E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Trade tensions with the United States blow hole in budget for China's newest aircraft carrier
[SCMP] Work on China’s newest aircraft carrier has slowed as tensions with the United States and military reform have taken their toll on the programme's budget, military sources said.
Example of what happens when you piss off your biggest money maker. US companies take note.
The assessment came just a day after Beijing confirmed it was building its second home-grown aircraft carrier - its third in total.

State-run Xinhua news agency said on its microblog on Sunday that work was under way on China's "new generation carrier", the Type 002. Its predecessor, the Type 001A, the first domestically built vessel of its kind, was launched in April 2017. Military experts expect it will be handed over to the Chinese navy by October 1 in time for the 70th anniversary of the people's republic.

China's first aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov-class Liaoning, was commissioned in 2012 after it was bought from Ukraine and refitted in China.

The Xinhua report was the first official Chinese media confirmation of the Type 002's construction, a disclosure that means the vessel's keel is ready to be laid, according to a source close to the Chinese military.

The newest warship will be fitted with the world's most advanced aircraft launch system, an electromagnetic system known as EMALs, which is the same type used on the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford supercarrier. EMALs causes less wear and tear on planes and allows more aircraft to be launched in a shorter time.
A technological and engineering challenge. Be interesting to see if they make it work.
Military insiders said work on the Type 002 had slowed because of budget cuts and the rising costs associated with the J-15, the beleaguered carrier-based fighter jet.

"China has so far still failed to develop a more advanced and powerful carrier-based fighter jet to match the Type 002 carrier," a naval source said.
China has a history of producing crap fighters with crap engines. This trend is not improving for them.
The South China Morning Post reported earlier that several sources said Beijing was developing a new carrier-based fighter jet to replace the J-15, which has had a series of mechanical failures and crashes. All of the J-15s were grounded for three months after a fatal crash in 2016. A military investigation revealed that some data relating to the flight control system had been doctored.
A repressive government covering up its failures!?!?! Say it isn't so!!!
"Another problem that slowed down construction of the Type 002 is the long-standing short lifespans of the J-15s' engines, even though the aircraft are now equipped with the more advanced and powerful WS-10H Taihang engines," an insider on the carrier projects said.

New turbine technology had extended the lifespan of the WS-10 engines from 800 flight hours to 1,500, but that was still just a fraction of the more than 4,000 flight hours that General Electric's F414 engines - used on the US' carrier-based F-18 Super Hornets ‐ could put in.

"The WS-10H is powerful and advanced, but its lifespan is much shorter than the American technology, meaning China needs more engines to support the operation of its J-15s. That's costly because each WS-10 engine costs millions of yuan," the insider said.
The long and short of it is, China can't produce fighters and ships that can run as long as the US, and can't keep up the tempo the US can, and can't compete with the performance. On top of that their damage control on ships is almost completely lacking and they don't have the naval skills, which take a long time to develop and are very expensive to do so, that the US and Japan have.

The more I read about China's navy and air force the more I feel it would be more in our interests to fight them now, rather than give them another 30 years to work out the kinks and we have to fight on their terms.

Posted by: DarthVader 2018-11-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=528535