Chinese Aircraft Carrier Spotted At Sea

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Originally posted by CREAM
That fact they kept this massive object secret until spotted on satellite is extremely impressive.

Secret?

To whom?

Anybody who has been alive for the past 40+ years and has paid attention knew about the carrier. There have been numerous threads going back years here at ATS .

Secret

Edit- never mind lol I am totally uneducated on aircraft carriers and related news, not being sarcastic

Really? That is all they have?

Can they do this, 13 times?

Originally posted by SLAYER69
You still haven't. That's an old Russian Aircraft carrier from the 1980s sold to China with a fresh coat of paint.
Varyag

You're selling them a bit short. It's been completely rebuilt. There weren't even engines in the thing when they bought it. They furnished all the systems for a completely empty hull. It first left port for sea trials on 10 Aug 2011. I'm not sure why this is making news other than the picture.

They've got another one being built at Changxing Island Shipyard in Shanghai. That should reach trials in the next three or four years. THAT will be quite an achievement for them.

The only reason China isn't still all working rice paddies is because we poured our entire National Wealth into China.


China only having that 1 old russian aircraft carrier would be very little for alllll the Trillions we've given them.


China has more than the Shi-Lang Aircraft Carrier.

Noshir Gowadia, an Indian Engineer Northrup Grumman brought in to work on the B-2 Bomber.....he GAVE China the blueprints to the B-2 plus designed them stealth cruise missiles.

Everything China has.....you paid for. One story awhile ago said China laid the hulls down for 2 home made new Aircraft Carriers. They are supposed to be done now as well. They can build a Destroyer in 90 days. Now that they aren't making anything for us, they have to be cranking out lots of military hardware for themselves.

They are still importing massive amounts of raw resources and aren't exporting anything to us now.

The boogeyman we created as former Marine/Senator Webb said "China is a threat".....well duh. We made them a threat.

reply to post by Pervius


I'm impressed. China seems to be pretty good at junk art. They always know how to make gold from from.
They did the same with the IAI Lavi.

suspicios monkey asks : why did no one else notice her being re-engined and slipping her berth ?

edit to add :

this is a rehtorical question

Chinese Carrier spotted in market....

Circa 1910.....






www.imagesofasia.com...

This just makes me want to fill my pants up in fear. China is not anyone's friend but its own.

Oh dear god.

reply to post by ignorant_ape


It first left the pier on 10 Aug. They've been refitting it for years. It was noticed. Not sure why any of this is news now, other than a new picture.

Wow strange that they only have one, Just makes you wonder what other military technology/equipment they are lacking in.

reply to post by CREAM

It wasn't a secret because China used a civilian company to buy the aircraft carrier Varyag to turn it into a floating casino. They met with a lot of challenges when they towed it from Ukraine to Hong Kong through the Turkish straits.From Hong Kong it was towed to China for refurbishment. This carrier is like a new toy. They may build their own in a few more years once they get the hang of it. Still no planes on the carrier but the J15 Shark is developed for the carrier. Still 2 to 3 years to go before you can see a full fledged carrier IMO.

China did acquire 4 retired aircraft carriers for study, Australian HMAS Melbourne and ex-Soviet carriers Minsk, Kiev and Varyag.

Shenyang J-15 is their carrier-based fighter aircraft.

Originally posted by TheGreatest
Wow strange that they only have one, Just makes you wonder what other military technology/equipment they are lacking in.

Lacking in?

Know why the US has 13 carrier battle groups? Because they require them to play as a global power.

Know why China only has one carrier now? Because China is only interested in its own region of the world.

Why would China build and maintain a global police strike force when they would rather watch the US sink into unrecoverable debt trying to maintain their own fleet. Man, if you though the rusting ex-Soviet shipyards are bad, then just wait until after the American Empire is forced to abandon most of its armada to rot without the money to take care of them.

Originally posted by randomname
the bigger they are, the harder they fall. i think aircraft carriers that big in confined seas like the straight of hormuz are sitting ducks for anti-ship missiles.

edit on 14-12-2011 by randomname because: (no reason given)

Yea, but the missile defense systems on a carrier (or most ships for that matter) are actually pretty impressive. I think there's at least 3 lines of defense (that we're allowed to know of), the last one I know of being Goalkeeper CIWS:

Am not worried too much...

Getting a carrier is one thing , learning to operate a carrier is another and learning how to use a carrier is something else.... Another 10 years before the Chinese figure things out. You can bet they will have to learn on their own and nobody is going to help them out...

Originally posted by maddy21
Am not worried too much...

Getting a carrier is one thing , learning to operate a carrier is another and learning how to use a carrier is something else.... Another 10 years before the Chinese figure things out. You can bet they will have to learn on their own and nobody is going to help them out...

What are they going to do for the next 10 years, just stare at their carrier like dumbfounded idiots?

It's not going to take 10 years to learn how to use a carrier that that are already fielding.

