KJ-600 carrierborne AEWC thread

H2O

Junior Member
Registered Member
Rocket assist won’t work with a ski jump for the same reason a ski jump won’t work with a catapult - the added acceleration will cause the plane to hit the ski jump too fast and collapse the front landing gear. You will basically need to fundamentally redesign a plane to structurally take that much extra force, with all the significant weight and cost penalties that would entail.

The only way the KJ600 can take off from Liaoning or Shandong is if it used rocket assist take off from the angled deck. Not impossible, but risky.

Personally I don’t think the PLAN will take such a risky approach to routine operations. Instead it seems to have settled on the formula of pairing up its carriers to face off against USN carriers. Currently, while one-on-one, the Liaoning and Shandong are at a disadvantage against a USN Nimitz/Ford class, in a 2-v-1 scenario where both the Liaoning and Shandong are going up a single Nimitz/Ford class, the tables are turned.

The PLAN won’t be desperate to add KJ600 to the Liaoning or Shandong because in future operations where KJ600s might be needed, they will have 018 Fujian class and future Chinese CVNs they can pair up with them to carry the KJ600 when operating together with the Liaoning/Shandong.

I agree that the PLA-N probably wouldn't bother making a requirement for the KJ-600 to have RATO capabilities. IIRC, the Shandong #17 wasn't part of the original plan until SecGen Xi made the request for whatever reason. It's obvious that the PLA-N wanted CATOBAR carriers from the very beginning. However, my original comment (in response to DaTang cavalry post) was under the assumption that the KJ-600 would begin testing on their current active carriers. I believe I may have misinterpreted his comment.

But in an exercise of "what-ifs", if RATO capabilities were included in the KJ-600 design, they don't have to ignite all the rockets at the same time (i.e. staggered ignition). Once the aircraft is on the ramp then all rockets are ignited. The other method as you suggested is probably better but they first have to make some modifications on the jet blast deflectors and wheel chocks as they're all oriented towards the ramp.


Forgive me if I sound stupid, but what if you put the catapult towards the landing deck rather than the ski jump.

View attachment 112669

According to another member here, snake65, he suggested that the Liaoning #16 was designed to have one catapult on the angled deck and his source was Valery Babich, a former Soviet engineer shipbuilder. Apparently he wrote some books but it's all in Russian and there's no electronic copy that I could find to verify it. However, there's no indication that the sister ship, Shandong #17, incorporated such capabilities assuming Babich told the truth (or snake65 misinterpreted what he read). In any case, I agree with plawolf. The PLA-N isn't going to spend resources to upgrade both the Liaoning (and possibly the Shandong) when there's going to be many "full" carriers being built in the near future, along with the Type 076 which is rumored to have a single catapult.
 

HighGround

Junior Member
Registered Member
I agree that the PLA-N probably wouldn't bother making a requirement for the KJ-600 to have RATO capabilities. IIRC, the Shandong #17 wasn't part of the original plan until SecGen Xi made the request for whatever reason. It's obvious that the PLA-N wanted CATOBAR carriers from the very beginning. However, my original comment (in response to DaTang cavalry post) was under the assumption that the KJ-600 would begin testing on their current active carriers. I believe I may have misinterpreted his comment.

But in an exercise of "what-ifs", if RATO capabilities were included in the KJ-600 design, they don't have to ignite all the rockets at the same time (i.e. staggered ignition). Once the aircraft is on the ramp then all rockets are ignited. The other method as you suggested is probably better but they first have to make some modifications on the jet blast deflectors and wheel chocks as they're all oriented towards the ramp.




According to another member here, snake65, he suggested that the Liaoning #16 was designed to have one catapult on the angled deck and his source was Valery Babich, a former Soviet engineer shipbuilder. Apparently he wrote some books but it's all in Russian and there's no electronic copy that I could find to verify it. However, there's no indication that the sister ship, Shandong #17, incorporated such capabilities assuming Babich told the truth (or snake65 misinterpreted what he read). In any case, I agree with plawolf. The PLA-N isn't going to spend resources to upgrade both the Liaoning (and possibly the Shandong) when there's going to be many "full" carriers being built in the near future, along with the Type 076 which is rumored to have a single catapult.
If you can find the original Russian source, I'm happy to translate it.
 

ascii

New Member
Registered Member
Besides, once 076 LHDs enter service, outside of amphibious assault operations, one of them can be attached to Liaoning and Shandong each.

