Chinese aircraft carriers: Type 002 'Shandong', Type 003 'Fujian', Type 004

Scott Kenny said:
I'm thinking that's shock testing, where you deliberately set off an explosion of specified size a certain distance away from the hull and look for what broke.

Boom in the picture is much too small to be a nuke, and it doesn't have a shadow under it to be a cloud.
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Would the ship be underway during a shock test? I’m leaning to very low cloud.
 
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According to the photos exposed on the Internet, the Fujian aircraft carrier may have completed its eighth sea trial. If true, the sea trial took only 6 days. This also means that the date of the official commissioning of the Fujian aircraft carrier is getting closer and closer, maybe next month?
 
SUPER=BUG said:
According to the photos exposed on the Internet, the Fujian aircraft carrier may have completed its eighth sea trial. If true, the sea trial took only 6 days.
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If you're only testing a few things, or you have a very well worked out test process, you can get a lot of sea trials done in a short amount of time.

Ohios have sea trials after every single refit, and the whole process is worked out that you can get everything done in about 16 hours or less, from reactor startup to shutdown tied up at the pier again. And that's like 8 hours of actual time at sea (well, in the deep bay across from the piers)
 
The official date of entry into service of 003 is getting closer and closer, and officials are beginning to use some ambiguous words to reveal the progress. In addition, there are some gossip that seem to indicate that China's new aircraft carrier is making progress.
 
Would that be the proposed island of the 004 or 005 we still do not know if the 005 will be the first PLAN carrier that is nuclear powered, I suspect that the 004 will just be a carry on from the Fujian.
 
FighterJock said:
Would that be the proposed island of the 004 or 005 we still do not know if the 005 will be the first PLAN carrier that is nuclear powered, I suspect that the 004 will just be a carry on from the Fujian.
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IIRC the 004 is supposed to be the PLA:N's first CVN.
 
Thanks NMaude. It does start to get confusing these days with the PLAN carrier force expanding at such a rate.
 
SUPER=BUG said:
Will this be the case with the ship island of China's next aircraft carrier?
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That's pretty ridiculous, unless engineers regressed from 003. Closer picture of the carrier mockup reveals it to be most likely a office building left over from 002 mockup.
 
I personally don't agree with this statement either, but Weibo is full of fake news like this
 
We have to be very careful about the news sites these days with so many news articles passing of as real news and later turns out to be fake. Just wait until official release from the PLAN.
 
Julio Garay Terrazas said:
That ship has another silhouette that I don't recognize.
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USS Atlanta (CL-104/IX-304) modified into a test ship to test the blast effects on radars, other fittings including torpedo tubes, and two competing designs for deckhouses, one based on that of USS Leahy (DLG-16) and another hardened against blast effects.

See images NH-98881 to NH-98885 (pages 89-90)


View: https://youtu.be/o3bQE2FYcKs?feature=shared
 
Tomboy said:
That's pretty ridiculous, unless engineers regressed from 003. Closer picture of the carrier mockup reveals it to be most likely a office building left over from 002 mockup.
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Are you sure? At least the mock-up at Wuhan shows such a strange arrangement and IMO it is not - esp. given all other work they do - only an old "office building left over from 002 mockup"!

PLN Type 004 carrier - mockup new at Wuhan Huangjiahu - 20250526.jpg
PLN Type 004 carrier - mockup new at Wuhan Huangjiahu - 20250606.jpeg

By the way, from the current trip of both carriers:

PLN CV-16 Liaoning + J-15T - 202506xx - 中国军号 - 2.jpg PLN CV-17 Shandong + J-15T - 202506xx - 中国军号 - 2.jpg
 
www.bbc.com

Chinese navy drill near Japan sparks concern and protest

Japan has made the rare decision to release a map disclosing Chinese military movements.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
A Chinese naval drill near Japan has sparked concern from Tokyo, which in recent days lodged a protest with Beijing and made the rare decision to publicly disclose Chinese military movements.

