"China’s new aircraft carrier the Shandong could confront" Topic

… other nations in disputed South China Sea, state media says

"China's first home-built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, will focus its mission on the disputed South China Sea and having face-to-face encounters with foreign vessels, state media said on Wednesday.

The new warship, commissioned on Tuesday, would be used for combat, mainly for gaining control of seas claimed by China, rather than focusing only on training missions like China's first aircraft carrier the Liaoning, the reports said.

"The main strategic focus of the Shandong will be on waters around the South China Sea," a commentary published by a social media account affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily said on Wednesday…."

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Amicalement
Armand

I doubt the carrier will be conducting combat op landings on it anytime soon.

Good thing they have runways on many of those islands, since carrier landings on their vessels by their aircraft are still dicey propositions.

I suspect it also will be unwise for one of their few carriers to conduct "face-to-face encounters" with foreign warships, since the latter could quickly knock out, or destroy it with a SSM salvo or two. The era of broadside to broadside naval warfare is over, and has been for about 200 years.

Perhaps someone should inform their propagandists of that.

Glup!….

Amicalement
Armand

Thresher01,

Chinese have another ace up their sleeves. The Su-27/-30/J-11/-16 Flanker series of combat aircraft have quite a long combat range which assists operating from land bases. There's also H-6s equipped with long range heavy anti ship missiles including the new DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile and YJ-12 anti ship cruise missiles. The size of the J-20 has analysts assuming it to has considerable range and may be used as an AWACS/tanker assassin, thus reducing range of US aircraft.

The other is the increasing range of land based missile systems to deter western aircraft.

Bear in mind the Chinese strategy is based on dominance over island Chains. One suspects any Chinese carriers operating in the first and second island chains would be operating without support from land based aircraft and missiles.

As for anti- shipping capability, US ships are very poorly equipped for it. AGM-84 Harpoon lacks range and lethality compared to some Russian/Chinese systems. The new Block II+ ER upgrade increases range to similar to Chinese YJ-83 which equips even the small Type 56 corvettes.

Those big, beautiful Sukhois are wonderful birds, but the Chinese carriers can't handle many of them, and with their ramped foredecks, they can't take off with full loads. Therefore, they're restricted on fuel, weapons, or both.

They can buddy-tank from other fighters, but that takes even more of them out of the fleet defense/offense roles, in order to provide fuel carriers for their other jets..

Also, since there are so few of the jets on their carriers, they're limited to either fleet defense, offense, or a weak mixture of both.

My guess is their carriers will be used for local power projection, and "diplomatic" shows of force in Asia.

They're too weak and too few to stand on their own, so will need to operate near the Chinese coast, and/or man-made islands, under an umbrella of land-based fighters and bombers, as well as shore-based, long-range SSMs.

Su-27/-30/J-11/-16 Flanker are not carrier birds, they're land based. They have significant range as do the H-6s equipped with anti ship missiles.

The carrier birds are J-15s based on Su-33 Flanker derivative.

My guess is their carriers will be used for local power projection, and "diplomatic" shows of force in Asia.

They're too weak and too few to stand on their own, so will need to operate near the Chinese coast, and/or man-made islands, under an umbrella of land-based fighters and bombers, as well as shore-based, long-range SSMs.

My thoughts exactly. All of this works well within the context of the first and second sets of island chains.

Also the Chinese currently don't have the logistics support capability to maintain long term mass deployments be it fleet auxiliaries or bases.

Also bear in mind there are growing concerns though in the USN that the carriers are increasingly vulnerable in the more congested smaller seas ala South China Sea.

Carrier aircraft range has effectively halved since the retirement of A-6 and F-14 whilst missile ranges increase. This means the USN now has to place carriers in range of land based systems for them to operate effectively.