00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread

[Blitzo]

There could be many reasons on how those rumors come about that we could speculate on, but I feel PLAN might want to validate this clean-sheet design with conventional propulsion before going ahead with nuclear propulsion. We have seen such incremental approach with 001->002->003 so I am not convinced there would be a huge jump when it comes to 004.

I agree with you there, but given how prominent the noise has been in characterizing the construction of a "definitive" CVN and a "possible" additional CV are, I think trying to fit what we see with those rumours makes sense.

Option C: we should interpret this as extra space added ahead of the island on the new design rather than the island shifting aft. The 003 has its stern extended compare to 002 as this was the only way to lengthen the ship without making major modification to the rest of the hull. With a clean-sheet design, this lengthening could be done on the hull forward of the island, and we should see this being reflected on the mock-up.

That's fine and can exist alongside both of the prior positions A) and B). The important thing is that the position of the island on the mockup (keeping in mind the mockup is almost certainly missing a bit of additional stern hull length and deck length) is more aft relative to the new overall hull and deck length and design, than the island on 003 is relative to 003's overall hull length.

Option D: they made enough change to the internal arrangement to allow the island to shift. For example, they could place the boiler rooms/nuclear compartments directly ahead and aft of the rear turbine-compartment, which would allow them to shift the island by 20~30m. However, I see this as very unlikely as it goes against what I call "design heritage". It would be more likely for the internal arrangement to be near-identical to 001/002/003 aside from modification needed to support nuclear propulsion.

That is plausible, and would be an explainer for B).
That said I also consider it unlikely for the same reasons you described.


The key point is that there are multiple reasonable ways in what we are seeing could reflect a desire to test the maximal permutations possible for island placement and island configuration.

 

[no_name]

Will China navy eventually transition to an all nuclear carrier force or will she keep a number of conventional carriers and now is just them trying to standardise a common bridge design for both?

 

[tamsen_ikard]

Will China navy eventually transition to an all nuclear carrier force or will she keep a number of conventional carriers and now is just them trying to standardise a common bridge design for both?

China will not retire Fujian or Shandong until their service life is complete, that is likely 30-40 years, could even go to 50 years similar to Nimitz. These are very new ships and can be useful for many many years to come. Yes, Nuclear carriers can take the frontline position while these carriers work more on second line duty.

We also don't know how useful nuclear carriers will be in the future. If anti-ship missiles get so good that carriers get too hard to defend. Then super expensive nuclear carriers could become obsolete and "distributed lethality" with smaller carriers becoming more useful since they are less expensive and more attritable.

 

[Cloud_Nine_]

Will China navy eventually transition to an all nuclear carrier force or will she keep a number of conventional carriers and now is just them trying to standardise a common bridge design for both?

Disregarding the obvious fact that PLAN will be operating Liaoning and Shandong for at least decades, new additions will probably include both CVs and CVNs.

Nuclear carriers definitely still has its own niche but are significantly more expensive. Besides, Fujian is already larger than the largest conventional CV USN had built by the time GAO completed the NSIAD-98-1 report. GAO had commented that much of CVN's advantage in terms of av gas and munition storage comes from simply being larger than conventional carriers. We don't really know how a 100,000 ton CV compares to a 100,000 ton CVN in operation simply because we've never seen a 100,000 ton CV.

We'll just have to wait and see. But it's safe to say PLAN will almost definitely not be pursing a USN like CVN only fleet.

 

[4Tran]

I think that it's going to be a question of how successful China nuclear designs are. Technically, China doesn't need any nuclear power carriers, and probably won't do so for quite a while. But if the results are good with their nuclear designs, then that's going to be advantageous for future needs.

 

[sunnymaxi]

Technically, China doesn't need any nuclear power carriers, and probably won't do so for quite a while

i don't think so.

Chinese shipyards layout the plan for Marine nuclear propulsion for future ships. from nuclear icebreaker to floating power nuclear ship to nuclear powered container ship. JG shipyard even officially announced..

 

[no_name]

I think the fact that China's CV uses EM cat, which significantly reduce size under deck, as well as not needing fresh water tanks for steam generation, may mean much better endurance compared to traditional US CVs even if they are of the same size.