In the last few weeks China's two aircraft carriers, the Shandong and the Liaoning, have been conducting simultaneous drills in the Pacific, in an unprecedented move.

Chinese fighter jets have done hundreds of landings and take-offs from the carriers. A few came close to Japanese surveillance planes, prompting Tokyo to convey its "serious concerns" to Beijing.

China has said its activities are consistent with international law and accused Japan of conducting "dangerous moves".

On Tuesday, the Japanese defence ministry released a map tracing the Chinese aircraft carriers' daily positions since 25 May. Japan does not usually disclose details of foreign militaries' movements.

It shows both carriers coming close to Japanese islands, and at times sailing through Japan's exclusive economic zone.

[snip]
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This is not unexpected, given the fact that American aircraft carriers often loitering in the direction of the South China Sea. Given the absence of the J35 (naval version) in the parade queue recently photographed on the Internet, I suspect that now the Fujian aircraft carrier is receiving J35 fighters.
 
SUPER=BUG said:
This is not unexpected, given the fact that American aircraft carriers often loitering in the direction of the South China Sea. Given the absence of the J35 (naval version) in the parade queue recently photographed on the Internet, I suspect that now the Fujian aircraft carrier is receiving J35 fighters.
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Will not be surprised if Chinese carriers are fully outfitted by J-35s before all US carriers have F-35Cs.
 
Sferrin said:
Will not be surprised if Chinese carriers are fully outfitted by J-35s before all US carriers have F-35Cs.
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To be fair though, the chinese CV fleet isn't as big as the US CVN fleet either yet. So it's easier to outfit 3 carriers as opposed to...11? Or was it 10?

Also, the J-35 could be exclusive to Fujian, given that Shandong and Liaoning lack catapults. And I think it's yet to be disclosed if the J-35 can operate from their ramps, no?

Still, the pace is neckbreaking and quite fascinating to observe.
 
EmoBirb said:
To be fair though, the chinese CV fleet isn't as big as the US CVN fleet either yet. So it's easier to outfit 3 carriers as opposed to...11? Or was it 10?

Also, the J-35 could be exclusive to Fujian, given that Shandong and Liaoning lack catapults. And I think it's yet to be disclosed if the J-35 can operate from their ramps, no?

Still, the pace is neckbreaking and quite fascinating to observe.
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Yeah but the F-35C was already flying while China was still waiting for the download to finish. It's almost criminal how long it's taken.
 
EmoBirb said:
To be fair though, the chinese CV fleet isn't as big as the US CVN fleet either yet. So it's easier to outfit 3 carriers as opposed to...11? Or was it 10?

Also, the J-35 could be exclusive to Fujian, given that Shandong and Liaoning lack catapults. And I think it's yet to be disclosed if the J-35 can operate from their ramps, no?

Still, the pace is neckbreaking and quite fascinating to observe.
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In fact, the J35 can land on the Shandong ship and the Liaoning ship, if the grapevine is accurate, the J35 first carried out a catapult take-off on land, and then carried out a landing test on the Liaoning aircraft carrier, and finally carried out a catapult take-off on the Fujian aircraft carrier, and there is no information showing that the J35 cannot take off by gliding. In fact, whether it can take off in a sliding jump depends only on whether the aircraft can meet the take-off speed when leaving the deck, and I believe that the J35 can do this.
 
Why four reactors for the Type 4? I would have thought that two would have been enough unless they are not that powerful and need more to compensate?
 
FighterJock said:
Why four reactors for the Type 4? I would have thought that two would have been enough unless they are not that powerful and need more to compensate?
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If they use a submarine reactor, then two would be insufficient. The alternative would be to use a purpose built reactor.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Most submarine reactors are ~15k-65k horsepower to the shaft. You'd need 4x 50+khp reactors to power a carrier.
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Nimitz has 260khp propulsion and displaces 100kt, Type 004 is projected to be considerably larger than Nimitz and Ford at ~120kt. You probably need ~280khp+ for propulsion to reach a similar top speed. Coupled with 4 EM cats and future upgrades, they might fit 4 A4W output level reactors instead since designing a singular PWR that could provide double the capacity of the A4W in a similar space requirement is pretty difficult if not impossible with current tech.
 
