You are assuming that China has not obtained access to these materials from Russia or Ukraine, clandestinely or otherwise. As the sightings of J-15s equipped with UPAZ refueling pods demonstrates, there has evidently been some kind of rapprochement between Russia and China in this area.

Yes. Reasoning; Varyag entered dalian drydock in 2005. If they knew everything they needed, it doesn’t explain why it took 10 years for Chinese. They are building several ships (albeit smaller) per year. Their funding is virtually limitless and only technical reasons can explain such delay.

Why do you conclude that China has no desire to field a 5th (4th)-generation carrier-based aircraft? I think they will almost certainly seek to field such an aircraft — that they are exploring CATOBAR for J-15 as well does nothing to change that. Indeed, such a dual-track strategy would seem to align several priorities simultaneously, in terms of research and development, timelines and risk, and operational requirements. Such a strategy would be perfectly in keeping with China’s record to date.

Both J-20 and J-31 is funded by PLAAF, and PLAN clearly stated they have no desire to field J-31. mk1 eyeball inspection tells me there is no apperant provision on J-20 for arrester hook. I may be well wrong on this one or PLAN may just change their minds, however, that is my opinion/estimate for the next decade.

due respect that is about the silliest sentence I have ever read on this board. the Nimitz Class, ten totally proven well built combat tested carriers are ‘pound for pound’ the best there is. Millions of miles sailed + likely launches and recoveries into the millions since the early 1970’s certainly proves it to me.

Due to respect, silliness is yours due to #1 If an opinion differs from yours its hardly silliness, but inability to listening it is. #2 you don’t have slightest idea on criteria what I am comparing. Way off-topic so a short summary; Kuznetsov have half crew and airwing of Nimitz. Conventionally powered so it costs way less than half (perharps even less than a third) to commission, operate and decommission. PLUS it carries ADGM/ASM armament of an entire carrier group (432 SAMs 14 CIWS), so does not need to be escorted by several ships, operating Kuznetsov goes down to 1/5th cost of a Nimitz. What Kuznetsov currently lacks is a proper airwing, which has nothing to do with ship itself. Ship can potentially carry 33 fixed wing aircraft, and 12 helicopters. With some money, its air wing could have been 3 Yak-44s, 20 new built Su-33s and 10 Su-33KUBs with Su-35 level of performance. Ship itself was great but its a shame Russian economy could never used it to its full potential.

Leaving aside the question of Kuznetsov‘s current condition, it appears to me that your deprecation of Liaoning is based merely on emotive supposition rather than evidence.

Why so? I am from Turkey, emotionally I don’t give a s*** about either country or their Navy. As an Engineer, I DO admire Kuznetsov class; pound for pound, I DO believe its the most effective carrier design sailing today. However, again as an engineer, I seriously doubt you can transform a hunk of welded sheet metal to a working warship by simply eyeballing it and putting some equipment on it.

Think of it this way. when Kuznetsov enters refit, shipyard engineers will re-open every technical drawing, mathmatical analysis, graphs etc to see what is doable and what is not. They will asses the design, and see which parts of the load bearing structure are more prone to failuers (so maintanence can be arranged), or which wall should never be drilled/cut to make room for equipment etc etc.

Without access to such material, any equipment Chinese install will end up a)working exactly as Russians designed by sheer luck, b)breaking something vital c)malfunctioning due to incompitability d)underperform due to risks. Some wrong choice in dampening of machinary, vibrations will transmit through hull and destroy the electronics 5 decks above, or make half the ship uninhabitable (as happened with Charles de Gaulle). The real problem is, without access to all technical data, tracing such problems to the cause is very difficult. They will not know what they did wrong. Was it electronics? cooling system? Wiring? I am not saying Chinese engineers live in caves, but they are limited by the fact Liaoning is not their ship. Or another critical example, if arrester cable mechanism they designed deviates even slightly from Russians, it will either break the ship or it will not stop the aircraft. Also problematic because it will work pefrectly in lab tests. Just two examples from millions of components that distinguish an aircraft carrier from a bulk freighter.

Why is this? The qualities that make a mature, potentially CATOBAR evolution of J-15 compelling are, for the most part, not seriously compromised by the continuing slow introduction of ‘stealth’ aircraft to the scene. Her payload, range, and performance in the AAR, CAP and potentially Growler roles will all continue to be valuable throughout the lifespan of the aircraft, just as with USN’s Super Hornets.

I don’t deny that. But in the next decade, US, UK, Italian Russian and potentially more navies will adapt 5th gen aircraft, Chinese -appearantly- don’t have such desire. You compare J-15 with Super Hornet, but SH is 15 years old now. I would expect something more ambitious than fielding J-15 to match those navies; if thats what they want.

Have you taken a look at the interior work they did to CV-16 to get it into service? No wonder it took them 10 years to get it back into service. There is a carrier thread on SDF. I suggest you go and look at some of those photos.

If you have the photos, can you post them here? I am curious how the Liaoning looks (and looked) from the inside.

the Russians have still been unable to field a competent carrier force complete with all the bells and whistles expected of a carrier force.

