All About The Chinese Aircraft Carrier Thread

[Jeff Head]

Originally Posted by BrightAsSun

So give up building carriers..

I will tell you the same thing in response to this that Thomas Paine told people in his day when it was sugested that they all give up their arms to make a more peaceful world.

"The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, we dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves."

I believe, for all the reasons discussed here, and particulalry for those reasons so eloquently explained by Obi Wan, that the PLAN will develop a carrier force.

But history will be the final arbitrator of this discussion.

[Obi Wan Russell]

BrightAsSun; You're Arguments concerning resources and morality are not specifically anti carrier arguments, they are arguments against china having any weapons at all. Japan has no natural resources at all but that didn't stop them building one of the most effective Carrier forces in the world prior to WW2, one that came perilously close to defeating the USA at the battle of Midway. It isn't us on this forum you have to convince (and you'll have to do a lot better than that!) it's the leadership of the PLAN; some how I think you'll be even less successful there too. Without a carrier arm the chinese navy would be defenceless beyond its own coastal waters, and sending a sub to someone elses doorstep will not have any deterrant value as that sub will have to remain hidden to be effective. A carrier group will be very visibly 'in your face' and thus achieves deterrance without firing a shot. You don't know the sub is there until it has sunk something, by which time you have a shooting war on your hands. Most of the worlds navies are geared towards Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) but few if any possess adequate forces to repel a Carrier Strike Group.
SSBNs deter nuclear war, nothing else. When opposing forces possess them they effectivley cancel each other out through being too terrible to contemplate using. You can't win a nuclear war, but you can win a conventional one (at a terrible and bloody price, unfortunately) if you have superior forces to your adversaries. A Carrier will soak up the same resources as four or five destroyers, but it will give you firepower far beyond anything those five DDGs could provide and thus the carrier is cost effective as a weapon system. A carrier gives your country political leverage in peacetime, through its sheer presence whereas a sub is only of value once the shooting has started due to it's need to remain invisible.
I'm quite prepared to debate this subject with anyone who puts forward a cohesive and well thought out argument, but if all you have to offer is "I don't like carriers so therefore we shouldn't build them" then perhaps this forum is not for you. The anti-carrier faction worldwide has known for decades that they can't defeat carriers in combat, so they try to sink them with words. That sort of thing has only worked once, when Denis Healy was British Defence minister in 1966 but he was a clown by his own admission and sanity eventually prevailled (too late for the conventional CV force, sadly).
Finally, I agree with Jeff Head; You either have no weapons at all (and leave yourself vulnerable to attack, a situation China has found itself in many times in the past) or you have the best defence you can provide for your self. All the evidence is that China has chosen the latter path.

[BrightAsSun]

As far as I know, a combat-winged aircraft carrier is for high sea engagements. Althought the carrier is the primal combatant in the modern warfare, it still has to remain "invisible" from the enemy detections. If the carrier gets located, the battle is supposedly over. The whole Carrier Battle Group needs to retreat about 500 natical miles, then re-establish the safety perimeters.

But an Armada Fleet is never in this case. The Armada fleet is build for meele. Such a fleet just fights its way in the path of blood and fires and never intents to have a ship goes home. This is what a carrier fleet cannot do. At least the carrier needs to go back unscratched for the next fight. But how is it going to do that when its escorts all sunk?

So I made two points above for PLAN.
1. PLAN has no such geography for operating a carrier. Even though PLAN finally gets its deep-water port by lease and by begging in Pakistan. It is not a permament foothold. And what is one pathetic base going to do? It is a FIXED TARGET! One fixed target to be surrounded and overwhelmed. And what if the enemies comes from the inner land; say mad Pakistains finally found out they are not getting their 72 virgins in the paradise? The good PLAN fleet would be captured.

2. PLAN has no such escorts for carriers. That sums it all.

So don't you tell me about building a naval trandition or taiwan resolution and that sort of things. What is naval tranditions going to do in a fight? I haven't figured out what naval tradtion is going to do in a naval fight. Is it what is suppose to do like the joke below?

PLAN skipper: Admiral! I got a slavo of missiles flying toward my ship. Absoring impacts in 15 seconds. Awaiting to Admiral's order, sir!

PLAN Admiral: We are China-a-Man. We don't run from attacks. Steady the course and absord the impacts.

PLAN skipper: Aye sir! China-a-Man runs not from attacks.



I figured that is so far a tradition going to do.

Now this is going to ramblings. So I will just post all I get here.

[bd popeye]

BrightasSun sez;

Why waste money on useless carriers, when we can just operate a few SSBNs which will surely scare every war monger away? And a SSBN is taking way too less money than a carrier to operate.

Really? I know a sonar tech on active duty that once told me the best place for those nuke boats the PLAN has is in port.