I hadn't heard that the Type 004 was expected to be 20% bigger than a Nimitz! I'm not sure that will prove to the advantage of the Chinese except for bragging rights of having the biggest carrier. If it made sense to build a much larger carrier than 100ktons, the US would have done so by now.

Also, remember that while we're throwing around big horsepower numbers, that's not counting all the steam needed for catapults or the electrical generation capacity.

(think I can get away with saying this) For example, the S8G in an Ohio is rated at 220MW thermal output, and makes in the neighborhood of 65,000hp/~88MW to the screw. Allow for another ~10MW of electrical generation, and you get a 220MW thermal reactor able to make ~100MW electrical if you set it up for pure electrical production like you would for an IEP installation.

I would not be surprised if the Chinese used 4x S8G-sized reactors in their carrier.
 
Anduriel said:
I'm not sure that 4 submarine reactors are enough. Enty had eight. USSR for Ulyanovsk planned 4, but they were KN-3, that twice as powerful as their standard submarine OK-900.
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The A2W reactors on Enterprise made about 35,000hp each, and were roughly twice as powerful as the standard S5W reactor used on all US submarines at the time.

But S8Gs from an Ohio or S6Ws from a Seawolf make about 60-65,000hp each.
 
It's all speculation, as for whether the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is Type 004 or not, it's hard to say, China's next aircraft carrier will definitely build a bigger one, but we don't know how much bigger it will be, as for how many reactors there are, we'd better take a wait-and-see attitude.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I hadn't heard that the Type 004 was expected to be 20% bigger than a Nimitz! I'm not sure that will prove to the advantage of the Chinese except for bragging rights of having the biggest carrier. If it made sense to build a much larger carrier than 100ktons, the US would have done so by now.
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Considering the size of the J15 and the fact that the sixth-generation aircraft (perhaps existing) built the aircraft carrier slightly larger ,in order to seek the same number of carrier-based aircraft as the American carrier, this is actually reasonable.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I hadn't heard that the Type 004 was expected to be 20% bigger than a Nimitz! I'm not sure that will prove to the advantage of the Chinese except for bragging rights of having the biggest carrier. If it made sense to build a much larger carrier than 100ktons, the US would have done so by now.

Also, remember that while we're throwing around big horsepower numbers, that's not counting all the steam needed for catapults or the electrical generation capacity.

(think I can get away with saying this) For example, the S8G in an Ohio is rated at 220MW thermal output, and makes in the neighborhood of 65,000hp/~88MW to the screw. Allow for another ~10MW of electrical generation, and you get a 220MW thermal reactor able to make ~100MW electrical if you set it up for pure electrical production like you would for an IEP installation.

I would not be surprised if the Chinese used 4x S8G-sized reactors in their carrier.
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Some mysterious ship that under construction in Dalian has 43m waterline width so if this thing has the same hull ratio as Gerald Ford it will be 350m long and weight around 118,000 tons.
If the Chinese ship ended up bigger than Ford I don't think its necessarily for bragging right of having the biggest carrier but also partly because of limitation of their reactor tech. Since they need 4 reactors instead of Ford's 2 they might as well make the ship bigger to compensate for the volume that are taken by the extra reactors.
 
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Anduriel said:
I'm not sure that 4 submarine reactors are enough. Enty had eight. USSR for Ulyanovsk planned 4, but they were KN-3, that twice as powerful as their standard submarine OK-900.
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Big E was experimental and replaced her boilers for reactors 1:1. In practice she only needed six of her reactor for propulsion, hotel, and aux, and ran two at minimal output as reserve.
 

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