and one that does not exist.
Well, at least for carriers itself they brought it fair and square. Chinese didn't even think making a carrier was possible until the Aussies sold them HMS Melbourne.
Tbf that’s how we did it here in the states when industrialization was taking off
You guys did it again with operation paperclip, everyone knows about the thousands of Nazi scientists that were settled in the US but most forget that in the same breath the US has also incorporated thousands of patents from medicine to steel construction to electronics and so on. This isn't a reproach though, even as a German I find this legitimate as "spoils of war".
The US did it pre-war as well. All that high quality aviation gasoline they were able to produce was based on German patents.
Don’t you dare we are true originals!
And you can bet your ass that America would have done the same thing if a global computer network existed during our rise to power. Instead we did even more heinous things like shield nazi war criminals from trials so we could get their tech.
I know this is a populist talking point, but honestly, why would we not utilize their technology and knowledge? You have two options: 1) Let knowledge be wasted, for revenge (or 'justice', or whatever). 2) Harvest it and advance humanity. I think the leaders made the right decision. The damage was already done. They're not a **future** harm. It comes down to if you fundamentally value prosperity for all over revenge.
Literally everybody does this. The us did it, Germany did it, Uk did it, all the way down the rabbit hole of history.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
And drunk artists accidentally set the whole house on fire while trying to oil paint. I.E Admiral Kuznetsov. Russian Government literally have no way to maintain it. And even if the Chinese agree to repair it, there is zero chance the poor thing can make it all the way to China.
The Kuznetsov... what a joke it is. Some areas have been condemned and sealed off because they're so bad and unrepairable. I doubt it'll see active service ever again.
And where did rocket technology come from?? Everybody steals. The issue is don’t cry about it. Be a man, kill the spies lol
If you were in China’s position, wouldn’t you too?
I’m pretty sure there was a case of US companies stealing tech from allies in the EU around 10 years ago
I know it's a reddit trope to keep saying China stole everything but lets not forget that they invented pretty much everything. These are not dumb idiots. They can make and invent shit themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
And so what. This is sour grapes, that don’t matter at all. As if the US didn’t exploit every advantage.
They invented gun powder. They’re pioneers in blowing shit up.
The Song dinasty was already using bombs and grenades against jurchen invaders by around the year 1100, another fun fact speaking of ships is the Song also had animal powered paddle wheel ships that spit a compound similar to greekfire (might even have been learned from the Byzantines trough the silk road)
Into the rabbit hole I go, thanks!
To a certain extent, every technology builds on what came before. Companies that started with crappy iPod clones now make some of the nicest Android phones, packed with innovative features. The real question isn't about China, it *should* be about *us*. The US is being left behind, not because of them stealing tech, but rather because we seem to have greatly slowed our innovation.
And, China is making strides ahead of the west in key areas like battery technology and solar panel manufacturing. [The most energy dense lithium battery was created by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.](https://physicsworld.com/a/lithium-ion-batteries-break-energy-density-record/) Most of the records for solar panel efficiency have been set by researchers in Australia, but manufacturing silicon solar panels requires incredibly precise control of the crystallization of the material. The silicon in solar panels is a thousand times less pure than what goes into a microchip, but they're making it on a billion times the scale. This requires incredibly sophisticated engineering, even if the science is done in Australia.
What?? In what world is the US behind on military tech. We dont have public healthcare for a reason
> What?? In what world is the US behind on military tech. We dont have public healthcare for a reason You don't have public healthcare because you [already pay more](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/03/u-s-pays-more-for-health-care-with-worse-population-health-outcomes/) than other high-income countries. Blame the middle men and unchecked capitalism. It's your system that should be changed, reducing the cost of your military won't help your healthcare system to cost less and be more affordable.
That was actually meant to be a bit of a joke. You weren’t meant to take that seriously. Shit. The reason you don’t have affordable healthcare is because a few people want to make lots of money out of something you need. Can everyone be careful what they say to Americans?
