Developing carriers is hard!

Who knew it would be so difficult? You mean we can't just buy someone else's obsolete carrier and jump directly into the game?

 

I have been trying to explain that to the China Fanbois for years now.

The US is where it is in Carrier Dominance because they not only were the first country to actually research this technology, they continued to pursue the advancements in it for almost a century now. From the first crude take-offs and landings on a converted ship to angled decks, nuclear power, and super carriers. The US has been in the forefront of this in every step of the way.

And it is also not just the carrier itself (which most fanbois totally miss), but the ships that support and protect it. From the cruisers and destroyers that keep the carrier safe, to the huge number of support ships and aircraft that most people forget about that keep them supplied in everything from bandaids and mail to replacement jet engines, fuel, and fresh fruit and milk for the galley (so the sailors can have fresh ice cream).

Far to many people think that having a carrier makes you a superpower. That is a fantasy and a badly mistaken one. That is like saying that having a nuke makes you a superpower. Well, India, Pakistan and Israel have had them for a decade or more, yet I would not count any of them as "superpowers".

I might believe the propaganda of the Chinese Carrier, once it has been in actual operation for a decade or so. At this time, I think it is a glorified and overpriced propaganda stunt, and I bet within 5 years it will be spending 80% of it's time tied up on the dock, and spend less then 5% of it's time outside of Chinese Territorial waters.

 

I'm pretty sure the Brits invented the aircraft carrier.

 

Pretty sure not.

I am sure the Brits followed closely though. So it is probably irrelevant in this context.

The point is that the US has certainly led the way in this technology almost from the beginning. America has such a massive lead that it would take many decades for China to catch up even if America's carrier tech came to a complete stop today. Numerically, the US not only has more carriers than any single nation, it has more than all nations combined.

China thinks it can buy it's way into modern technology, and that is simply not realistic IMO. If you buy and steal your technology from someone else instead of developing it internally, you will never be more than 2nd best.

 

LOL! I was looking at that link in the "Carriers in Service" section...every nation in the world has like 1 or 2...you scroll down to the US, and we have 19!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_carrier#Aircraft_carriers_in_service

 

you can buy a carrier, you can't buy the aviators that can land on them.

 

we only have 8 real carriers in service..you can fly a Harrier off a freighter. the Enterprise is being decommissioned, the Lincoln is waiting to be refueled and another is waiting to be refitted (the Washington, i believe).

 

Depends on the definition of 'aircraft carrier'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_aircraft_carrier
The US did some early experiments with launching aircraft from ships, as did some others, but in terms of building actual carriers it was behind both the UK and Japan. 'Invented' is a difficult term in this context, because it was an experimentation and development process, but the first true 'aircraft carriers' were certainly not built by the USA, but by the UK (and, arguably, by Japan).

It wasn't until part way through WWII, post Pearl Harbor, that the USA began to really take the lead. Unsurprisingly, really, since it had greater resources, more money, and wasn't having its homeland bombed at the time! I guess it may also have been something of a higher priority for the US in some ways at that point than for the UK, since the major, immediate threat to the UK was from just across the channel (and it had land bases in other regions to operate aircraft from too), and carriers obviously weren't required for getting planes that distance. The navy was important to the UK for protecting overseas interests, but not really for protecting itself quite so much. The US, on the other hand, was dealing with the pacific islands and Japan, so probably needed them more.

After the war, the US was still wealthy, where the UK, Japan, Germany and France were not so much anymore. Russia/USSR never really went in for them in a big way anyway (I guess because it's main need to defend/attack has always been overland), so the US surged ahead, and remains a long way ahead.

 

That is true to a large extent, but the USA's current superiority in aircraft carriers itself is proof that, over time and given the right circumstances, ideas and technology can be taken from others and then built on to advance beyond them. China does have massive resources of its own, and it's ability to overtake others if the circumstances are right shouldn't be ignored.

That can't be assumed, in the same way that the 'two power standard' couldn't be assumed to put the UK's navy way ahead of the rest of the world on a long term basis, because all it really did was create the incentive for others to engage in a Naval 'arms race'. If China decided to prioritise aircraft carrier development, and made a concerted effort to develop what it already knows about US and other ships, and if the US didn't decide to follow suit and engage in a serious (and very expensive!) aircraft carrier 'arms race' with them, the reality is that they could probably overtake the US within 10 years without too much difficulty.