Other than providing extra aviation capacity for more J-15s, J-35s and carrier-based UCAVs in the future, the one (or two) catapult(s) onboard can also launch KJ-600s like those on Fujian and future Chinese supercarriers.

Adding one 076 LHD to each of the Liaoning and Shandong CSGs of essentially provides Liaoning and Shandong with ad-hoc AEW capabilities for their carrier strike groups respectively.
May be China will have VTOL planes like V-22 soon in the near future. They could install radar on it like Ka-31.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I agree that the PLA-N probably wouldn't bother making a requirement for the KJ-600 to have RATO capabilities. IIRC, the Shandong #17 wasn't part of the original plan until SecGen Xi made the request for whatever reason. It's obvious that the PLA-N wanted CATOBAR carriers from the very beginning. However, my original comment (in response to DaTang cavalry post) was under the assumption that the KJ-600 would begin testing on their current active carriers. I believe I may have misinterpreted his comment.

But in an exercise of "what-ifs", if RATO capabilities were included in the KJ-600 design, they don't have to ignite all the rockets at the same time (i.e. staggered ignition). Once the aircraft is on the ramp then all rockets are ignited. The other method as you suggested is probably better but they first have to make some modifications on the jet blast deflectors and wheel chocks as they're all oriented towards the ramp.




According to another member here, snake65, he suggested that the Liaoning #16 was designed to have one catapult on the angled deck and his source was Valery Babich, a former Soviet engineer shipbuilder. Apparently he wrote some books but it's all in Russian and there's no electronic copy that I could find to verify it. However, there's no indication that the sister ship, Shandong #17, incorporated such capabilities assuming Babich told the truth (or snake65 misinterpreted what he read). In any case, I agree with plawolf. The PLA-N isn't going to spend resources to upgrade both the Liaoning (and possibly the Shandong) when there's going to be many "full" carriers being built in the near future, along with the Type 076 which is rumored to have a single catapult.

RATO is already inherently risky enough, adding staged sequential rocket ignition is just going to make it so much more likely you end up dunking a perfectly good AWACS in the sea.

If you want to use RATO to launch KJ600s off the CV16 or 17, just do it off the angled deck.

It might set back your launch rate a little since you can’t have as many fighters parked on deck, but just launch 2-4 J15s off the ski jump as CAP and launch a KJ600 from the angled deck and then do your main launch prep.

You will loose a bit of time on station for the KJ600 while the fighters are getting ready to mass launch on deck, but it would be so easy to plan around. You can launch all your fighters and have a second KJ600 take off after to relieve the first and support your air wing on mission with a full tank while the first KJ600 and CAP land to refuel and go back up as fleet protection.
 

H2O

Junior Member
Registered Member
I assume this is the gentleman in question.
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I believe that was what snake65 was referring to. Last I checked, his articles / books seem to be out of print and so far no one bothered to digitize it and upload it to the internet. Maybe snake65 can scan the relevant pages and upload it to SDF; assuming he still have his books. I vaguely recall some journalists questioned his involvement when China resumed Liaoning's construction which he denied any involvement. Hopefully someone in the future can shed some light into this topic (in the correct thread LOL ).
 

zszczhyx

Junior Member
Registered Member
I believe that was what snake65 was referring to. Last I checked, his articles / books seem to be out of print and so far no one bothered to digitize it and upload it to the internet. Maybe snake65 can scan the relevant pages and upload it to SDF; assuming he still have his books. I vaguely recall some journalists questioned his involvement when China resumed Liaoning's construction which he denied any involvement. Hopefully someone in the future can shed some light into this topic (in the correct thread LOL ).
Our aircraft carriers (2003) Russian: Наши авианосцы
This book has Chinese edition.
 

Atomicfrog

Captain
Registered Member
A few people on the web claim that the E2 Hawkeye was tested on a ramp and was able to take off but without full fuel load. Google around and didn't find anything official though.
With a good front wind and full carrier speed they made C-130 liftoff without a ramp and jato from a carrier... It's more about flexing and propeller vs ramp that I would find scary.

 
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