Your correspondent was surprised to learn that the People’s Republic of China would be happy to build an aircraft carrier:
A high-ranking Chinese military official has hinted that China’s fast-growing navy is seeking to acquire an aircraft carrier, a move that would surely stoke tensions with the United States military and its allies in Asia.
In an interview published in The Financial Times of London on Monday, the official, Maj. Gen. Quan Lihua, did not say whether China was building a carrier. But the general, a senior official of the Ministry of National Defense, said having one was the dream of any great military power. He suggested that the United States had nothing to fear should China acquire one for strictly defensive purposes.
“The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier,” he said in the interview. “Even if one day we have an aircraft carrier, unlike another country we will not use it to pursue global deployment or global reach.”
Because history is replete with examples of the deployment of aircraft carriers for purely defensive purposes.
I’ve only one request: YouTube the videos.
NIce target!
There were six carriers used defensively that come to mind immediately: The Red Castle, Province of Kaga, Blue Dragon. Flying Dragon, Flying Crane, and Fortunate Crane. (AKA Akagi, Kaga, Soryu,Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku.) Dec 7, 1941. Those who would laugh about Chinese carriers should think past the obvious steep learning curve, and remember they have all of our experience to shorten that curve. Just a thought.
I’m not sure I would consider the Japanese fleet to have been purely defensive in operation. Of course, when you’re down to 6 months worth of oil reserves and need to find a new source of same, while at the same time there’s a blue-water fleet in operation in the same region that isn’t inclined to ignore a Phillipine invasion, Pearl Harbor can be seen as a pre-emptive defensive strike to shore up your own economy, not to mention ensuring your army has the tools it needs to fight in China. Seen from one side, anyway.
Somehow I don’t think China is being so squeezed economically.
If they want a defensive weapon, they should build a new Yamato. Outside of 30 miles nobody cares. Carriers, by definition, are meant for force projection.
Let them build them — there’s going to be lead in the paint and carcinogens in the chow anyway, they’ll be lucky to sail past Singapore before the thing scuttles itself. And even if they’ve read our ops manuals what’s important isn’t in the manual — the details are passed down while at sea to the new recruits. There’s 30 years minimum before they learn from our basic mistakes, because that’s the time it takes to build Senior Chief’s and the institutional memory they retain.
The annoying thing is most of the stuff in my house has “Made in China” stamped on it, except for the kid and the dog. And I’m not sure about the dog, come to think of it, what with her brown eyes and small nose….
– Max
25Z:
Yes – and the Russians had even more years of watching (plus those a-hole Walker brothers) and look what they had/have to show for it. Like the Russians (and Indians, Brits, French, Canadians, Australians, Brazilians, Argentines, Japanese, etc.) before them, the Chinese will find the price of entry exhorbinantly high in terms of treasure and blood, the learning curve indeed steep and the level of play – varsity. Then will come, if it hadn’t already, the strategic assessment of the value and place of carrier-based air in their grander strategic scheme. Then we shall see whether they deem it a strategic necessity to build and maintain a true capability at sea or keep it a show horse to be rolled out only in carefully controlled environs.
- SJS
25Z
Just because I can buy myself a NASCAR vehicle doesn’t mean I know a damned thing about racing.
They have to learn all about it through doing, not talking, not modeling, not simulations or gaming.
SJS hits square on the mark.
And one carrier isn’t going to do them anything worth a bucket of warm spit. You need several, because one isn’t expendable, but one of several is. One carrier becomes an incredibly expensive white elephant, just like Yamato or Musashi.
It will be a show horse; why, because they can afford it.
Yak, beat me to it.
If they build their aircraft carriers like they build everything else, we have no worries. It’ll start to rust out within a couple of years and sink after five.
Might cause an environmental crisis, though, when the lead paint contaminates the ecological food chain. And it will probably continuously leak an abundance of fuel….
If they do build it, it will be financed with the money we send them every day.
What do you own that was “Made in America”?
Let them build it. It will give the bubbleheads something new to do. If we ever decide to go to war with China, that carrier becomes a submarine in about five minutes.
Can’t wait to see how they manage that getting aboard in the oh-dark-thirty, with vis at a half mile and the goo right down to about 300 feet. Hope they plan to buy lots of Sukhois…
They are.
