CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

[Biscuits]

The issue I take with basing what is one of China's most, if not the most, strategically significant military programmes on the rationale of emulating the USN's carrier doctrines, which have also seen major recent shifts as brought on by Ford's introduction, is the inherently reactive nature of this proposition, or perhaps more accurately, the "follow-the-puck" aspect of it.

To justify China's building of like-supercarriers that rival the US, I would think the issue invariably revolves around just what the PLAN plans(!) to do with their CVs in the first place, and I would also think there's an exhaustive list of questions we may have to ask ourselves, which, needless to say would be such a lengthy discussion which I must admit I may not have the will to get into the nitty-gritty of it.



That said, going back to my above point, I think the simple truth is that we don't know how the PLAN actually intends to operate their carrier fleets as they continue to expand and mature. I think there'd be little disagreement that they're very much still at the training, exploration and refinement phase of their carrier-operating competency, surely to be compounded by now having a CATOBAR in the mix. Then again, STOBAR was never the end goal to begin with, so the PLAN would have surely and expectedly been training as if they were operating on a CATOBAR platform off site and at sea.

So once the PLAN's carrier fleets (however many that may end up to be) reach the level of matured operability and sortie rates that can be considered as on par with that of the USN, what does the PLAN hope to achieve then?

If I may name just a very few obvious scenarios -

- Do they envision themselves conducting A2AD not just around the 1st and 2nd island chains but beyond? Where?

- Do they expect to conduct expeditionary strikes and policing ops like the US? Against whom?

- Do they expect to pit their own carriers against US carriers? For what purpose would either side do that?

Apart form the prestige and intimidation factor of having the biggest and baddest, just on these circumstances alone how realistically do we think the PLAN would envision themselves conducting these operations/ventures/power projections that would warrant acquiring precisely such compositions and capabilities the USN's CVNs have to offer?

Perhaps I could be misunderstanding what the PLAN's operational requirements actually are, if they've ever published anything recently that I may have missed. Or maybe you could be so kind to elaborate on it.

To the sure, I don't dispute the technological advantages China has undeniably benefited from observing and studying US CVN progress, esp. in nuclear propulsion and EMALS, and quite possibly electronics suites, and improving upon them. That much is obvious.

When it comes the time the PLAN gets around to building a 100,000 ton CVN in earnest, I don't mean to sound arrogant or dismissive, but in terms of emulating the USN down to the way they design, configure and build their state-of-art carriers which ultimately dictates the fashion in which the USN gets to operate them, however, that's where I think watchers should probably expect the PLAN would pay due consideration to how it may differ, or not, in the capabilities a homegrown 100,000 ton CVN can afford them to achieve in the face of adversarial military assets the PLAN intends to deploy it against, in theatres where the PLAN intends to deploy it, and the roles in which the PLAN intends to employ it, and probably not "what China would do with a CVN like the Ford".

I think prestige, or more accurately deterrence, might indeed be a major motivation to creating a carrier force.

The situation of the Chinese navy can be paralleled to the US navy in the interwar years. It is not the largest nor the most powerful on paper, but it is backed by the largest economy and industry, giving it opportunity to develop in unique ways. It has also researched capabilities that might be era defining, and is an early adopter.

Even with China's missile centric doctrine, Carriers can still provide significant support. When the dominant pacific power in ww2 was constructing the biggest, strongest battleship, despite suspecting that battleships were outdated, the US navy still decided to invest in the Iowa class to match the Yamato class. And even if the iowas never became key pieces for victory, they were useful as support platforms for a long time.

The key platforms in China's inventory will still be the 055 and later derivatives. Supercarriers will send a symbolic message that the Navy remains competitive against the US threat, while their actual combat role will be supporting the DDG centric fleet, alongside providing cheap bombardment options.

 

[Gloire_bb]

Even with China's missile centric doctrine, Carriers can still provide significant support.

Carriers in Chinese doctrine are quite clearly not meant to provide support. They are simply evolving in a different direction.
Soviet carrier capability was sorta support* - and PLAN has very clearly moved away from this concept.

*even then, by late 1980s shift in thinking has actually started to happen, before even getting first true decks: it was just illogical. I personally think that the hypothetical 1990s Soviet Navy would've moved to be carrier-centric, too. It's just far more logical.

