Rumoured Type 076 LHD/LHA discussion

Tootensky said:

Just a question. Since the number of full-sized carriers is supposed to go up, would LHD/LHA's actually need full blown AWACS of their own? I mean, I'm guessing nobody's going to send off these ships to run the gauntlet by themselves, right? It's been almost 80 years since Leyte. So there's bound to be some proper CV support for the LHDs. Wouldn't the hypothetical UCAVs from the LHDs benefit from AWACS deployed by the CV just as much? And if there really is a need for some sort of EW, wouldn't a helicopter platform, similar to Ka-31 be more suitable?

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People’s Liberation Army is accelerating efforts to match US offshore capabilities

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in Taipei yesterday

Beijing is developing a military vessel that is a hybrid of an amphibious assault ship and aircraft carrier, which would enable China to project its power far from its shores sooner than expected, according to procurement documents.

As Beijing’s great rivalry with Washington turns openly hostile, and the US military seeks to reassert its traditional dominance in the Asia-Pacific region, the planned ship could accelerate the People’s Liberation Army’s attempts to match American power.

According to documents published online on July 19, the 708th Research Institute of China State Shipbuilding, an institution involved in the development of military vessels, is tendering for research and modelling work worth Rmb478.3m ($68m).

The tender, which is headlined “Project XX6”, does not spell out what is being developed. But PLA experts said the detailed list of items reflected the modification of China’s largest amphibious assault ship, the Type 075, into a vessel that can carry combat drones and launch fighter jets in addition to transporting helicopters and amphibious assault troops.

Plans for a “Type 076”, a tweaked version of Type 075, which China launched last year, had been rumoured among Chinese military enthusiasts and foreign PLA watchers.

“As a slightly larger Type 075 Landing Helicopter Deck, the Type 076 is a realistic new weapon system for the PLA Navy,” said Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Centre, a US think-tank focused on security issues.

“It takes a modification of the existing LHD design and combines it with the electromagnetic launch system [EMALS] that may equip the next PLA Navy conventional aircraft carrier, with some advanced developments in unmanned aerial combat vehicles [combat drones].”

The plans for the hybrid vessel surfaced as the assembly of the PLA’s third aircraft carrier, and the first entirely Chinese designed, progressed in a Shanghai shipyard.

The South China Morning Post reported last week that construction of a fourth carrier had begun. Both are expected to come with EMALS. The PLA Navy has only two carriers in operation: a refurbished Ukrainian carrier and a domestically built copy of that. But Beijing aspires to a fleet of up to six aircraft carriers.

Over the past few weeks, the US has been demonstrating its superior carrier force with repeated exercises in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Philippine Sea.

China’s attempt to catch up by modifying an amphibious assault ship reflects the PLA’s time-tested strategy of experimenting with small numbers of one type of platform and then optimising it — an approach called “running fast in small steps”.

The lower cost of the planned hybrid ship would allow the PLA Navy to “more rapidly increase its number of ‘carrier’ air support platforms”, Mr Fisher said.

Lin Ying-yu, a PLA expert at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, said the plans suggested that the PLA’s Marine Corps, which is being rapidly expanded, could evolve to more closely resemble the US Marine Corps.

“It indicates they would become an independent fighting force and have their own close air support,” he said, pointing to the role of combat drones.

That function would make it easier for the PLA navy to move against less well-armed adversaries in conflict zones far from home. It would also greatly enhance its capabilities in an attack on Taiwan.

Additional reporting by Xueqiao Wang in Beijing

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Gatekeeper said:

To be fair, although the Chinese, like everyone else, have finite resources, it dies still have a long way to go if push comes to shove. The USA spends nearly $2000 per person on defence, whereas Chinese spends less than $200 per person. So China has room to expand expenditure if they do wish.

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kriss said:

One of the colleague yankee referred to wrote another article which fully supported manned fixed wing capability. I would summarize some of his point below:

1. Use of IEPS greatly reduced size of mechanical propulsion system thus it could more easily arrange its real estate for both amphibious assault and aviation operation.