China isn’t like the Soviet Union. The Soviets had no interest in sea control – they wanted sea denial. Cut Europe off from the United States, and they could waltz through the Fulda Gap all the way to the Atlantic.
China, on the other hand, is a trade power. They need shipping as much as we do. And trade powers have a nasty habit of fighting over control of trade routes. Add to that a geographically risky situation (U.S. allies are in good locations to cut Chinese trade), and you can see the potential for a clash.
No, the Chinese will play the carrier game until their money runs out. And I would not discount their chances. It only took the U.S. Navy fifteen years to go from the Langley to World War II…and we were working out tactics, doctrine, and operating procedures as we went.
Well, and they’re a craft, industrious lot as well. I wouldn’t count them out.
Just take a stroll through the campus of any of your favorite UC’s.
I’m not sure it’ll be pretty, but I figure they’ll get something together. They’re following our trail of blood and sweat instead of blazing their own.
The strategic issue I see is the one AW1 pointed out – your ability to use the asset is greatly limited when you only have one. Defenses would have to be pretty in-depth to protect it, and it’d be hard to hide when it’s sailing with that much support. Kinda hard to see how it might be used in a large-scale conflict. But it could be used to scare folks in the neighborhood.
And it’s going to be a looong haul getting the ship and airwing to all-weather operability 24/7/365.
Like Lex said – please YouTube the video.
Lex, in general I agree with you. Asians as a rule are great people, hard workers, fast learners, the whole deal. But, in a communist regime, with all that entails, I just don’t see these things being accomplished quickly. To simply hope to sail and at least match the USN they have to leapfrog 97 years of our experience. The PLAN will build the ships. The ships will be sound. The electronics game will be 4.0. But the whole purpose of carriers is to send the wing aloft to do harm to the enemy, then they MUST return so that they may do it again.
Even during workups the PLAN is going to have to do some really tough training with little time to get it done. No assumptions here, and I hope someone will be keeping a real close watch on them. This item alone would make me (as CNO) start screaming to Congres about more carriers.
I do love all that sabre rattling we do ’round here!
Sure, we need more carriers to counter any CHICOM build up but we also need aircraft to man the ships we have today. BTW, there is an ongoing F-18 story eeirly similar to the P-3 story found in yesterday’s Navy Times I linked in last weeks Orion bleg. This story is called:
“The F-18 Strike Fighter Limps Home”
-badbob of the b2 times
No. Just kidding. Actually it’s:
“Roughead To Be Briefed On F/A-18 Service Life Extension This Week”
(INSIDE THE NAVY 17 NOV 08) … Dan Taylor
NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, MD — F/A-18 Hornet program officials will brief the chief of naval operations this week on exactly how much it will cost to extend the service lives of legacy Hornets to 10,000 hours in order to help mitigate the projected strike fighter gap anticipated in 2017, Capt. Mark Darrah, the program manager, told Inside the Navy.
The service is facing a shortfall of 125 aircraft — 69 in the Navy and
56 in the Marine Corps — between when aging legacy F/A-18A-D Hornets start leaving service and the follow-on aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter, enters service. One way to bridge the gap is to extend the service lives of Hornets, which were originally intended to last 6,000 hours, and are now slated to be extended to 8,000 or even 10,000 hours.
Darrah’s program has drafted a report that will be out-briefed to CNO Adm. Gary Roughead Nov. 18 which will enable him to make an informed decision on how to proceed, the captain said Nov. 12 in an interview at his office here.
“What we did over the past three months is we looked at those areas and we decided and determined, ‘What do we need to do to those areas to get them to 10,000 hours?’” he said. “That process identified for us a cost.
We’re still in the process of getting that cost number under control and understanding what it means. That will be out-briefed to the CNO.
“Once we’re done with that, [and Roughead] says, ‘I understand,’ then we’ll be able to talk about what it might mean in terms of the budget,”
he added.
Darrah noted that with unlimited money and no schedule constraints, he could extend all the aircraft to 10,000 hours, but the CNO will have to decide based on his report how many aircraft it is worth it to extend, and then budget the money for it.
“We have to be fiscally responsible and understand what makes sense,” he said. “We need to figure out, ‘How many do we really need?’ And that’s still to be determined.”
The report to the CNO should help clarify what to do about the strike fighter gap, but it could be months before there is major movement on the issue because of the White House transition.
