Sorry, your propaganda won’t work on me. Nor does it seem to be working on the majority…………….

Do you even know what the word means? Seems like the level of thought going into your posts have been dropping off a cliff. :rolleyes:

You were comparing hypothetical future small Japanese carriers with hypothetical future larger Chinese carriers? Why? What’s the point of that? :confused:

Because he doesn’t care about what is actually happening, just desperate to invent evidence to support his delusions about everybody working to contain China and ready to come rushing to India’s aid when India decide to finally avenge 1962.

Best thing to do just ignore him because he will just spew nonsense based on ultra-rightwing paranoia websites like newsmax given half a chance.

In a rare departure from normality I find myself leaning more towards PLAWolf’s position here.

I think I may need glasses. Jonesy agreeing with me? What has the world come to these days? 😀

Much has been made about how the ‘French knew what they were doing and still stuffed it up’. That almost implies that the French were somehow suprised to find that the CdeG was a bit lemony when she was completed. They weren’t. They knew that they were building a very compromised design as soon as the political decision to go nuclear was foisted on them and they realised what kind of installed power budget they were looking at. Essentially they did the best they could with an almost impossible set of design criteria to satisfy – garbage in garbage out as they say. The one thing it wasnt was a suprise though!

Very informative, its a refreshing change to see some facts being stated instead of vague generalizations. A good example to set for everyone, myself included.

Returning to the China context Distiller makes the crucial point – what are these carriers to do?. Soviet/Russian doctrine was almost for the carrier to be a very long range area AAW vessel protecting forward deployed fleet units with powerful shipboard air search radars controlling high endurance CAP fighters in a very active area defence stance. This type of vessel can be very much simpler than a multirole fleet carrier as it doesnt need to support high sortie rates, have voluminous air ordnance magazines and handling systems and strike planning capabilities. If the Chinese limit their first attempts at carriers to this kind of forward support role, and dont try for a Nimitz straight out of the gate, then there is no reason why they cant get useful vessels in the water. They wont be competing with the USN with these ships but then they arent going to be doing that for decades anyway.

Very good analysis, and I think that is exactly what the PLAN will do here.

I do not see China wishing to invade anyone halfway across the world anytime soon, so the carriers would be used primarily for protection of China’s shipping lanes and maybe to strike at a few high-value, high-significance targets. But the bread and butter of the carrier would be fleet protection, so all those shinny new DDGs and FFGs would be able to travel the world more safely.

I see the biggest areas where the PLAN still needs development as its ASW capabilities. Ideally they should develop a dedicated ASW FFG or even DDG, as I think that their new ships, together with the new carriers, should have air defense covered pretty well.

In any future war, the biggest threat to Chinese surface ships will be subs, not hostile airpower.

It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat the same comments it’s not going to change reality.

Well, how about we have a look at reality then?

CAD is a tool and subject to the skills of the users.

So from that, I take it you are asserting that China in 2004-8, is still not able to match France’s skill in the use of CAD in 1985-9. Care to provide some factual evidence to back up this claim?

You’re the one who’s offering nothing but the mantra, “China has been studying…blah, blah, blah.” Carriers ain’t frigates and there’s a heck of a lot more that goes into building a carrier than looking at what others have done. If the other countries who have a history of fixed wing naval aviation have had glitches, so will China

The above is the only mantra being repeated around here.

France’s ‘history of fixed wing aviation’ is largely meaningless in this context since France had not designed and built carriers for more then 30 years, since the Clemenceau class, before CdG. While they might have accumulated a wealth of operational knowledge and a huge wish-list of what they would like in a future carrier, that in no way translates into the technological knowledge one would need to actually design and build a carrier.

Had France studied carrier designs as long as China did, hell, even if they had just established a realistic design goal as per Jonesy’s post, then the CdG would not have taken as long to build and would probably have suffered from far fewer problems.

I really doubt that they’re going to build something way out of their experience zone in the same time it takes a Newport News to build something they’ve been cranking out over the past 30 years.

And I’m sure the above us based on facts instead of baseless and outdated assumptions.

[B]If, America really wanted to, do you think it can’t churn out carrier far faster then its current rate? Say in the event of a major war?

At peace time, construction rates are set by the contractual conditions as much as they are set by technical ability.

[/B]

Well, if the US could cut a years time off to build a Nimtz Class Carrier it would be remarkable. As the ships are so large and complex…………Remember, even the US only has one yard big enough to build such massive vessels. So, just adding more workers gets you little…..[/QUOTE]

Perhaps you would care to refresh your memory about your own history. What was the average construction time of warships before and near the end of WWII in America?

Do you think people are working on those carriers night and day? Those docks don’t build ships when all the works have gone home. You can at least cut construction time by 1/3 to 1/2 by doubling the manpower and doing 24h shifts. That is the only way you would reach a point where adding menpower would not speed things up much more. Until you reach that point, there is always room for improvement.

The bottom line for me and most people who know anything about shipbuilding in general and Carrier construction in particular is that Carriers are next to atomic powered submarines the most complex ship afloat. Nobody doubt’s China’s abilities to field a carrier force eventually but anything less than a decade to build would be unrealistic. Even France, a country with experience building and operating carriers for decades cound not do it under a decade, and even then the ship had significant teething troubles.

Its funny you used the nuclear sub example. If you had taken my earlier advice and had a look at the rate at which the Chinese and turning out SSNs and SSBNs, then you might have formed a different opinion.

China can throw virtually unlimited resources, manpower and funding at the problem, and they very well might, but there is no shortcut for experience.

Nonsense. You act as if China has never built a ship before.

Ship design is one thing, but ship building is very standardized. Warships and civilian ships are designed differently, but when they are being built, most of the skills and equipment used for one is directly transferable to the other. Designers go to great lengths to ensure this to cut costs and construction times.

You say that you do not wish to belittle China, but that is pretty much what you are doing by not learning about the facts and applying outdated views and inaccurate models when trying to judge China’s capabilities. Because answer truthfully, how do you form an expectation of what China is capable of? Did you look at what the Chinese have achieved in the relevant field before and extrapolating that to this project, or did you merely take a look at what western nations have managed in the past and decide that China would be lucky to match that let alone surpass it?

His remarks stated obvious facts. The French with State of the Art Technology and Vast Experience with Aircraft Carriers. Still suffered serious problems nonetheless. So, to take into question that China can build two very similar ships within the same time frame. Is hardly inmaterial…………………Then instead of providing a respectful counterpoint. You throw names and sarcasm……..maybe your the juvenile in the group???

Please get a grip. State of the art 20 years ago is household these days. Either you have problems coming to grips with that simple fact, or you need to disguise your personal bias better.

CAD was utilised in design process for the CdG . Didn’t prevent it from having design problems. But apparently in China CAD can mysteriously overcome design faults. 😀

Yet more thoughtless flippantry. I’d ask you to consider the effects such juvenile outbursts are having on your reputation, but then that would merely be a waste of time.