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are we ever actually going to see an EM launch?
We will see that in later trials. Usually it takes five to seven sea trials before we could see jet operations onboard.
Looks like they already tested it. performed well judging by the video.
Can’t you see them? The planes are invisible but they’re in the picture
Respect where it's due. This sub seems to love downplaying these achievements, but I think that attitude has a big negative effect on our (American) perception of what's essentially our most formidable competitor on the world stage.
Ridicule is just copium. It brings with it hints of underestimation, denial, superiority complex, and complacency.
The seaworthiness of Fujian immediately puts China above every single NATO ally in terms of naval power projection. It also puts China undeniably above Russia as a foe (ahem the one and only Admiral Kuznetsov). This all achieved in house, and within 22 years of receiving their first foreign-constructed carrier is astonishing.
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The general public are dumbasses. The pentagon strategists are not. They are not underestimating anyone.
there is actually not much thing you can do, if you are not willing to give up other parts of the world.
The US government and military have not underestimated. They take this very seriously I promise.
Some dweebs on a subreddit aren't representative of anything significant.
That said China has a history of misrepresenting itself. So it's best to question everything.
maybe…just maybe, china played the misrepresenting card up to this moment. it’s all for the almighty fujian. the Americans will not know what hit them.
i suggest usa double down on military funds and activities. usa cannot fall behind!
oh wait this is not ncd huh?
What are you on about?
Very much agreed. Fielding an aircraft carrier is no joke. Fielding a modern super-carrier with EMALS is an even bigger achievement. This will definitely improve China's power projection capabilities
And defense. Protecting their national sovereignty is their right, and we should assume that's the first intent of their latest shipbuilding efforts. Of course with China everyone immediately assumes the worst.
You don’t build an aircraft carrier for national defense. That’s what a strategic missile force is for. With home turf advantage you can use ballistic missiles, airfields, etc for much greater effect and with less cost.
An aircraft carrier is purely for power projection far beyond national borders. The US doesn’t patrol the west/east coast with its carriers, nor does France or the UK’s carriers just hang around the North Atlantic. They go far, and park themselves near other nations as a, shall we say, diplomatic statement of intent.
Correct! Nuclear missile subs for deterrent, aircraft carriers for projecting military power.
I feel as though in this case it is defense in response to American power projection, no?
China lacks the infrastructure to support ships abroad with very few places they could stop and refuel. It will be quite some time before they’re projecting power further than the South China Sea.
We assume the worse because China usually confirms those suspicions
Everyone has a right to build defensive weapons, the problem always occurs when someone wants to use them offensively. The problem around that is that it’s always safest to assume the worst rather than hope for the best. Which is of course why we’re in Cold War again.
Agreed. With naval power it becomes quite a tricky thing because the US stands alone.
We have the only navy capable of force projection over every ocean. It's enshrined in our doctrine of protecting free trade, which we ostensibly provide to all nations of the world and it's also in our interest as the world's largest economy and holder of the dollar standard.
All good. But when China creates something like the Fujian do we take the stance that China is now also participating in the protection of free trade? And their $20T economy.
I think it's in our best interest to assume the best from China, at least initially. But be prepared for the worst.
It doesn't cost us anything to let at least let China show they can use their new capabilities for something benign. The world is watching.
Oh the Pentagon is underestimating no one
They're estimating them exactly as much as is warrented, which is why they think the Type03 is no big deal.
This ship requires the US to purchase like 5 LRASMs. Not that big a deal.
Agreed. Copium and complacency is the fastest way to lose to a near peer adversary.
The problem is war just changed. Ukraine is showing us the power of agile disposable munitions in mass. Aircraft carriers are the old way of waging war. New war will be directed energy weapons, swarms of disposable munitions, and EW/Cyber driven by AI.
It’s not that building the carrier isn’t impressive, it’s just that the timing couldn’t be worse.
There’s no carrier operating in the Ukraine conflict.
The US is still making carriers. other nations are still trying to make them as well. As far as pentagon’s own war games are showing, the carrier remains the premier single force projection platform for a nation. All the tech you listed as possible counters have their own limitations. You’ll know the carrier is obsolete when the US congress defunds its plans to build them. That’s truly when the rest of the world will freak out.
I’m not saying the carrier should be retired just yet. I’m saying the production of one isn’t as impactful as it once was. We are nearing the end of the age of the carrier. Space based platforms are the new carrier. Just like aerial drones are the new fighter jet.
If only countries were designing and building floating airfields capable of launching aerial drones ...
I can basically agree on all points except for the statement that it was all done in house. No it wasn't. Firstly, because the first carrier was sold to China incomplete from Ukraine. Secondly, China is well, well known for stealing everything not nailed down in terms of IP. I highly doubt they came up with any of the tech on this thing "all by themselves". Like, I'd wager 10 to 1 odds they stole whatever they've got on this carrier.
