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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 18 2022, @08:53AM   Printer-friendly

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.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @05:38PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @05:38PM (#1254240)

    10 miles? Hardly. The first bomb dropped during Operation Crossroads, an A-bomb test designed to test the effects of an atomic blast on ships at sea, was off target by less than half a mile, and that resulted in most of the ships that were supposed to sink surviving. And these were (obviously) uncrewed, inactive ships. The observation post for that test was about ten miles away, the observers said the test was unspectacular.

    Although we have larger thermonuclear weapons today, they are not mounted on tactical missiles. It would take the Tsar Bomba to sink a warship from ten miles away, and nobody is putting anything like that on a missile (the Soviets could barely fit it into a bomber).

    As for why China wants an aircraft carrier, not everything is about Taiwan. The purpose of the ship is to project power into the Pacific Ocean and, especially, the South China Sea, which China thinks belongs to them. (I guess it does have their name on it, but it definitely isn't theirs).

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday June 18 2022, @09:21PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday June 18 2022, @09:21PM (#1254274) Journal

    You should look into the "Ripple" bomb design [soylentnews.org]:

    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/794729 [jhu.edu]


    Livermore’s Edward Teller and Harold Brown predicted that by 1965 a 50-megaton yield would be possible from a device weighing only 6,000 pounds—an approximately 350 percent increase over the most efficient weapon ever built, Livermore’s own B-41. These figures represented a yield-to-weight ratio of 18.4 kilotons per kilogram (kt/kg), thus exceeding the total raw energy content of plutonium and obliterating the “Taylor Limit” of six kt/kg of device weight (the most advanced weapon in the arsenal today, the Livermore/Los Alamos W-88, registers in at around 1.5 kt/kg).

    [...] These statements both confirm the viability of the Ripple concept and provide some actual numbers and reference points from which to determine the projected performance of a weaponized device. With the primary as the only source of fissile material in the “inherently clean” Ripple design, the device would be around 99.9 percent clean; for all practical purposes, a pure fusion device. The yield-to-weight ratio would be more than twice that of the most efficient high-yield weapon constructed, Livermore’s own three-stage B-41 bomb. The B-41 had a device weight of 9,300 pounds and a maximum (untested) “conventional” yield of 25 megatons, giving a yield-to-weight ratio of close to 6 kt/kg. More than twice this ratio, or approximately 12 to 15 kt/kg, would correspond accurately to the quoted yields of 35 to 40 megatons for the Titan II warhead. Given the admittedly overbuilt and far from optimized devices tested, we can reasonably assume that even higher yield-to-weight ratios would have been attainable if testing in the atmosphere (or deep space?) had continued.

    [...] An additional factor weighed against the weaponization of the Ripple concept for reentry vehicle purposes; namely, size. Despite being unusually lightweight, the Ripple concept required a particularly large volume relative to standard Teller-Ulam designs. The only ICBM in the inventory dimensionally large enough to carry a Ripple-based design was the Titan II, and even though this class of launch vehicle was relatively new, it was already being phased out in favor of smaller missiles such as the Minuteman. This shift, coupled with a strategy that sought to minimize warhead size in order to maximize numbers, also played a role in the decision to halt development.

    [...] When compared to the most modern and powerful ballistic missile warhead in the arsenal today—the 475-kiloton W-88—the Ripple concept offers at a minimum ten times the yield-to-weight ratio and does it “clean.” The Ripple concept as it stood in early 1963 was at the very beginning of its development cycle as a potential weapon system. Given further development through testing and complete computational analysis, the Teller-Brown prediction of 50 megatons for a 6,000-pound device by 1965 may have been within reach. In today’s technological environment, after nearly 60 years of continual ICF research and petaflop computing, the potential gains for the Ripple concept are staggering.

    I'm not saying that this changes your analysis or that these are even being built today, just that it is theoretically possible that Tsar Bomba-like 50 megaton yields could be realized in a "small" package. If the U.S. decides to modernize its nuclear arsenal and start producing new bomb designs, something like this will probably make its way in there. Given the lineup of ever more powerful supercomputers that have been used for nuclear simulations for decades, I bet there has been additional development of the Ripple concept, just no testing or production.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]