Let's suppose for whatever reason China doesn't manage to get Varyag. My preferred TL is for it to somehow get under russian control, eventually refurbished and serving alongside Kuznetsov.
With that out of the way, wonder what will be the options/development path for the chinese carrier program? We can assume they will still gets lot of blueprint and likely design assistance from Russia initially.
1. Convert one or both Kievs to ski-jump STOBAR, much like Vikramaditya, and buy 50 MiG-29Ks as the immediate available option. Navalized J-10 is also an option but a bit tricky as it's single engine. Alternatively somehow manage to get Novorossyisk too and convert it to STOBAR since it's newer, either on it's own or with another Kiev (say Minsk since is the second oldest). In this scenario, how do you think the first indigenous chinese carrier will look like, would they jump straight to a CATOBAR (a sort of Fujian minus, with two steam cats since steam cats are probably easier to build in the 2010s than the then brand new EMALS) since they'd have already two STOBAR Kievs, or if they only covert Novorossyisk, build an improved sistership to it at Dalian, then Jiangnan still goes on to a CATOBAR Fujian or at least a Fujian minus?
2. Don't convert any Kievs, but instead start building indigenous carriers from scratch, based on past experience such as the 891 carrier design, subsequent designs investigated such as the Bazans and of course russian blueprints study and design assistance. Would they jump straight to a CATOBAR design, a sort of Fujian minus, at both Dalian and Jiangnan, or this will be too great a leap and they will build two ski-jump STOBARs first, more or less like Shandong, before building the next pair more or less to Fujian specs?
On the other hand if they convert Kievs first they might give top priority to navalizing the FC-31/J-31/35 since it's the right size to replace the MiG-29s. Though they might still build the J-15 via the T-10K as well for the bigger carriers, but in reversed order (first FC-31 then J-15).
As a parallel example, China did started building LHDs without having any such ships to study, so probably they could build CATOBAR carriers from scratch as well, though it may take them a bit longer to build and put them in service than the OTL carriers, maybe couple of years at most.
Comments and input welcomed.
With that out of the way, wonder what will be the options/development path for the chinese carrier program? We can assume they will still gets lot of blueprint and likely design assistance from Russia initially.
1. Convert one or both Kievs to ski-jump STOBAR, much like Vikramaditya, and buy 50 MiG-29Ks as the immediate available option. Navalized J-10 is also an option but a bit tricky as it's single engine. Alternatively somehow manage to get Novorossyisk too and convert it to STOBAR since it's newer, either on it's own or with another Kiev (say Minsk since is the second oldest). In this scenario, how do you think the first indigenous chinese carrier will look like, would they jump straight to a CATOBAR (a sort of Fujian minus, with two steam cats since steam cats are probably easier to build in the 2010s than the then brand new EMALS) since they'd have already two STOBAR Kievs, or if they only covert Novorossyisk, build an improved sistership to it at Dalian, then Jiangnan still goes on to a CATOBAR Fujian or at least a Fujian minus?
2. Don't convert any Kievs, but instead start building indigenous carriers from scratch, based on past experience such as the 891 carrier design, subsequent designs investigated such as the Bazans and of course russian blueprints study and design assistance. Would they jump straight to a CATOBAR design, a sort of Fujian minus, at both Dalian and Jiangnan, or this will be too great a leap and they will build two ski-jump STOBARs first, more or less like Shandong, before building the next pair more or less to Fujian specs?
On the other hand if they convert Kievs first they might give top priority to navalizing the FC-31/J-31/35 since it's the right size to replace the MiG-29s. Though they might still build the J-15 via the T-10K as well for the bigger carriers, but in reversed order (first FC-31 then J-15).
As a parallel example, China did started building LHDs without having any such ships to study, so probably they could build CATOBAR carriers from scratch as well, though it may take them a bit longer to build and put them in service than the OTL carriers, maybe couple of years at most.
Comments and input welcomed.