2. During an amphibious invasion, 5-6 manned fixed wing aircraft could provide a highly integrated support for the landing force against enemy air support(helicopter or fixed wing) and/or enemy reinforcement marching towards beachhead (taiwan invasion was used as an example).

3. In the procurement list there is a requirement for the ship to be able to operate in tropical environment and/or under sandstorm(do sand storm go that far into the ocean?) which means operation in ME or africa. When far away from homeland it could operate like described in #2 or when supported by a carrier it could act as a FOB performing refuel and rearm for carrier air wing. (My 2 cents here: it essentially adds a "temporarily air wing" to 076 which allows better payloads/range for the carrier air wing without risk putting carrier to close) He also compared this to the "small FOB concept" USAF is developing(which I'm not sure what he means. maybe distributed operations?).

4. Flexibility. When it's not needed or impossible to conduct amphibious landing (eg. a showdown with USN) it could go full fixed wing and add another 20 fighters to those already on the carrier.

Also a trivia in the article. He used to think 076 would be more like first two of america class: 30 knots, no dock/vehicle deck, air op only. And he wonders why just build more carrier and believing this project has been canceled. We know the rest turns out 076 is a super CATBOR Wasp.

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AndrewS said:

Yes, there's a lot of room for China to expand military spending.
Imagine China matched the USA in terms of spending 3.4% of GDP on the military, up from 2% today.

Given the difference in GDP growth rates, Chinese military spending would double in roughly 5 years.

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AndrewS said:

I agree that the size and layout of the flight deck is a constraint in sortie rate generation.

For full-scale carriers with manned aircraft based on the carrier, sortie rate generation is also influenced by pilot availability.

But ultimately, it is aircraft maintenance requirements which drives the need for more flight deck space and hanger space.
Current manned fighter aircraft need a lot of maintenance time, which takes up space.

However, if aircraft maintenance is primarily conducted on land rather than on the carrier, and there's no need for pilots, then these 2 constraints disappear.

Sortie rate generation is then limited to how fast aircraft can recovered, refueled, rearmed and then launched again.

The requirements for flight deck space and hanger space (for aircraft parking/maintenance) are reduced substantially.
Other displacement for support activities are also reduced as well.
So a smaller carrier can still achieve high sortie generation rates, as long as the ground crew is scaled up.
And it's useful if the ship has a large number of spare crew billets (like we see on LHDs or on the French/British carriers)

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This analysis between manned/unmanned aircraft applies to equivalent carrier sizes - whether they are full-sized or LHD-sized.

But if you were to build a large carrier optimised for UCAVs/UAVs on this model, you're probably looking at an excessive number of aircraft (100+) dependent on that platform, and you may encounter the limits of having a single landing strip on a carrier.

Hence my statement that the optimum size of a UCAV/UAV carrier (which leverage land-based aircraft) is smaller than the current crop of carriers.

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AndrewS said:

I see the additional cost of an air-control Type-076 as being reasonable, whilst being able to vastly increase the reach of land-based UCAVs deep into the Pacific.

In terms of finances, SIPRI have estimated that China has consistently spend about 2% of GDP on the military over the past 20 years.

But we've now seen China has departed from a situation where military spending increases are in line with economic growth.

If there was even a modest increase in Chinese military spending to a still-modest 2.5% of GDP in 5 years time, we're probably looking at a 50% increase in the overall Chinese military budget in the next 5 years.

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In retrospect, I do think the current large amphibious ships are a suboptimal use of resources, conceived in a time when relations between China and the USA were cordial, and when the Chinese military could afford to take a longer-term view.

To be fair, I don't think anyone expected the US and China to descend into a cold-war type situation so fast and so badly.

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Gatekeeper said:

It's most funded by deficit funding.

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Gatekeeper said:

nuclear arms is under energy department, not defence. NSA and CIA is homeland security.

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