By Mark Thompson
TIME Magazine
TIME Magazine
There’s a Ford In Your Future: The U.S. Navy’s first Ford-class carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is slated to set sail in 2015 or 2016. (U.S. Navy)
With President Obama’s re-election, GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s plans to boost U.S. Navy shipbuilding from 10 to 15 warships a year are history. Could we look back on the electoral result as a turning point?
Under current Pentagon plans, the Navy will shrink to 10 aircraft carriers when the USS Enterprise, which returned from the final cruise in its 51-year history last weekend, is retired from the fleet in December.
It’s worth noting that as the U.S. temporarily pares its carrier fleet by 9% for about three years — until the USS Gerald R. Ford sets sail — other would-be naval powers are talking about expanding their fleets:
In London, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the Royal Navy might actually buy two aircraft carriers, bringing its total carrier fleet to…two. A “relatively modest” additional $113 million annually would give the British a pair of carriers and would constitute an “extremely good investment,” Hammond told a Royal United Services Institute gathering Nov 1.
Then on Tuesday, from the other side of the world, came Wang Baokun, a Chinese military and economic scholar, arguing that Beijing can afford to build a four-carrier fleet (it currently is testing its lone model, a hand-me-down Russian carrier that lacks…aircraft):
China’s aircraft carrier building project will boost a series of industries such as carrier construction and maintenance, special materials, aircraft and missiles, navigation and combat command system, defense weapons system, radar, electronic information, satellite communication and automatic control system. And since the government will have to develop aircraft carrier formations, warships, fleet bases and ports, the project will also spawn or boost other sectors.
Make no mistake about it: these drawing-board carriers are no match for today’s U.S. Navy flattops.
But also know this: a carrier and her supporting flotilla are the most visible and potent sign of military power many people – and their governments — ever see. Their presence is real in a way that Air Force flyovers are not, and without the political stickiness of ground-troop deployments. Just how much of a carrier edge the U.S. Navy needs to maintain for decades to come — at an initial investment of $20 billion each — is going to be an increasingly-debated issue as foreign-carrier fleets grow.
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IN FOCUS: Pushing China’s maritime frontier
By Greg Waldron
Flightglobal.com
Flightglobal.com
The Liaoning, a retrofitted Soviet carrier, uses a ski ramp for take-offs. (Rex Features)
China’s aircraft carrier is among the world’s worst kept military secrets in recent years. Formerly the Soviet carrier Varyag, the ship was retrofitted at the port of Dalian. Chinese bloggers advised that the best viewing location to observe the ship’s retrofit was a window in the Dalian Ikea store.
After years of refurbishment, the ship commenced sea trials in late 2011 and was finally commissioned as the Liaoning in late September. Although what are believed to be full-sized models of a Shenyang J-15 and an Avicopter Z-8 AEW have been spotted on the deck, the Liaoning has yet to start flight operations.
“PLAN [People's Liberation Army Navy] airpower has so far been intended for littoral power projection and coastal defence,” says Douglas Barrie, an air warfare analyst with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The emergence of the carrier programme and the J-15 will allow the navy to begin to explore the projection of air power beyond the littoral environment, with the South China Sea as an obvious arena. Again, the pace of development of carrier operations and the carrier building programme will be a focus of interest.”
The Liaoning will help the PLAN experiment with the complex technical issues involved in operating aircraft from a carrier deck. Even when the ship does become operational, it will have only limited capabilities. The ship’s ski ramp is a far simpler and less maintenance-intensive way to launch aircraft than the catapults found on US aircraft carriers, but it comes with major trade-offs. Ski ramps require aircraft to launch entirely under their own power and this consumes valuable fuel and limits aircraft payload.
STEPPING STONE
In addition, support aircraft in roles such as airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) or anti-submarine warfare (ASW) lack the power to use the ski ramps found on short take-off but arrested-recovery carriers such as the Liaoning. Finally, a ski ramp can launch only one aircraft at a time (compared with four for an American flat-top) and requires more space for an aircraft to take off, restricting the number of aircraft the ship can carry.
Nonetheless, there are tentative signs that the Liaoning is only a stepping stone and that China may have aspirations to one day operate catapult-assisted take-off, barrier arrested-recovery aircraft carriers, similar to those operated by the USA and France. Beijing also appears to be interested in beefing up its ability to perform missions such as ASW well beyond its coast line.
In late July 2012, images emerged on Chinese defence sites of what appeared to be a testbed for a possible carrier-borne AEW&C aircraft based on the Xian Y-7 transport. The two most notable features are a large circular radar dome mounted on a single mast aft of the wing root. It is unclear whether this is an operational radome or a mock-up for testing aerodynamics.
The aircraft’s tail has been highly modified and resembles the four vertical stabiliser arrangement found on the world’s only carrier-capable fixed-wing AEW&C aircraft – the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye. The four vertical stabilisers that the E-2 Hawkeye has allows it to fit inside an aircraft carrier’s hangar deck. Notably, the JZY-01 appears to lack a tail hook, an essential piece of equipment for a carrier-borne aircraft. In addition, the landing gear would need to be heavily modified for carrier operations and there is no indication that the wings can fold. The JZY-01 is also much larger than the E-2 Hawkeye, suggesting that it is only a testbed for technologies needed for a carrier-borne AEW&C aircraft.
Richard Bitzinger, senior fellow of the Military Transformations Programme at Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies, notes that British aircraft carriers such as the HMS Invincible were intended mainly for ASW operations. The British Aerospace Sea Harrier aircraft they deployed were primarily for the protection of ASW assets. He agrees with the view that the main purposes of Beijing’s current carrier are training and prestige.
TELLING IMAGES
In November 2011, images emerged of a large ASW aircraft based on the Shaanxi Y-8 transport. The pictures show the four-engined turboprop with a large radome under its nose and with weapon bay doors in the open position. Most significantly, they also show a long appendage from the aircraft’s tail, which could house a magnetic anomaly detector – an essential sensor for detecting submarines. This aircraft would be far too large to operate from a carrier, but on long range missions it, and other support aircraft, would benefit from the air cover provided by a carrier’s fighters.
“At this point, China’s carrier is entirely symbolic,” adds Bitzinger. “The ski jump limits how much airpower you can pack in. Because they don’t use a catapult, they have to use a lot of fuel to take off, which turns planes into flying gas tanks. This ship will not project power like a US carrier. It mainly exists to protect itself – a self-licking ice cream cone.”
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