Fancy name for what is just a new LCAC design.

Clearly the Pentagon’s acronym-generating A-team was away that day.

No shortcuts learning the operational lessons of combat tempo operational deployment Rii. No matter what level of ubermenchen you ascribe to the Chinese or how much ‘missile gap’ you want to confidently predict. The fact is they have to work up their own operational routines and those routines advise and incorporate into the next design.

The best China can aim for for is, in the next 15yrs, to expand its STOBAR fleet with another couple of hulls. That and having a CVN at or near maingate and ready to move into production. Any more than that is rushing the fences with no clear requirement to do so.

Given a need for a whole new support type to be developed to equip a CVNs decks plus a need to bring SSN tech up to NATO 3rd gen standard, to give an aggressive postured Chinese carrier group all-aspect coverage, a more tempered approach is realistic.

I agree with all of this, although I would put more emphasis on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of China prioritising or otherwise accelerating the development of carrier capabilities. So long as China remains in its present phase of rapid development, and the likelihood of major conflict remains low, PLAN must take a measured approach in terms of many hulls it puts in the water. China doesn’t (or shouldn’t) want to end up in a situation where its ability to fund future programs *cough* SSBN(X) *cough* is constrained by the cost of supporting the present bloated force of rapidly out-dated equipment that is inadequate to meet national requirements of e.g. global power projection. The national story of China’s development and transformation will be mostly over by 2030, but it is then — when technology gains slow down as they increasingly approach the state of the global art — that they really start putting hulls in the water. So I agree that China’s investments in carrier capabilities will be relatively modest before 2030, limited to perhaps 3 Liaoning-type carriers intended for regional operation, with the third likely acting as a testbed for a number of technologies (e.g. nuclear power) intended to bear fruit in a 2030s supercarrier program.

Man, I would hate to be that guy who, in his eagerness to see China fail, built a grand narrative around a story that turned out to be mistaken. That would be embarassing.

On-topic: I expect that China’s progress in carriers and carrier aviation will resemble its progress in other fields: rapid iteration that constrains risk at each step.

News flash: it isn’t 1948.

Great shot, probably the best angle for Mi-24/35.

Total tonnage of aircraft is more revealing than quantity.

Someone should introduce IAF to this metric given its laser focus on shortfalls relative to authorised squadron strength.

It’s a significant pre-order even with the new numbers.

But they aren’t new numbers. The reduction occurred ages ago (and is simply paper shuffling with no real-world implications anyway) as did the elimination of second-seat FGFA. HAL was responsible for developing that variant, and India’s decision not to proceed with it, and to reduce the level of indigenisation they are pursuing in general, is responsible for reduced indigenous workshare percentage that these officials are also complaining about.

Complaining about an engine which isn’t going to see service in Indian aircraft. Complaining about progress on a radar that India was meant to be replacing with its own anyway. When every item we can cross-reference with established information suggests the complaint is spurious at best, it’s pretty difficult to take the rest of it seriously.

Eurofighter pitches Typhoon as replacement for Polish Su-22 and MiG-29

A nation of shopkeepers indeed.