When the dominant pacific power in ww2 was constructing the biggest, strongest battleship, despite suspecting that battleships were outdated, the US navy still decided to invest in the Iowa class to match the Yamato class. And even if the iowas never became key pieces for victory, they were useful as support platforms for a long time.

Battleships weren't outdated during WW2. US managed to misuse its new battleline through 1944 to get as little bang for the buck from her as possible, sure, but ultimately it was its own fault.
Even then, the old line worked.

The key platforms in China's inventory will still be the 055 and later derivatives.

And carriers are now becoming key platforms in China's inventory. Strictly speaking, they already did - as even type 001 is an outright superior [main] sea superiority platform.
Surface ships are just not competitive in this regard with tactical aviation.
This of course doesn't mean they are somehow not necessary. It's simply a question of who supports whom.

 

[56860]

I think prestige, or more accurately deterrence, might indeed be a major motivation to creating a carrier force.

The situation of the Chinese navy can be paralleled to the US navy in the interwar years. It is not the largest nor the most powerful on paper, but it is backed by the largest economy and industry, giving it opportunity to develop in unique ways. It has also researched capabilities that might be era defining, and is an early adopter.

Even with China's missile centric doctrine, Carriers can still provide significant support. When the dominant pacific power in ww2 was constructing the biggest, strongest battleship, despite suspecting that battleships were outdated, the US navy still decided to invest in the Iowa class to match the Yamato class. And even if the iowas never became key pieces for victory, they were useful as support platforms for a long time.

The key platforms in China's inventory will still be the 055 and later derivatives. Supercarriers will send a symbolic message that the Navy remains competitive against the US threat, while their actual combat role will be supporting the DDG centric fleet, alongside providing cheap bombardment options.

I think we need to get this ridiculous idea out of our heads that the Chinese government cares overwhelmingly about 'prestige', to the point where it would splurge billions of dollars, resources and manpower purely for the sake of it. It's a western stereotype implanted by MSM conveniently used to justify the million and one China collapse theories they come up with.

China building thousands of km of HSR? Prestige project. Not actually economically efficient. China gonna collapse soon.
China locking down entire districts after a few positive cases? Saving face. China gonna collapse soon.
etc

If anything, the CPC has consistently shown that it runs the country in a practical, sensible, logical, and resourceful manner.

I believe China is building supercarriers for the simple reason that as the largest trading nation in the world, China needs assets that can protect that trade.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

The issue I take with basing what is one of China's most, if not the most, strategically significant military programmes on the rationale of emulating the USN's carrier doctrines, which have also seen major recent shifts as brought on by Ford's introduction, is the inherently reactive nature of this proposition, or perhaps more accurately, the "follow-the-puck" aspect of it.

To justify China's building of like-supercarriers that rival the US, I would think the issue invariably revolves around just what the PLAN plans(!) to do with their CVs in the first place, and I would also think there's an exhaustive list of questions we may have to ask ourselves, which, needless to say would be such a lengthy discussion which I must admit I may not have the will to get into the nitty-gritty of it.



That said, going back to my above point, I think the simple truth is that we don't know how the PLAN actually intends to operate their carrier fleets as they continue to expand and mature. I think there'd be little disagreement that they're very much still at the training, exploration and refinement phase of their carrier-operating competency, surely to be compounded by now having a CATOBAR in the mix. Then again, STOBAR was never the end goal to begin with, so the PLAN would have surely and expectedly been training as if they were operating on a CATOBAR platform off site and at sea.

So once the PLAN's carrier fleets (however many that may end up to be) reach the level of matured operability and sortie rates that can be considered as on par with that of the USN, what does the PLAN hope to achieve then?

I think it's better to stick with multiple conventional CV and LHD for PLAN in the next few iterations and perfect them with IEP, EMALs, UAVs, USVs, even SMRs for hotel loads, etc before moving to full CVN. Conventional CVs do have advantages over CVNs based on US Congress and navy analysts:

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1. CVNs require longer to repair and maintain, which reduces the effective fleet size. Carrier employment cycle is defined as 3x each of deployment, pre-deployment, and maintenance. CVNs maintenance periods are 6/6/10.5 months. CV maintenance periods are 3/3/12 months. In addition, there is a 3-4 year period every 25 years for refueling and overhaul.