 

But who is claiming that was the Chinese intention. Anyone who has spent more than 30 seconds beyond Wikipedia knows the timelines for naval technology. But the US never had any real significant edge in carrier technology until the late 50's.

But to the point of the thread, the Chinese have always said their intention was to use the Russian carrier as a template to designing their own ships. They want the ship to develop their own carrier operation processes and look at what sort of aircraft they will need to develop to make their carriers effective

 

Money alone is insufficient to develop new technology. They are far behind us in aircraft technology despite prioritizing that. I have seen no evidence at all that China is capable of overtaking us within a decade, even if they poured all their cash into the military.

 

Carriers need a whole fleet of ships to defend them and keep them and their aircraft operational. I wouldn't look at the US carriers, they are miles ahead of anything else, so it's pointless even trying to catch them. I would look more at what the UK has been doing with the Queen Elizabeth class carriers, they are much cheaper, easier to build, have far less crew needs and you don't need the massive infastructure that comes with nuclear carriers. China is nowhere near even the UK in terms of technolgy and experience, still about 10 years behind. China needs better replenishment, cruisers, destroyers, attack and hunter-killer submarines, better aircraft, short range missles and so on, they are not very good right now, and the problem is they aren't learning from the British or Americans, the only countries to fight wars with carriers, but the Russians. The French would love to help the Chinese, and sell them billions of military equipment and technology, so I would watch out for that.

 

I agree to an extent, but it wouldn't take much of a change in circumstances (a change in priorities and method on their part, a decent bit of spying on what the opposition are doing, and a few particularly gifted designers, all of which are entirely possible and could have a big effect quite quickly) to allow them to. It's not just about money, or about where exactly hey are now, but about the context of what is going on in China and in the outside the world that could make things change very rapidly. I wouldn't be wise to assume that they are so far behind that they couldn't catch up quite rapidly.

 

The carrier concept was originally developed separately by both the US and Royal Navies. These were separate programs, but working on pretty similar timelines. The US had the first take-off and landing, the Brits the first take-off and landing while under way. You also had the Japanese with their own program, and they were the first to actually conduct a military attack with carrier based aircraft.

The US Navy had the USS Langley, our first Aircraft Carrier, converted from the collier USS Jupiter. At the same time period, the Brits took an uncompleted passenger ship and converted it while under construction into the HMS Argus. But the Japanese were the first to build a ship specifically as a carrier from the beginning (Imperial Navy Ship Hōsh&#333.

So the argument of who did what first is equally valid for all 3 of these nations, the US, the UK and Japan. And read carefully, I never claimed the US was "first", simply that it was in the "forefront" and is still there to this day. Japan has not had carriers in over 60 years, and the UK carriers are only a pale shadow of what they once were.

They are not even close for a great many reasons.

China has within the last 2-3 decades gone through a frenzy of ship building and upgrades. And essentially what this has left them is a mess of a Navy. They have lots of frigates and some destroyers of over a dozen models, but they have no cruisers and a single carrier.

Add to that the fact that they have little to no "Blue Water" experience, their ships s[end almost all of their time tied up along the wharfs.

They also have little to no experience in operating large combined fleets, generally they work in groups of no more then 2-3 frigates. Not even close to the massive dance a Carrier Group is, consisting of a dozen or more ships all working together.

We also know they have some serious issues with UNREP (UNderway REPlenishment, getting resupplied while at sea). The PLAN has been screaming for years now that they need facilities in the Middle East, because they are not even able to fully support and supply a single small fleet only a few thousand miles away.

The surface ships they have now (frigates, destroyers) are really not really designed with the idea of protecting other ships, they are primarily designed with self-protection in mind. So they are going to have to design quite a few more ships that have the primary goal of protecting a large carrier.

And they still lack the aircraft needed. A lot of people are talking about the new fighters they are developing, but what about the other aircraft needed? Where is the AWACS? Where is the "large" cargo plane, like the C-2 Greyhound? Because they are going to need these if they are going to be able to operate effectively, and I have found no sign that the PLAN is working on anything like these aircraft.

