"China Navy works..." Topic

"There are three Type052D and two Type055 Destroyers (totaling to five) under construction at Dalian shipyard alone side with "Shandong" China's second aircraft carrier. Photo credit (here). Additionally, there are yards in Shanghai and Guangdong producing surface combatants for the China Navy (tm) in parallel, all indicating that 2018 will be another dumpling-making year.

Nuclear subs are manufactured at Huludao in Liaoning, not too far from Dalian. The inland city of Wuhan is generally responsible for building conventional submarines…."

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Amicalement
Armand

The world is kow-towing to the Dragon.

Here you go, Dan. You're welcome.

Hope they don't kill too many sailors getting used to blue-water ops.

Every navy has to start somewhere. It didn't take the Japanese long at all to figure it out when they surprised the West, I doubt that China will have too much difficulty considering they already have ships carting goods all over the world.

The oceans are littered with the sunken ships of navies who underestimated their opponent's ability to sort out naval operations.

For an American example, look no further than the naval actions of the War of 1812. We never seriously threatened the UK as a naval power, but we poked them hard where they underestimated us.

The Chinese once were a very strong naval power and are aiming to be so again.

I dunno, the Chinese were only a Naval power for about 20 years, some 500 years ago. Then the Emperor got bored.

It's not like the US or UK, where we've had ships going to the far corners of the earth for 200+ years (300+ years for the Brits) continuously.

It takes time to develop the skills, and those skills are extremely perishable. To give you an idea, my crew (missile subs, so two crews) went out to sea roughly every 5 months and were gone for 3 months. We still spent about a week doing refresher training getting people back up to speed, and that's with simulator training during the time when the other crew was out to sea. (SSBN operations are ~3 months out with Gold Crew, ~1 month refit with both crews and a shipyard fixing things, ~3 months out with Blue Crew, ~1 month refit with both crews and a shipyard fixing things, etc.)

In 5 months, my skills driving the boat went from +-0.3deg in coursekeeping and +-2 feet depth control to +-3deg and +-20 feet! With about a week's worth of simulator time in the middle. Not counting damage control and firefighting simulators.

It's going to take the Chinese a LOT of work to get up to the level of the Japanese (who are not exactly slouches, but don't spend enough time out in the blue water). They're going to take about that much more work to get up to the level of the USN when I was in (though I admit I was on a Battle E boat, best crew in the Pacific). The final 10% of 'finished' seems to take 90% of the man-hours. We drilled 5 days a week while underway, and had 1 day a week of classroom training. Sunday was the only day we didn't drill. If you're not doing things at that level, you're not going to be competitive.

The Chinese has always big patience….

Amicalement
Armand

We think in 2 year cycles in the US, depending on which Party is getting elected when. The winning Party dismantling or de-funding half of what the previous Party approved and started up. Then it all starts up again, when the other Party returns the favor. Sometimes plans that cost tens of millions are scrapped much sooner than that, just because of an unfavorable news article. Two steps forward, one step back.

Communist China doesn't have that "problem", even under its current capitalist facade. :)

When the Party leadership sets their eyes on a 10-year or 20-year plan, they typically mean it, even if the average citizen has to tighten their belts a notch or two. It's not as if their vote will ever count. And their "news" media will always justify to the public what the leadership is doing, so public opinion is not an issue.

The government saves years or decades on R&D alone, by stealing and hacking IP, specially by offering to have "joint ventures" with outside partners (with offers too good to refuse) and then ending the partnership when they are in a position to counterfeit the products themselves, using their own "private" corporations.

Dan
PS. 28mm Fanatik, thanks for those posters. I already had most of them.

Lion has it right. (and Dan, you have it WRONG in a lot places). It'll take YEARS for the Chinese to develop the corporate culture to get the best out of their equipment. Example: The US has been at the carrier game for nearly a century. The Chinese? Their first homebuilt carrier launched in 2012. All the study and reverse engineering takes you up to the point of HOW something works; it doesn't tell you WHY. And without that, you'll make a lot of mistakes along the way (OH!! So that's why that's done that way!!!). Can't wait until they try their first night carrier landings….

What's even more amusing is that the Chinese are basing their program on the ex-Sov program. You remember those stirling experts of carrier tech, the Russians, don't you? Yeah, neither do I….

Charlie 12: "It'll take YEARS for the Chinese to develop the corporate culture to get the best out of their equipment. Example: The US has been at the carrier game for nearly a century. The Chinese? Their first homebuilt carrier launched in 2012."

Yes. Communist China is new to the carrier race. Something has clearly changed in their world outlook for them to now feel the need to make their own carriers. By the way, 2012 was also the same year they began taking over the South China Sea reefs and converting them into island bases. Some might choose to see all of this* as a coincidence, I don't.

Just curious … how many carriers has the US built since 2012? How many have we decommissioned since then? In other words, are we growing? Or are we static?

Dan
* Along with the new Chinese naval bases in Sri Lanka, the Red Sea, Namibia, etc. And their efforts to secure a land shortcut to the Persian Gulf at Gwadar, Pakistan. And their uranium mines purchased in Bolivia and elsewhere. And their extensive land purchases in Africa. And their new interest in troop deployments on U.N. peacekeeping missions. And their larger than usual sales of weapons in Africa and elsewhere. And their troop deployments in Afghanistan. Most of this activity taking place in just the last 5 or 6 years. Communist China's dragon is definitely stirring. Yet our people seem way more interested in internal political bickering and on what is going on in Iran and NK (two of China's close friends, by the way).

US carriers are a significant step above the current Chinese carriers. Nearly twice the displacement and designed for catapulting fully-loaded birds off the deck.

The Chinese carriers are about 200 feet shorter and don't have catapults, which significantly reduces not just how many planes they can carry, but how heavily loaded the planes can be.

The USN has been losing carriers since the end of the Cold War, mostly because we decommissioned the 3 we had left over from WW2 (Midway class), and all the rest of the conventionally-powered carriers from the 1950s and early 1960s.

I think the US is down to too few carriers, since you need 3 carriers to have one at sea. The US currently has 11 or 12 carriers, enough to have 4 at sea at any one time. in 1991, we had enough carriers to have 7 at sea, but 3 of those were too small for the newest and best aircraft.

Yes, China can be a threat. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of time. 50 years, maybe. Might be as little as 30. But not in the next decade.

You need to have the ship captains that have been driving carriers since the start of their career, and air bosses that have been flying planes off carriers since the start of their careers. That's at least 20 years in the USN. Further, you need those ship captains and air bosses to have been doing best practices for their entire careers, not discovering said practices at the start of their careers! So there's probably another 10-30 years to develop the institutional experience necessary to play with the big boys.

China is undergoing an ambitious naval modernization much like Japan did over the course of the latter 19th and early 20th century: link

It won't be accomplished overnight, but it will be accelerated and take much less time than starting from scratch as in the case of the British and American naval tradition.

Here's an interesting report of PLAN's modernization efforts for those of you who like some light reading: PDF link

Interesting indeed!

thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

I wonder if the move towards "trust scores" will help or hinder their labor structure for these projects.

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The trust scores should go up after this:

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Dan