Otherwise, while I agree it's always folly to underestimate any potential enemy, what China boasts on paper is far from a match for US military supremacy. Unless they've got some secret weapon they've kept hidden for decades, the US would still easily wipe the floor with anything the Chinese could throw at them.
You misunderstand the concept of trajectory. 10 years ago in the pentagon’s own war games they would have wiped the floor with a couple carriers in a battle in the pacific. Today, they estimate losing entire fleets. What happens In another mere 10 years, when china has largely executed its force growth strategy?
People also like to shit on IP theft but that is the logical, rational, realpolitik method of catching up when you’re technologically behind. The US puts massive, massive resources into forging new tech, paving new ways to edge out competition. If you’re china, why waste your time money and effort on that if the US already did? Stealing is just the smart thing to do.
And just because the stole tech doesn’t make it easy for them. They still had to build the fucking thing, get it to work, staff it, develop operations around it, and execute strategy for it. Besides japan, no non-western company has EVER been able to do this (the kuznetsov definitely doesn’t count)
This is a really good point.
It's not a point that makes anyone happy, but it's the same as the point post-9/11: we act like America wouldn't blow up a few buildings In a country that was funding the bombing of our kids.
Our reaction to that attack was to annihilate multiple countries: Israel lost 1,000 people and they reacted by killing over 30,000.
As we all claim to be the pinnacle of civilization compared to "those savages."
Americans need perspective and that's not provided by the majority of American media.
This is likely why so much of what they build doesn't work very well.
The other element is training, which is a massive problem for a country where cheating on tests is normal behavior and even seen as necessary behavior.
Chinese military personnel aren't as well-trained compared to the West and that's not because China lacks the capability: it lacks the cultural understanding.
It took the USA a long time to end their "top-down" approach to command structure: we don't make platoon leaders call in every decision, like we did in WWII and even Vietnam.
We learned that tempo is vital to warfare and that's simply something that the salami-slicing Chinese either don't understand or simply can't achieve.
What's worse is that they have to use one of these two models: either a slow telephone game to confirm orders or more autonomy for poorly-trained officers to make their own decisions based in the overall strategy.
Does "a company commander fully explaining the overall strategy to platoon leaders" sound like something the PLA is going to be doing?
Or does "a company commander telling platoon leaders exactly what to do and to check with them if they want to do anything different" sound more like them?
The last time the Chinese were in a legitimate armed conflict, it was with Vietnam, in 1979: the Chinese lost as many troops in a month as the USA lost in their entire war in Vietnam.
And there's zero veterans from that still in the game today.
It's a military with absolutely no combat experience, unless you count the sticks and stones bullshit at the Indian border.
So you're right: of course they have to steal.
And cheat.
And lie about it all.
And if there's anything we know about history, those methods have great results in the long-term.
But that brings us back to Chinese culture and that "rice bowl mentality."
All the tech in the world isn't gonna' save them from their own cultural practices that have consistently fucked them over again and again for their entire "_______ thousand years of history."
Absolutely nailed it.
The Chinese absolutely understand command structure, and tempo. What they do not have is properly trained and experienced officers who have been in enough combat situations to make good judgements. Example is in the Chinese UN peace keeping forces' screw ups.
They are not only learning tech, they are also learning US fighting doctrines, but without experience, it remains theoretical to them. These doctrines are written in blood, and they just haven't seen combat for too long, and haven't bled enough to truly understand it.
But here we are, on reddit, China is the Schrodinger's evil empire, simultaneously the blood thirsty evil imperialistic expansionist totalitarian empire, that is apparently invaded Ukraine, taiwan, philipines, vietnam, japan, korea, all at once and is moving towards world domination, while at the same time complete incompetent useless backwater joke of a military that hasn't fought a war in a long time and is so ineffective that their planes don't work, boats don't float, missiles don't fire, guns don't shoot, and anything they say is a joke.
This is the classical example of copium
The copium is strong with this one.
It’s not a super carrier and it’s not nuclear powered so its range is poor.
The military has to have practical use not just be a moral boost.
Go China for their growth and pulling people out of poverty. Now they are putting it into the military and when I comes to the USA be China, this is nothing outside of something that can be used for Taiwan for a near by country.
True, but China is investing heavily and making pretty rapid progress in SMR tech Linglong One is ground-based, but they're also working on reactors for ships. Unless it's already near completion, I'd imagine their next carrier will be nuclear.
This is also not a super carrier, it’s a carrier. The USA has 10 super carriers. One of them could pound these three Chinese carriers and even the next few that pop out.