It will just take about US$ 100.00 to empty the nuclear arsenal on a SSBN in the matter of 15 minutes, then the cheerful crews can head home in "light-speed" for the New Year

How is that boat going to get that close to say the US west coast without being detecded? Once the PLAN puts to sea a SSBN it will be tracked every step of the way.

I agree with Obi wan that a CV is the best way to project power. Many of his points I have already made in my many post in the last year.

Imagine the good will the PRC would have built if after the Tsnami in Dec 2004 they had a CV/LPH they could have sent for the relief effort loaded with helos and humanitarian aid. But they could only sit back and watch other nations provide the airlift need during that time of disaster.

[Jeff Head]

Originally Posted by BrightAsSun

But an Armada Fleet is never in this case. The Armada fleet is build for meele. Such a fleet just fights its way in the path of blood and fires and never intents to have a ship goes home. This is what a carrier fleet cannot do. At least the carrier needs to go back unscratched for the next fight. But how is it going to do that when its escorts all sunk?.

You are basically proposing a tactic that calls for everyone in the "Armada Fleet", which I take to mean a Surface Action Group, perhaps with some subs thrown in, to sacrifice themselves and get themsleves all killed in an attempt to get at the Carrier Strike Group, or other SAG, and destroy it. The Soviets tended towards this doctrine.

Problem is, as the Japanes found out in World War II, it does not work. A carrier strike group is much more capable of either avoiding such a confrontation if it so chooses,, defending itself against such an attempt, or engaging such an attempt and defeating it because of its naval air arm which can reach further, and see futher than the Armada Fleet's detection device or weapons. A carrier is only out of the fight if it is located when the enemy has something that can reach to where the carrier is (or was when they last saw it) and then defeat the carrier strike groups ample and very effective anti-surface, anti-submarine, and anti-air defensive systems in depth.

That is a nut people have been wanting and trying to crack for the last 64+ years...and noone has done so yet. The result reamins that a nation with multiple carrier strike groups has the ability to project its power and defend its interests globally better than any nation that does not.

Again, because of this, I expect the Chinese to develop a carrier capability, and probably, before it is all said and done, they will have the resource to develop a capability that is second only to the US in the regard in the next 20 years.

[Obi Wan Russell]

China has plenty of deep water ports, otherwise they wouldn't be able to dock anything bigger than a corvette or a fishing boat. In times of tension, if you think an attack is likely you start sending your fleet to sea; the Kriegsmarine did this in 1939 in the weeks before war broke out. Their geography was arguably even worse than China's as all their exits to the open ocean were guarded by the Royal Navy. You ask what good building a naval tradition is in a fight? Build the right one and you avoid a fight in the first place, which is the ultimate objective of any countries' armed forces.
As for the lack of Carrier escorts, I could have sworn I'd seen pictures on this forum and elsewhere of the PLANs very modern destroyers and frigates, the sovremnys, the type 051s, 052As, Bs and Cs etc. In any Carrier based Navy these vessels would be ideally suited to the Carrier escort role, what do you think a carrier escort is exactly? Something other than a DDG or an FFG? All such vessels are capable of independant ops or fleet ops just like their western counterparts, and your prediction of a PLAN admirals behaviour whist under missile attack is frankly insulting to sailors everywhere.
All land bases are fixed targets, so all land based forces should be disbanded according to your argument. Fine, you can save money by not having to pay for the PLA or the PLAAF.
We are talking about building a strong defence posture so that China will not have to get involved in a shooting war, and will be able to take it's rightful place amongst the great powers of the UN when natural disasters (eg the aforementioned Tsunami) strike.

[jackbh]

Here is a picture of a Chinese carrier I found on sina.com


The twin hall design looks interesting.

[Obi Wan Russell]

It's a fascinating design... I'm sure I saw something similar in an episode of Thunderbirds when I was a kid! I think it'll be a couple of decades before something like this will be seen patrolling the worlds oceans, but in this case I'd love to be proved wrong.

[bd popeye]

That's a new one...

Interesting design...The double hull is for stablity...But that ship is so huge in it's appearence. Must be over 100 meters wide. I would like to know the proposed demensions. And could you post a link?

Obi -Wan..The Thunderbirds? Oh my! You mean those marionettes? I loved the models they used in that show...

Dinner time!

[jackbh]

It says on the rendering that it's 350 meters long, so by the dimension of the rendering it's probably not 100 meters wide. Also it says it's abount 68000 tons with nuclear power plants that carries around 70 planes including jets, awacs, and helos.

[bd popeye]

Thanks Jack!

100 meters wide? That's wider than a USN CVN by about 17 meters...

