CV-17 Shandong (002 carrier) Thread I ...News, Views and operations

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kickars

Junior Member
May be we have to forget about the name CV17 Shandong, waiting to see if it will be named PLANS Hainan instead.
That’s something most of us have been saying for a long time beside few who still insist on those designations/names given by fans all those years ago.

Before the official name been released, all we have are the photos taken from official ceremonies of this ship, which show the designation of “Number 002 Carrier”. For whatever the reason, for some that isn’t as good as the names/designations given by the fans...
 

Lethe

Captain
so now the worst part they are indeed now having to split the J15 between two carriers

very bad

Planes are not wedded to their carriers. Given that aircraft carriers, like all naval vessels, have significant downtime, it would be suboptimal for aircraft to be wedded to a single carrier. Of course aircraft have even more downtime than ships, but at sea this occurs on a more or less continuous basis within a squadron or air wing (although of course there are also longer periods of downtime ashore for training, deep maintenance and recreation). Even USN only has 9 carrier air wings for its 11 carriers.

It is certainly not ideal to be operating two carriers with only ~24 J-15s between them, but it is not a catastrophe or a waste of a second carrier. Given the delay in further airframes to date, it is likely that PLAN and SAC are waiting for a CATOBAR "J-15D" to reach a full level of maturity and readiness. They will likely end up producing a significant number of airframes (up to triple digits) and those aircraft will fulfil PLAN requirements until the next generation arrives in meaningful numbers. Undoubtedly SAC could've pumped out another dozen or two dozen J-15s by now if PLAN and CMC felt it was sufficiently important, but they haven't. PLAN has the airframe numbers it needs for training and the development of procedures, now they are laying the foundations for the capabilities they require in the medium-long term rather than maximising numbers of more limited aircraft in the present.
 
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schenkus

Junior Member
Registered Member
Do we know how long it took the carrier to reach Hainan from Dalian and how far it travelled ?
Assuming it took around 4 days for about 2000 nautical miles, the average speed would be ~20 knots.
 
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