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China Launches 'Fujian,' its Most Advanced Aircraft Carrier
China launches 'Fujian,' its most advanced aircraft carrier:
China launched its largest and most advanced aircraft carrier on Friday at a shipyard in Shanghai, in what state media called a "short but festive ceremony."
The 80,000-ton Fujian, named for the southern coastal province opposite Taiwan, is the first of China's three carriers to be fully designed and built domestically. Unlike China's Liaoning and Shandong carriers, which use ski-jump ramps, Fujian will launch planes using electromagnetic catapults, the technology used on current U.S. carriers.
"Although it will be years before the [carrier] enters military service and achieves initial operating capability, its launch will be a seminal moment in China's ongoing modernization efforts and a symbol of the country's growing military might," said analysts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, in an article earlier this month.
China Launches Third Aircraft Carrier: State Media - Times of India
China launches third aircraft carrier: State media - Times of India:
[...] However, it will take years before it reaches operational capacity, as the Ministry of Defence has not announced a date for entry into service. "Sailing and mooring tests will be carried out as planned after the ship is launched," CCTV reported. China has two other aircraft carriers in service. The Liaoning was commissioned in 2012, and the Shandong entering service in 2019.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 18 2022, @11:45AM (7 children)
The crew of the ship decides how capable the ship is. You can have the most awesome ship in all of history, but if the crew is crap, that mind-boggling ship is crap. You can also have a worn out rust bucket, but with an excellent crew and leadership, it can pull off the most amazing feats.
There is really no reliable way to measure this metric, until the ship goes into harm's way. Weather, enemy action, supply problems, humanitarian aid, whatever the mission, you don't know how good a ship is, until it gets into the action, and is tested. History is filled with examples, like the famous Spanish Armada. The English didn't stand a chance against the Spanish, until the Spanish just fell apart for reasons that are difficult to understand.
You might get an idea of a ship's capabilities by looking at maintenance and upkeep. If a relatively new ship looks like a garbage scow, the crew is probably substandard. On the flip side, if every fitting and all the brightwork sparkles and shines, and paintwork is immaculate, the crew may be too dedicated to appearances, rather than actual capabilities.
No one can possibly know how impressive the Chinese fleet is, until it is tested.
Let it be noted that many of the most outstanding naval commanders in history have been - shall we say - nonconformists? Often enough, the top commanders were hated by their own superiors, under supported, and sent into the worst possible situations in the hopes that the enemy would eliminate them.
The Chinese are noted for not tolerating such men. I don't foresee nonconformists being rewarded for thinking outside the box. Maybe, but a nation with social credit scores doesn't bode well for nonconformists.
Compare all of that with the modern US Navy . . .
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @06:29PM (1 child)
One of the eternal problems in military operations is choosing people with exactly the right amount of initiative to be officers. Too much, and they will create problems. Not enough, and they will be ineffective. Probably everyone assumes that China will fall into that latter category, as the Russians have. I'm sure China knows this, and just as surely they will still be unable to solve it.
But the Americans are not perfect here either. The US did not, as far as I know, relieve any battlefield commanders in Afghanistan or the second Iraq war as a result of ineffectiveness. While the problem in these wars was politics, not combat, there were enough failures that it's hard to believe that everyone did an outstanding job.
In the American military, the only way it seems that you can lose your job is to run afoul of politics, or to be a scapegoat, or to commit a blunder that embarrasses someone higher up. The US system is much better about choosing its leaders, but it's probably not much better at making sure they are actually effective in practice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @08:37PM
I hope the draft never comes back, but if it does then the US has tended to pull in some great people. It didn't help us in Vietnam, but that was probably unwinnable no matter what. A lot of great mid 20th Century authors were WW2 vets. You know they were not conventional military people at all. Drafted or not, an existential crisis pulls in the best Americans. Audie Murphy had to lie about his height or something just to get in, and he became one of the most decorated soldiers of WW2.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @09:58PM
> Compare all of that with the modern US Navy . . .
Tell that to the "Diversity is our strength" crowd. https://cdn.airgundepot.com/ty/cdn/airgundepot/redneck-adt.jpg [airgundepot.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 18 2022, @11:51PM (1 child)
>You can also have a worn out rust bucket, but with an excellent crew and leadership, it can pull off the most amazing feats.
Back to the movie theaters for you.
If that worn out rust bucket isn't supplied well, your excellent crew and leadership will have limited fuel, limited mobility, limited armament, and limited ability to deploy those arms. They may pull off a surprise attack or two with what they've got on hand, but they're not going to be boarding enemy vessels and sabotaging them, not in today's world.
Crew matters, logistics supply chain matters more.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @08:38AM
Bollocks! Everyone can work wonders if supplied well.
An excellent crew will propel the ship by paddling with their feet, will catch and eat raw fish while doing so and will inflict terrible damage with the fish bones.
Otherwise it's not an excellent crew.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday June 19 2022, @01:55PM (1 child)
Maybe that's what the Russians thought when those skimpy Japanese started their ten year plan [wikipedia.org] for a 260,000 ton Navy in 1896, after being humiliated by the Triple Intervention [wikipedia.org] under Russian leadership. By 1905 the Russian Navy was destroyed.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 19 2022, @03:32PM
I think perhaps I left room for misunderstanding. I'm not terribly impressed with our Navy today. I'm neither scoffing at the Chinese navy, nor bragging on our own navy there. We have instituted out own social standing bullshit in our own navy. Military personnel should be judged on their core skills and duties - fighting. Instead, we see good fighting men being kicked out because they don't support LGBT, trans, etc ad nauseum. Many have been booted or otherwise "disciplined" because they are reluctant to get vaxxed. Our military is being bent and warped away from their primary duties, to support social agendas.
We've seen some pretty terrible performances in recent years, with submarines running aground, surface ships and submarines colliding with other ships, we saw a bunch of squids captured by Iran - on and on it goes.
We see 'explanations' that crews are undermanned and overworked.
It often appears that our own military is falling short.