Let’s wait for a few hundred takeoffs on 003 before using the word “master”.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
As others have said, an elevator on the port side does not take away from flight deck space, certainly not during a ship's normal cyclical flight operations because the elevator will be up at flight deck level.
I would be surprised if the future CVN 004/00X of 100,000t did not have an additional port side lift (among other major flight deck changes), and the most simple answer for 003 not having one is due to a tradeoff of additional capability versus additional risk.
For a ship of 003's size, two elevators on the starboard side would always have been a given.
The question was whether an additional third elevator (that by extension would have to be on the port side) would be worth the additional work or not.
The 003's flight deck configuration and associated equipment is not perfect and has room to improve with future carrier designs especially for a larger nuclear carrier -- and that includes a longer flight deck, smaller and repositioned island, repositioned starboard elevators, perhaps a slightly geometrically outwards flared elevator design... and most importantly the addition of a fourth catapult (on the waist) and a third elevator on the port side.
That doesn't take away from the fact that 003 is a very competent first go at the world's only large CATOBAR carrier that's existed outside of the US in all of history, especially from a nation whose first foray in operating a carrier was only 10 years ago, and yet still able to implement a bunch of advanced technologies on 003 at that.
For a first go, it is truly quite impressive at how much they managed to get right and correctly position and miniaturize.
But that doesn't mean the 003 isn't still a result of certain compromises and limitations that have resulted in certain design choices that the PLAN would likely prefer to see rectified in a future, larger clean sheet carrier design.
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Well, you have to start somewhere, poverty or not.
Remember that the USS Enterprise CVN-65, the first ever nuclear-powered aircraft carrier/supercarrier of the US Navy (or in fact, the world's first), has 8 nuclear reactors. It was only from Nimitz onwards that the number went down to 4, and then from Ford onwards that the number went down to 2.
In essence, Enterprise CVN-65 is a sort-of prototype carrier that tests marine nuclear propulsion technology for carrier usage. After Enterprise CVN-65 was comissioned in 1961, it wasn't until 1968 when the Nimitz was laid down.
Although I hope that China would fast-track build an improved version of conventionally-powered 003 following the Fujian in light of the present deteriorating geopolitical situation in the Western Pacific, I believe a mixed conventional-nuclear propulsion system for the 004 is also a good way to advance the mastering of carrier-based nuclear propulsion operations by the PLAN.
But if the PLAN has mastered nuclear propulsion technology for carrier usage and are confident of their capabilities, then a full-on nuclear propulsion system for the 004 is also a good way to go.
(Although we all hope that China could just pump out those (005) nuclear-powered supercarriers to scare the shit outta everyone else, lol)
Even pumping out more type 003 would scare those haters enough.
Type 003 have nice bow design compared to 075 LHD. Will new 075 have aesthetically pleasing bow design similar to 003 AC ?
Whilst the US naval fleet may bounce back after 2030, it doesn't change how China should end up with more carriers than the US by 2050.
That would simply be the result of China having a significantly larger economy and military spending than the US. So why would China have to act when it only has 4 carriers, when it could have more than 11 in 2050 and then outnumber the US carrier fleet?
A similar calculation applies to every other military system.
And if China has a commanding economic and military presence in the Western Pacific, the Taiwan issue likely wouldn't require an actual war.
For the record, Nimitz has 2 reactors, not 4.
Some people have this misconception where USS Enterprise was somehow gimped or inferior because it had submarine reactors. This couldn't be further from the truth. There's a reason why it was one of the fastest carriers (if not the fastest ever) in the USN - because 8 reactors turned out to be complete overkill.
Part of the design required the steam from each of the 8 reactors to be interchangable to each of the 4 turbines, leading to an extremely complicated system of piping. And to its credit, this setup provided impressive results. But this complexity also caused massive cost overruns, which led to the cancellation of 5 of the 6 planned units.
The bottom line was that Enteprise was anything but a "poverty" ship. It's the opposite of poverty. It was a prototype that was so overengineered they cancelled all of her sisters and forced the next class of carriers to have no more than 2 reactors, and very understandably so.
Whoops, thanks for pointing out my mistake.
Intrepid
Major
Maybe because they have a well-functioning secret service, were aware of American problems early on and didn't have to make the same mistakes.
The best decision was probably not to feed four catapults from three energy storage systems via a complex distribution mechanism, but to feed the associated catapult three times directly from one energy storage system (just as it worked smoothly in the American test facility on land).
It should be noted, however, that the Chinese use a different energy storage system than the Americans. To my knowledge, a Chinese energy storage system does not consist of four flywheels. I don't know what it's made of though.
Intrepid
Major
In fact, in the past, with additional deck edge elevators, available deck space has increased.
Picture is from here: