China’s Aircraft Carriers: And Then There Were Three

CHINA’S MOST ADVANCED aircraft carrier is now in the water following its launch ceremony at the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai on June 17 (seen above).

The next step for the Fujian will be completing its fitting out and then sea trials before being commissioned into service alongside its sister carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong. Commissioning is expected next year, with operational deployment in 2024.

The Fujian is the PLA Navy’s first domestically designed and built carrier. With a displacement that state media describe as ‘more than 80,000 tonnes‘ but foreign analysts speculate may be closer to 100,000 tonnes, it is the largest warship built outside of the United States.

Designated a Type 003, the Fujian is immediately distinguishable from its two predecessors not just by its size — approaching twice the displacement of the other two, but also by its flat deck. Electromagnetic catapults will launch its aircraft, not the ‘ski jumps’ seen on the Liaoning and the Shandong.

Such CATOBAR systems are used by the US Navy’s Nimitz and Gerald R Ford-class carriers and allow aircraft to be launched with heavier payloads, whether weapons or fuel.

They also make it easier to launch aircraft with less take-off thrust and more weight than fighters, such as airborne early warning and control (AEWC) aircraft. The PLA-N currently has to use helicopters for AEWC duties.

The Fujian’s size also means it will be able to carry more aircraft and fuel than its sister carriers and thus deploy more fighting power for longer and further out to sea.

It will be equipped with an estimated 48-strong flight of ‘Flying Sharks’ (the carrier-borne version of the J-15 fighter jet) plus Harbin Z-20 helicopters. A complement of 48 fighters is considered the minimum necessary for combat.

The Fujian will also be able to accommodate two aircraft being developed for Type 003 carriers, although not without teething troubles, the larger J-35 fighter and the multi-role KJ-600 utility aircraft, one of whose roles will be AWEC duties. More than likely, the Fujian will also carry combat drones.

However, the PLA-N will still be short of matching the maritime airpower of the United States and its regional allies.

While it has not been announced which of the PLA-N’s three fleet commands the Fujian will join, the East Sea fleet is the only one lacking a carrier. The Liaoning serves in the Northern command and the Shandong in the Southern one. The East Sea fleet is based in Ningbo, not so far from Taiwan.

The Fujian is conventionally powered. China’s fourth carrier, currently under construction, will likely be nuclear-powered as part of plans to make the PLA-N a ‘blue-water’ navy able to operate ‘out of area’ in waters such as the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean by 2025.

Having three carriers is an important milestone towards that objective as the PLA-N will meet the conventional assumption that three is the minimum number of carriers a navy needs: one operational, one in port and one in maintenance.

However, it will need at least a second Type 003 before it can follow the modern naval doctrine of operating carrier battle fleets in coordinated or ‘networked’ pairs for greater combat efficiency.

Once the Fujian is operational, Beijing will have secured its coastal waters, but for now, it can only project force, not deploy it, beyond the first island chain.

China Steams Ahead With New Aircraft Carriers

ONE OF THE naval world’s worst-kept secrets is that China is building its third and fourth aircraft carriers. The closest to official confirmation of that to date has come from Li Jie, a senior researcher at the Naval Military Studies Research Institute of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), speaking at a national defence education event in Beijing.

There was nothing that has been reported in Li’s remarks to alter what we already believe to be the case. He said that on the third carrier an electromagnetic catapult launch system would replace the ‘ski-jump’ of the PLA-Navy’s first two carriers, the Liaoning (seen above in 2018) and the Shandong, and that the power system of the fourth carrier would be ‘very likely to adopt significant changes’. That could mean nuclear powered or that the solution found to the power demands of electromagnetic catapult launching, which are typically beyond a conventionally powered carrier, might be extensible to the vessel’s whole propulsion system.

The third carrier is also likely to be larger than the Shandong — of the order of 80,000-85,000 tons versus 66,000-70,000 tons. That makes it a decent mid-sized carrier, but will also let it accommodate an additional 12 fighter jets, taking its complement to the 48 considered the minimum necessary for combat.

Catapult launching will allow its aircraft to carry heavier payloads, for a broader range of aircraft to be deployed, such as the new KJ-600 surveillance plane, and for more rapid flight operations. Along with the third carrier’s greater sea range, this will extend the reach and effectiveness of its carrier-based fighters.