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


The Chinese have already informed that they are using this as a training carrier.. One cant just shout "Abracadabra" and learn how to operate carriers and develop Doctrines for it... Fielding a carrier is one thing Using it is something else..

Take a look at this Article

Link
www.rusi.org...:C4E4A591E49661/

Troubled Waters: the Implications of China's First Aircraft Carrier Far from transforming Asia's naval balance, the launch of China's first aircraft carrier will only begin to expose China to the rigours of modern naval warfare. The region should respond to the strategic ripples by steering carefully between complacency and alarmism. By Ashley Townshend and Shashank Joshi for RUSI.org

The seas have always had a special pull on strategy. From 1898 to 1912, Germany's five Naval Laws saw it establish a fleet of battleships intended to secure the country's 'place in the sun'. Britain, sensing the Royal Navy's supremacy was coming under threat, quickly stitched up alliances with Russia, France, and Japan. A decade later, Japan launched the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, the Hôshô, from a dockyard in Yokohama. The Imperial Japanese Navy not only matched the United States Navy for total displacement by 1940, but a year later it also launched the Yamato, a battleship of unprecedented size and firepower.

The adoption of new and symbolic military technology by rising powers produces inevitable strategic ripples. China's launch of the ex-Soviet carrier Varyag is no exception. But do its sea trials herald a Sputnik moment for the Indo-Pacific? And is the refurbished Varyag actually capable of projecting Chinese sea-power throughout Indo-Pacific Asia?

A glance at the warship's operational potential suggests there is little to fear about China's first carrier.

An imperfect new carrier

Although its Cold War-era hull has been outfitted for the Twenty-first century, the ex-Varyag is an entry-level carrier by modern naval standards. At a modest 60,000 tonnes, China's newest warship will be dwarfed by every one of the United States' eleven Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super-carriers. The Japan-based USS George Washington, for instance, displaces over 100,000 tonnes, carries up to 90 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, permits simultaneous catapult-launch and aircraft recovery, and can sail for over 20 years without having to refuel.

By contrast, the refurbished ex-Varyag carries just twenty-six fixed-wing aircraft and twenty-four helicopters, exhibits a 'Stobar' [1] deck configuration which forgoes steam-powered catapults for a less versatile ski-jump, can travel for just forty days before needing to refuel, and is replete with new sensors and weapons systems that have yet to be integrated into People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) doctrine and expertise.

The ex-Varyag's ability to deploy aircraft into combat also appears questionable. While the PLAN's first carrier-based airframe, the J-15 'Flying Shark', may soon have the potential to perform close-in fighter operations, maritime/ground strike, and air support missions, it is not particularly well-suited to the ex-Varyag's ski-jump flight deck. As Gabriel Collins and Andrew Erickson explain, using a ski-jump for take-off imposes strict limitations on the size and weight of the aircraft being launched. This means that China's J-15s, however advanced, will have to compromise on payload and fuel in order to safely take-off from the carrier's deck. [2]

Making matters worse, the ex-Varyag will be unable to launch the hefty tankers, cargo aircraft, and fixed-wing surveillance and reconnaissance assets that carrier power projection missions invariably require. This will further reduce the combat radius of China's J-15s and force the ex-Varyag's crew to rely on suboptimal helicopter-based aerial early warning - a longstanding PLAN weakness.

The challenges of carrier warfare

Leaving the ex-Varyag's technical limitations aside, carrier warfare is one of the most complex challenges any modern military can undertake. The PLAN's own doctrine has been oriented towards crippling carriers, not using them in battle. Learning new ways of fighting is time-consuming and hard. Mike Horowitz, in a recent study of disruptive military innovations, has argued that:



carrier warfare is one of the only ... major military innovations requiring high levels of both financial intensity and organisational capital to adopt ... operating a floating airfield and the ship itself, plus coordinating with support ships, is simply a much harder set of tasks than lining up the big guns of a battleship and firing.



Just how difficult carrier operations are is evident from figures, recorded by Robert Rubel, which show that between 1949 and 1988 the US Navy and Marine Corps lost 12,000 aircraft and 8,500 aircrew.

Few threads about this already since it was posted December 14, 2011.

You have heard their carrier has no ability to actually launch an aircraft so it a carrier in the most literal sense. It can carry airplanes

Originally posted by Darkmask
reply to post by ShaolinTemple

 

Fortunately the carrier is vastly inferior and the Chinese army ill equipped. They are just now learning how to utilize such a weapon. The U.S.A. has had over half a century to perfect their toys. As much as I hate to admit it, there isn't a country in the world that could stand up to the U.S.

Oh man. Underestimating your adversary is the worst mistake you can make in war.

China makes almost all our electronics, including the bulk of the ones used in military gear. They also study deception and used it to great effect against us in Korea.

If you want to learn about what they are doing now, just google for manchurian microchip. They are hiding secret stuff in the chips that they make that go into military hardware, and probably your computer too.

The fact is that we have no idea what China's military capabilities are because unlike us, they practice secrecy and do not hire foreigners to work on their military projects.