PLAN Aircraft Carrier programme...(Closed)

Pan, perhaps so.

But I do not think so.

If they have indeed started building the second carrier (and I believe they have), then they will complete it.

They have invested far too much, and thought it out for too meticulously, to abandon it at this point I believe.

The J-15s are coming off the line. The second carrier is being built (IMHO), and the expensive training facility and new docking facilities in two locations for carriers have been built.

They will have the two, and outfit them accordingly, and proceed from there. It's just going to take some time.

No doubt they are finding that it is a very expensive and painstaking undertaking...but I honestly believe that they understood this going in, and that it is simply that they never planned to rapidly (by many Chinese enthusiasts standards) build up this force in a manner like they are doing the Type 052Ds or Type 056 vessels.

They are taking their sweet time and very carefully moving forward and I believe we will continue to see that.

Anyhow, those are my own thoughts on it.

PanAsian said:

I'm just going to pipe in with my occasional note that I think the Liaoning was an opportunistic acquisition and carriers in general are the dream/vanity/experimental projects of elements of the Chinese and PLAN leadership which may be falling out of favor due to likely leaner and tenser times and likely now first hand experience of how difficult and expensive CV operations are.

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And your evidence is?

I think people mistaken a growth slowdown for a recession. Slower growth is still growth. The PRC is still getting wealthier. The Soviet Union struggling to grow at all and abandoning projects left and right this is not.

To suggest the PLA didn't look very hard at operational needs and how expensive operating carriers would be (publicly available information) would be to suggest the PLAN does not take planning seriously. Everything we know about the PLAN in the last three decades and how far they've gotten with development and modernization suggests otherwise. They've been looking at doing this for well over thirty years now, as attested by the numerous times they've consulted with multiple different carrier operating militaries around the world about carriers specifically in that same time span.

If you can understand the interviews, the most consistent and highly stressed factor that Chinese crews and pilots stress is safety.

For them, something like the Forestal fire is simply unacceable.

Indeed, an accident of that magnitude cannot be acceptable to any navy. And the fact that nothing like it has happened since proves that it is not an inevitable cost of owning and operating a carrier.

The PLAN's goal is to have USN levels of competence and safety records without having to go through the same 'growth pains' as the USN did getting to that point.

If the price for that trade-off is a little time, then that is a far better deal than the blood and lives the USN had to pay.

Accidents and losses will happen, that is inevitable, unfortunately. But there is no real correlation between accidents and losses and competency, well not a positive one at the very least.

I'm sure if the PLAN lost a bird or had a fire, all sorts of questions would be raised about their competency and how they allowed that to happen.

That is all noise, the only thing the PLAN will be concerned about is keeping the butchers bill as low as they can as they work up capacity and competency.

plawolf said:

If you can understand the interviews, the most consistent and highly stressed factor that Chinese crews and pilots stress is safety.

For them, something like the Forestal fire is simply unacceable.

Indeed, an accident of that magnitude cannot be acceptable to any navy. And the fact that nothing like it has happened since proves that it is not an inevitable cost of owning and operating a carrier.

The PLAN's goal is to have USN levels of competence and safety records without having to go through the same 'growth pains' as the USN did getting to that point.

If the price for that trade-off is a little time, then that is a far better deal than the blood and lives the USN had to pay.

Accidents and losses will happen, that is inevitable, unfortunately. But there is no real correlation between accidents and losses and competency, well not a positive one at the very least.

I'm sure if the PLAN lost a bird or had a fire, all sorts of questions would be raised about their competency and how they allowed that to happen.

That is all noise, the only thing the PLAN will be concerned about is keeping the butchers bill as low as they can as they work up capacity and competency.

Click to expand...

What I mean was, critical deficiencies sometimes only reveal itself in real world battle, just like the ground troops, no matter how realistic the military excercise is, or how hard you train them, nothing beats the lessons learned in a real battle. When things start getting chaotic it will intensify the pressure, and people start making mistakes, and then disasters happen. How to identify these breaking point procedurally often requires real world battle experience.

Ultra said:

What I mean was, critical deficiencies sometimes only reveal itself in real world battle, just like the ground troops, no matter how realistic the military excercise is, or how hard you train them, nothing beats the lessons learned in a real battle. When things start getting chaotic it will intensify the pressure, and people start making mistakes, and then disasters happen. How to identify these breaking point procedurally often requires real world battle experience.