China is going to take decades to even get to the place that the US was in the 1950's.

 

But there are things that no amount of money can buy. And that is training and experience.

The kids serving in the Navy today was mostly taught by folks my age, and we were taught by our fathers, and their fathers. Our Navy has been operating carriers for almost a century now, with the old Chiefs teaching the young kids their 20-30+ years of training and direct experience. And this kind of "Institutional Memory" is invaluable.

And the same thing goes for the pilots. Our Navy has been training Naval Aviators for almost a century, and our premiere advanced school ("Top Gun") has been in operation for over 40 years now. Today the instructors are veterans of the Gulf War and Iraq. Prior to that they were Vietnam vets.

Once again, China has none of that. You can spend like a drunken sailor on liberty, but you can't buy training and experience. And I am pretty sure that in the first few years that carrier is going to be laid up quite a bit for repairs because some hotdog came in a little to fast and did not follow the meatball and smeared himself all over the deck.

 

I don't think in naval terms the Chinese will ever catch up the US. It really doesn't matter how good your equipment is, it is the attitude to the combat that really counts. And American commanders have a tradition hundreds of years old of balls to the wall action. I just see no evidence of that confidence or ability in the Chinese.

 

There is a bright shining line that delineates real modern aircraft carriers and the wannabes: The steam catapult.

 

So are you saying the New Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth class carriers are wannabes?

 

the Royal Navy changed it's mind.

 

The Brazilians have a 39,000 ton aircraft carrier that has steam catapults.
The French have a 65,000 ton aircraft carrier that has steam catapults.
With one exception, all US aircraft carriers displace about 100,000 tons and have steam catapults.
The new USS Gerald Ford has electromagnetic catapults that will eventually supplant steam catapults in US service.

Nobody else - not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the Indians have catapults. The British invented the catapult but no longer use them as their carriers have gotten too small to use the high-performance planes that need the boost to fly.

High performance planes (air superiority fighters and heavily-laden strike aircraft) need the extra speed (about 125 MPH) to be able to take off. Planes of lesser capability can live without catapults.

Catapults require enormous energy. On a Nimitz-class (the world standard) carrier, one reactor drives the ship's propulsion, and the second reactor drives the catapults plus the balance of energy needs (called the "hotel load.")

France and Brazil are small-timers but have genuine carriers. Russia, Britain, India, and China are wannabes.

 

that is coming to an end. the US Navy is moving past steam.

 

Until the first Queen Elizabeth is in fleet service, the RN retains "wannabe" status.

I suspect the first generation of the RN's new real carrier pilots will be trained on US carriers, or maybe the Charles DeGaulle.

 

Yup. The catapult system on the Ford has worked out well and is gentler on airframes.

Unfortunately, the Ford system cannot be retrofitted on the Nimitz class. So steam catapult will persist past 2050.

 

The British QE class carriers are very good small crew and much cheaper to run, so we don't have cats and traps. To have steam you need nuclear power, to have nuclear power you need nuclear and refueling infastructure on land, which costs billions. The British carriers are 65,000 tons, they are large enough to have cats and traps, and operate the F-18, Rafale, F-35C and E-2. They would need a independent way of getting steam, which would mean increasing the size of the carrier and changing the inside of the carrier, that was going to cost £5 billion so the government decided to stick with STOVL. We should have designed the carrier from the outset with cats and traps, for cost reasons Lord Alun West and the Labour government decided not to. This doesn't mean the British wannabes, it means we have different way of doing things. I can assure you HMS Queen Elizabeth will be the second best carrier in the world when she comes into service in 2016, the problem is no F-35B.

Also you forget about STOBAR aircraft like the Naval Typhoon, which the QE class could have used. Catapults aren't the be all and end all of carriers and there strike aircraft.

The Brazilians carrier is an old French carrier it's about 30,000 tons. The French carrier Charles de Gaulle is 45,000 tons. Also in future the UK could add electromagnetic catapults to the QE class carrier, if the US gives us the technology.

 

We are still training on US carriers and amphibious assult ships, not sure about off Charles de Gaulle, which it looks like you copied off wiki. Hahaha. The problem is no aircraft, the F-35B will not be operational for ages.

So in 2016 the British stop being wannabes and become what? Hahaha.