However, the fifth-generation carrier-based fighters that China is developing (with some difficulty), the FC-31/J-31, will still not be a match for the F-35 stealth fighters the US Navy already has in the air. We note in passing that South Korea has F-35Bs (the short takeoff/vertical landing variant) and has allocated money in its 2021-25 defence budget to build a 30,000-ton carrier for them, similar to Japan’s destroyer helicopter carriers. For its part, Tokyo has F-35Bs on order for its mini-carriers.

Nonetheless, the rapid build-out of a blue-water fleet with carriers as the centrepiece means that China’s maritime security within the first island chain already looks increasingly assured. The PLA-Navy’s capacity to put adversaries at risk up to 1,500 kilometres off China’s coast will grow with its next carriers.

The third carrier is expected to be commissioned into service in 2023 and operational the following year. It has been under construction at the Jiangnan military naval yard in Shanghai since 2018.

Meanwhile, the Liaoning and the Shandong have carried out joint exercises for the first time, conducting live-fire and coordination drills in the Bohai and Yellow seas last week that appear to have continued into this.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about synchronised operations between two carriers, and it is just one more thing the PLA-N has to master as it learns how to operate carrier battle groups.

However, in the context of Taiwan, one implication of PLA-N dual-carrier operations is that in the event of a military invasion of the island, they could effectively blunt a possible US intervention on Taipei’s behalf. The US Navy’s dual-carrier exercises in the Western Pacific have shown the effectiveness of such coordination for sustaining high-intensity attack missions by carrier-based aircraft.

China’s Aircraft Carriers: Now We Are Two

THE SECOND AND first wholly indigenous aircraft carrier was commissioned into service in the People’s Liberation Army- Navy (PLA-N) on December 17. The CV17 Shandong is a larger and more advanced clone of the CV16 Liaoning, a refitted Kuznetsov-class carrier bought part-built from Ukraine as the Varyag and which has been in service since 2016.

The commissioning of the Shandong was deemed of such significance in the development of China’s blue-water fleet that President Xi Jinping (seen onboard in the photo above inspecting a guard of honour) attended the ceremony at the Sanya-Yulin naval base on Hainan island.

China now joins a relatively small club of nations with two aircraft carriers that can carry aircraft as opposed to helicopters. It still lags the United States by a distance, however. The US Navy has 11 Nimitz and Ford-class nuclear-powered super-carriers.

It is two and a half year since the Shandong was launched and fitting out started. Sea trials commenced in May 2017. That relatively long, albeit planned period of testing suggests that technical issues with new systems, especially for control and command, weapons and radar, may have proved as challenging as expected.

Like the Liaoning, the new carrier is conventionally powered and has a ‘ski-jump’ takeoff. The design limits it to carrying helicopters and Shenyang J-15 fighter jets, although its larger size (66,000-70,000 tons vs 60,000-66,000 tons) and a 10% smaller ‘island’ lets it accommodate 36 aircraft against the Liaoning’s 24. That, though, is still a dozen aircraft short of what naval planners would consider the minimum necessary for combat.

Nonetheless, whereas the Liaoning has mainly been used for training, the Shandong will have a more routine military role. On its route south from the shipyard in Dalian where it was built to its new base in Sanya, the Shandong made a point of passing through the Taiwan Straits.

As well as providing patrol capability to reinforce China’s territorial claims in the South China sea, the new carrier will be able to be a regular and ready presence in those waters as a counterpoint to the freedom of navigation operations conducted by the navies of the United States and its allies.

It will let the PLA patrol between the ‘two island chains’ and the sea lanes critical to China’s trade, including the maritime belt of the Belt and Road initiative, although, like the Liaoning, it cannot be at sea for more than six days without refueling.

The Shandong will also undertake the flag-waving-cum-power-projection exercises of naval visits. There is speculation that although the carrier will based alongside the PLA-N’s South Sea Fleet in Sanya, it may be under the direct command of the Central Military Commission.

The third of an expected six aircraft carriers is under construction at the Jiangnan military naval yard in Shanghai (the first two were built in Dalian). The Class 003 carrier is likely to be conventionally powered, but larger (of the order of 80,000-85,000 tons) and using more powerful catapult launch systems in place of ski-jump takeoff.

It is expected to be in the water late next year and commissioned in 2023. Its successors are likely to be nuclear powered.

