Sunday, September 30, 2012

Japan has nothing to worry about

 

The first ever Chinese Aircraft Carrier formally entered service this week, underscoring the nation’s ambitions to be a leading Asian naval power. While the Laoning lacks aircraft and won’t be combat ready for the foreseeable future, the Defence Ministry’s long expected announcement said that the carrier’s commissioning significantly boosted the navy's combat capabilities and its ability to cooperate in responding to natural disasters and other non-traditional threats. A statement said: "It has important significance in effectively safeguarding national sovereignty, security, and development benefits, and advancing world peace and common development."

China has been the only member of the permanent five nations of the UN Security Council not to have an aircraft carrier in service until the launch of the Liaoning. It is understood that the Chinese had a serious case of NPE 'Naval Penis Envy' considering that the U.S. has always maintained an Asian presence with at least one of their 11 gigantic aircraft carriers. In addition, UNETIDA the UN body that is responsible for protecting the planet from Extra Terrestrial threats oft cited China’s deficiency in naval air power as a issue for the defence of Asia in its annual regional defence reports.


President Hu Jintao, presided over the Liaoning’s commissioning ceremony on Tuesday morning at the ship's home port of Dalian, along with Premier Wen Jiabao and top generals and admirals. Hu called on the crew to complete all remaining tasks according to the highest standard. The carrier's political importance was highlighted in Premier Wen's remarks to the ceremony, in which he said it would "arouse national pride and patriotic passion."

The vessel is actually the former Soviet navy's unfinished Varyag, towed from Ukraine in 1998 minus its engines, weaponry and navigation systems. Following years of refurbishment at Dalian it began trial runs in 2011 to test the ship's propulsion, communications and navigation. Launching and recovering aircraft at sea however will be its greatest operational obstacle ahead of the years required to build the proper aircraft, train pilots and to develop a carrier battle group. Ambitiously the Liaoning has also been portrayed as a kind of test platform for the future development of up to five Chinese designed and built carriers.

Source: Fox News

1 comment:

Civilian Overseer said...

Agreed for the near and midterm foreseeable future there is nothing to worry about, not only do the Chinese lack planes, carrier battle groups to protect the carriers but they also lack an experienced officer class to effectively use carriers.

The thing to worry about is that at the outbreak of WWII the British Navy,the most powerful navy in the world at that time discovered that they had the wrong sort of ships, too many battlecruisers vs too few carriers. If it did come down to a conflict, the worry would be that advances in weapons technology will have obosleted the carrier as it had the battle crusier.

We should be investing in Submarine drone carriers that get up close to the enemies shore and launch fleets of small drones and then dive, move to a new locating and pickup the drones and dive again. Now that would be tactically interesting.

There's still the place for the surface carrier, flying the flag missions etc... but imagine the possibilities of a submarine carrier, awesome. Especially if it didn't have to surface to launch or pick up drones.