I argue here that several decades into the future the PLAN carrier force will be no further developed relative to western carriers than the Russian carriers are today to western carrier development.

I would hate to sound like JSR, but this statement is a clear nonsense. Compared to which western carrier development? Kuznetsov is second only to Nimitz class currently in service. You may also argue Charles de Gaulle has some advantages because it fields AWACS (E-2) and thats it. Such comparison is also nonsense, as capability is directly proportional with carrier size, but competency is not. Though not seen any action, Kuznetsov carrier is as much competent as any. The problem with Russians was they were too poor to operate their carriers. This is not exactly a technical problem, and not a problem at all for Chinese. IF they can actually advance like you stated, I would be very suprised and impressed.

In my opinion, it will take 10-15 years for Liaoning/J-15 to advance to current Kuznetsov/Su-33 levels, provided Chinese don’t give up on Liaoning and leave it as a test ship. My reasoning? Well, Su-33 first landed on Kuznetsov in 1989, declared operational in 1998. Due to reasons explained in my previous post, it would take way longer for Chinese, no amount of money will change that. By that time, US Navy will be migrated to Gerrard R.Ford/F-35C, UK will have QE/F-35B, and Russians will at least put their PAK-FA on the Kuznetsov and maybe develop an all new carrier.

Thats not good enough for the Chinese I think.

why artillery shells and bullet can accelerate so much faster than missile?

I have no solid information but if I were to make an educated guess, there are several reasons;

1-Aerodynamics and energy equations; as an object goes faster, it produces more drag. Higher the drag force, higher the % of propellant simply wasted heating up the airframe. Its much more efficient to accelerate slowly, conserve some fuel for where the atmosphere is thin, and keep accelerating there. Such missile will gain more KE/PE energy and will reach longer range. This is the prime reason longer ranged missiles -generally- have longer burn times, and relatively less acceleration. An artillery shell does not have such luxury, only way to throw an artillery shell further is to give it more kinetic energy right at the end of the muzzle; irrelevant if it is efficient or not. As the muzzle length is limited due to several reasons, high acceleration is a must.

2-Structural concerns; Speaking of ICBMs, it will never need to withstand severe G forces due to “ballistic” flight. If it were to withstand 3 times more Gs, its structure will need to be 3 times heavier. As explained above, accelerating quickly serve no purpose for range, so there are no gains either way. Same will apply to all missiles to a certain degree.

3-All missiles carry some kind of electronics equipment inside. While those CAN be made to with stand 10000+Gs, this would make them more expensive and heavy.

Following quality discussion for a while, it has been quite laughable to for uneducated people to claim/defend build quality of Su-35 is worse than Grippen etc, or to claim chinese have better quality than Russians or anything.

Really I ask; what is build quailty?

Going from Su-27/35 example; fitting clearerance between fuselage and flaperon of Su-27/35 is 10 milimeters, with tolerances of +5/-0 and +1/-2 milimeters for the top and bottom side measurements respectively;

One can look at a brand new production Su-35, and observe clearance is 15mm at the top and just 8mm at the bottom. Is this a BAD production quality? For some uneducated it may be, as it will look bended/distorted/wrongly fitted. However, if flaperon works as intended, (that is, without touching the fuselage during its entire lifetime) it means production quality of both fuselage area, flaperon and the assembly is 100.00% perfect from engineering point of view.

If a brand new Su-35 leaves factory after -obviously- passing zillion quality control tests and works as intented, its a succesful product. If some of the production aircraft breaks in mid-air without reaching the end of its lifetime and others not -as in F-15C example- this can be concluded as deficient/poor production quality.

You may then claim Su-27/35 is poorly designed to accept imperfections, and that is stupid. Making a design work with loose tolerances is the acme of engineering skill. I don’t think anyone sane enough to claim Su-27/35’s airframe doesn’t work well.

You may say Su-35 is designed as such because of the inability to Russians achive sufficient precision in production; which is even more stupid. Russians, Chienese, Koreans, Turkish, are all capable of building precision ball bearings, smoothbore guns, or jet engine blades; all require precision between 0.03 and 0.01mm or so. Anyone can apply same techniques to produce a Su-35 which looks perfect to the eye, but it won’t perform any better than the current ones.

Though I am aware R-77 is not “officially” in service with VVS, but how about unofficially? I had seen pictures of R-77 on dozen of company owned aircraft, plus serial MiG-29SMT, Su-34, Su-35S, Su-30SM and T-50 prototypes? IMHO its in some kind of limited service, very much like R-40 or Kh-15; officially not in service, but operational aircraft still carry those. Another example would be Tu-160, it was flying combat patrols even during SU times, but officially accepted into service in 2005.

IIRC, (I may be wrong on this one) MiG-25s used KM-1 on early variants and replaced by K-36. MiG-31s all use K-36. While it is true M2.67 ejection was conducted via KM-1, why replace it with K-36 if its inferior to KM-1?