But as much as new, larger and more powerful carriers with greater sea range, the PLA-N needs to develop next-generation carrier-based fighter jets if its carrier battle groups are to be an effective fighting force. Even improved versions of the J-20 and FC-31 and a rumoured next-generation stealth fighter would not match the US Navy’s F-35C, the carrier version of the US Air Force’s Lightning stealth fighter, already in the air.

 

China’s Second Carrier Starts Its Sea Trials

SEA TRIALS HAVE begun for the first domestically built aircraft carrier, state media report. Accompanying photographs (above) of the vessel being towed from its fitting-out berth in Dalian on what looks like a misty morning probably date from last month. On May 5, a Z-18 helicopter, the sort used by the Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier, a refit of a Soviet-era carrier, conducted a test landing and takeoff, the same precursor to the Liaoning’s sea trials in 2012. The new carrier, which is still unnamed, is expected to be go into active service in 2020, adding national pride to an increasingly potent blue-water fleet.

 

The Weighty Matter of China’s Carrier-Borne Aircraft

CHINA’S FIRST INDIGENOUSLY designed aircraft carrier is expected to start its sea trials shortly, probably immediately after lunar new year.

The sister ship to the Liaoning, a refitted former Soviet carrier, was launched in April and has since been being fitted out in the Dalian yards where it was built (see below).  The Liaoning is currently at sea on a training mission for the crew that will man the new carrier.

The still unnamed new carrier is pencilled in to enter active service at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, in the Jiangnan yards in Shanghai, work is proceeding on the next generation of Chinese carriers — and this time under a roof to hide the construction  from prying eyes in the sky.

The Type 002s will be conventionally, not nuclear powered and about 40% larger than the Type 001/001As (which at 60,000 tons displacement are mid-sized at best for carriers).  Their most significant difference is that they will employ a catapult system, not a ‘ski-jump’ to launch their aircraft.

Building the first of the next generation of carriers had been held up while the PLA-Navy (PLA-N)’s crack marine engineers solved the problem of how to power the catapult system.

The PLA-N had always wanted to go straight to an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMAL), similar to the ones on the latest US carriers. EMALs impose less wear and tear on the planes than steam-catapult launches, allow faster launches than with either ski or steam-catapult systems and allow the aircraft to carry heavier payloads.

Most importantly, the only carrier-borne aircraft the PLA-N has is a marine version of the J-15, based on 30-year old Soviet designs and the heaviest active carrier-based fighter jet in the world. Steam catapults would struggle to launch them.

However, EMALs are energy-ravenous. To date, only nuclear-powered carriers can utilize them. Conventionally powered carriers in all navies have to use steam-power, and China is not yet at the point of development of its carrier fleet where the vessels can be nuclear powered (though that is only a matter of time).

However, the PLA-N’s engineers have cracked the problem of generating enough power for an EMAL on a non-nuclear powered vessel with a head-to-tail redesign of a ship’s energy generation, storage and distribution systems. As a bonus, it will also potentially provide the power needed to launch missiles and other weapons systems.

Our man with the blueprints and T-square says that the solution ‘builds on’ the first-generation integrated propulsion system used on the United States’ Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers which were launched in 2013.

Solving the power problem had held up development of the Type 002 carriers, which state media has previously reported had started in 2015, because the choice of launch system affects the design of the ship.

The logjam was reportedly only cleared in November after an intensive year of testing and development. Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo  told state television that month that J-15s had conducted thousands of take-offs using the electromagnetic launch system. The Navy has built a land-based test rig, just as it has a test aircraft deck in Wuhan.

China has been trying to develop a lighter fighter, the FC-31/J-31 fifth-generation stealth fighter, to replace the J-15. Shenyang Aircraft Corp., which also makes the J-15, has built two prototypes. One was shown off at the Zhuhai air show back in 2014.

However, further development has, we hear, been bedevilled by technical problems. The first test flight of a prototype was not until the end of 2016, and with a larger plane than initially intended. The proposed carrier version is larger still, leaving the PLA-N little better off regarding weight than it is with the J-15.

China Rushes To Ready Its Second Carrier For Party Congress

CHINA SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY Corp. (CSIC) and Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Corp. (DSIC) are rushing to complete the construction of China’s first indigenous aircraft carrier (seen above at her mooring dock in Dalian earlier this year) so the start of her sea trials can be trumpeted at the forthcoming Party congress. A stronger, more outward looking China is expected to be one of the themes of the meeting.