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Even in real combat with critical deficiencies showing up even harden veterans makes mistakes. The human factor can never be totally ironed out regardless of experiences. It's the discipline and team work that counts.

latenlazy said:

And your evidence is?

I think people mistaken a growth slowdown for a recession. Slower growth is still growth. The PRC is still getting wealthier. The Soviet Union struggling to grow at all and abandoning projects left and right this is not.

To suggest the PLA didn't look very hard at operational needs and how expensive operating carriers would be (publicly available information) would be to suggest the PLAN does not take planning seriously. Everything we know about the PLAN in the last three decades and how far they've gotten with development and modernization suggests otherwise. They've been looking at doing this for well over thirty years now, as attested by the numerous times they've consulted with multiple different carrier operating militaries around the world about carriers specifically in that same time span.

Click to expand...

It's not that the PLAN didn't plan but that it makes sense for them to adapt to a changing environment or adjust their own priorities for their own reasons.

For the PLAN's core missions such as a Taiwan contingency or securing the waters within the First Island Chain a carrier capability is not a necessity. It may be a nice-to-have only if the PLAN can afford an entire CVBG for survivable forward deployment into the Pacific but that is not an efficient use of its resources nor likely to be particularly effective on its mission in the foreseeable future.

There is the opportunity cost of other areas of naval development being more achievable within a shorter time frame with lower cost and being valuable for a wider range of the PLAN's core and secondary missions. These include surface combatants from the 055 to the 056, conventional and nuclear submarines, and aircraft from the surveillance/C4 types through the latest H-6 model and the J-20. Other long term research with wider applications and thereby more deserving of resources than carrier development are things like weaponizing lasers, and developing electromagnetic systems.

Economic change is hard to predict but both PLA personnel and acquisition costs are set to rise together with China's trends of rising standard of living and production costs which could tip the scales on something like carrier development from being a long term luxury to being a near term white elephant.

Ultra said:

What I mean was, critical deficiencies sometimes only reveal itself in real world battle, just like the ground troops, no matter how realistic the military excercise is, or how hard you train them, nothing beats the lessons learned in a real battle. When things start getting chaotic it will intensify the pressure, and people start making mistakes, and then disasters happen. How to identify these breaking point procedurally often requires real world battle experience.

Click to expand...

To be fair the Forrestal fire wasn't exactly during a battle per se, the ship itself wasn't under attack by anyone, they were sustaining sorties and rearmament yes, and there were unforeseen training and design issues that could have substantially mitigated the accident.

For instance, the presence of a built in deck wash down system would have helped (Liaoning has this btw) dramatically, and was subsequently standard fit for all USN carriers.

To say that a navy needs to experience something as disastrous as the USS Forrestal fire to "pop its cherry" is ridiculous. No, such lessons can be learned in other, slower and safer ways or even the accumulation of a variety of smaller accidents that may be of far lower profile. What PLAN needs is to work up its ship, crew and airwing to a stage where they know their parts and then operate, operate, operate, making sure to stay on the right side of the line between safety and new learning.

PanAsian said:

It's not that the PLAN didn't plan but that it makes sense for them to adapt to a changing environment or adjust their own priorities for their own reasons.

For the PLAN's core missions such as a Taiwan contingency or securing the waters within the First Island Chain a carrier capability is not a necessity. It may be a nice-to-have only if the PLAN can afford an entire CVBG for survivable forward deployment into the Pacific but that is not an efficient use of its resources nor likely to be particularly effective on its mission in the foreseeable future.

There is the opportunity cost of other areas of naval development being more achievable within a shorter time frame with lower cost and being valuable for a wider range of the PLAN's core and secondary missions. These include surface combatants from the 055 to the 056, conventional and nuclear submarines, and aircraft from the surveillance/C4 types through the latest H-6 model and the J-20. Other long term research with wider applications and thereby more deserving of resources than carrier development are things like weaponizing lasers, and developing electromagnetic systems.

Economic change is hard to predict but both PLA personnel and acquisition costs are set to rise together with China's trends of rising standard of living and production costs which could tip the scales on something like carrier development from being a long term luxury to being a near term white elephant.

