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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Chinese Mystery Deepens |
| 2004-12-21 |
| China is up to something with it's second hand Russian aircraft carrier, the Varyag. After spending over $50 million to buy the unfinished 67,000 ton Varyag, and tow it to the Chinese naval base at Dalian, work continues to do
Well, no one is quite sure. Originally, the Varyag was bought, for three times its scrap value, by a Chinese front company (that turned out to be owned by the Chinese navy). Their stated intention was to convert the ship into a floating casino in Macao (near Hong Kong). This turned out to be a cover story, to get Turkey to allow the Varyag to be towed out of the Black Sea. There's an international treaty that allows Turkey to control what warships pass through the Turkish controlled entrance to the Black Sea. The Chinese then spent $30 million, and 627 days, to tow the engineless Varyag to a Chinese naval base. That was two years ago. Since then, refurbishment work has slowly continued on the Varyag. Parts of the ship have been rebuilt, and electronic equipment has been installed. But the Varyag is nowhere near ready to go to sea. Originally designed to operate the Su-27 fighter (which the Chinese have). To further complicate matters, the Chinese have been seen conducting flight exercises from a mock up of a 20,000 ton class aircraft carrier. Such a carrier, the former Australian HMAS Melbourne was sold for scrap in 1985, and broken up in Dalian, China. Apparently Chinese naval architects took careful notes as the Melbourne was broken up. Now learning how to operate aircraft from a Melbourne class carrier is not much help for anyone planning to put a larger Varyag class carrier to work. So the Chinese appear to be working on the utility of building smaller carriers as well. Then again, both small carriers, and a refurbished Varyag, could be useful for carrying troops, and operating helicopters, during an invasion of Taiwan. So whatever the Chinese are doing with aircraft carrier development, they have spent over $100 million on it so far and appear determined to learn as much as they can. Maybe we can sell them the old Forrestal to "scrap". |
| Posted by:ed |
| #14 Shhhhh! I have a C-Wolf submarine I am about to sell the Chinese. |
| Posted by: Brett_the_Quarkian 2004-12-21 8:42:38 PM |
| #13 Joseph, could you turn on the caps lock sooner next time? Some of that wasn't as loud as it should have been. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-21 8:26:34 PM |
| #12 Joeseph, please use more jargon and acronyms in your future posts. #11 was just too clear. Oh and caps too. Love the caps. |
| Posted by: Remoteman 2004-12-21 8:24:24 PM |
| #11 Reverse logic, boys, the Commies are primarily intent on using CV's and other surface warfare ships to protect their SUBMARINES - read BOOMERS and anti-carrier capable SSK's/SSN's, from dedicated surface- and airborne- anti-sub threats, NOT to develop US/NATO-style "BLUE WATER" CVBG's. US GMD/NMD only makes submarines and submarine-/UW warfare centric milops more important to the cash-strapped Commies and their Navies, alongst with dual military-civilian or multipurpose DISGUISED/STEALTH MISSLE andor SEA CONTROL SURFACE SHIPS - oops, like Britney Spears I meant [Clintonian] Communist-controlled Fascists-Rightists-Nationalists of Russia-China, etal. This is not to argue that these small or medium CV's can't also be used for traditional but limited carrier-based support roles - the greatest singular historical endowment of Russia-China ags hi-tech Western milfors has always been their AVAILABLE MANPOWER, i.e. QUANTITY OF MEN + CHEAP BUT SUFFICIENT MATERIEL USED TO BLUDGEON THEIR ENEMY. The underlying, ultim premise behind China's dev of so-called ASSASSIN's MACE technologies is NOT merely to achieve parity, suffic of scale, or even superiority ags America but like an assassin/hunting predator to ensure that a "kill", the defeat and destruction of US milfors andor America itself, is quickly, surprisingly, decisively, unconditionally and undeniably achieved REGARDLESS OF WHAT AMERICA DOES TO COUNTER, RESIST, OR PREVENT - NO ONE SHOULD DOUBT THAT THE CLINTONS, 9-11 AND RADICAL ISLAM [aka FAITH-BASED DESPOTIC SOCIALISM], AND THE [PC]FOSTERING OF INTERNATIONAL/GLOBAL ANTI-AMERICANISM AND ANTI-US UNO IS PART OF ASSASSIN'S MACE! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2004-12-21 8:10:20 PM |
| #10 Note that China doesn't need aircraft carriers to attack Taiwan, since Taiwan is only 100 miles away. The only reason China might want them is to challenge existing US dominance of vital waterways. It's also quite possible that they may be used as refueling/rearming stations. i.e. not deploy with embarked aircraft. Reduces the turnaround time. Some months back, there was a blog written by a Brit expat in Shanghai, that displayed photos taken by him of the Varyag. As for the carrier-sized airfield - the PLAAF has had one of those for at least five years. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-12-21 6:46:47 PM |