2. CVNs are more expensive to build and operate. According to US Navy itself, CVN is 58% more expensive to build and operate, with 40% more labor hours due to requiring special engineers for the plant.

3. There was no observable difference in capability during Desert Storm.

For China's specific case, the strengths of CV is more apparent:

1. CVs main weakness is needing to refuel on distant cruises. Chinese CVs aren't going too far.

2. China needs high availability to increase effective fleet size with a smaller fleet. USN with ~30% deployability is basically a fleet size of 4 out of 12. If PLAN has 40% deployability then it needs only 10 CVs to match USN globally and only 5 to match USN locally.

3. CVs can be built with commercially available parts and shipbuilding, meaning they can be pumped out like dumplings while CVNs are all essentially 1 of a kind custom made.

 

[Intrepid]

The question of whether CV or CVN does not arise. China is planning CVNs.

 

[Zichan]

From the experience of Type 45, UK has not mastered MVAC yet. We don't know much about USN since there are only two Zumwalt and they don't go around much.

Mastering MVDC 10 years ahead is different from installing MVDC on an operational warship 10 years ahead. We have seen the consequence of rushing MVAC on Type 45. One may gain the title of being the first, but there comes punishment for not doing it right and carefully testing it.

The Royal Navy learned its lessons, such as they were, from the Type 45 destroyer and applied them to the Queen Elizabeth class carriers which have an updated 11kV MVAC grid and much better balanced prime movers.

For the benefit of other readers on the forum, it should be pointed out that that the problems suffered by the Type 45 destroyers wasn't necessarily with its 4kV MVAC grid per se, but with the decision to design the ship's peacetime CONOPS around a single generator operation mode, whereby one of the two WR-21 complex cycle gas turbine generator would provide power to all onboard systems, including propulsion. The auxiliary diesel generators weren't intended to be used in regular operation, except in harbour transits and blackout recovery. This was driven by the desire to reduce through life costs at the risk of providing no redundancy in case of a propulsion casualty. In war time, both gas turbines would be operated, reducing fuel economy but providing the critical redundancy.

The adopted IFEP system on the Type 45 was a departure from the original UK electric warship design, which was to use a hybrid AC-DC grid, where additional redundancy was built into the DC grid with its own prime movers and energy stores:


As a remedy, it seems that they are taking out the two 2MW diesel generators and replacing them with 3x 3 MW diesel generators. The ships will now run exclusively on diesel generators at low speed patrols and switch in the gas turbine when cruising.

As for the Zumwalt's, they have adopted the hybrid AC-DC grid whereby all service loads (including radars and future pulse weapons?) are delivered through a zonal DC grid. However, they have the shortcoming of operating their AC grid at the same 4kV voltage as the Type 45 destroyer whilst packing twice as much installed power. From what I've read, this makes it quite difficult if not impossible to parallel all 4 prime movers across their switchboards.

 

[henrik]

Do we know for sure what type of energy storage system 003 uses? Flywheel or capacitors?

According to some commentators type 003 uses capacitors. Is using DC better than AC?

 

[Intrepid]

US EMALS had two options. The one they chose was to achieve redundancy by sharing. However if they wanted to avoid the "out of sync" problem they would have chosen the "assumed Chinese system" by isolating all launch motors therefor enable all launchers to be safely used simultaneously.

Do we know how Americans solved their EMALS power distribution problem? Have they perhaps dispensed with part of the redundancy?

 

[Intrepid]

Unless this?

View attachment 91114

I don't know wether it is that easy to simply connect or disconnect busbars. I know from the electric railway that de-energizing a section is a complex operation. It is not enough to switch switches or open contactors. The sections must then be grounded. At least at 15,000 V AC this is the case. I don't know if DC is any different.

 

[Helius]

I don't know wether it is that easy to simply connect or disconnect busbars. I know from the electric railway that de-energizing a section is a complex operation. It is not enough to switch switches or open contactors. The sections must then be grounded. At least at 15,000 V AC this is the case. I don't know if DC is any different.

But presumably you wouldn't need to disconnect the busbars in the case of an exhausted or faulty energy storage unit.

The issue, as encountered by the US EMALS, is the inability to isolate the individual catapults if any of them fails.