When a diverse college graduate receives a degree in Fluff Studies and a real college student earns a degree in Engineering, the engineer has something of value that leads to a real job and a real paycheck. The Fluff Studies graduate asks, “would you like fries with that”.
Similarly, building a ship with a large flight deck will not give the People Liberation Army Navy the aviation capabilities that we earned over 80+ years of flight operations. I’m not in any way worried about a PLAN carrier.
“......Similarly, building a ship with a large flight deck will not give the People Liberation Army Navy the aviation capabilities that we earned over 80+ years of flight operations. I’m not in any way worried about a PLAN carrier.”
Exactly. It would take generations for china to build a “world class navy” being the men, not the machines. They are just building expensive targets.......
The Chinese engineer will have cheated his way through school.
At face value, I totally agree with you. Experience is the one thing you can only get by needing it when you don't have It. Having said that, the American value placed on human life has generally resulted in cautious development over those 80 years (perhaps a bit less so during the exigencies of wartime). The Chinese subscribe to the Stalinist theory of quantity having a quality all its own. They will expend as many aviator and flight deck crew lives as necessary to rapidly gain the experience and apply the lessons learned. As others have noted here as well, lessons the Americans have learned through trial and error, the Chinese will learn through espionage. So, yes, we have invaluable experience in nearly a century of naval aviation which the Chinese do not. But it will not take them a century to catch up.
My very first thought, as well.
Not just 80+ years, but amazingly, two years shy of a century!
The USS Langley, CV-1, was rebuilt from a fairly new Naval collier into a carrier in 1920.
100 years of carrier operations in 2020.
Now THAT'S a legacy!
As long as Chinese students are allowed to spy and steal at the whim for China’s Government, you will see a robust.building of the military with modern technology.