"China's New Carrier Heading for SCS?" Topic

It appears that the new Chinese carrier, which is now operational, may be heading to the South China Sea, in addition to China deploying more missiles on "their" islands in the region:

link

link

China has also, already deployed antiship missiles on the islands of the South China Sea as well, earlier this year:

link

"Beijing is defending the deployment of anti-ship cruise missiles to Woody Island in the South China Sea, according to a Wednesday statement from the Chinese foreign ministry.

"China's deployment of national defense facilities on its own territory is reasonable and justified," ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Wednesday.
"It has nothing to do with the so-called militarization".".

Gotta love that last line.

Wonder what it does have to do with?

"…the Y-62 has a guessstimated range of about +180 miles", so covers a good chunk of the SCS.

Here's hoping Nock Ten has a greeting for them.

Yes, that wind event will be interesting, could be some fun before-and-after satellite photos there.

Nock Ten is forecast to swing south and to weaken to a tropical storm. [I watch these storms closely]. The main Chinese occupied islands are further north in the East Sea [as we are supposed to call it here] so not much will happen. [EDIT – they do have a lot of outposts in the Spratleys and they will get hit by this storm].

Also – the 'carrier' [inverted commas to distinguish from more serious fleet carriers] will be able to avoid the worst of the storm by not sailing into it!

When it gets within range the local air forces will be flying more in order to get a closer look at it. It can get noisy as they fly almost over my house!

I suspect this carrier will be quite disappointing to the PLAN. It is after all their first foray into a very complex arena. I wonder how the Royal Navy will cope when it has to train aircrew to land on carriers again after a rather long hiatus. That kind of institutional knowledge is quickly forgotten. Then again – looks like they won't have any fixed wing aircraft for them…

Don't worry about the Royal Navy fast jet pilots. They've been training with the USN for quite some time.

Apparently, it sailed by Taiwan on its way to the SCS, in order to send a message to the new leader there, as well as the Taiwanese citizens.

Lots of missiles reportedly destined for their illegal, man-made bases in the SCS as well.

It will be good for the Chinese pilots to have lots of airfields to divert to when they fail to land on the carrier.