Sure but they're not planning to project power globally for now.
In 20 years... perhaps. (But their median age will be ~60...)
The thing we need to worry about is China can build these things very quickly.
Once they have the experience of building supercarriers, they'll probably churn a couple out every year.
It’s a supercarrier, even the U.S. Navy considers it as such. Yea it’s conventional but that’s not a huge deal considering no carriers escorts are nuclear powered, and neither is the airwing, so regardless of the carriers powerplant the battle group will need underway provisioning frequently.
Even the British QE is considered a supercarrier by some analysts, even though it’s much less capable than the 003 and cannot carry fixed wing AWACS.
This, because of ita short range it’s basically airport right of shore.
This is their very first carrier. It's not even intended to be used in combat, it's a prototype. It's basically the bare minimum of what their future capabilities will be.
It’s actually China’s 3rd aircraft carrier in its fleet. The second one China built entirely from scratch.
What’s exactly the point of building an aircraft carrier? If you aren’t going to use it for war. The main purpose of having a floating airport at sea. Is to have a base platform to launch fighter jets.
Test systems, train crew, learn and understand logistics and many other things can be learned this way.
The Americans, Japanese and other western powers had a crash course in carrier warfare during WWII. They all (except Japan) build on that legacy since then.
China has to build and learn everything from scratch during peace times. That's super hard. So this is probably one of the best ways to do that.
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The first was purchased from the Soviets and the second was a copy of the first right? This is the first original carrier designed and built by China.
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Honestly, just about everything you said is geopolitically nonsensical.
India has nukes which are meant for Pakistan if necessary. Also, India is something of a fairweather friend and is very much a non-aligned nation. Hell, it's where the term "third world" originates from. It may want to keep an eye on China but it will never invade it for any reason. Both countries are officially uninvadable. There are too many people in each of them for any country to even attempt to control. India will not invade and take a square inch of Chinese territory.
Japan and Australia have no ability whatsoever to effect any Korean war. Australia has no projection power and Japan doesn't have an offensive military system. The only thing that would set off any war on the Korean peninsula are the actions of China or the Koreas. China won't do anything to encourage North Korea to invade the south because it likes the status quo. Initiating a conflict on the peninsula is an open invitation to the US to land a million troops and potentially set up a forward operating base on China's doorstep. Not only that, it's practically a short, straight shot to Beijing from Dandong. This is the last thing Beijing wants.
This new carrier is no match for even two generations previous of US carriers. I assume the Pentagon keeps the tech for this shit locked up really tightly and isolated. Since China only develops tech it can steal, they'll need a very long time before they can figure out how to make something formidable enough to match a US super carrier.
None of what you said makes sense to me, to be honest.
A prototype is just a test, like a beta version. The actual carriers they put into production will be far more capable and well tested.
By building this carrier they have already demonstrated that their military is more capable than any NATO country besides the United States. The rest of your comment I don’t understand at all.
China put China in poverty. It didn't pull anybody out of it. Remember when it "eliminated" poverty in some province by simply deciding that the threshold for defining poverty could be lowered such that nobody was under it?
Sorry, I hate when that claim gets trotted out. It's pure propaganda. It's not that people haven't gained wealth, it's that the CCP wants to take credit for it. They kept everyone poor in the first place and when they finally fucked off and gave people some room to improve their lives, they did what came naturally and improved their lives. No CCP was needed and, in fact, the country couldn't" improve until they left it alone.
Care to expand on this? I like it and you’re right, I just said that so people wouldn’t think I’m just hating. But tbh I hate the CCP.
The World Bank defines the poverty threshold for a upper-middle income country like China at $6.85/day based on 2017 dollar price. Using that numbers then 25% of Chinese are still in poverty.
If using the US threshold ($35/day in 2020) then 95% of the Chinese population are below that.
https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/themes/poverty-and-inequality.html
https://pip.worldbank.org/country-profiles/CHN
Hey I gave you crutches when I broke your legs. Shouldn't you thank me?
I declare that everyone can stand upright even those with broken legs.
its range is poor
This might be true but it is not relevant within ten or twenty years. All three carriers that China operates now, Liaoning, Shandong and Fujian are conventional-powered. But that does not make them combat ineffectively in the waters adjacent to China.
From this point we can say with almost 100% certainty: the fourth carrier of China is also conventional-powered; but the fifth will not likely be.
This take a long time, they have to become super carriers, and that’s assuming everyone is just sitting on their hands till then.
True, but I cannot imagine there will be any others, except US and China, that have enough resources to build and operate super carriers.
Keep in mind only two countries on earth have nuclear powered carriers.
Nimitz-class carriers are quite capable, I will give them that. Ford-class carriers are great, too; I believe they will function well in the future.
