The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning
Lt. Gen. Qi Jianguo, assistant to the chief of the PLA’s general staff said “All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers — they are symbols of a great power.”
No, simply owning an aircraft carrier isn’t power. Anyone can buy one. Knowing how to use an aircraft carrier is a great power.
Cute, China. Cute.
In a ceremony attended by the country’s top leaders, China put its first aircraft carrier into service on Tuesday, a move intended to signal its growing military might as tensions escalate between Beijing and its neighbors over islands in nearby seas.Officials said that the carrier, a discarded vessel bought from Ukraine in 1998 and refurbished by China, would protect national sovereignty, an issue that has become a touchstone of the government’s dispute with Japan over ownership of islands in the East China Sea.
via China Shows Off an Aircraft Carrier, but Experts Are Skeptical – NYTimes.com.
I think you buried the lead on this one Mark 🙂
The mark “16” emblazoned on the carrier’s side indicates it is limited to training, Chinese and other military experts said. China does not have planes capable of landing on the carrier and so far training for such landings has been carried out on land, they said.
Yes, I know. Training. But no one expects anything to fly from this for probably a decade if that.
I agree with others when they say it’s a colossal waste of money. China is nowhere near being a blue water navy. This ship’s is good for whipping up patriotic feelings among the Chinese and little else.
In fact, it might have been more useful as a novelty casino in Macau, as the buyer originally claimed. Then again, casinos are known too waste large amounts of money! 🙂
Can you imagine the mess decks?
“Chinese food….? AGAIN?”
🙂
And, an aircraft carrier is just the most prominent piece of the puzzle, you can’t do power projection with just the carrier alone, you need the aircraft (obviously), you need the supporting battlegroup and other noncombatant assets to support it, otherwise your carrier is just a bigger than normal target.
As carriers go, — it’s first and foremost only a pocket carrier, with about have the displacement and 1/3 the capacity of the Carl Vinson. It’s also the lower tech and inferior ski-ramp design that will limit what they can launch off of it if they ever do get planes.
Yeah, what good is an aircraft carrier if you can’t do power projection?
I hope this doesn’t make the Chinese foolhardy enough to stumble into a dust-up with the Japanese over the disputed islands. The JDF would smoke them.