CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

Anlsvrthng said:

18 month passed since the knee laying of the ship in Jiangnan .

At this construction stage the Newport News already built into the Ford 2000-3000 million worth of equipment.


Now, at this construction stage we can see 20-30 million worth of steel structure in Jiangnan.
There is no sign of boilers, turbines, piping, pumps and so on, anything that cost money.


The PLN can scrap the whole steel structure, and start it from the scratch without spending any real money.

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Relax, the first time they build a conventional CATOBAR carrier. You should not compare it with the US that has a century long experience building and operating these carriers. They still have to commission the second STOBAR carrier. That already is a big happening for the PLA Navy. You expect they go from crawling to elite navy in a few years? Kid, that is a generational undertaking. When you want to make a comparision compare the PLA Navy of 2010 with that of 2020. Huge progress made in one decade.

Anlsvrthng said:

Now, at this construction stage we can see 20-30 million worth of steel structure in Jiangnan. There is no sign of boilers, turbines, piping, pumps and so on, anything that cost money.

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As I have already explained: this is a sign of a project progress if the planning phase has not yet been completed, but the resources for the construction phase are already available and you have to deal with it. Every project manager knows.

Some guy on Weibo/CJDBY (who obviously has too much time on his hands) took the effort to splice all of the existing images of the Type 003 blocks, juxtapose them, and measure the overall length and width. The results were 40-41 meters for the waterline beam and 320 meters for the waterline depth. This would make it comparable to the size of the Nimitz- or Ford-class vessels if accurate.

Does anyone know if this is proper way to measure total ship length? Or if the guy is using the correct images at all? We were expecting a Kitty Hawk-sized or Forrestal-sized ship but not something approaching USN nuclear carriers.

SinoSoldier said:

Some guy on Weibo/CJDBY (who obviously has too much time on his hands) took the effort to splice all of the existing images of the Type 003 blocks, juxtapose them, and measure the overall length and width. The results were 40-41 meters for the waterline beam and 320 meters for the waterline depth. This would make it comparable to the size of the Nimitz- or Ford-class vessels if accurate.

Does anyone know if this is proper way to measure total ship length? Or if the guy is using the correct images at all? We were expecting a Kitty Hawk-sized or Forrestal-sized ship but not something approaching USN nuclear carriers.

View attachment 55953

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At that level of resolution and the relatively imprecise method of arranging the modules together in series, as well as double counting and determining which modules are actually for the same level (i.e.: keel, which would be relevant for waterline length), I wouldn't take the length exact estimate with too much gravity at this stage.

Sure, it might be real, but given the above errors it might be off by a significant margin as well.


The only thing we can take away is the beam of the modules, which is not something that is susceptible to the above error of "double counting" but it is also something we've known for months now given satellite images taken over the year. A 40-41m waterline beam is well within expectations of course.

I've just realised that the Chinese supply chain hasn't got experience with big capital ship engines.

As it looks like even the Chinese customers buying the 100k+ ships with European engines from Jiangnan .


First I thought that the new LNG carrier in Jiangnan will have steam power-plan, but that will have diesel-LNG piston engine.

The steam turbine is the same on a power plan and on a ship, but the condensers, boilers not, and the most important important, it needs gearbox as well, and designed together all.

It can be quite challenging to design a power train in this dimensions.

I think the UK went for diesel/turbine-electric power train due to the experiences/industrial background in the leisure cruisers.

But the USA hasn't changed the carriers power trains since the 30s, only replaced the boilers with boiling water reactors.

They are provided with local production licence agreements, thus relatively cheaper. As long as it is profitable and readily at disposal, they wouldn't bother investing extra in low-emission, high performance marine engines for the commercial market.

Anlsvrthng said:

I've just realised that the Chinese supply chain hasn't got experience with big capital ship engines.

As it looks like even the Chinese customers buying the 100k+ ships with European engines from Jiangnan .

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

First I thought that the new LNG carrier in Jiangnan will have steam power-plan, but that will have diesel-LNG piston engine.