“We will learn a lot over the next several months, [but] I would be surprised . . . if anything dramatic happened in the next year in terms of our budgets or decisions on programs of record,” Darrah said.
“[President-elect Barack Obama] has got to get an inauguration done. So the F-18 program is on the list I’m sure, but it’s not at the very top.”
He added that he does not see anything major happening on the issue for the next six months.
The program is also getting an early jump on extending the service lives of the younger F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, Darrah noted. The aircraft, which is also supposed to fly for 6,000 hours, could be extended to 9,000 hours, he said.
The program is applying lessons learned from the legacy Hornet extension effort to the Super Hornet effort.
Starting earlier and focusing on all parts of the aircraft instead of just the airframe makes it more likely that an extension program would be successful, the captain said.
“It allows us to do things sooner — that keeps problems that could get bigger from getting bigger,” he said. “You can save money and you can extend life.”
Extending the service lives of current aircraft is one of three options for the Navy in dealing with the strike fighter shortfall. A second option, which has gained support with some lawmakers, is buying more F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
In the fiscal year 2009 defense appropriations bill, Congress called the projection of a 69-aircraft shortfall for the Navy the “most optimistic scenario,” and urged the service to budget for a third multi-year Super Hornet buy beginning in FY-10. Congress also stated that “cost reduction measures which will yield future savings for this program should be explored.”
Darrah said that buying more aircraft is probably inevitable if the Navy wants to eliminate the gap.
“We, at this point, understand we have to buy more strike fighters,” he said. “[Congress] wants us to prepare for that. It makes sense — it’s prudent. If there is a decision to do that second option . . . we’ll prepare leadership to do that.”
A third option is accelerating the ramp-up of Joint Strike Fighter buys, a more difficult prospect. Navy leadership has been focused on simply keeping the aircraft from falling behind. Earlier this month, the JSF program office told ITN that, due to funding cuts, there likely would be a delay in the initial operational capability of the Navy’s carrier
variant of the JSF. Any delay in JSF puts a great deal of pressure on the F/A-18 program, Darrah noted.
“Obviously, if there is a delay in JSF of any kind, it affects us,” he said. “It’s more pressure. It means those first two variables get a lot more attention. If JSF slides, we’ll do the analysis and tell [Navy leadership] what it means.”
—————————————————-
That poor ol’Shoe. As if he didn’t have enough problems with shipbuilding…
You know- I could save CAPT Darrah 30% of the fatigue life of his SuperHornets very quickly…And 30% less flight time or deferred flight time may be enough to get him to 11000 hours without any new wings or more SLEP!
How’s that? Well, seeing how each and every SuperHornet is an ovhd tanker at times and that for each 2 Hornets airborne you need one Hornet tanker onduty overhead, I would suggest bringing back the S-3B, thereby relieving the SuperHornet from all those flight hours and resulting in at least a 30% reduction in flight hour fatigue life.
Outcome of doing so?
#1- Fewer new SuperHornets needed as a bridge for JSF (to nowhere???) and
#2- more emphasis and resources would be available to keep Lex’s beloved legacy (I love saying that..) Hornets A-D flying longer until the F-35 arrives!
Op scheme- Two S-3B squadrons ala HSL community East and West. Send out 4 plane dets to cover all overhead tanking, COD and light Sea Control missions..Cost? A lot cheaper than one (1) new SuperHornet…How many would you need? I’d say about 35-40.
Almost sounds like a no-brainer, eh? Yep and that is exactly why it wouldn’t even be considered! They got no brains.
Serious stuff: If’n they don’t solve this problem this blog dries up! You know what that means? There will be no s-hot pics of bugs getting shot off the cat!
b2
We’ll probably see a mix extending A-D (but really mostly C/D; Bs are out, A+ is smaller component, micromanaged for lots of good reasons) and buying some more E/Fs (MYP 3). One real problem with extending the C/D life is that there’s a lot of recurring insp/work transferred to the fleet to keep it going. Getting it there is one thing; keeping it there is another. Can’t keep shipping ‘em back to the FRC.
Option Three above? Ain’t.Gonna.Happen.
The Chinese already own a carrier, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Varyag. It’s only one of a large number of ex-Russian ships and subs in their growing inventory.
I like the cover story they used originally when buying the carrier – it’ll be a hotel/casino…
B2, might want to talk to my son in law about keeping the War Hoovers flying first. They’re just a tad older than the -18 A-Ds.