Outfitting work and system debugging of the 70,000-tonne Type 001A carrier, modelled on the Liaoning, a converted Soviet era carrier bought from Ukraine that is now in PLA-Navy service, are almost complete ahead of schedule, according to a defence ministry spokesman, and the power-systems tests have been completed.

DSIC’s chairman, Liu Zheng, told a company Party meeting last month that the shipbuilder would “greet the 19th CPC National Congress by delivering key achievements on a special product in this special time”.

The timetable for the mooring trials is being telescoped so the carrier can set out to sea in time for the Party congress. Sea trials, which will test propulsion and communications systems under operational conditions, are the final phase before a vessel is handed over the navy to be commissioned into service.

From an April launch to September sea trials would be the blink of an eye in terms of aircraft carrier production, but a signal of the symbolic important Beijing places on its first home-built carrier.

Meanwhile, the first of the successor generation of carriers, the Type 002, is under construction in Shanghai yards.

It Is Not Having An Aircraft Carrier; It Is What You Can Do With It.

TOWING THE HULL of a vessel out of dry dock and mooring it at the neighbouring berth is not much by way of a naval manoeuvre, but when the vessel is China’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, such a ‘launch’ carries a certain symbolism and an opportunity for patriotic pride.

The as-yet-unnamed sister carrier to the Liaoning, China’s starter carrier, herself bought as an unfinished hull from the Russian Navy, will now have to be fitted out and then undergo sea trials. It is likely to be 2020 before she is commissioned into service.

Soon, construction will get underway at the Dalian dry dock on a third Type 001/001A carrier. That will give the PLA Navy the standard carrier set navies everywhere want — one vessel on operations, the second in maintenance and the third being used for training.

This trio will be small beer by the standards of the US carrier fleet. It will comprise Admiral Kuznetsov class carriers, which naval men dismiss as aircraft-carrying cruisers, though that still lets the Liaoning pull rank on the best that India and Japan has, and it is more than a training vessel, better regarded as a moderately capable warship.

Nonetheless, talk of China being able to project military power beyond the ‘Near Seas’ (Yellow, East and South China Seas) is premature. At best, it will be able to project a bit of military power close to home, and perhaps especially against the smaller neighbours on the periphery of the South China Sea. The perception that it can may be the most important impact.

The Type 001/001A carriers are underpowered and have an old-fashioned ‘ski-jump’ aircraft launching system, both of which limit the PLA-Navy’s air power at sea. Also, the Shenyang J-15 multirole fighters the carriers carry are limited in both range and endurance. The latest, fourth-generation fighters represent a significant improvement over the previous versions but fall a long way short of fifth-generation fighters such as the F-35Cs deployed by the United States Navy.

However, under China’s incremental ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach to carrier development, the third Type 001/001A carrier will be considerably more capable flagship for a combat-capable carrier group than the Liaoning.

However, think of the Type 001/001A carriers as collectively being the ‘crawl’ stage; the ‘walk’ phase is already underway at the state-owned Jiangnan shipyard on Changxing, the island opposite Shanghai at the mouth of the Changjiang River. This Bystander noted at the start of last year the four new docks built there for the construction of two mid-sized aircraft carriers, suggesting that the Type 002s will be larger than the Type 001/001As.

Since that post, the satellite imagery shows that a roof has been built over the dry dock, presumably to obscure the view of prying ‘eyes in the sky’. At Dalian, anyone could see the Liaoning’s construction from the roof of the nearby IKEA store.

Displacement — that is size to landlubbers — is not everything when it comes to carriers. Offensive capability is what counts.

Propulsion systems — speed and range for the ship and power for the launching systems — are one critical component. China will have to have nuclear-powered carriers at some point if it wants them to be at sea for long periods without refuelling.

Another is being able to carry more offensively-capable aircraft and launch them more powerfully. One reason that ski-jump launches are so limiting is that take-off is fuel-intensive, cutting range and payload (payload includes not only armaments but also such equipment as airborne early warning systems).

The Type 002s could skip a generation of launchers and go straight to electromagnetic launch systems (EMALS), of the sort the U.S. Navy is currently testing to replace its catapult launchers, although that might be a too radical step for what has been a conservative development plan. The first Type 002 is likely to have catapult-assisted launch, assuming the J-15’s can be sufficiently strengthened to take advantage of it.

The third critical component is developing the advanced weapons and communications systems to control a stronger supporting battle group of destroyers and frigates, logistics and supply ships and submarines.

