China moving full speed ahead in construction of aircraft carriers

Satellite photos analyzed by IHS Janes show China has dramatically ramped up efforts to construct a second aircraft carrier—the first to be built indigenously there. While the new ship will likely not be a match for US aircraft carriers, it is important for a number of reasons, and representative of China's ambitions to be a naval superpower. The ship is in "advanced state of construction" in a Dailan shipyard, according to analysis of commercial satellite images by IHS Jane's. And China's goal is reportedly to launch the new carrier by this December (in time for Mao Zedong's 122nd birthday), and outfit it by the end of next year.

China's plans to build new carriers have not exactly been a secret. Construction of the ship started in March, and was confirmed to be a carrier by People's Liberation Army (PLA) officials speaking to Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The new carrier, called the Type 001A, will include technology currently only used aboard US carriers, according to PLA Navy senior officers: an electromagnetic catapult that will allow aircraft to be launched with greater fuel and weapons loads. That would put China into a very exclusive club.

The Type 001A is likely the first of at least three new carriers that will be built by China. The PLA Navy's existing carrier, the Liaonang—an extensive rebuild of a never-completed former Soviet carrier acquired from Ukraine—took sixteen years to obtain and rebuild. But during that time, China has acquired a wealth of data about how aircraft carriers work—purchasing other derelict carriers (including one from Australia) and technical data from other countries—including data likely stolen from US defense contractors. China's military leaders have said that they believed they could now build a carrier in as little as two years.

Force projection

China's leadership doesn't just want carriers so that it can challenge the US naval dominance of the Pacific. It's part of President Xi Jingping's "Chinese dream" to make China the most powerful country in the world in this century, reversing the effects of what Xi once called a "century of humiliation." Xi and a collection of hardliners within the PLA and Communist party want to have the most powerful military in the world to help return China to the dominant position it held before the First Opium War and Britain's forcing of the cession of Hong Kong in 1842. China was forced to capitulate in part because of Britain's naval power.

In 2011, Lieutenant General Qi Jianguo, then assistant chief of the People's Liberation Army general staff, told a Hong Kong newspaper, told the Hong Kong Commercial Daily, "All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers—they are symbols of a great nation." But carriers also happen to be a great way to project national power much further; and catapult-equipped carriers even more so.

Catapult-operating aircraft carriers have been the center of US expeditionary naval strategy since World War II. The US Navy has more aircraft carriers in its fleet than the rest of the navies of the world combined, providing the US with something few other powers can achieve: a forward-based "air force" nearly anywhere in the world within days. Because of the catapult systems used to launch US carrier-based aircraft, they can fly further and carry more armament than planes launched from the "ski-jump" style carriers used by practically every other Navy other than France's nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle.(The UK dropped plans for a catapult system aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth, forcing the Royal Navy to go exclusively with the F-35B "jump jet" variant.)

The upside of catapult carriers can be counted in the number of bombs they can deliver on targets. In the US Navy's case, while F/A-18 Super Hornets can't carry nearly as much as an Air Force B-52, B-2 or B-1, they make up for that with their ability to stay on station longer because they have less distance to fly, and refuel and rearm within a few hours and return. Strikes by the Air Force often have involved flying planes as far as halfway around the world, refueling in flight multiple times before striking their targets once.

A very short runway

Ski-jump carriers, on the other hand, require jets to take off purely under their own power, giving them a slight boost into the sky with the ramp. That means either using "jump jets" like the AV-8B Harrier or the future F-35B, or using aircraft with low enough stall speeds to stay airborne on their afterburners alone on launch. The second route is the one China, India, and Russia have followed with their carrier-based fighters.

But China has faced a big problem in building fighters capable of flying off a ski-jump: the gas turbine engines China manufactures indigenously lack the acceleration power to achieve the required thrust off the ramp to stay airborne. The J-15 Flying Shark fighter—China's answer to the F/A-18 Super Hornet—uses Russian-built engines to get aloft.

Even so, a report by one Chinese media outlet called the Flying Shark a "flopping fish" unable to take off with loads over 12 tons—and anything more than two tons of weaponry when fully fueled. As a result, according to the report, a version of China's anti-ship missile modified for the J-15 has reduced range, and "the J-15 will be boxed into less than 120 [kilometers] of attack range" (74 miles)—not exactly "force projection."

The ski jump is also a problem for heavier support aircraft, such as airborne early warning (AEW) radar planes. They just can't build up enough speed on a short deck, even with a ramp boost, to fly. To really do the sort of carrier air operations China aspires to, catapults are a prerequisite.

China isn't the only country building new carriers in Asia that need catapults. India, which also has a former Soviet ski-jump carrier, has two new carriers planned: INS Vikrant, which is already being built, and the future INS Vishal. And over the summer, India began a collaboration with the US, gaining access to the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EALS), a catapult system used aboard the US Navy's Gerald R. Ford class carriers.

However, China may also have gained access to EALS technology in its own ways-including computer espionage. Satellite photos published in March showed a catapult test facility in China. Days later, PLA Navy Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, cited as an expert in “naval propulsion and electrical engineering by Hong Kong Commercial Daily, confirmed the project and told the paper that a homegrown electromagnetic catapult system would be ready for the new planned carriers. Ma said that China's electromagnetic catapult was more advanced than the US technology, and had performed smoothly in tests. He was confident that the system was ready for real-world use.

There are other technological issues facing China's carrier ambitions. The Liaoning is, despite being nearly fully rebuilt, fairly low-tech in terms of its engineering plant. It is powered by oil-fired steam boilers, one of which burst during initial sea trials forcing an evacuation of an engine room. Analysts believe China lacks the experience with nuclear propulsion systems to build a nuclear-powered carrier, though they could conceivably use a large number of low-power reactors designed for submarines. That's the route the US took when building its first nuclear carrier, the USS Enterprise, in the late 1950s with 8 reactors.

Even with new carriers, it will take some time for the PLA Navy to gain enough experience with flying carrier aircraft to actually use them for anything other than training. Until November of 2012, the only carrier that PLA pilots had flown from was a concrete replica built atop a building. There's the matter of logistical support and fleet operations with carriers as well—the PLA Navy is just beginning to perform fleet operations, such as the ships that travelled to Alaska's coast last month, and coordinating defense of a carrier group is significantly complex. But it's clear that China plans on rapidly surpassing its near neighbors' abilities soon, if only to be used as a persuasive tool as the country exerts its political muscle.