China launches aircraft carrier the length of 13.6 brontosauruses China has launched its own aircraft carrier – the first ship of its type to be built from scratch in the rising Asian superpower's yards. The yet-to-be-named warship was launched at a ceremony held in the northeastern port of Dalian, according to local media via the BBC. Al Jazeera reported that the 50,000 tonne carrier (she …
Looking at the lottery of outcomes, and the fact that the House always wins, it could be argued that ownership of aircraft carriers is a casino operation. Cost overruns on the US Ford class carriers are hardly something to be proud of, and the UK's dismal mess of building carriers big enough to have catapults, but forgetting to spec them... well.
I would beg to differ with the article though that whilst China may have built this new one themselves, it is so similar to the Kuznetsov class that it clearly is a modest design revision with a bit of the fat trimmed - hardly a true indigenous capability. If they got the paper designs from Ukraine, then all they've done is bash the metal out for a near 40 year old design, if they've tried to recreate the designs from the metal then lord knows what sort of podge up they've got.
But, good luck to the them! Let the Chinese find out the hard way what a dismal money sink carriers are, how vulnerable they are to missiles. I suppose that their real purpose isn't to face off to the Yanks, but simply to frighten the nations round the South China Sea, and continue to prop up the regime of Fat Boy Kim.
when spending public money (hint: your internal organs risk becoming available for transplants) so it might not be such a money sink after all. Remember, in China when the communist party recommends you to be efficient you'd better be or else...
I would beg to differ with the article though that whilst China may have built this new one themselves, it is so similar to the Kuznetsov class that it clearly is a modest design revision with a bit of the fat trimmed - hardly a true indigenous capability.
While that's true, I think Chinas carrier plan seems to be based along the lines of use these to learn and work up to a full nuclear class carrier. I can't help thinking of the engineers from Kawasaki and Yamaha, coming over looking at Triumph bikes and learning from them.
I like your thinking, El_Fev. There's no need to copy yesterday's paradigms from the West. What if the Chinese were to have just one fighter jet per boat? They could build thousands of those! They could employ JATO units for vertical takeoff and then land on one of those new islands they're building in other people's waters.
The result? A dispersed 'carrier group' that's really hard to sink. A lot more flexible too. Heck, they could even sell units to tiny countries that could never afford a proper carrier!
Just don't call them junks...
AIUI aircraft carriers are fine for asymmetrical force protection, but floating deathtraps against any sort of adversary with ballistic missiles. Can't find the link but a few months back I saw a really good summary of the problem by someone who actually knew what he was talking about (I just nod sagely when I read stuff on the internet, it's really not my area.) I do know that the Falklands campaign was a couple of lucky missile hits away from being an utter catastrophe though; if Hermes or Invincible had been hit... thousands of dead, goodnight Vienna, and hello a whole new parallel universe with a completely different history of the 80s (in the UK anyway.)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-carriers-specialreport-idUKKBN16G1CX is the nearest thing I can find with a couple of mins searching.
EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99NLoPtuZVY is a rather dramatic animation of how you wipe out a CBG with one tactical nuclear launch. AIU ships have very little realistic defence against ballistic missiles, whther conventional or nuclear tipped. Looks pretty quick, anyway, I'd rather be vapourised than trapped in a dark upturned metal box listening to the downflooding.
@Aladdin Sane
Only 1 island
So only half as good as the QE class.
Alas, Extra Island vs Steam Catapult - no contest. Or, may be the shipbuilders managed to convince the MOD and RN - "Steam Catapults are so yesterday - what a Tier 1 Navy aircraft carrier needs is an extra island - just sign here and a lucrative job will be waiting for you when you leave government service"
Believe it or not...this is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. The Radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on Oct. 10, 1995.
US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.
CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!
US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!
CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
If you finely slice a adult brontie at an angle (to look classy) and lay the bits end on end, it'll easily reach 100m in length.
Yeah, but you've then got the problem of finding a large enough serving plate, cocktail sticks, and bowl of dip. It never all gets eaten, and honestly, who has fridge space for half a leftover sliced brontosaurus?
