Give it up, swerve.
We don’t have the history book re-wrotten by the central party.

Just conveniently rewritten nonetheless.

To crobato

I know the tradditions and the subsidoring organistion of the PLA, but like in PLAAF, I belive that the PLAN has been “set free” from the somewhat humiliating role of simply supporting the army’s movement in land and defending the coastal areas. I belive this happened bit earlier than it did with the PLAAF (after first gulf war) as the expansion of PLAN started around late 80’s.

I’m not saying that there is no different “schools” in PLAN, all maor and even smaller navies have them. But I think none of those schools can just go and buy stuff with out central planning. Aquiring carrier and pursuing carrier operations is not just any regular equipment bought for trialling purposes. The volume of it in all aspects is so huge that it simply cannot be just some school’s way of proofing them to be right. I agree you with that there mighht have been some changes in the PLAN leadership and some of them wishes to see subs more than carriers, but the decision of aquiring carrier is made earlier and it’s affects to the PLAN will be so dramatical that it’s most definetly the main single factor that dominates all PLAN future plannings and organisation changes.

To me the carrier plans are all but in a hold, or have been. Like I said the incorporating a carrier to your fleet is so big change, that exspecially in the chinese case it will inflict all doctrines and shipdevelopment plans. And that takes time. For example Soviets started to dream about carriers as early as late 20’s but it was in the very last year of that regime (1991) when a true fixed wing carrier was completed. It’s evident that the chinese were pursuing carriers for long period now, to my recall it was started when that same “forget-his-name” Admiral, a student and fan of the Admiral Gorshkov himself became to power (remembering it being in the 80’s). Even if he now would have been replaced, it’s clearly seen that the carrier plans are not being halted, but infact being steaming forward all along. You mentioned the first talks about Su-33 in 1997, but that could be seen as a “door-opener” to further talks. Remember, the Varyag was purchased in next year and the work to make it a operational started in 2002.

They had been studying carriers, and they can afford it, considering the pittance that is spent. How much for the Varyag? 20 million? That’s less than a jet fighter.

But studying does not mean a firm commitment. Everyone puts investments on alternative proposals, options. It does not it will be pursued to the end. Think of it like TV programs, just because there is a huge investment behind does not mean it won’t get cancelled later on if results are unsatisfactory.

The Varyag languished for years in Dalian, getting new paint, but otherwise its been sitting there. If there has been a firm commitment to carriers, you would see PLANAF pilots being trained on the Kuznetsov under contract since 1999, and Su-33s would have been bought before, then assigned and lent to the Kuznetsov to train these pilots.

I’ve been studying the PLA and other militaries long enough to know that the wind can blow in one direction then blow to another. What people might want to see is an sense or image of order. People like order. People like seeing solidity, long term plans and dreams fulfilled in schedule. People like seeing the expected executed as hoped. People like seeing things worked as extrapolated. People like constancy.

It works well observing most militaries because they tend to be transparent with their roadmaps. Not with the PLA. They don’t say anything about their plans, it’s only when they’re already right on the water can we say, okay they just built a new destroyer, okay they just built a new sub. Since we don’t know what they’re really up to, we only have what in our minds what we think they’re up to. But the problem of this is that it makes it vulnerable to new developments that don’t quite fit to what we expected.

Things can happen very unexpectedly. What you would have thought they are firmly moving in one direction, they would suddenly stop and moved into another. I can cite many cases of this happening. The halt of Su-30 purchases is an example of massive policy turnaround that no one in the outside world expected, not even the Russians. It was completely out of pattern. I can almost swear that the one constancy in PLA observing is the lack of constancy.

So I like to keep these new events under watch. It is certainly most interesting development, it reflects fundamental changes in PLAN doctrine and how they see themselves fitting into the future. But it’s still not set in stone and still open to the sudden “frack it”, and project abandoned.

Tell that to the Koreans.

well liked it or not, next century migth be ‘chinise’ century and even if the most optimistic forecasts fails, china is rising power whit constantly improving its influence over its neighbours and beyond. If there isent any power to protect today, there will be one in tomorrow.

And to support that growth china needs strong navy with great reach and ultimately there will be time that the PLAN cannot fullfill its task with out martime based airpower. Maybe not today but tommorow???