Well now I have a collection of drawings of possible PLAN CV's. Are any of them anything but someones wet dream? Only the future will tell....

My Chinese CV drawings collection.....I'm sure you have seen most of them!

[BrightAsSun]

Of course China has standby deep-water ports. The problem is really not on building ports according to China's labour power. The problems are to operate and maintain the ships. Take it this way. Building ships is a matter, but mobilizing the ships is another matter. Be patient with me, I'll explain.

I oppose China to have military carriers are based on 2 major reasons. The first reason is on economy basis. China is not filthy rich, therefore it cannot recover itself when the carrier-draw-backs come to the surface. The carrier-draw-backs could be no aduquent money to train and pay the professional carrier-wings, no sufficient money to maintain the carrier hardwares & structures, no money at all to dispatch the carrier from the port, etc.

no aduqent money to train the professional carrier-wings:
Which means inexperient pilots crash on the deck, don't know the sepecific techniques on using naval-versioned aircraft arsenal. Those in fact are good signs, because these are pariotic young people joining in with little wages offered to them. And the government couldn't afford to give them enough real high-sea exercises, and let them launch real weapons on the expensive targets such as drones and dummy ship

Now the next is the bad case. The government is not able to pay the pilots with "reasonable" wages, then nobody is willing to take such dangerous job with little money. The only ones who takes such jobs are geeky virgin fly-sim lovers. Or the people couldn't find a job in the civilian society. Or their parents want them to join, because it brings big honour to the family. These people defect to the enemies easily, or behave irregulaly. They are not pariotic. They just do this job to survive. And only the armed force will take them in, since no elites of the society will join the armed force.

no sufficient money to maintain the carrier hardwares & structures:
The carrier is not a water dam. This steel-floating-airport gets all these electronic wires and computers. And there is the internal hull and external hull to look after. The military carrier is not your automobile in the garage. It's a warship which determines the outcome of a war. You want this babe in good conditions all the time.

no money at all to dispatch the carrier from the port
Why Russians don't sail the carriers to protect their SSBNs as usual?



My second major argument to oppose China to pursue the Carrier Ambition. The argument is based on the moral high ground. ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** *****************

WARNING ISSUED TO BrightAssun. I told you previously that remarks that are insulting to any group or country are not permitted. You have been warned! You also need to tone down the political retoric. Read the forum rules.

bd popeye moderator

Conclusion:
I would like to see China turns out to be a swiss-like nation instead the so-called the world's major power. If it is possible, China could just give up its status of the Permanment Member of the United Nation Security Council. Why takes the crown of thorn, when the people who cast it away are living better than you?

[Finn McCool]

Carriers are indeed expensive, but are necessary for a Navy that serves a nation as large as China. By taking on those expenses, China proves it is indeed a naval power.

About carrier names-I would suggest something from China's imperial past. A good one would be the Koxinga. He fought against foreign invaders and was primarily sea-based. However, he also created the original Taiwan issue, back in the 1600s. Another one would be the Zheng He, or the Sun Zi. Each ship could be named after a dynasty. The PLAN could even name it the Great Wall. Or it could just be named the Mao!

[netspider]

Originally Posted by BrightAsSun

Conclusion:
I would like to see China turns out to be a swiss-like nation instead the so-called the world's major power. If it is possible, China could just give up its status of the Permanment Member of the United Nation Security Council. Why takes the crown of thorn, when the people who cast it away are living better than you?

This is really absurd. Countries like India, Germany and Japan are dreaming of becoming the permanment menber of the UN Security Council, and we have a man here want China to give up its membership.

These days, countries like US, Russia and China they all have their global interests, and their army should not only protect their homeland security but also their global interests. You seems to still think in an old way in which countries as big as China were basically isolated from outside world and all its people and economy do not depend on the trade and the stability of the world.

To protect China's global interests, an ability to project military power is much needed. There are basically two ways to achieve this, one is to have a "fixed" base oversea to station your army and air force, which even US has found it is hard to do that since the end of cold war. US has lost many of its oversea military bases in the 90's including the one in Phillipine. Unless China can have true allies like UK, Germany, Korea and Japan to United States, a military base oversea would remain as a dream.

Another way is to have a carrier centered navy which can "float" around the world. Why it must be carrier, instead of other fleet warship or submarine? Read previous posts, they are all valid and strong reasons.

[netspider]

Originally Posted by Violet Oboe

P.S.: Zheng He would be cool name for the first PLAN CV since a muslim eunuch would be a symbol for friendship in a region which will be very important in coming years.

Zheng He would be a good name, but unforunately, it is already assigned to a support ship in PLAN.

There are rumors floating around Chinese military forum saything that the name for Varyaga will be Shi Liang, a general who retaked Taiwan in Qing dynasty.