You're high as a kite if you think the US is being "left behind" in any capacity.
Australian navy also donated catapult system to them in their great wisdom. Similar system is now in testing in Fujian. That was the component which the Ukrainians didn’t know how to build and many western navies didn’t do either. Only the US has vast experience on them.
Oh it is more than the catapult--the entire deck was used to train China's first gen Navy aviators. Edit: Also the arresting cable. Can't land a plane without them, so lets leave them right there on deck for the Chinese...
> Australian navy also donated catapult system to them The 1970's and 1980's were a very interesting time in US/Australian relations. The sacking of Gough Whitlam was said to be orchestrated by USA after he threatened to close Pine Gap. It was under the Liberal (Right-Wing) government that replaced Gough Whitlam that HMAS Melbourne was sent to China to be scrapped. Had the US/CIA stayed out of our affairs, maybe HMAS Melbourne would not have been sent to China to be scrapped and maybe then China would not have delayed the scrapping to study the steam-catapult system for their future Aircraft Carrier design. Who honestly knows...
The weird part was, I was watching some video by a Chinese speaker, he mention when the Chinese FINALLY got around to dissemble the ship, the Chinese discover the steering (?) was wielded 15 degree off. That means the whole issue of that carrier sinking multiple western ships by accident wasn't the fault of the crew...but bad engineering by papa Britain.
>That means the whole issue of that carrier sinking multiple western ships by accident wasn't the fault of the crew...but bad engineering by papa Britain. Tbf, at least one of those incidents wasn't really the carrier's fault to begin with. The American destroyer turned the wrong way, putting it on a collision course. Then after being warned by the Melbourne, took no evasive actions until it was too late, and then when it did try to avoid a collision, it turned into the same path the Melbourne was trying to take to also avoid the collision. The Captain of the American destroyer was asleep at the time, and the people in charge were unqualified and inexperienced, and they would all be court marshalled later for negligence.
The Australian carrier had a steam catapult. The Fujian has an electromagnetic one. The Chinese got nothing from the Australian carrier.
Ah yes a gutted WW2 era carrier, such advanced technology to be getting hold of in the 80s.
The ship had its Steam catapult and arresting cable intact. The Steam catapult was relative new tech (introduced in 1954), and it remained "High tech" until introduction of EMAL in...2010. (And EMAL apparently have a dubious success rate).
Fun thing about the first carrier: it's sister ship is still owned by the Russian navy, although they should really just scrap that embarrassment. The Admiral Kuznetsov is officially in dry dock undergoing re-fitting and repairs. In practice it is rusting away since the Russian government doesn't have the will, budget or technology necessary to get it sailing again. Not that they should. The Kuznetsov has only completed a deployment completely on its own power once. In the mid 90s, in what was essentially a little showing off. Every deployment since has been troubled with mechanical issues, incidents and the ship eventually breaking down and needing to be towed back to port. Since its last deployment it has managed to sink the dry dock it was placed in and suffered a crane falling through the flight deck. And if intel is to be believed the ship is too corroded and filled with mud to be safely deployed ever again. It is likely to just keel over and sink.
That is why Russians actually want to buy back the Liaoning, whom they blame the Ukrainians for "selling the ship for a bottle of vodka"
I read recently that China's shipbuilding capacity compared to the US is literally 200 to 1. There is almost zero commercial shipbuilding capacity in the US and what little capacity there is, it's devoted to the US Navy. This in theory would be a disaster in a war as China would be able to replace their ships very quickly.
It is slightly funny that it requires fuel though
Didn't they buy 1 from Russia?
Ukraine, actually. And that's the part I genuinely don't get - they spent *years* and million$ of shady transactions and logistics (incl. paying Turkey to let it out of Bosporus), to get what's essentially a [crumbling pile of rust](https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/129mf3p/before_ussrs_unfinished_varyag_aircraft_carrier/) that had none of the relevant parts installed. Surely building a big hull is the *easy* part of an aircraft carrier? (And China knows how to build big ships.) Learning how to *operate* one is the hard part, and buying an empty hull doesn't teach you that.
