The 60,000 ton Liaoning is an operational training aircraft carrier.
The first Dalian aircraft carrier is scheduled to be launched before 2017 according to China’s plan to produce two China-made 48,000 to 64,000-ton conventional carriers. It is already under construction.
The third aircraft carrier in Shanghai is expected to be completed around 2021.
New aircraft carriers will have electromagnetic catapults. The catapults will allow the J-15 fighter jets to lift off with full twelve tons of weapons, while currently they can only use the Liaoning ramp to lift off with 2 tons of weapons.
The J-15 may be descended from the Russian Su-27 basic design, but inside it’s Chinese. The AESA radar, avionics, infrared search and track system, and even the engines are of Chinese origin. The J-15 utilizes two WS-10 afterburning turbofan engines, the same used in the land-based J-10 fighter. Taking off from land, the J-15 is supposedly capable of carrying twelve tons of weapons.
If China can successfully carry out its Type 001A aircraft carrier program, the People’s Liberation Army Navy will eventually have better carriers than its Indian and Japanese counterparts
Chinese experts believe that China’s J-15 carrier-based fighter is better than India’s Russian-built MiG-29, Kanwa said the Chinese fighter is still under development. The MiG-29 has been used in various aerial operations, and China admits that the J-15 will not be fully ready before 2020. Moreover, it remains unclear whether China is capable to operate the J-31, its second stealth fighter still in development, from aircraft carriers.
SOURCES – Kanwa Defense, Want China times, Tiananmenstremendousachievements, qianzhan.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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