China has built a snap-together container aircraft carrier.
- Ship Conversion: A 100m Chinese cargo ship at Shanghai’s Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard has been rapidly converted with a modular electromagnetic catapult (EMALS), stealth drones, 30mm auto cannon, phased-array radar, and vertical launch missile cells.
- Technological Leap: Raises questions about China mastering EMALS technology on a modular platform; recovery of drones may rely on one-shot disposable systems rather than traditional arrestor decks.
- Strategic Implications: With over 370 warships and 4,000+ dual-use merchant vessels, China could mass-produce low-cost, disguised drone carriers, challenging US and allied naval dominance in the Pacific theatre.
Pictures show stealth drones next to the launcher as if ready for take-off - @CollinSLKoh
Images have emerged of a Chinese medium-sized cargo ship, docked at Shanghai’s Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard, fitted with a modular electromagnetic catapult for launching advanced combat drones, or perhaps even fighter jets.
This vessel, roughly 100-metres long and built as a container ship, has been reconfigured in just days to include a train of four connected vehicles secured on deck to form the launch track. This is probably an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (Emals). Pictures show stealth drones next to the launcher as if ready for take-off. The ship also has the recently fitted, containerised 30mm close-in auto cannon system, phased-array radar and frigate-like amounts of vertical launch missile cells, that I commented on last week.
As a merchant mariner friend of mine commented, “the hull is rubbish, common and cheap. It’s therefore perfect for mass and disguise. It also needs very few people to run it”.
To be clear, a few photos like this does not equal a full operational capability. To start with, have the Chinese really conquered Emals – the bane of the US Navy (USN) for several years – to the point where it can be bolted together like this? It looks as though they have mastered Emals on their third carrier, the Fujian, but a modular system is even more difficult. And how would the drone demonstrators be recovered – if they are intended to be? Recovery still normally needs a large deck, probably with an arrestor system, neither of which are visible here, but China may be intending to use only one-shot disposable drones.
What we do know is that the new snap-together aircraft carrier slash missile ship is docked round the corner from the Type 076 amphibious assault ship Sichuan, which I wrote about last year. The Sichuan is a new thing in the world: a large-deck amphibious assault ship with a catapult fitted for fixed-wing operations. The advantages of a high-speed accelerated take-off in terms of payload and endurance are well understood. Has China leapfrogged ahead of the US in Emals technology?
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (Plan) has the most warships of any navy in the world now: 370 plus. The US Navy has around 290. In tonnage, probably a more important metric, the US Navy still has the advantage, but that is being eroded fast. In the last year alone, the Plan commissioned warships totalling 213,000 tons: one Type 003 aircraft carrier, one Type 075 amphibious ship, one Type 055 destroyer, seven Type 052Ds, four Type 054A frigates, and two Type 054Bs. That’s 752 new vertical launch cells. It is now questionable if the combined US Seventh Fleet (70 ships), Japan’s 150 and Australia’s 50 can match the Plan’s mass in the Pacific theatre. A statistic used in the UK is that in tonnage terms China is building the equivalent of the Royal Navy every two years. That is now out of date, and not for the better.
Add to this China’s 4,000-plus merchant vessels, many of them built in dual-use yards to military specifications including reinforced hulls and extra compartmentalisation for improved damage control. These could convert en masse to warship-like levels of capability, like this drone ship. The US has just shown in Venezuela that when it comes to long-range, multi-domain precision operations it is unrivalled. But even for the US, the waters inside the first and second island chains are far away from most bases. A slugging match against a peer or near-peer adversary conducted across the Pacific Ocean would be a very serious thing to embark upon, even for America. If nothing else, this latest round of show-and-tell will have obliged all relevant intelligence communities to revise their calculations
China has built a snap-together container aircraft carrier. The numbers make me turn pale |