Oh you deliciously evil man. Can we see the music videos also? Love to see them little Chinese folks doing the rap wit da commissars too. ……. As long as the commissars look kinda like Barbara Bach and not your friendly neighborhood Soviet Wendy’s commercial……..
SVIMVEAR…… Veddy Nice!
Spoken like a True supporter of the Force. Many Thanks.
Subsunk out.
I’m always amazed at the variety and quality of responses here, and this is no exception. Thank you all for the comments. I think Mike M and Brian can see what I was trying to say, though. Give them 10-15 years, and they’ll have maybe half a dozen carriers and support ships. Even if they only operate at, say 70% of the effectiveness of ours, that’s plenty to throw an offensive line around Taiwan, and the oil rich islands off the Chinese coast and make a move on Taiwan while we’re distracted elsewhere. Probably enough to make COMINCH count the cost of breaching that line for a few days, which would be all the time they’d need to reclaim their ‘lost’ province. I don’t doubt that there would be a lot of Chinese metal on the bottom when it was over, but my oldest boy has spent a lot of time trying to track their diesel boats, and trust me; they’d get their share of the medals, too. They’d have Taiwan and effective control of a big chunk of the Pacific. Just depends on if they have the will to lose enough men and material to make it happen.
Byron,
You are right Byron, but S-3 Viking’s are Jack Lallane to the little F-18 A-C Hornet being Curt Cobain…Think about that for a moment.
The S-3B Viking has 11, 000 flight hours left on the airframe. Every Mauler should know that..plus, ALL Mauler mechs know the TF34 is supportable until 2030 with the USAF continuing to operate the engine on the A-10! Work on those AF engines is done at the Jax depot ..but you know that, right?
BTW, there is a squadron det of ISR equipped Vikings in IR today conducting ISR missions the P-3 cannot cover to finish pacification. Did you know that? Just saying.
bc,
How’re we gonna do all that F-18 work AND all that P-3 work ?(Prowlers- you’re SOL, sorry)?
Why do you think I linked the 2 articles together? Naval Aviation is one budget you know…Just what kind of industrial capacity do you think this nation has to do all this work? Each P-3 zone 5 replacement takes 21,000 man hours to complete not including all the individual NRE….that’s the gist of what I’m talking about. It ain’t money necessarily, it’s schedule/capacity.
You’re outta Shlitz but not Spin ‘buddy. Our carriers are going to have less Strike-Fighters (what a macho term!) now (65 aircraft airwings-LOL) and forever because of no-brainers ignored! Same thing with the P-3 to P-8 Ghost Gap. We’re stuck on stupid!
Basically, poor ol’CNO has the same problem with aviation as he does with shipbuilding.
b2
Two Five says “Give them 10-15 years, and they’ll have maybe half a dozen carriers and support ships” seems a bit optimistic with his projections. One good carrier takes at least 5 years to build (how long have they had the varyag?). Add in the building learning curve that number will get stretched to 8-10 for just the first one. Then you need several years of aggresive ops to shake out the bugs and establish the proceedures. I doubt you will see several keels at the same time in the shipyards as building more then a couple before you learn enough would be foolish. More likely then to get to a decent fleet of 4-5 carriers we are looking 25+ years out. Of course they have the time.
Here you guys were talking 70s last week, and you’ve already forgot the ol’ fashioned Jimmah Cahtah ways of meeting shortfalls:
1. reduce goals. Just require less flying every year, and the USN will have plenty of airplanes of every type.
2. reduce methods. Mothball or sell (to the PLANavy?) half of the carriers. What better way to show our newly cooperative spirit in the world? and it will force fewer hours out of the Hornets.
3. reduce the missions. Task the E/F for tanker duty exclusively. Think of the cost savings without all those expensive g’s being wasted on ACM!
b2: I get most of where your’e coming from, especially wrt to budgets and stuck on stupid, but for the Hornet life extensions it is very much more about money than capacity (the F/A-18 and P-3 have separate FRCs). Fund the program, they can do.
Although the numbers may flex you can bet our carriers will continue deploy/fight/win with sufficient deckloads of Hornets (A+/C/D/E/F/G) for quite some time.
This ain’t from a fanboy perspective, jest sayin.
Well, I for one believe the Chinese claim to defensive purposes for their planned carrier(s).