Presumably with good engineers you can learn a lot about what equipment should be there and how things work just from the hull and what's left. * Launching and landing planes, recovery systems * Armaments * Lighting and marking for night operations * Command and control integration * Design of hangars and maintenance for aircraft Not to mention getting the practice with logistics and supply chain to field an existing design will teach them a lot about how to make their own. The biggest challenge isn't the hull-- it's the integration hell from managing maritime, and aviation technology that needs to coordinate in a relatively self-contained package.
"Original fully domestic design" would be a stretch for anything in China. Even when it's untested or newer ideas, they tend to be ones stolen from countries around the world. I do appreciate the rest of your analysis and agree they are learning. But the curve is super high, and all three carriers so far have been just that practice and learning. They're not really useful as carriers in a functional sense. All three have a large number of spectacular failures and bad design. The jump to nuclear carrier would depend on them learning enough to make an actual functional carrier in the first place. Currently, there isn't a lot of reason to think they've mastered that challenge.
I’d hesitate to claim that a fully nuclear carrier is a necessity to reach parity. That’s perhaps arrogant. The rest of their fleet is fossil fuel based, the planes are fossil fuel based, and China’s objective of projection is narrower to fellow Eurasian ports where it will enjoy access to fossil fuels with redundancy via Belt-and-Road.
This does not describe a true blue water navy with the ability to project power, and parity would require the Chinese navy to have what…11 carrier strike groups? The only other option for parity would be to take out the USN’s capabilities to project power which would be a catastrophic mistake and is currently highly improbable, if not impossible. If there’s one lesson other nations should take to heart it’s that you don’t touch the United States’ boats.
You beat me to it. But to the previous comments point, if they're not projecting power globally then it is true they could hobble along on disel. Far from ideal but not a deal breaker for domestic defense and limited regional projection. And to your point, yeah, no way the Chinese could project whole-globe power the way the US does. And no matter how much technology you steal, the mass manufacturing, logistics, command and control, and a million other aspects of a fully mature global military can't just be copied. These things rely on training and human learning. The biggest variable, I think, will be how much they can accelerate that with AI and robotics since the greatest bottleneck is trained and experienced professionals.
The article says it is not nuclear powered but uses conventional fuel
Yeah. They are doing it right. Credit where credit is due. Espionage is part of the game so I ain’t even hating on that.
You’re making me want to reinstall Rule the Waves!
This is not meant to go toe to toe with the US navy, but it will put pressure on China's neighbors.
This is China's baby steps into blue water naval capacity. They're just learning to swim. Much like the j20, it's to increase their range of influence but still needs to truck back home for munitions and likely will only be deployed defensively on the edge of their air supremacy range. They still have work to do, especially in radar. America has a dozen different flavors of radar suites for carriers destroyers cruisers and even our shitfuck LCSs are running a radar unit from SAAB
Neighbors who are increasingly aligning with the US due to being bullied by China.
It's not, really. More businesses and political groups have started to align with China. In the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. There's a noticeable group of pro-China/pro-Russia sentiment. Japan is...well, never moved on with their problem with China(occupation) and Russia(Kuril). However, do have a weird population of North Korean Japanese. It's still a long way to go, but things may change in the next decade. And to be fair, in comparison to US, China is the best place to study further and more advanced political and economic studies/growth for Asian nations. There's simply no running from that unless European nations and the US start offering more to attract them.
They don't need to go toe to toe with the US Navy, they just need to go toe to toe with what the US navy can put in the pacific at any given time. The disadvantage of the US is that it has to cover 2 big oceans, or actually more if you consider their presences in other parts of the globe.
What the US navy can put in the pacific at any given time IS the US navy. It’s doctrine since WW2 is to be able to fight two separate wars on opposite sides of the globe, without breaking a sweat.