As we said earlier:

If China is to have a blue-water navy capable of projecting force far from its shores, it will need fleet carriers — and eventually supercarriers if it is to fulfil its long-term ambition of matching the U.S. Navy.

China’s experience in building massive oil tankers and ore carriers suggests that its shipyards can build hulls up to supercarrier size and of the quality and strength necessary in a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The systems and operational sides of carriers are still a work in progress — and the learning curve is steep — albeit advancing with every new carrier built.

Carriers do not sail them selves (not yet at least). However, China has been preparing an elite cadre of carrier sailors and airmen for three decades, an indication of how long-laid its carrier plans have been.

Such preparation mitigates but does not eliminate the risks of carrier aviation. Small, rolling landing strips are inherently more dangerous than those on land. It took the US Navy and Marine Corps 40 years to get their accident rates down to the average level across the US Air Force (they lost 8,500 aircrew over those four decades, according to one retired US naval aviator).

For all the prestige and patriotic pride that China is investing in its carriers, it is almost certain to suffer unexpected losses and reverses.

Nor are carriers the be all and end all of naval power. They would be disproportionately susceptible to attack in the event of war because of their size and roles. In the ballistic missile age, their longevity during a high-intensity conflict would probably be counted in days, if not hours.

This Bystander would be the first to acknowledge that carriers are only one part of China’s plans for a blue-water navy, albeit an expensive one. Our back of the envelope calculation is that the cost of a carrier battle group runs upwards of $10 billion — and China can build them less expensively than most. However, that sort of money would buy the PLA Navy a lot of hardware far more suitable to the roles it is likely to be undertaking in the foreseeable future.

That is part of the calculation of the price of prestige.

Heading For The Deep Blue Yonder

THE PLA-NAVY’S aircraft carrier, the Liaoning (above), has sailed for the Western Pacific on what state media say is a routine naval exercise. The trip marks the first time it has ventured into ‘blue water’.

Japan’s defence ministry noted that the carrier and seven other warships had sailed from the East China Sea making passage between Okinawa and Miyako islands on Saturday headed for the Philippines Sea. Taiwan’s counterpart said on Monday that the carrier had entered the South China Sea after passing south of the island, though it counted two fewer vessels than the Japanese (it may not be counting supply ships; a carrier battle group usually comprises eight vessels).

The symbolism of the sailing is that the Liaoning has ‘broken through’ the ‘first island chain’ — the first major archipelagos out from the East Asian littoral, stretching from the Kamchatka peninsula in the north to the Malay peninsula in the south-west and within which China believes the United States wants to keep its force projection penned.

This trip may have been long planned to come just as US President-elect Donald Trump prepared to take over from Barack Obama, but the timing will have added piquancy given Trump’s ratcheting up of tensions in past weeks, including suggestions that his administration might abandon the One China policy.

Last month, Beijing declared the Liaoning ‘combat-ready’ and the warship conducted its first live-fire drills earlier this month in the Bohai Sea. Before heading out to the Pacific, Liaoning was carrying out combat-readiness air drills in the East China Sea including aerial refuelling of its J-15 fighters.

This trip (or the next one) may be intended to get the Liaoning to the ‘second island chain’ (Guam, Mariana Islands and Iwo Jima) to test the carrier group’s long-range mission capabilities, which will be essential to changing the strategic naval balance of power in the Western Pacific (eventually).

The nationalist-minded state newspaper, the Global Times, lays out the long-term course:

The Chinese fleet will cruise to the Eastern Pacific sooner or later. When China’s aircraft carrier fleet appears in offshore areas of the US one day, it will trigger intense thinking about maritime rules.

That is still some day off, but no longer never.

China Cracks On With Its Second Carrier

THE CONSTRUCTION OF the hull of China’s second aircraft carrier has been completed, state media reports, and the flight deck is now being installed.

Once that is done, probably by the first or second quarter of next year, the vessel will be floated, and its fitting out will start. Sea trials will likely not begin until 2018 or 2019, so the carrier will not be commissioned into active service until the 2020s.

The picture above was taken in Dalian earlier this year, so the flight deck will by now be looking more complete, though there is still work to be done below deck. Our man with the telephoto lens says the island (conning tower) was being installed by late September.

