However, that link redirects to a registration/subscription form, which if you close without registering redirects you to the “international news” page. I chased links down to the link you used above, but clicking on it just repeats the process.

You can usually put the URL or title of the article, or excerpt, into Google and go from there. That’s what I did.

However, thanks for the quote from the article – so the PLAN just had to translate the “40 tonnes of blueprints” into whichever Chinese language the shipyard/PLAN use. That would take quite a while by itself.

Presumably the blueprints would’ve arrived a year or two in advance of the carrier. But the lack of Govt/PLAN commitment at the outset would certainly account for much of the elapsed time from delivery to reappearance. I might’ve missed it, but I don’t recall the articles shed much light on when PLAN actually committed to restoring her to service.

Yes your right. Link is
http://vpk.name/news/124383_pyat_sekretov_t50.html

For overcoming enemy PVO (Air Defense) the engines can pass from the nozzles round to the flat. It is invalid, thrust loss amounts to 5-7 percent, but you got to hide a massive red-hot turbines off the radar and infrared sensors.

???

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1681710/sea-trials-how-one-man-bought-china-its-aircraft-carrier
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1682731/mission-impossible-ii-battle-get-chinas-aircraft-carrier-home

There is another article in this series here and it sheds light on a previous topic of conversation:

You are getting to my point, actually. If such examination was a necessity, it indicates Chinese didn’t have access to original plans of Kuznetsov (contrary to Rii claimed).

From the article:

After several alcohol-drenched days, the shipbuilder and government agreed to sell Xu the carrier – and the ship’s all-important blueprints – for the bargain-basement price of US$20 million [….] he arranged the next day to have the 40 tonnes of blueprints for the carrier packed into eight trucks and moved overland to China.

Aside from the sensational tale of how the vessel was acquired, the other significant takeaway from the article series regards Liaoning‘s engines:

It is the first time anyone linked to the deal has confirmed publicly the engines were in place at the time of purchase. Earlier reports said the vessel’s power generation system was removed at Ukraine’s Nikolayev South Shipyard on the Black Sea along with its electronics and weaponry before Xu bought it in 1998 for US$20 million.

“When I was taken to the carrier’s engine room by the shipyard’s chief engineer, I found all four engines were brand new and carefully grease-sealed, each of them originally costing US$20 million,” Xu said. He said a refit finished in 2011 restored the four engines to operating condition.

The populations of most developed nations are aging rapidly, in fact, I thought the USA had a younger aged population than most other industrialised countries?

This is true, but does not make it any easier for the US to sustain or increase defence spending going forward — it just means other nations will confront the same problem.

The latest Long-Term Budget Outlook from the Congressional Budget Office makes the naive assumption that currently mandated spending constraints will remain in place until 2024, by which time defense spending will have declined to 2.7% of GDP — lower than at any point during the Clinton administration, and a figure which is sure to give the Pentagon (which has been pushing 4% as an “absolute minimum”) a heart-attack. The fact that one has to get to page 53 before the CBO gets around to addressing DoD says something of itself, I think. Fortunately, present observation, history and theory all agree that DoD has little reason to be concerned that present budgetary constraints will actually be maintained, and it is entirely possible that the Pentagon will enjoy robust funding growth over the next decade and beyond — at corresponding cost to the long-term fiscal outlook, of course.

oh and i meant this decade, not the next. The US Defence funding might improve a little bit in the next decade though, or at least at the end of it.

I wouldn’t bet on it. An ageing population (proportion of US population >70yrs of age jumps 50% from 2015-2030) will place significant upward pressure on two of the largest components of domestic expenditure: healthcare and social security.

India wants technology, and they seem to be doing exactly what they have to do to never get it

Teething issues aside, they seem to be able to deal with the Russians.

Nice pic. I went to add it to my collection but discovered I already had this similar one that I like even better. 🙂

[ATTACH=CONFIG]234699[/ATTACH]