> The disadvantage of the US is that it has to cover 2 big oceans, Against who? Oh just China. I think we're underestimating the vast superiority of US diplomacy relative to China
The US Navy is planned and built with the capability of fighting two wars on two sides of the world, at the same time. What you are saying is a non issue. You are also conveniently forgetting all of the US allies in Asia. China’s navy is improving, sure, but it’s still not remotely close to the capabilities of the US Navy.
America has 11 fleet carriers, 10 Nimitz and the Ford. At any given time about 1/3 of these ships are deployed, 1/3 are readying for deployment and 1/3 returning from deployment. The deck space for the USN carriers is twice what all other navies have. Then theres 9 smaller, helo carriers America has. If all out naval conflict erupts China is absolutely going to get bodied. No contest in a 1v1 here.
Pepsi rubbing hands together
ITT: people who don't know that China is the largest commercial shipbuilder in the world. We'd have a lot more ships with fronts falling off if we were to go by the comments here.
I think people see the cheap consumer crap and allegations of tech theft and think it's impossible for china to design and produce ultra complicated technologies. But the truth is the reason consumer goods are so cheap is the western market WANTS shitty quality goods because they rather would want something affordable. And the reason they steal tech designs is because it makes it easier to catch up to western quality, the US stole TONS of British tech in the late 19th century for the same reason. China is chock full of incredibly smart and motivated people, and if you're anti china it actually does a disservice to yourself to underestimate their potential.
The funny things is on the consumer front they can make stuff just as good. Us companies that pay for crap, get crap. US companies like Apple that pay for quality, get quality from China
This. Common misconception that all china just makes poor quality stuff. Incorrect. American consumers demand low quality stuff and china is happy to oblige. If a company wants to pay for it, high quality is available. Apple is the perfect example.
They're capable of anything. They have, on one side, cheap Chinese finger cuffs you find in a Dollar Tree to a $2,000 DGI drone that's leading in its class of drone technology.
True, I don’t buy the cheap consumer crap. But they are at least a decade ahead of the US in terms of manufacturing capability.
That's true, but you can't also ignore the quality of their infrastructure either. They absolutely cut corners and don't have equal Standards for a lot of things. Not everything China makes is of poor quality, but a lot of things are.
Thank god western capitalists never cut corners. They just forget to put some bolts on their aircrafts worth milions of dollars due to sheer greed and lust for money.
Let's steal it.
Just play the GPS signals backward, get it to sail west
Luckily for China they don't use GPS
.. and fly it to mexico!
YOU BOYS LIKE MEXICO?!
US had a nuclear carrier *60 years ago* (and 11 in current service), and China's newest build runs on *diesel*??˜
You don't need nuclear power in most applications. US fleet carriers are nuclear power but the amphibious assault ships which for everyone else would be their carriers are diesel. In the entire world only other nuclear power carrier is from France. It causes their navy headaches the last time it had to go into maintenance since it took out their only operational carrier for years. The reason the sister ships (there were originally going to be 3 ships total) got canned was because the cost of the single carrier was too much for the French politicians. On top of that that carrier had design compromises to fit the reactor in which makes flight operation less than optimal.
To add to that, Britain has just built and launched two brand new carriers and opted for those to be diesel to remove cost and complexity. Despite having significant local expertise operating a fleet of nuclear submarines and having Rolls Royce with their expertise in small nuclear reactor tech.
Remember a carrier needs escorting. Everything that escorts the British carriers needs diesel, even in NATO deployment. And to top it off, they need fuel for the planes they fly anyways, so why bother with the headache of nuclear power. When you need resupply for your escort and air wing anyways, just combine that in logistics.
The Fujian is comparable to the Midway in size. Diesel is perfectly acceptable, especially when it gets you a carrier *right now*. The only unknown is how it's gonna work with the electric catapults, going to be demanding a lot of power with those things.
