Indonesia builds aircraft carriers
Aircraft carriers are the capital ships of modern navies, and a navy with and without an aircraft carrier are two completely different concepts. Based on the importance of aircraft carriers, many countries have put plans to build aircraft carriers on the agenda, including Indonesia, a country that has long been a small transparent country in the international military field. Indonesia has also recently vowed to build an "aircraft carrier" or cooperate with Turkey.
Indonesia's aircraft carrier construction dates back to 2018, when Indonesia introduced a plan to build an amphibious assault ship. The amphibious assault ship program, called the LPH program, is 244 meters long, can take off and land drones or helicopters, and has a displacement of nearly 50,000 tons. At present, Indonesia has two sets of plans on the take-off and landing points, one is 8 take-off and landing points, and the other is 6.
The technical source of Indonesian aircraft carriers and carrier-based aircraft
However, when it comes to the biggest feature of this "aircraft carrier", it must be its technical source. It is reported that Indonesia will cooperate with Turkey to build its own LPH based on Turkey's quasi-aircraft carrier Anadolu. As for Turkey's quasi-aircraft carrier Anadolu, the source is Spain's Juan Carlos I class strategic delivery ship. After obtaining the technology of the ship, Turkey not only built its own aircraft carrier, but also intended to undertake the construction of warships of other countries, and Indonesia was one of its customers.
After Turkey obtained the technology of the amphibious assault ship from Spain, it originally planned to import some F-35B carrier-based aircraft from the United States and build its quasi-aircraft carrier Anadolu into a warship that could provide vertical take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft. However, due to international political reasons, the United States did not sell the F-35B to Turkey, so Turkey had to retreat to let helicopters and drones board the quasi-aircraft carrier an Anadolu.
The same is true of Indonesia's LPH scheme, and in the absence of Turkey's F-35B, Indonesia may have been rushing from the beginning to get drones and carrier-based helicopters on board. There is a lot of speculation from the outside world that Indonesia may buy TB-3 drones from Turkey and make its LPH a drone aircraft carrier completely. Or let the LPH carry 16 helicopters and become a helicopter carrier.
Positioning of Indonesian aircraft carriers
In terms of combat effectiveness alone, UAVs are inferior to F-35Bs, after all, modern UAVs are far behind the ship-based aircraft in terms of speed, maneuverability, and bomb carrying capacity. And with modern data link technology, even the top military powers such as China, the United States and Russia cannot make drones "obey orders" like manned warplanes. In countries like Indonesia, where the military industry is largely bought, drones can only be used against enemy ground targets that have no air defense.
As for helicopters, they cannot be compared with fighters in air combat, so the positioning of Indonesia's quasi-aircraft carrier is very intriguing. From the perspective of the combat effectiveness of the carrier-based aircraft, Indonesia's LPH aircraft carrier can undoubtedly only undertake tasks such as covering the landing operations of the Marine Corps. Around Indonesia, it hardly has such tactical needs.
But this aircraft carrier can not undertake maritime combat tasks, after all, whether it is a drone or a helicopter, it cannot win the real fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft. So now the most concerned about this aircraft carrier is what kind of goals Indonesia wants to achieve with this aircraft carrier. Before the carrier is launched into service, it is difficult to guess its position.