| #9 Shipman, ZF--as you well know, NATOPS is written in blood. The Russians were unprepared to pay that price, also. The Chinese may well be willing to pay that price. A blue water Navy for China? Not likely, but a Navy that pushes defense of the homeland 500 to 1000 miles farther out to sea would be a great asset to China, complicating the US Navy's missions immensely. I do remain thoroughly skeptical about anybody's ability to operate Flanker-sized aircraft off of tiny, non-catapult boats like the Varyag or Kuznetsov. We never tried to fly Tomcats off the Midway, the deck was too small, only two elevators. The Flanker is huge, and will need Nimitz-class decks with the elevators forward of the island, which in turn will require nuclear propulsion. And as the Brits learned in the Falkland war, your flat decks are painfully vulnerable without AEW aircraft. Don't forget airborne tankers, either. Finally, they have to sustain, requiring a whole layer of essential but unsexy technology supporting underway replenishment. America has been the only country to really maintain these arts since the Japanese dropped out of the running in WWII. The Chinese may well be up to deploying a carrier, but we'll most certainly see it coming from a long ways away. |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-12-21 5:52:26 PM |
| #8 You may be right ZF, but operating an attack carrier for the first time is frought with froughtness for any country. So literally I want to see the fire drill. :) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-21 3:21:13 PM |
| #7 ZF: The question isn't Chinese technical ability - it's whether they're prepared to spend the large sums of money involved. Note also that the Chinese have technical ability in spades. They developed ballistic missiles and nukes in the 60's, while being embargoed on every side (including the Soviets, who weren't thrilled about having a border-line hostile nuclear neighbor). On a personal note, I encountered several Chinese graduate students over a decade ago in some very math-intensive classes that started out with two dozen students and were whittled down to the low single digits after several weeks of classes. They were scarily bright. Not to stereotype, but if they're an example of what the average Chinese weapons scientist is like, I suspect we'll stop hearing about the Russian arms industry in a decade or so - the Chinese will have outdone them in terms of both cost and quality. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-12-21 3:15:06 PM |
| #6 Shipman: Ah yes, the wiley chinnee do want an aircraft carrier. Oh please let me be there to see the fire drill. I doubt it's all that difficult. The Japanese built aircraft carriers 70 years ago based on a level of development decades behind American capabilities then. The question isn't Chinese technical ability - it's whether they're prepared to spend the large sums of money involved. I suspect the Russians could have built and kept a really capable fleet of carrier battle groups in the water - but the Soviet Union would have collapsed decades earlier because of the level of economic strain that would have involved. The question is whether the Chinese are prepared to absorb the financial expense. A billion here, a billion there - pretty soon we're talking real money. Note that China doesn't need aircraft carriers to attack Taiwan, since Taiwan is only 100 miles away. The only reason China might want them is to challenge existing US dominance of vital waterways. (They may also be reacting to the possibility that the US will impose a blockade on shipments of oil to China in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-12-21 3:02:54 PM |
| #5 I'd be guessing there may be a few Russian naval architects assisting in this project? |
| Posted by: john 2004-12-21 2:21:27 PM |
| #4 One wild-assed guess: reverse engineering? |
| Posted by: Capt America 2004-12-21 1:30:11 PM |
| #3 I have no doubt that the Chinese are building a modern spaceship beneath the metalwork of the old Carrier much as the Japanese built a spaceship beneath the rusted hulk of the Yamato in Star Blazers. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-12-21 1:14:57 PM |
| #2 Ah yes, the wiley chinnee do want an aircraft carrier. Oh please let me be there to see the fire drill. (from a safe distance) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-21 11:16:31 AM |
| #1 Seawolf drivers will be racing each other to see who gets to paint a carrier on their conning tower. |
| Posted by: Steve 2004-12-21 11:15:40 AM |