The vessel, known as 17 (US Navy convention would call it CV-17, but the PLA-N uses just a number), is similar in many respects to China’s first carrier, which carried the number 16 before being rechristened as the Liaoning. Whereas the Liaoning was a refit of the Varig, a surplus Soviet-era Admiral Kuznetsov class carrier bought from Ukraine where it was built, 17 is an indigenous version and will carry the designation of a Type 001A class carrier.

It is about the same size as the Liaoning, unsurprisingly as it is being built in the same Dalian dry dock as its predecessor used, but lighter, displacing about 50,000 tonnes. As can be seen in the photograph, it will have a ‘ski ramp’ launch system at the bow.

It also looks to have more space for aircraft than the Liaoning and less for secondary weapons. 17  will still be capable of carrying less than 50 aircraft, including helicopters, but a few more than the Liaoning. As well as the J-15 fighters and helicopters that the Liaoning has, 17 will probably carry an anti-submarine and early warning patrol aircraft.

Chinese military strategists have indicated that China plans a set of three Type 001A carriers — one to be operational, one in port and one in maintenance.

They will very much be the PLA-Navy’s training wheels. Though operational warships, as a carrier battle fleet, they are far short of the blue-water force China has aspirations for its Navy to be. Nineteen, 20 and 21 — Type 002 class carriers — will be much closer to that. This Bystander will be looking for keels to be laid in 2017, probably in Shanghai yards, but they will not be operational on the high seas for at least a decade. Until then, Beijing will have a carrier force whose primary purpose will be to project force in the South China Sea.

That force will be constrained. For one, the J-15s flying from it are a converted rather than a customised marine fighter, and one that has limited strike capacities. Battle-effective carrier fleets need a range of patrol and other aircraft capable of waging electronic warfare. That 17 will likely carry one or two of them is notable.

Furthermore, ski ramp launches restrict a carrier’s fleet to jets. Transporters needed for resupplying carriers far out at sea might be able to land on them, but cannot take off again. Nor can turbo-prop patrol aircraft operate from them.

The next set of carriers will have either the more powerful catapult launch systems standard on US and Russian carriers or may skip a generation and go to electromagnetic systems as are being developed for the US Navy’s most advanced carrier.

That might prove a step too far too fast for China’s naval architects and designers. They have climbed a steep learning curve with refitting the Liaoning (despite the Varig coming, reportedly, with eight lorry-loads of technical documents). Building its successor from scratch will be proving equally challenging, though it has been achieved in double-quick time by carrier-building standards.

In addition, the submarine force has been the navy’s development priority over the carrier fleet, and thus it got the pick of the available design and development talent — the often forgotten constraint on all navies.

Light, Fleet And Super: Building China’s Aircraft Carriers

CHINA LAID DOWN its long-term plan to develop an indigenous carrier fleet as long ago as 1987. It took a quarter of a century for the first carrier, the Liaoning, to be commissioned into service, in September 2012.

China’s first carrier was a half-way house in as much as it was a refitted unfinished Soviet vessel, the Varyag. In late December, the defence ministry confirmed the open secret that a second and entirely indigenously designed carrier was being built.

Like the Liaoning, this is being constructed in Dalian, as shown in the satellite image above. Work started in late February or early March, using the same dry dock used to convert the Varyag into the Liaoning.

The new carrier looks to be similar in shape to the Liaoning, though its upper deck may be slightly longer to fit on more planes. It will be conventionally powered, with a ‘ski-jump’ launch for its aircraft. Its displacement has been reported at 50,000-53,000 tonnes, about half the size of the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz and new Ford-class carriers.

Whereas the Liaoning was primarily intended to learn the ropes of building and operating a carrier, the second ship is being built with the intention of operational deployment on ‘combat patrols and humanitarian missions’.

It may start trials as soon as at the end of this year, but it will probably be at least two years after that until it is commissioned. The Liaoning spent more than a year in sea trials and the new carrier will be more complex, particular in terms of its systems, and especially the systems need for carrier groups to operate missions.

These will be domestically developed for the first time, and so need extensive testing. Commissioning the new carrier in December 2018 would be a splashy way to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Mao’s birth.

The new carrier is also likely not the only one that China will add to its fleet. A December 2013 report by New York-based Duowei News sourced to Central Military Commission officials said the PLA-Navy planned to commission two Liaoning-pattern aircraft carriers — known as Type 001s — by 2020.  Wang Min, the Liaoning provincial Party boss, spoke in 2014 of plans for the construction in Dalian of two more carriers.