US is focused on power projection globally, so for them nuclear was a no brainer. Whereas China seems more focused on Taiwan/Asia so they may not see a need to go after the more expensive nuclear tier.
builds floating airport to go 100 miles 🤔
I know how it sounds but trust me, nuclear carriers are no joke. As they cost serious money and require a ton of extremely experienced staff watching everything like a hawk. Meanwhile China “could” still get what it wants just using standard diesel. With that said, I don’t really see China rushing to kick out nuclear carriers unless they suddenly decide to project power further out of its neighboring area indefinitely.
Their next carrier is supposed to be nuclear. The hard part for China isn’t the nuclear part it’s the carrier part. They’ve been running nuclear power plants for forty years now with a better safety record than Japan.
Any conflict in Taiwan would potentially involve all the first island chain nations and the trade routes through the South China Sea. It's not just about getting to Taiwan, but rather projecting power to the rest of the region in a wider conflict.
Tell me you know nothing about nuclear carriers without telling me you know nothing about nuclear carriers.
I don't know much about nuclear carriers. Why would they need one to invade an island 100 miles from their shore?
Different requirements, different engineering decisions, I guess.
operating a nuclear powered ship requires years of training for hundreds of people. the US has been doing it for decades and still has problems occasionally
The next one will be nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_004_aircraft_carrier Anyway there are certain advantages to conventional propulsion. You can refuel anywhere and it's cheaper to maintain. The British HMS Queen Elizabeth that went into service in 2014 uses gas turbines and diesel engines too.
British ships want to be able to dock in NZ too. You can't do that with a nuclear vessel.
> You can refuel anywhere Refueling isn't the issue. Nuclear carriers only need to be refueled at most every few years. It's one of their advantages. The problem is everything else. You have to up your security to ensure only certain personnel can get near the reactor. Loads of countries have a major dislike of nuclear power and won't let nuclear vessels into their waters. Making it harder to resupply with allies. As others have mentioned, one of the key drivers for the UK going for conventional fuel is that they have to resupply fuel regularly anyway: for the planes. You might be able to do multiple laps of the planet in your nuclear carrier without refueling - but your planes won't be doing much. And your escort ships need diesel too.
it's not actually that unusual, the two British carriers also aren't nuclear. The US has the infrastructure at lots of ports to support them, and experience in portable nuclear reactors to keep them running, maintained and updated. for everyone else it's usually a lot cheaper to just use traditional fuels
You can’t just build a nuclear vessel overnight, much the same way that if you asked the US to rebuild its 1950s commercial shipbuilding industry and all the supporting wares it’s probably take 20 years to do so. Also China isn’t capable of and doesn’t have plans in the short-term to control the entire ocean - whether or not Fujian is nuclear doesn’t actually matter much if it’s never more than a week from home. China’s plan is to build a bit more capability with each carrier. First they bought one from Ukraine so they can learn how to operate one - then they built one to the same design so they can learn how to build a carrier, and now they’ve constructed the Fujian so they can learn how to design and build a CATOBAR ship. The next logical step is to figure out how to stick a nuclear reactor onboard a carrier, at which point they’ll start rolling CVNs in classes rather than a series of one-off designs
The US Navy is roughly 150 years older than the PLA Navy. There isn’t a single 70 year old Navy capable of building an aircraft carrier except them. India and ROK would be runner ups.
The Norwegian navy is like a 1000 years old. We dont have any aircraft carriers.
I’d argue 200 years since the Danes took all your shit. Their navy isn’t half bad for its size, very modern.
They didnt take the sea and shipbuilding knowledge passed down through generations of a seafaring people though. And Norwegians were very much a part of the danish-norwegian (technically danish I guess) navy. Shit can be replaced. The first one cant.
It has more to do with GDP. Smaller economies can't afford a single 7-15b asset
No need for that. If they can just keep Japanese aircraft, away, the seas around Taiwan and the gateway through Indonesia protected for oil supplies from the middle east they are good.
