I wouldn’t be surprised if in say 10-15 years Japan and Soko both decide to have an aircraft carrier.

Both already are in all but name.

Indeed! PLANs prettiest, most sleek looking ship titles would go to the 054A. The VLS gives it that extra effect. But still, my favourite PLAN ship is the 052C by a long way. That one is unique!

PS: Wolfie, are you going to RIAT?

Totally agree, there is just something extra special about the 052Cs, even the inefficient round launchers seem to add to its charm as with square ones it would start looking too much like every other Ageis type ship out there.

As for the RIAT, well I haven’t planned on it, but I got the free time so I might pop down, what about you?

That’s very situational and situational reasons don’t justify such expenses, especially if the situation is not likely to happen for China. You cannot transpose US reasons to China, considering that China does not seem to have the inclination to play global cop and dominant superpower with its attendant responsibilities (“the multipolar world”). The Chinese sense of strategy is to mean not to be in a situation to put marines in Africa in the first place.

Its always better to have the means just in case. All the plans of mice and men are all subject to fate/chance/luck/whatever you want to call it, but the point is you can’t plan for the unexpected, so its always good to have options to react and respond, especially since China is starting to have more and more interestes and citizens abroad.

What would happen if rebels tried to overthrow the goverment of *insert name of african country that China has invest heavily in*? Or a larger country has their eyes on the oilfields of a neighbour that China is heavily invested in? Even if the UN passes a resolution it would count for nothing if the US don’t agree to send some carriers, and as the way things are, the US is not going to send carriers to save China’s bacon. Hell, China could probably count themselves lucky if American money and/or influence wasn’t helping the rebels.

Having your own carrier would be a major help in such cases.

The soviets focused much of their efforts on their subs, but did they ever come close to matching the west in the seas?

The modern battlefield is multi-dimentional, and the air is purhaps the most important of them all. Without a carrier force, you are as good as surrendering control of the skies to the enemy, need I expand on what unchecked air power can do?

yes, subs are a great deterence and a fantastic weapon to be used in a defensive situation where they can be protected by land based air assets, but subs will have a much harder time if they are left unsupported and need to counter hostile air, surface and subsurface threats all at once. The most you can hope for is for a sub to be able to get one salvo off before it is forced to disengaged and/or destroyed. How many men crew a sub? How much will it cost to build a sub? How long? In all cases, the answer is, many many times that of a fighter.

Air power is also far more flexible and dependable then subs, and the operating costs in times of low intensity warfare is going to be far lower then a cruise missile popping sub. But the downside of a carrier is you have to be able to keep the carrier alive to enjoy all those benefits. In this regard, the sub has an inherant advantage.

The key is getting your priorities straight. If you want to take on the top dog and win in your back yard, then subs will give you far more bang for buck. If you want to bully poor third world countries and/or give yourself a few more cards to play at the negotiation table, then a limited carrier force is the way to go. But if you want to be top dog yourself, then you will need to at least have the potential to win control of the seas, and to do that, you will need as many of the biggest, meanest carriers as you can reasonably afford.

At present, the PLA’s top priority is Taiwan, so its logical that the lion share of their resources would be going into sub and other carrier killing means. But sooner or later, the PLAN is going to have to look beyound just Taiwan. For example, if one day the balance of power becomes such that even the US would have trouble to have a certain victory, and that the costs of the war, regardless of result is going to be extremely high for the US, then the Americans would likely adjust their strategy that would not need them to walk into the deathtrap the PLA has set up for them around Taiwan. Obvious strategy, go choke China’s sea lanes to inflict some major hurt on the Chinese economy and China.

Aside from the assumption that the cost to the US would be so high as to make such a move extremely unlikely, and maybe to wave the nuclear card around as a last resort, China has no other answers. China has invested much to get as much oil in through land as possible, but China still needs a market for their finished goods, and the vast majority of that will still have to go by sea. I think that is not a situation the leaders of China are happy with, and its unlikely that they would want to see it maintained. That is why I think China will be going for carriers. The only question remaining would be when.

China currently have enough assets to form, one or maybe two, tops, decently protected carrier groups. Not yet up to US standards, but likely on par or not far behind all the other major players (Russia, UK, France). But thats putting all their eggs in one basket major time.

The way I see it, the PLAN may put the Varyag back in service as primarily a training carrier, to train its core cadre of crews and pilots that will form the backbone of a future carrier fleet. In the meantime, they can train with it and learn the ropes and even use it as a ‘blue force’ to help the rest of the PLAN to train to better deal with carriers (just like what the PLAAF did when they first got flankers). In times of emergence, it can even be pushed into service against weak third world countries as a limited power projection means, but mostly, it will likely be called upon for humanitarian missions and to support UN action that the US and UK might be unwilling to actively support. You know, since China has started to get more pro-active world stage and is trying to make a good image for itself.

Thus, I can see the Varyag going back into service before the end of the decade, but probably after 2008 as that is one of the main milestones (many believe it is the next, and only likely date in the forseeable future where war might break out across the straits), thus the PLA likely has that as its top priority and after the Olympics has passed, they can relax a little and start making other plans.

However, I do not see any large scale indiginous carrier production for at least another decade or two after that. China may build one sometime between 2015 and 2020 almost as a test carrier to see if the design works as it should and to iron out any bugs before they commit to mass production. But it will really depend on DDG and SSN production numbers. China won’t build more carriers then it can protect, so if DDG/FFG and SSN production rates suddenly start spiking, then odds are a carrier is also being worked on somewhere.

