China will need carriers that can project a persistent presence quite far away from most land support because China doesn’t have a lot of foreign bases across the pacific but does have pretty far flung area control needs. The point of having carriers for China is to project strategic pressure onto the first island chain and past that even into the second island chain. The endurance of a CVN is pretty essential for that sort of mission.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I'll not be surprised if PLAN eventually comes up with a class of nuclear-powered Cruisers (something in the 12,800t–16,000t displacement range) as the primary AAW escorts for its inevitable future CVNs.
There's no way PLAN, just like the USN, is going to operate Carriers individually but it would rather group a couple of Carriers together into a combined Carrier Battle Force which would have at least 14-16 escorts of which a minimum of 4 will be Cruisers and the rest (majority) Destroyers & Frigates. Since Cruisers are going to be the largest of those escorts, it would make sense for PLAN to provide them with nuclear-propulsion so as to reduce burden on the Fast Combat Support Ships and/or Fleet Oilers operating together with the Battle Force.
There's no way PLAN, just like the USN, is going to operate Carriers individually but it would rather group a couple of Carriers together into a combined Carrier Battle Force which would have at least 14-16 escorts of which a minimum of 4 will be Cruisers and the rest (majority) Destroyers & Frigates. Since Cruisers are going to be the largest of those escorts, it would make sense for PLAN to provide them with nuclear-propulsion so as to reduce burden on the Fast Combat Support Ships and/or Fleet Oilers operating together with the Battle Force.
Until a completely new class of weapons are introduced (like a mega spacecraft flinging tungsten rods from space) or a major war happens in which carriers are rendered obsolete, countries will continue to build carriers.
This whole debate about why China needs a carrier or not is mute because for now carriers have a place in naval warfare (which are based primarily on the capabilities of the aircraft it carries). Even I need to correct myself for a second. The introduction of a new class of weapons won't end the importance of carriers right away, it will be when carriers are put to the test in a major war and rendered ineffective by those new class of weapons.
This ongoing long debate keeps resurfacing here needs to end. It's like debating whether PLA needs a submarine or a destroyer. As long as a weapon class exist, states that can afford them will want them, because that class of weapons has a function in today's conflict.
Carriers haven't been rendered obsolete no matter what anyone says or what new missile (hypersonic and ASBM) is on the horizon. For that China will keep building carriers and will build better and bigger ones as long as it can afford to.
Only a major war will answer this age-old question.
This whole debate about why China needs a carrier or not is mute because for now carriers have a place in naval warfare (which are based primarily on the capabilities of the aircraft it carries). Even I need to correct myself for a second. The introduction of a new class of weapons won't end the importance of carriers right away, it will be when carriers are put to the test in a major war and rendered ineffective by those new class of weapons.
This ongoing long debate keeps resurfacing here needs to end. It's like debating whether PLA needs a submarine or a destroyer. As long as a weapon class exist, states that can afford them will want them, because that class of weapons has a function in today's conflict.
Carriers haven't been rendered obsolete no matter what anyone says or what new missile (hypersonic and ASBM) is on the horizon. For that China will keep building carriers and will build better and bigger ones as long as it can afford to.
Only a major war will answer this age-old question.
by78
General
AVIC 703 Institute is responsible for the heat-resistant surface coating used on Fujian's jet blast deflectors. This is the second generation of protective coating from the institute. Compared with the first generation, it features longer service life and stronger anti-skid, anti-corrosion, and heat-resistant properties. Significant improvements have also been made in the ease of production and on-site repairability.
Actually, DC is better for long distance, cheaper and more capacity and more stable.
Why do most of the photos of Shanghai's docks look gray and eerie, is it for the convenience of concealment at a certain time, or is it because of the weather and climate?
From what‘s anticipated, the J-35/J-15 pairing will have an inverse combat radius relationship to the F-35/F-18 dyad; how might this affect tactical differences between PLAN and USN Carrier flight operations?
Last edited:
I have just read it. I did not find anything more than what you have quoted. EMALS does have a critical flaw in its design as not able to disconnect flywheels from the grid in case of maintenance which I also regarded it as a very weird design choice in another post. This is also shared by the USN as saying "Absent a major redesign, ......".
I see @Intrepid's intention, but I don't think China's EM launcher need such solution to sacrifice redundancy. The fundamental difference is that China's EM launcher is a AC-DC-AC structure. The US EMALS is a AC-AC structure. The DC bridge in China's design acts as a isolating node. The interface between DC and AC acts as a switch already. I don't have a diagram of it, but in principle so long as you put DC bridge at the right place, you can cut off the unwanted load or power source. The very reason that favours DC grid is its ability to decouple the power source and load regardless if it is within the catapult system or the IEPS.
The reason for EMALS' choice is the lack of high power DC electronics at the time of their design. Cutting off something from an AC grid is always troublesome in out of sync problem even though AC switch is easier to realize. The "possible redesign" mentioned by USN is NOT going to be easy because of the sync problem of offloading. They basically fix one problem by introducing another equal or even higher challenge. I think their initial "flawed" design had a "good" technical reason that is like choosing between being killed by a bullet or a knife.
So my conclusion is that EMALS got its inherit problem due to full AC architecture which is due to the immaturity of DC industry at the time. However China does not have that kind of problem because of DC architecture, therefor China doesn't need the proposed solution.
[addtion]
From the experience of Type 45 and Ford, I have a feeling that it is a common tendency in the western world that 1. people take higher risks than Chinese, 2. immediately act on an idea and deal with coming problem one by one. It is kind of "walk and see" mentality. On the contrary, Chinese do not act immediately until everything that can be thought of have got answers. This makes Chinese "less" adventurous, timid but does give Chinese advantage in avoiding future troubles. If China was in the US shoes in the 1990s when DC power grid is still immature, China would have avoided EMALS and stick to Steam. Chinese don't like something fancy but useless and won't bet on wishful thinking "problem will be solved one way or the other".
Last edited:
Unless, instead of all the catapults connecting to the cycloconverter like the US ones, now the cats are connected to the inverter. So when you shut one off, you shut them all off, and the same problem remains?