Chinese aircraft carrier program

walle83 wrote:

Nice photo showing the two deck layout of the island... the lower row of windows are clearly for operating the ship, while the upper deck is for air operations.

From the side views you can see neither deck goes right around the island, but it certainly seems to be a better solution than having two island structures...

GarryB wrote:

From the side views you can see neither deck goes right around the island, but it certainly seems to be a better solution than having two island structures...

Good to see that you've come around to the idea of a ONE island structure on modern carrier designs.

Good to see that you've come around to the idea of a ONE island structure on modern carrier designs.

I see benefits of both designs, the twin islands means you can optimise the location of both teams of people (one controlling the air group and running deck operations and the other steering the ship and communicating with the other ships in the surface action group).

If one Island means a huge island then I support two tiny islands, but this appears to be a very compact island design, which I like as well.

You can see from the side shot the enormous volume of the Island structure taken by the engine exhausts/smoke stack, so with a nuke you could probably make the Island rather smaller... but this is a clever and tidy looking design.

The flat decks with no ski jump make it look American... be funny if they took the buildings away and there are some huge ass Trebuchets sitting there ready to launch planes...





Just joking... I can't wait to see the first aircraft take off flawlessly... this is a serious step forward for a country with such a long cultural history but such a short history of naval aviation at sea.

Great looking carrier design. They are probably hiding those EMALS deliberately
The Island structure is very neat and not much larger than the Ford class and like the Ford it provides for excellent all round visibility.

I wonder what aircraft will go on it. J-15 is a dead end and they need a new plateform. J-31 is said to be the new naval fighter but it is just a prototype aircraft that would need years to be adapted and mastered for carrier use. J-20 is too big.

Maybe mig-35 has a chance since it is a mig-29k with more modern avionics. At least until they come up with a 5th generation plateform.

Much as I would like to see the MiG-35 or Su-33 get the job... these planes were adapted for heavier landings and takeoffs but were not modified for assisted takeoffs AFAIK.

They would need updates to their front wheel to prevent it being ripped off.

Fortunately one of the advantages of EMALS over Steam cats is that it can start off a little slow and then accelerate based on the load it detects during the launch, so no need to set it up for aircraft weight or other features.

With the steam system you had to put information in like the type of aircraft and the weight of fuel it is carrying, as well as its payload weight and type and other factors as well to ensure it can get the aircraft up to take off speed by the time it reaches the end of its stroke.

Pulls too hard and it rips off the front wheel and the plane will most likely end in the water. Doesn't pull hard enough and the plane drops off the end of the deck into the water.

Or worse pulls hard enough to rupture the wings or external fuel tanks being carried and creates a massive fireball that burns till it falls into the water...

With operational cats the aircraft performance no longer needs to be sprite to operate safely so I would go for heavier aircraft just because they should be able to carry more fuel and more weapons... in 5 years time being able to take off and climb to 15km altitude and launch some mach 10 scramjet powered AAMs with flight ranges of 1,000km will make them very potent and capable interceptor fighters...

I wonder if they will go with single engined fighters or stick with twin engines?

A naval variant of the twin engine J-31 (dubbed J-35) made it's first flight in October 2021. A CATOBAR variant of the J-15 is also under development and both these fighters will likely serve on the new Fujian carrier.

And he says that the J-35 is more Russian than F-35. Mig was consulting on it. Which is what I've always said

MiG has been working on its own light 5th gen types and it would make sense for China to pay for consulting work to be done by them to speed up the process and add quality to the result.

There are rumours they got the technical plans for the F-35 as well so maybe down the track they could offer their services to fix the design for the Americans too...

J-35 is a dumb copy of f-35. Open your eyes. They made it after hacking f-35 program.

This is the reason they should throw this project at garbage and create a real fighter. F-35 is a very bad design from the begining, mainly because of it small size that make impossible to have good internal bays and weapons, a copy of it will also be bad.

Small 5th gen fighters are bad. Even checkmate is almost the same size as su-57. Packing weapons, fuel and system internally require too much space to use a small design.

I can't agree, the Chinese already knew the F-35 was not exactly what they wanted and is not just a blind copy... for a start it is a twin engined design with two smaller engines instead of one really really big one which does free up internal space for weapons and fuel.

If you eliminated the VSTOL requirement and just had a land and carrier based cat launched aircraft they could have made a much better design that would be more like the stealthy F-16 they wanted instead of the stealthy Buccaneer they got.

Note I like the Buccanner but it is a strike bomber not a fighter.

The ideas behind the F-35 all made sense and it would still be a workable system if they weren't so greedy and the military was a bit more realistic.

They focused more on making it cancel proof than they did on making it a capable powerful aircraft... in this weight class that does not mean exceeds the performance of the F-22, it means smaller and lighter and cheaper to operate and able to do most things the bigger aircraft can do over shorter distances with lighter payloads.

The Checkmate seems to be based on the Su-57 and uses parts and systems and equipment which will be good for keeping it cheap, though I don't think having one engine instead of two is going to reduce operating costs on its own all that much.

BTW I don't think leaving the buildings on top of that Chinese carrier indicate the EMALS cats are not ready... obviously they still have to take them out to sea and see if they work properly but I suspect the buildings are more to hide them from prying eyes for now... why let them get an early view.

Hell you could open each end and leave them in place and test them with drones or weighted dummies that fit inside those structures for tests before they test them on aircraft... which would be a sensible idea.... and really annoy western spies and analysts who will of course say it is evidence they are not ready or are vulnerable to salt air or some such shit... despite these structures clearly not being hermetically sealed to prevent salt air getting in.

Small 5th gen fighters are bad. Even checkmate is almost the same size as su-57. Packing weapons, fuel and system internally require too much space to use a small design.

To be fair the Su-57 is not a huge plane... it is closer in size to the MiG-35 than the Su-35.

It makes sense to have two different sizes of fighters... the bigger heavier more capable types max speed and range, but smaller aircraft are also useful in closer and allow more planes to be carried.

Having only big planes reduces the numbers you can carry while having only smaller planes limits their reach and sprinting ability.

If you get a contact at max range an Su-33 can fly in full AB all the way out to the target area to inspect the target... getting there much faster than a MiG-29K could manage because it does not have the fuel capacity to do a lot of high speed flight, but having MiG-29Ks means the Su-33s can be launched first to meet the first wave of attacking aircraft of missiles while a second wave of carrier aircraft can be the rest of your Su-33s who fly at max speed to intercept remaining targets also as far out from the carrier as possible while MiG-29Ks are launched to intercept the incoming threats closer to the carriers and also provide target data for ship launched long range missiles (250km and 400km ranged missiles).

With enemy forces closing the later launches of aircraft don't need to be big long ranged platforms that fly great distances from your ships.