Then we all know that China needs to forge its carrier craft from the start. No one is coming to helping them and it takes propaly half a century to have substansial carrier fleet. Its almoust irrelevant which plane of the current catalogue will suite best in the some PLAN groupies fantasyes of some nankinj-payback mission, when PLAN is ready to be considered as true martime power, we are talking about 6th or 7th generation of fighters, not 4.5 or 5th.
But PLAN knows that it has lost too many deades in the carrier path and it should not waste any more time to commision its first carrier and start making mistakes whit it and eventually learn to how to use it properly.
The most suitable plane therefore would be either the one with best logistic support and training facilityes or the one most properly suited for basis of future operational carrier air group.

Any case the chinese carrier would be reality in next five years….thougth it would not be that sort of reality that the mentioned ‘chinese section’ would like to have, but I keep wonder why it is so hard to the equally annoying ‘US section’ (that has formed into every military forum minimizing others and overexaggerate themselves) realise the simple logic and strategical idea behind the current chinese carrier program????

I don’t really think there is a big pro-carrier faction in China. Many think its still a waste of money and that opinion may be shared by factions within the PLAN, the CMC and the CCP leadership. This is a country that remains traditionally bound to the concepts of a continental power.

PLAN has been in an internal battle between the squids and the seagull factions. The seagulls had control of the PLAN in the 90s but in this decade, the squids have been dominating. There appears only enough support to do a serious trial and tryout of a carrier, but not enough to commit to 3 or 4. Frankly for the seagulls to go this far is a pleasant surprise.

Getting the Varyag to run and operate as a trial carrier, then put some planes on it, to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of carrier operation, this is more of a demonstration to the PLA and the main party leadership than to the outside world that the concept is viable. Once that obstacle is past, then maybe you can see a second or a third carrier, but that’s way down the line.

And here above a typical answer from “I-don’t-know-what-I-am-talking-about”.
Putain de merde!

Pot-kettle.

China began serious discussion of acquiring Su-33 as early as 1997. Then suddenly in 1999, the Su-27KUB (original name) prototype appeared. Russians claim it is to train new pilots, although their own Su-33 wing is teethering on the edge of disintegration and spend more time on shore and on the ground than on the sea and air. Which is funny to me.

The project is said to be “privately funded”. In armstrade circles, that’s code words for Chinese funded. Su-33KUB began testing Zhuk-MSE radar right about 2001, when China was seriously considering Zhuk-MSE as an option to upgrade Su-30MKKs further in the roadmap, first proposed in the Su-30MK2, then later in the Su-30MK3. In the end, the Chinese didn’t accept the Zhuk-MSE for reasons unknown, -MK2 and -MK3 plans put into hiatus. About 2004 I believe around that time, Su-33KUB began testing of the phase array version of the radar, the Zhuk MSFE, which was previously known as Sokol. Same radar is also tested on the Su-35UB, which looks like an Su-30MKK with canards.

During development of the radar, in March 2001, Russia also cleared Sokol for export to China, even though the radar is far from finished. Phazotron, who makes the Sokol and the Zhuk, also offered Kopyo-F for the FC-1. This uses a scaled down version of the phase array developed orignally for the Sokol.

No. What is the source? According to the FIAR website, the offered Grifo has an antenna dia of 600 mm. Radar dia or available area? For example, the Tejas’s nose cone dia is >700 mm at the base, but the MMR antenna dia is 650 mm.

The FC-1 is a stable design ie it has positive static margin. Old news.

Nope. Usman is wrong in one thing. A plane that has an FBW controlling the pitch axis right in the first prototype is the one thing indicative of relaxed stability. What it didn’t have was FBW on the roll axis. which is a different issue and was added later. FBW on roll axis don’t do squat on positive-negative stability which is centered on pitch.

Why would Japan feel more threatened about a Chinese carrier? Should Japan feel more rightly threatened about Chinese SSBMs carrying nuclear warheads? Or Chinese SSMs and IRBMs with nukes? There are more things Japan should feel more threatened about than a Chinese carrier.

As for Taiwan, it means nothing because a Chinese carrier has zero tactical relevance to a Straits war. The Straits are too close and narrow. It will be a massively dense air war fought with land based aircraft from both sides.