Posted on 08/11/2011 4:57:35 PM PDT by lbryce
China sent its first aircraft carrier to sea, a defining moment in its effort to become a top-tier naval power that seeks to challenge U.S. military supremacy in Asia and protect Chinese economic interests that now span the globe. The carrier, based on an empty hull bought from Ukraine, sounded its horn three times as it plowed through fog around the northeastern port of Dalian early Wednesday to begin its first sea trials, according to a Twitter-like service by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
China's carrier, designed to carry about 2,000 people and 50 fighter jets, is dwarfed by the nuclear-powered U.S. Nimitz-class "supercarrier," which can carry 6,250 people and launch planes with more fuel and weaponry thanks to a catapult system and longer runway. China's carrier, which isn't nuclear powered, is thought to have a gas-turbine or marine-diesel engine.
The vessel nonetheless sends a powerful message both to China's domestic audience, for whom a carrier has for decades been equated with national strength, and to the U.S. and its regional allies, many of whom are embroiled in territorial disputes with Beijing.
It is the most potent symbol yet of China's long-term desire to develop the power both to deny U.S. naval access to Asian waters and to protect its global economic interests, including shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and oil sources in the Middle East.
Its launch is thus seen as a milestone in relations between an ascendant China, bent on reclaiming its historical role as a global power, and a debt-ridden U.S. that wants to retain the military supremacy it has wielded in Asia since 1945.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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Good for the Chinese! let them have fun with their new toy. BUT one carrier without planes does not a navy make. It didn’t do the Nazis any good—they too had a carrier with no planes and it sits on the bottom of the Baltic. Lets see what they do with it.
Sure, like to article says, “China sent its first aircraft carrier to sea...,” but it’s going to be many years just to get the ship beyond sea trials. Then there’s all that time-consuming training to do...that’s one. A bigger fleet is just around the corner, a long way away.
My parents worked on the factory that built this ship.
Yes, really. I saw it launched off the shipway.
Yum... another target for our SSNs.
China has never been a “Global Power”. Historically speaking, China has always considered itself the center of the world and outside of building the Great Wall, has never really cared about anything outside of China.
I can’t do a thing with my navel muscle.
Why am I reminded of this?
"This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."
Even with Noballs in the White House, I just can't get all upset with a Chinese carrier.
"PLAN Varyag - 17 steel decks and a straw bottom..."
You’ve got to remove all the belly-button lint first. Placing the open end of a vacuum-cleaner tube directly over the belly-button works best. innies resist lint-removal more than outies.
Only thing is, after you sink a Chinese carrier, in an hour you’r hungry to sink another one.
Actually the other way round. They had the planes but no carrier.
While the carrier design was flawed - absurdly heavy surface warfare armament, too small air group (Only 42, the similarly laid out, but smaller IJN Hiyo/Junyo carried over 50, and the Japanese didn't have folding wing aircraft), too little avgas even for the small airgroup).
But the Germans had produced an Air Wing for it. By 1940 10 preprod aircraft each of the Bf109T-0 and Ju-87C-0 had been built, and by the end of 1942 there were sufficient production Bf109T-1 and Ju87C-1 aircraft available for an initial airwing. It was political (ie Hitler's) will to complete the ship that was lacking.
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