Assuming the carrier now being built could vacate its dry dock by the end of this year, allowing work on the next carrier to start in early 2017, that deadline might not slip more than a year or so.

That would give China a trio of similar carriers, which fits the pattern across many navies of having carriers in sets of three, one on operational deployment, one in maintenance and one for training. Collectively, they would have 90-100 aircraft and comprise a formidable maritime force in nearby waters such as the East and South China Seas, and beyond towards the Indian Ocean.

India and China are engaged in a competitive race to build their blue-water fleets as they jostle for regional power. All of which makes what is going on at the Jiangnan shipyard on Changxingdao, the island opposite Shanghai at the mouth of the Changjiang river, even more interesting.

Seven years ago, Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported that state-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Corp., the owner of the yard, was building four new docks there (seen in the image above) for the construction of two indigenous mid-sized aircraft carriers – i.e. suggesting something larger than the Liaoning and its sister Type 001s.

One question is, how much larger. The Liaoning and its sister ship(s) fall into the category of light aircraft carriers, at least in terms of capabilities if not necessary displacement. Light aircraft carriers are the Bantamweights of aircraft carriers, as much aviation-capable patrol ships as anything.

The so-called Type 002s to be built in Shanghai could still be in that class, just more offensively capable, with more fighter aircraft and a stronger supporting group comprising destroyers and frigates, logistics and supply ships and possibly submarines.

Or they may be large enough to be considered fleet carriers, albeit still far smaller that U.S., French or Japanese fleet carriers. If China is to have a blue-water navy capable of projecting force far from its shores, it will need fleet carriers — and eventually supercarriers if it is to fulfil its long-term ambition of matching the U.S. Navy.

Another question is, which launching mechanism will be used? A Shenyang J-15 fighter jet cannot take off from the Liaoning’s ski jump both fully armed and with a sufficient fuel load to carry those weapons a useful distance. That could restrict the carriers’ aircraft to air-to-air missions to the exclusion of air-to-ground attacks. That, in turn, could diminish the effectiveness of the advanced Shenyang J-33 fighters being developed for the carriers.

Ski-jump launchers also limit the deck space available for parked aircraft. Ski-jump-launched planes need a longer take-off run than catapult-launched ones.

If China’s carriers are to be deployed operationally as intended such shortcomings will have to be addressed. One or both of the new Type 001s might use a hybrid solution of including so-called ‘waist’ catapult launchers along with a ski jump, as some Russian carriers do.

Or there could be a straight switch to catapult launching, which has been the standard for the U.S. Navy. Either solution would be a significant design change, requiring extended testing time. At best, this Bystander believes, catapult launching would happen for the second of the indigenous carriers.

The Type 002s could skip a generation of launchers and go straight to electromagnetic launch systems (EMALS), of the sort the U.S. Navy is currently testing to replace its catapult launchers. That, though, might be a too courageous leap for the conservative PLA — and aircraft carriers are expensive and high-profile assets on which to experiment. Nor do we have any sense of how far China has got with developing EMALS technology, if at all.

The third question is perhaps the biggest of all. Will the Type 002s be conventionally or nuclear powered? Why that matters is that nuclear-powered carriers would vastly extend the scope and range of PLA-Navy operations.

One straw in the wind that the propulsion system may be the latter is that the Jiangnan yard has a history of building new types of vessels that are firsts for China. Will China’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier be added to its honour roll?

This Bystander thinks that, eventually, it will, but that it will be not the first Type 002 it builds. It could be the second, although we lean slightly towards that being conventionally powered, too, and the transition to nuclear carriers and supercarriers starting after that.

The PLA-Navy already has a dozen nuclear-powered submarines; in fact, it decommissioned its first nuclear submarine in 2013, after three decades of service. That same year, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. started state-funded research on core technologies and safety considerations for future nuclear-powered surface vessels.

Ships that need to be at sea for long periods without refuelings, such as polar vessels and aircraft carriers, are likely candidates. However, unlike building hulls of aircraft-carrier size and strength, scaling up nuclear propulsion from a submarine to an aircraft carrier is not a trivial task.

Going from starting research to commissioning something as large, complicated and expensive as an aircraft carrier within a decade strikes us as far too tight a deadline to hit. But nuclear-powered Chinese supercarriers on the high seas in 10-15 years from now seems eminently likely.