There seems to be a bug in El Reg's unit conversion page : It clocks the brontosausus at 138 m instead of the more reasonnable 22 m.
Thanks for pointing this out! It looks like this specific unit conversion has been wrong for quite a long time.
I've just now updated it to have a more meaningful value, i.e. exactly 157 linguine.
An aircraft carrier is something like 200-300 metres long. There's no way a Brontosaurus was 100 metres long. You're thinking of a Bolloxosaurus, surely?
I think you will find that the Chinese have been building a "pocket aircraft carrier" reminiscent of the German pocket battleships Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee of the Second World War.
A brontasaurus was about 20 metres long. Whilst a 40 metre long ship might be big for Western pockets, the Chinese have very deep pockets these days.
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The real threat are the 85+ missile boats with 8 missiles each as well as 120+ other surface ships with 2-8 missiles each. Mix of Sunburns and indigenous stuff. Enough to overwhelm the defenses of a typical Tier one navy carrier group by sheer numbers. That is the real danger. The carrier is mostly just to project defensive umbrella over the rest, not for offense.
Sort of. Remember the sea is very big and even a carrier task force is quite small compared to that. What all those missile boats need is targeting information. And it's very hard to get such information when your enemy has air dominance and can knock down your recon drones/aircraft before they can supply such data.
While most modern missiles can simply be fired down a vector with the hope that the onboard radar will pick something up, that is a rather poor method of engagement with a much lower chance of a successful strike.
The Chinese boat looks like purloined off Russian blueprints. Something in-between Kuznetsov class (after refurb which took the missiles out) and Ulianovsk class.
That is not surprising as they have purloined the blueprints of the fighter to fly from it and they are pretty well matched - Su-33 requires a specific ski-jump ramp config.
Their next (nuclear using stolen Ulianovsk class blueprints) carrier is more interesting. The two they have now are just to "lean how to use it".
That's a valid question from a nation who sort of has an aircraft carrier but no suitable aircraft to fly from it.
Bollocks. They have cloned Su-33 and they are flying the clones today off the ex-Varyag (Liaoing). So they definitely have MORE suitable aircraft than UK.
'That's a valid question from a nation who sort of has an aircraft carrier but no suitable aircraft to fly from it.'
Strictly speaking we've got 3* aeroplanes we could fly off it and a plethora of helicopters.
*I mean we have 3 actual F-35B, there are other aeroplanes we could fly off it given the space available but I don't think anyone's done the clearance process to operate an Islander from a CV.
Yeah, and the subhead claims it weighs as much as "5.7 million" badgers, yet the third paragraph specifies "5.74 million". That's some rounding error. Do 40,000 adult badgers mean so little to you, Register writers? Are you so callous and inured to the world that a compressed stack of millions of badgers is merely a numerical curiosity? For shame! I shall be cancelling my subscription forthwith, etc.
@Nolveys The mass difference between male and female African badgers is negligible, but if we are talking about European badgers then it's a different story.
And of course if it's honey badgers , well, I hear they don't give a ****.
Come to think of it, an aircraft vessel made of 5.7 million honey badgers would certainly send out that certain "don't mess with us" message. Anyone want to suggest it to President Trump?
Al Jazeera reported that the 50,000 tonne carrier (she weighs the same as 5.74 million adult badgers)
Given that it's a ship, isn't that going to be displacement tonnes? In which case it doesn't weigh the same as all those badgers -- they need to be displacement badgers.
Quick, someone fetch me a bathtub and an adult badger. Brock is going to have to learn how to hold his breath.
On the one hand, it's an impressive testimonial to China's shipbuilding industry.
But on the other it's a copy of a flawed design - they could at least have improved it, got rid of the ski ramp and put in a catapult. Yes I am aware that for a steam catapult they'd have needed a different power design. But the Royal Navy ran cordite powered catapults for many years on their older carriers which worked perfectly well - i.e. using a charge of slower burning gunpowder to drive the catapult.