I think its a matter of different strategies the two sides had in mind for their fleets and their perception of the strengths and weaknesses of each other. The West relied primarily on their carriers for offensive ops, while their surface ships and subs are used mainly to protect the carriers from threats. The west viewed the vast soviet sub forces and soviet air power as the primary threat to its fleets, thus the priorities on tackling and countering these first. You have dedicated carrier interceptors, AWACS and ageis cruisers all tasked with destroying soviet attack ac before they can get within missile range. For the subs, the west had its own formidable sub fleet and dedicated sub hunting destroyers.

All of the above don’t come cheap and took up the lion share of western naval budgets. AShMs were low on the priority list as it was flet that a typical western fleet’s strike ac and sub components were sufficient to kill any surface threats long before they can get within AShM range.

The soviets also realised the above, and recognised that the carriers were the heart and soul of western naval power, so they built their navy to try and kill carriers. Because the soviets never really had true carriers of their own in survice until the very end of the cold war, they could not rely on tactical air support when attacking a western fleet, and needed to rely on long range strategic bombers who were the only things with the range to go carrier hunting from land bases. This also give them greater payload capacity which made heavy AShMs a more reasonable option.

But the main weapon the soviets hoped to use was its sub fleet, and its surface fleet was tasked with supporting the sub fleet for most of the cold war. Again, because of a lack of carriers, the soviet surface fleet only had AShMs to use against hostile surface ships, thus AShMs got far higher priority and funding, which allowed the development and feilding of very expansive supersonics.

In short, the west didn’t really think they needed supersonic AShMs, and relied on their carriers and subs to kill enemy surface ships. The soviets didn’t have the luxury of being able to rely on carriers, thus they needed their surface ships to be able to take care of businesses themselves, so they invested more in the primary ship-to-ship weapon and that is AShM, and they took the next logical step and made the missiles faster and faster and increased the range time and again to improve kill probability and reduce enemy reaction time.

To be a good dogifghter, you need good speed, acceleration, turn rate (instant and sustained) amongst other things, and you need them all. Thus I doubt the A10 would fit the bill.

Also, its greatest advantage – the GAU8, is just plain overkill against any flying target. Run of the mill 20 ~ 30mm cannons most modern fighters carry have the punch and cycle rate to easly mince other fighters, so there is little need for improvement there.

Besides, modern air comba rely on missiles, not the gun, and while the A10 has plenty of hardpoints, it can only carry short range missiles, and would be unlikely to ever be allowed to close to within WVR missile range, let alone gun range against well equiped and trained foes.

Something like the A10 might have made a decent fighter had it came out during WWII, or korea or vietnam even, but in this day and age, the only way it will get an AA kill against even modestly equiped and trained foes is if an enemy jet came in to do some CAS work and didn’t see the A10 in the area.

I cannot beleive this discussion has been going on for so long!

It really boggles the mind that not only do a few hardcore China bashers refuse to beleive anything other then their own biased opinions, but also that others are still trying to convice them otherwise. Seriously, you’d have more chance of convincing Bush that he was wrong to invade Iraq. :rolleyes:

One thing that doesn’t seem to be mentioned/suggested in these threads.
What of the possible roles of Belorussia and Ukraine supplying Flanker components for maintenance of vanila Su-27SKs and possibly in part of the Chinese’s own upgrade package of their Flankers. Kanwa has reported before that there is quite a bit of purchases by the PRC from these 2 countries.

Neither of those two countries have a particularly impressive aviation industry, and are basically just living off of what was left over from the days of the USSR. It is highly doubtful that they would have anything more advanced then what the Chinese can produce themselves.

It is, however, possible that the PLA might have employed specialists from those two countries and others to help its own people get to grips with maintaining Flankers when they were first introduced, and may even have them directly fixing the planes in China to get around the need to send the jets back to Russia to be fixed and overhauled.

Similarly, China might have bought parts from other Flanker users for their own fleet at below the price the Russians were charging.

However, these are likely to be a thing of the past as the Chinese should now be fully familar with the workings of Flankers, and should also be able to make all replacement parts ‘in house’ without the need to import.

That is the main factor that allows SAC to do what it likes with its J11s, because they are now fully self sufficient in the manufacture and maintaince of the Flankers. What is Sukhoi going to do about it? There is no international court to rule on such matters, the only thing it can do is void the warrenty and refuse to supply parts for the planes. That is how companies and countries usually react if a customer does something they are not pleased about with their gear. In 99% of the cases, it is a very effective measure as without parts and support, the fleet would just break down and become useless. But the threat looses its bite when the customer can make all the parts themselves and maintain their jets without any help from the manufacturer.

It seems that Sukhoi has just accepted the fact that there is nothing they can do to stop the Chinese doing what they want with the Flanker design, and gave a quiet nod of the head to just let them get on with it. It is far better then making a big hoohaa and leaving a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths and achieve nothing more then making it even more unlikely for the Chinese to buying anything else from them again. The Chinese probably also made concessions as a sort of ‘compansation’ for the Russians to oil the wheels and keep everyone happy. The original contract was for 200 Sks, while only 105 kits were delivered. The Russians would have kept the money from the orignal contract, and may have also got a sizable sum in compansation for termination of the contract from the Chinese (like the compansation the Israelis paid the Chinese after the Phalcon deal fell throw).

It is also possible that the Russians signed another contract to allow the Chinese to make as many Flankers as they like for themselves (provided they don’t export any), for a large fixed sum or a modest royalty per plane made.