But CDG is another story. You just don't put reactors from SSBN on carriers. CDG can't even reach 30 knots.
Just wondering but can nuclear tugboats be a thing?
Aircraft carriers anyway have to be accompanied with an entourage of warships.
What about putting a nuclear powered middle class tugboat in the front of the gang, whose side hustle is to act as the carrier's source of propulsion.
Then when during times of peace, this "tugboat" can then fuck off and do something more constructive with its time like be an emissions free cargo boat.
Agreed but also I don't expect we'll get the ton of likes that negative posts get.
Love your points and attitude, this competition is yet to have a clear winner, we (US+allies) need to have clear mind and not getting complacent. China’s biggest strength (imo) is their ability to mobilise significant resources in very short periods of time , its authoritarian government is a big bonus when it comes to development like this. NATO and 5 eyes maybe technically capable to do the same, but their systems don’t often allow them to do so
True but with China nothing is as ever seems, be that GDP growth, population numbers or military capability. What does concern me is China's industrial capacity and ability to vastly outproduce the west in wartime
With food, materials and energy shipped in over the sea by countries they would be at war with.
That's why they are trying to corner commodities like rare earth. Also if in the run up to war you would expect stockpiling and a drive for more self-sufficiency like the Nazis did with autarky. The west's industrial capacity has been severely eroded, restoring should be a high strategic priority because it will take decades to accomplish
Except 1.4 billion Chinese have to eat like every day and oil refineries need to be running 24/7. If war broke out then oil import via the sea will be halted so oil refineries are shutting down, that would severely impact food production and industrial production.
Germany literally needed France during WWII to feed themselves. After Germany were driven out of France it no coincidence that the military and the country collapsed within one year.
Is it really astonishing? They have the benefit of accessing 100+ years of global naval aviation development and doctrine. Besides which, the ship is only part of the equation. There's still the procedures and the such that they have to work out (again, which has been developed and refined by other nations already), and then they have their own naval doctrine to develop; which has political restrictions applied as well.
That’s what I’m saying, we need more military spending
One of the most dangerous things is to underestimate your competitors but nor should you overestimate. This is a big step in the right direction for the PLAN and quite an achievement, but that being said I believe this carrier isn’t even nuclear so its power projection is still limited when compared to an American super carrier.
I know right. This is an impressive accomplishment. They ain’t no joke.
Apart from the UK, France and Japan...... They need another 20 years of cooking to get it right.
Within 22 years like it's not 2024.. these ships have been around for nearly 100 years. China is only a threat if we were fighting within their border. We never will though. The U.S., China, and Russia will continue destabilizing areas as testing grounds and for bragging rights, stripping them of their resources for a small fraction of return on "investment"
By "in house" you mean "by stealing massive amounts of information from the entire world because they can't actually do it in house," yeah?
This isn't ridicule: this is reality.
That ship is filled with things stolen from The West.
Just because China physically built them doesn't change that they were stolen designs.
Manufacturing is the easiest part of R&D.
So let's relax before we praise them too much over the manufacturing they've been doing for decades: they can only manufacture designs that they steal - they can't make their own designs.
This isn't ridicule: this is reality.
The ‘reality’ you’re referring to is that they have a new carrier. Whether they stole the designs or not has no bearing on the fact that it exists. The US navy isn’t gonna sink the fujian by shaming it or calling it derivative.
Imagine launching 8 jet per scramble before the battery needs recharge
China also invented the world largest, longest, and thickest USB cable for carrier recharging!
I could use one of those, everything I buy ends up with the end connections jacked up.
beautiful ship,
From a beat up Russian ramp deck carrier refurbishment to a flat top like that in 20 years! they’ll be nuclear powered next and they want 6 by 2035,
I bet she was designed with a future refit to nuclear power in mind.
This had better be the one I ordered and NO you haven't delivered it and NO it's not behind the bins!!
No ramp😲
Gonna make a nice reef.
Pardon me while I'm skeptical as shit at them having a working electronic catapult.
Why? Its just a railgun. It would be sililar tech as the high-speed rail.
Buddy, you're not just way off, you might not be on the same continent.
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Maybe for the fact they've been working on it for over 20 FUCKING YEARS and it's still not IN USE! Source: family member worked at a shipbuilding making the fucking boat and testing the fucking system!
And Railguns aren't even combat deployed on ships. Source: Know a guy who has worked on them.
And they're similar to high-speed rail? Do you have a degree in anything, or just have a M/NM copy of "Eraser" stuck in your VCR?
You know jack and shit about all this, and jack just left town.
PLAN is best Navy! They completed all these tests in only 24 hours. Weeks faster than USA Navy! Everything has obviously worked perfectly since they finished sea trials so fast