Instead what they appear to have created is a copy of the Kuznetsov only with working toilets and on-board WiFi.
One such ship (the Liaoning) can be justified on the grounds of "we are training on how to run a carrier", but two such flawed designs is a bit silly.
Not so.
1. Buy and learn.
2. Build new based upon above incorporating learnings.
3. Repeat option 2.
Most of the time this is how all warships (of any type) have evolved - the exception being the "game changer" design (ie Dreadnought) which is a gamble for anything other than a country having an extremely large lead in power supremacy/projection.
Look at the carrier evolution since the early 20's - it took 20 years for most countries to realise that they were the "new" battleship - the tool of power projection. And it took a very pain lesson (ie WWII) to introduce the rapid changes necessary that enabled the current US nuclear carriers (we wont mention the current British fiasco).
Torpedo boats (the fore-runner of the modern small missile boats) and which we seem to think were a creation of WWII in the UK got their education from such events as the Agar's sinking of the Oleg in 1919.... but yet again the technical innovation over the next 20 years wasnt exactly staggering.
Thankfully China has not engaged in conflicts that will allow those sort of capability leaps - but also perhaps we are forgetting where China's interests lie - the countries which China is most likely intending to "impress" with its carriers have no possibility of getting their own - now or in the near future - which will of course ensure that China stays technologically ahead of them.
Personally I think most carriers are a waste of space & money - but its the reality in that they "look impressive" rather than what they can really deliver (I'm still not going to comment about the QE class) - in any real battle situation I would go for swarm tactics with low-level drones against targets and you dont need so many badgers to launch them from.....
I don't think so. China is long past simply copying stuff. They are also very patient and work their way towards long term objectives slowly, one step at a time. Then there is the circumstance that it's nice to have matching aircraft for your carrier. IIRC, China has also their own "copy" of the corresponding jets. None of these, ships or planes, are simple knock-off copies. The designs will have been evaluated, compared with other designs and somewhat altered, with future developments in the designs in mind.
As to catapults, well...
But on the other it's a copy of a flawed design - they could at least have improved it, got rid of the ski ramp and put in a catapult.
It was built to match their current fleet arm which uses a purloined blueprints clone of Su-33 which is not catapult launched. It is short take off, arrested landing.
A fascinating subject but in the context of the article : several centuries ago, in response to a Dutch strategy of designing and building Bigger and Better Vessels the UK Government threw resources at designing and building Even Bigger and Better Vessels. Some years later : British Empire.
Dunno how much but there must have been some advantage in having suitable trees in Blighty back then (after all, whisky is better when aged in American Oak barrels so why waste ours?) or possibly expertise in building barns helped.
Moral : Government support of R&D helps.
Moral 2 : There will be immense pride in China at having built their own carrier. You can guess where it could lead from here.
From http://www.badgerland.co.uk/animals/size.html
The weight of an adult badger varies throughout the year - depending on how much fat it has laid down for the winter months. In spring an adult badger will have an average weight of 8 to 9 kg, rising to 11 to 12 kg in autumn. Occasionally individual specimens do weigh more than this, but these are generally the exception rather than the rule. Also, in territories which provide a poor food supply for the badgers, weights may be less than this.
In addition, adult males will generally tend to be about 1 kg heavier than females of the same age; and lactating females will be as much as 1 kg less than non-lactating females.
"Western analysts have long feared a rise of Chinese naval power, particularly in the disputed areas of the South China Sea where an awful lot of Western goods pass through. "
Does it matter? Considering most of those "Western goods" are probably from China. So much it bought from China these days and made, we and the Americans would be screwed either way in a war. But also China would screw itself as it would have less of the world that would buy its stuff. What would happen to Apple for a start? They rely on China so much.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, pandas can swim ...
=====
well, I have heard that there is an equation to determine just how far a panda can swim, it goes something along the lines of :
how deep is the water here ?
about 150 feet
then the pandas can swim about 150 feet ....................
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