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China's projected high intensity missions include but are also beyond Taiwan, and even beyond the first island chain, really. It is now a matter of ECS, SCS and the western pacific at large. A carrier is really the only multirole vessel capable of sustaining any kind of competitive air operations without land based aircraft, and it is something PLAN requires.
And in future lower intensity missions beyond westpac (say, defending interests in africa against second or third tier military forces), carriers will also be essential in providing air support and air cover as well.

Carriers for PLAN should be better described as a medium term necessity, and a near term luxury. However it is impossible for one to develop a capable carrier force for the future without starting off somewhere.
In other words, PLAN are investing some money it could use to buy other things with, into a robust carrier capability in future even if in the near term the capability may not be wholly competitive.

Frankly I think it is ridiculous to call the PLAN's carrier goals or Liaoning as a white elephant -- it would have been better if you originally said PLAN should consider spending money elsewhere.
I'm sure PLAN have quite vigorously debated their budget, yet the fact that they're still pursuing carriers must mean they believe the capability it provides is worth the money and even worth the short term risk in not spending carrier-related finances elsewhere.

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I also see no evidence for your claim that carriers "may be falling out of favour" to Chinese and PLAN leadership.

PanAsian said:

It's not that the PLAN didn't plan but that it makes sense for them to adapt to a changing environment or adjust their own priorities for their own reasons.

For the PLAN's core missions such as a Taiwan contingency or securing the waters within the First Island Chain a carrier capability is not a necessity. It may be a nice-to-have only if the PLAN can afford an entire CVBG for survivable forward deployment into the Pacific but that is not an efficient use of its resources nor likely to be particularly effective on its mission in the foreseeable future.

There is the opportunity cost of other areas of naval development being more achievable within a shorter time frame with lower cost and being valuable for a wider range of the PLAN's core and secondary missions. These include surface combatants from the 055 to the 056, conventional and nuclear submarines, and aircraft from the surveillance/C4 types through the latest H-6 model and the J-20. Other long term research with wider applications and thereby more deserving of resources than carrier development are things like weaponizing lasers, and developing electromagnetic systems.

Economic change is hard to predict but both PLA personnel and acquisition costs are set to rise together with China's trends of rising standard of living and production costs which could tip the scales on something like carrier development from being a long term luxury to being a near term white elephant.

Click to expand...

I would take a step back, in the pure calculus, you are right, those system are not needed. If it is about national pride or esprit de corp, then it matters significantly.

In the greater sense, the first soviet nuke was a white elephant, it cannot hit the continental USA for MAD. The First US ICBM Atlas, have a 50% fail rate, and the like the R7, it does not provide a credible second strike threat. Sputnik was an useless satellite that has only a radio transmitter that looped an audio clip. The battleship Yamato and Mushashi would never win against 10X Iowas etc. but they captured the imagination of the generations to this day.

All of these are white elephants in the room, but they shaped the mind and soul for generations to come; and it is national pride and esprit de corp.

Lezt said:

I would take a step back, in the pure calculus, you are right, those system are not needed. If it is about national pride or esprit de corp, then it matters significantly.

In the greater sense, the first soviet nuke was a white elephant, it cannot hit the continental USA for MAD. The First US ICBM Atlas, have a 50% fail rate, and the like the R7, it does not provide a credible second strike threat. Sputnik was an useless satellite that has only a radio transmitter that looped an audio clip. The battleship Yamato and Mushashi would never win against 10X Iowas etc. but they captured the imagination of the generations to this day.

All of these are white elephants in the room, but they shaped the mind and soul for generations to come; and it is national pride and esprit de corp.

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I think far more important than shaping "mind and soul" for future generations or "national pride," the things (apart from Yamato and Musashi in their time) which you listed were key prerequisites in developing a future capability...

In the same way, I think few of us would argue that carriers are not a viable combat capability if properly developed and escorted, and for PLAN they are seeking to achieve that capability in the future.... but they will have to start off with a green crew, a new ship, a small airwing, with limited doctrine, untested training procedures and overall inexperience, before they can reach that capability.

National pride shouldn't really come into it too much compared to the material and physical capability of such projects and creating the basis for future development.