Similarly, I’m sure the Chinese won’t mind – not in the slightest – if the Japanese and South Koreans stack their new escort flattops with F-35Bs.
After all, they’ll have more to be defensive about…….
Dave,
One good carrier takes 5 years to build when it: a) is Nuc-u-ler powered. b) Built by the only shipyard that can build it. c) Built by union labor where an 8 hour workday results in about 5.5 hours of actual work.
Put 10,000 chi-coms (Not to be confused with Chicago Communists) who work 12 hours a day, build it to run on DFM (or the blood of dissenters if you want) at “Mao’s Shipbuilding and Drydock company” and I bet they get it done a bit better.
Nose
Union guy.
Y’all keep forgettin’. In ’bout a year’s time, we’re gonna be sit down, beer drinkin’ bubbas with Beijing. That bein’ the case, they’s a whole mess of retired CV’s sittin’ in PSNS Bremerton and just screamin to be FMS material for some deservin’ furrin’ nation.
Just think! We’ve got Ranger, Indy, Connie, and the Hawk all sittin’ there and bored as Hades just lookin’ for something to do.
Now, Beijing gets good with us, we refurbish a platform for ‘em, and they sail away happy…with their solemn promise not to do anything evil…promise…
And…and…here’s the best part. We’ll even train the crews! How’s that for international relations? We’d sure like for ‘em to operate safely and knowledgeably, dontcha know?
Ya gotta hand it to ol’ Chairman Barry. He promises to remake America. Ain’t y’all just so proud of him?
bc,
I am well aware of the FRC SW and SE and which aircraft they support. You seem to think you just fly one in, park it, drop off the keys and pick it up in a week! Not.
NRE must be completed for each job, materials with long lead times procured, special tools designed and finally thousands of man hours expended to complete the work. Setbacks and breakage are standard. All require custom work… This ain’t WWII and Rosie the Riveter doesn’t exist…
Throughput, capacity, call it what you will, the FRCs can only do so much..That is where private industry comes in especially for the foreign customers with the same aircraft. It ain’t an easy situation and despite how much $$ you throw at the problem the schedule drags you down..Uniformed officers in both articles are “spinning it” because they both know they will be fighting for the same limited resources for $hit happens issues…The P-3 and Hornet problems aren’t acquisition or planned maintenance actions. Rather, they are emergent and unexpected structural component replacement/rework. IE- the frame on your BMW just cracked before 100,000 miles/5 years and you have no warranty yet you have to go to work every day…
I would also remind you the Pirates, the Iranians and the Chicom-Rooskie threat grows along with all the other commitments, including deployments under the shell game called FRP the USN has…There is no Reposition Day or POM scheduled due to world events.
That’s where no-brainer solutions come in..Sometimes you can’t buy or clever your way out of a mess…
b2
b2: I have nothing but respect for the S-3 (the men, machines and the missions; I grew up next door to them, east coast and west). Your no-brainer would work, except one thing: the tanking mission has been assigned to the Rhino. I ain’t disagreeing with you, or agreeing with them, but of the few things I do know, NAVAIR doesn’t go backwards well, or often. Once in, they’re in. I’m afraid the S-3 will sit it out at AMARG or continue life in the Forestry/FMS afterworld.
I know you know so I should leave it alone.
One odd thought on a Chinese aircraft carrier, what if they’re not planning on taking over Singapore but rather stopping piracy of their trade fleet?
Given they’ve no skin in the game with respect to the crew, the ship, or for that matter much of the cargo, having a carrier to sink a pirated cargo ship not of theirs with only a half-million dollars worth of stuff for Wal Mart isn’t a bad deal. Insurance has to pay up, the crew isn’t theirs, the ship isn’t theirs, pirates learn who owns that sandbox.
For a trading nation dependent upon the sea sometimes it might be best to kill not only the messenger but also everybody he’s ever met.
That would not be unusual for the Chinese.
– Max
bc,
Sigh….Si, Senor.
b2
Who said “A journey of a 1000 miles begins with but a single step.”?
So it’ll cost time, money and lives to build up a carrier force? The Chinese are quite willing to expend all of the above, and aren’t nearly as reticent to expend the 3rd factor as we are if it’ll speed things up. This may not end up our problem. It may end up our children’s problem. But if we sit on our lead we’ll lose it.
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