The steam turbine is the same on a power plan and on a ship, but the condensers, boilers not, and the most important important, it needs gearbox as well, and designed together all.

It can be quite challenging to design a power train in this dimensions.

I think the UK went for diesel/turbine-electric power train due to the experiences/industrial background in the leisure cruisers.

But the USA hasn't changed the carriers power trains since the 30s, only replaced the boilers with boiling water reactors.

Click to expand...

Why would you think the new LNG carrier in Jiangnan would ever use a steam turbine? Vast majority of new builds today are LNG-diesel. Steam turbine is already so yesteryear. This is already so commonly known in the industry.

Ships have long gone to diesel because of ever tightening fuel economy requirements, and now emission requirements are forcing the migration to LNG-diesel.

Just to be clear, China, S. Korea and Japan dominate world production of marine diesels. This does not mean China imports engines they do. Chinese diesel engine makers have long standing patent and IP licensing agreements with the likes of MAN, Pielstik, Caterpillar, Wartsilla, etc,.

azretonov said:

They are provided with local production licence agreements, thus relatively cheaper. As long as it is profitable and readily at disposal, they wouldn't bother investing extra in low-emission, high performance marine engines for the commercial market.

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What? The drive to using LNG fuel is because of all countries tightening their carbon emission requirements both in the company and in the government level. Countries are requiring that ships achieve these emission requirements before they are even allowed to enter port. China itself is pretty tight on this regard which is why they are investing on developing all electric powered barges.

I took few minutes to compare the powertrain performance of different warships, considering diesel (gas turbine) electric, geared gas , geared turbine and so on.

Just to see what could be expected for the new carrier.

Quite interesting.

kW/ton .

Burke : 7.96 kW/ton - geared gas turbine
Zumwalt : 4.87 kW/ton - gas turbine - electric hybrid powertrain
Iowa class battleship : 3.25 kW/ton - conventional boiler - geared steam
Kuznetsov : 2,72 kW/ton - conventional boiler - geared steam
Nimitz: 1.9 kW/ton - nuclear boiler - geared steam
Yamoto battleship : 1.69 kW/ton - conventional boiler - geared steam
Queen Elisabeth carrier : 1.23 kW/ton - diesel/turbine electric hybrid powertrain

The basic machine design in work, to use generator-motor instead of gearbox cost lot of mass, and decrease the warship performance.



Checking these data it should be quite demanding / complex to design the propulsion system of a carrier sized ship.
Without extensive experience in the powertrain design it could be very difficult.

Anlsvrthng said:

I've just realised that the Chinese supply chain hasn't got experience with big capital ship engines.

As it looks like even the Chinese customers buying the 100k+ ships with European engines from Jiangnan .

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

First I thought that the new LNG carrier in Jiangnan will have steam power-plan, but that will have diesel-LNG piston engine.

The steam turbine is the same on a power plan and on a ship, but the condensers, boilers not, and the most important important, it needs gearbox as well, and designed together all.

It can be quite challenging to design a power train in this dimensions.

I think the UK went for diesel/turbine-electric power train due to the experiences/industrial background in the leisure cruisers.

But the USA hasn't changed the carriers power trains since the 30s, only replaced the boilers with boiling water reactors.

Click to expand...

To admit, I'm slowly loosing my patience. Not only that you ignore a reply to now already three direct quotes with a clear and simple question in which you should explain WHAT is your intention, but now you are again derailing this thread with another theory out of the blue by claiming "the Chinese supply chain hasn't got experience with big capital ship engines" and as such hinting "this is not a carrier"!?

Again .. what is your intention here in this thread and even more with all these IMO off topic or at least only tangential relevant issues?
In barely any of these posts is a direct relationship to the 003 carrier explained. You remain vague even after direct requests ... and as such I can rate this only as trolling.

Again: Please answer the already three times posted question, explain what is your intention to bring up this issue ... or it will be deleted.

Take this as a warning. we are now again already more than one page of posts beyond anything directly related to the carrier.