Yes the same agreement said she would be a casino. Not worth the paper it was written on. That sales agreement was primarily to allow Ukraine to make the sale and claim complete innocence of any knowledge about the ships further use. If China chooses to make Varyag fully operational, expect Ukraine to throw their hands up in mock disgust, then continue with normal business relations with China anyway. The agreement is completley unenforceable other than by war even if the Ukraine was interested in enforcing it. Remember operational aircraft carriers are forbidden from passing through the Bosphorus by treaty so they had to come up with some pretext to get round it.
A Carrier’s primary weapon system is the aircraft it carries, so a ‘training carrier’ can be altered to a ‘strike carrier’ overnight simply by exchanging an air group of training aircraft for frontline types. No refitting required. US carriers do this often, with one usually available in US waters to operate T-45 Goshawks, then they embark their normal air wing when required to work up for deployment. All carriers are training carriers until ordered to open fire in wartime. In the case of Varyag the continued emphasis on her being ‘only’ a training carrier is political in origin and somewhat disingenuous. She is already fitted with magazines for the air group’s weapons and beyond that will most likely recieve a self defence complement of short range missiles and guns. The silos in her deck for SSMs will probably not be used, and this may form the basis of her not being an ‘offensive’ warship. In general most carriers aren’t offensive warships. It’s their aircraft which do the ‘offensive’ bit….;)
No it says that she cannot be used in combat thats all. All the casino thing is not in that agreement, show proof if you can. The proof of the agreement that she can’t be used in combat is in this thread itself. As per the Boshphorous thing, the Carrier was not even fully completed. So I am pretty sure it was non operational and it was towed to China.
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