Question, why do they need to protect ships going through Malacca but not through the Indian Ocean?
They do, but Malacca is a choke point. Easier to intercept, harder to escape. Opposite is true on the open ocean.
If a ship wanted to disappear in the Indian Ocean it wouldn’t be that hard, turn off AIS and reduce speed to mitigate wake and it’s be really difficult to find you, far less breathing room in the straight of malacca since you are visually in range of anything.
One of these days Im going to have to sit everyone in America down at the table so I can say in sobering terms, eye to eye to them.... "You motherf\*ers are gifted at flight, ok. Its your secret national power. You invented flight, the Pan Am flying boats, the 707 to the 787, the B-52, F-22, Blackbird, Blackhawk, Chinook, Aurora, the f\*ing moon, the f\*ing sound barrier, everything. Just accept that America is unquestionably good at it". Of course America's carriers are better. And of course America has a ridiculous carrier-combat record. Anything involving flight, America will be disproportionally good at. The national character naturally fits with the risk/adventure/reward of flight.
Huh I wouldn’t have thought about US power at that way. But every word of your post makes complete sense.
... for now
Their next one will be nuclear
i dont think going for the ultra premium option all the time makes sense when these ships are just food for ultra quiet subs and AA/AD.
I don’t know what ChatGPT hell that article crawled out of but their information isn’t very accurate. For one, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers displace 100,000+ tons, not 87,000. Fujian is a remarkable achievement for the PLAN, but they will need ten to fifteen years to even have an adequate understanding of how to effectively operate a blue water aircraft carrier. This includes everything from crisis handling, damage control, maintenance and air operations. That’s before even thinking about tactics. And nighttime air operations in rough seas while underway? Lol. Good luck.
That looks like a very serious ship. The question I have is where is it that China intends to project power that is far enough away that it cannot get there from the shore? Australia comes to mind.
They could park it at their new BFF's place in the Solomon Islands, you know, those islands between Australia and Oahu 😉
The fact that the PRC is investing so much in carriers could be good news for America. There has been talk about whether the PRC has the ability to sink American carriers. If the PRC really has a reliable way to do that, then they would know carriers are a thing of the past and wouldn’t be wasting money building their own.
Carriers are there to project power, meaning you can be miles away from your closet base and still carry out strikes using your air power. Just because you can sink the enemies carriers doesn't make them obsolete. During ww2 USA sunk a lot of Japanese carriers and made them irrelevant for Japan, but USA still used them regardless and quite effectively
There are many ways to sink aircraft carriers and it’s not like a secret or anything. The whole point of aircraft carriers is to project naval power to other areas of the globe.
Every weapon system on the battlefield can be destroyed. I don’t think that deters any nation from continuing to build them.
Carriers arent for going to war with near peers anymore. Carriers are for protecting economic interests in the Middle East and Africa.
Their ability to sink one is basically a ballistic missile. If it can either be shot down or dodged, it’s mitigated. Not sure what the guidance situation is on it though.
A carrier is easy to sink from any number of methods. That's why they only travel in a fleet group with a sub and numerous other ships to protect it
Your taking a huge bet that you’ll get past the subs and all the other contingencies protecting any carrier TBH. So unless you’re a peer nation, odds are you’ll never get the chance to fire.
Carrier killing missiles aren't short range (the H-6 is \~3700 miles) and given China's primary objectives are all shore focused well inside their support range, don't require any naval platform. All air defense can be overwhelmed with enough volume.
Oh, I wasn’t going into all of the shit that makes them nearly invincible. Just the active defense measure and the fact that they can, you know, move.
China don’t need military they have TikTok
And in the event of war with Taiwan, the US Marine Corps will be deployed under a newly revised force deployment plan that leans heavily on light modular vehicles that are often equipped with… drumroll please… A metric shit ton of anti-ship missiles. Enjoy, Fujian!
West Taiwan has an emotional support boat