China’s newest aircraft carrier may be capable of only about 60% of the air operations of a 50-year-old U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, two former U.S. carrier officers said, a practical combat limitation for a ship intended to revolutionize the Chinese navy’s fleet.
Officers told CNN that the soon-to-be-commissioned Fujian’s flight deck configuration limits the pace at which aircraft can be launched and recovered, especially when compared to America’s Nimitz-class carriers.
“The Fujian ship has only about 60% of the operational capability of the Nimitz class,” said Karl Schuster, a former U.S. Navy captain who served on two U.S. aircraft carriers.
After studying photos of Fujian’s flight deck, Schuster and a retired lieutenant colonel said: Keith Stewart, a former U.S. naval aviator, said Fujian’s deck layout limits simultaneous takeoff and landing.
In a major step forward, China built the Fujian aircraft with an electromagnetic catapult aircraft launch system. This allows aircraft to take off with heavier weapons and fuel, allowing them to attack enemy targets from greater distances. It can only be rivaled by the newest and largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
This flight deck configuration is the first of its kind for a Chinese airline. The first two carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, use ski-jump-style ramps to fly aircraft under their own power.
Configuring a new type of carrier from scratch can introduce limitations.
The issue of Fujian aircraft’s ability to conduct air operations was first raised after a Chinese military blogger watched a video about the Chinese military featuring a segment on Fujian aircraft on state-run CCTV.
After watching the documentary, a blogger wrote on the military commentary blog Haishixianfeng: “Since both catapults are located near the center front of the landing area, a J-15 or J-35 (two Chinese carrier-based fighter jets) would roll over the catapults during landing, temporarily rendering them unusable for launch operations and affecting the takeoff efficiency of the fighter jets.”
The comments were picked up by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, and CNN asked two former U.S. naval officers to review the report and video.
Schuster said the angle at which the landing area intersects the Fujian’s deck is just 6 degrees off-center, compared to 9 degrees on U.S. aircraft carriers, limiting space between the landing strip and the two forward catapults.
In addition, the Fujian plane’s landing area is longer than the Nimitz’s landing area, which means it will be too close to the bow area where the aircraft will be positioned for catapult-assisted launches, he said.
“Longer landing areas and narrower deck angles reduce space for repositioning recovered aircraft,” Schuster said.
U.S. officers also noted that Fujian’s forward catapult appeared to be longer than Nimitz’s.
Essentially, the aircraft is at risk of colliding with the flight deck as it moves from the elevator to the lower hangar deck for takeoff and landing, Schuster and Stewart said.
The only option is to slow down flight deck operations to prevent flight deck accidents.
China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, is building the world’s largest navy by launching high-tech warships at a breakneck pace, putting pressure on the United States and its Pacific allies to keep pace.
But when it comes to aircraft carriers, the United States has a significant lead, at least in numbers, with 11 active carriers to China’s two, and Fujian is expected to be revitalized in the coming weeks.
Liaoning and Shandong are small, displacing 60,000 to 70,000 tons, and their launch systems limit the aircraft’s weapons and fuel payload.
Fujian, with a displacement of 80,000 tons, is the closest aircraft carrier to the 97,000-ton Nimitz-class carriers, which make up 10 of the U.S. Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers.
USS Nimitz was commissioned in May 1975 and is the oldest aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. According to USNI News, it entered the South China Sea through the Singapore Strait earlier this month in what is expected to be its final deployment before being retired next year.
Meanwhile, satellite images from late September showed Fujian docked on Hainan Island in the northern South China Sea, with a commissioning ceremony scheduled soon.
The aircraft carrier’s move comes as US President Donald Trump is heading to the region and is scheduled to make port stops in Malaysia, Japan and South Korea in the coming days.
The Fujian ship has received high praise in Chinese state media, and Chinese military affairs expert Zhang Junsha told the Global Times last month that the Fujian ship’s successful launch test “shows that China is becoming a major aircraft carrier power, and that both carriers and aircraft are achieving world-class performance on important indicators.”
“This not only demonstrated that the People’s Liberation Army has fully mastered and matured the application of complex electromagnetic catapults, but also reflected the continuous improvement in the capabilities and proficiency of naval personnel operating high-tech equipment,” Zhang was quoted as saying.
Mr Schuster said the Fujian aircraft would likely serve as a springboard, and lessons learned would be incorporated into China’s next Type 004 aircraft carrier, for which initial construction is believed to have begun.
Meanwhile, Stewart said carrier operations are one place China has a lot to learn, especially since Fujian is the first carrier to be equipped with a catapult system.
“There’s an old Navy proverb that says, ‘All the rules and regulations for aircraft carrier operations are written in blood,’ which means someone will either be seriously injured or killed during a flight operation,” Stewart said.
“I’ve seen several people get killed on the flight deck, so I know what a dangerous playing field it is.
“It’s all well and good to build a shiny new aircraft carrier, but I assume the Chinese don’t know what they don’t know about carrier operations,” he says.
According to Stewart, it can only be learned by practicing in all kinds of situations.
“It’s not that difficult to take off from an aircraft carrier during the day in good weather. What’s difficult, as aviators shrug their cheeks, is to fly and land on a rainy, windy night with the deck heaving up to 18 feet, low on fuel, and fear.
“If someone says they’ve never been scared during a night operation, they’re delusional,” Stewart said.
