As the symbolic weapons and equipment of the major countries in the world today, aircraft carriers are also one of the weapons and equipment with the largest tonnage, the most complex structure, the strongest deterrent, the highest cost and the highest manufacturing difficulty in the world today. Whether a country has an aircraft carrier can directly reflect the strength of the country's navy. For example, in the world today, the military strength of the top countries, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and India all have aircraft carriers. Other countries, without the capacity to build or maintain aircraft carriers, are committed to developing amphibious assault ships, which we often call quasi-aircraft carriers, such as Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt.
U.S. Navy Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
Among all the countries that have aircraft carriers, the United States is undoubtedly the most powerful, and under the support of strong economic, scientific and technological strength and industrial strength, the United States has been the strongest presence in the development of aircraft carriers since the end of World War II in order to seek the status of world maritime hegemony. Even today, the United States is far ahead of other countries in the development of aircraft carriers, with a total of 10 "Nimitz-class" nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and 1 "Ford-class" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (another one is ready to enter service), both of which have a displacement of more than 100,000 tons and use nuclear power and catapults. The "Ford-class" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier adopts a new nuclear reactor, an electromagnetic catapult system and a new blocking system, which is a generation higher than the comprehensive level of the "Nimitz-class" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
U.S. Navy Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
Other countries, including China, Britain, France, Russia and India, have a huge gap with the United States in terms of both the number and quality of aircraft carriers. Among these countries, the largest displacement aircraft carriers are China's Shandong and Liaoning, Russia's Kuznetsov, Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, all of which have displacements of 60,000-70,000 tons. Moreover, they all use conventional power and skid over the deck, the aircraft carrier itself is not as tonnage as the United States, the sea self-sustainment capacity is limited, the number of carrier-based aircraft is smaller, it is impossible to carry fixed-wing early warning aircraft and transport aircraft, and the take-off efficiency of carrier-based aircraft is not as good as that of the United States.
Chinese Navy Liaoning
France's only "Charles de Gaulle" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, although the use of nuclear power and catapult devices, but the tonnage of only 40,000 tons, and the United States gap is obvious, the use of nuclear power devices are from nuclear submarines, insufficient power into the criticism, carrier-based aircraft carrying capacity gap is even greater. India is the weakest of the above-mentioned countries with aircraft carriers, the only aircraft carrier in active service, the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya, the No. 4 aircraft carrier Gorshkov, which is converted from the Kiev-class aircraft carrier of the Soviet Navy/Russian Navy, with a full load displacement of only 40,000 tons, and also uses conventional power and skid decks to build its own aircraft carrier Vikrant, with a displacement of only about 40,000 tons.
HMS Queen Elizabeth of the British Navy
Therefore, in the development of aircraft carriers, the United States has an absolute advantage, and such an advantage may continue for decades. At the same time, the aircraft carrier is also the core of the US Navy's stable maritime supremacy, and in order to maintain the absolute advantage of technology, the US Navy will also be fully equipped with Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the future. In China, with the continuous growth of the economy, the rise in military expenditure year by year, the continuous development of industrial strength and scientific and technological strength, in order to enhance the comprehensive status and influence of the Chinese Navy in the world, it is also necessary to develop a high-level, high-combat capability and high deterrent aircraft carrier.
Chinese Navy Shandong ship
To this end, China has been committed to the development of aircraft carriers in the past few decades, as early as the 1970s, China conducted in-depth research on aircraft carriers, during which it also purchased several second-hand aircraft carriers from Countries such as Australia and Russia. However, these aircraft carriers are either retired aircraft carriers or scrapped aircraft carriers, which are not helpful to China's development of aircraft carriers, and have no research significance, their own economic strength is limited, and the shipbuilding industry and scientific and technological strength are not enough to develop aircraft carriers, so that China's aircraft carrier development has no substantial progress. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that the purchase of the Varyag completely changed the development of China's aircraft carriers.
USS Varyag
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Varyag aircraft carrier, which had a completion rate of only 68% at the time, belonged to Ukraine, which was unable to continue to build the aircraft carrier and eventually had to sell it. On March 19, 1998, Hong Kong businessman Xu Zengping bought it for $20 million in the name of Hong Kong Chuang Law Group and dragged it to China, during which it was also blocked by Turkey, and the return of the Varyag aircraft carrier was extremely difficult, and it was finally approved after many efforts and conditions. Since 2005, it has been studied, continued to be built and transformed by Dalian Shipyard of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. Arrived at Dalian Port on March 4, 2002, and after years of investigation, evaluation and preparation, on April 26, 2005, the Chinese Navy began to continue to build and improve.
The varyag transformation process
After 7 years of transformation, on September 25, 2012, the Varyag was fully transformed in China, renamed "Liaoning Ship", and joined the Chinese Navy, its successful transformation marks that China has the first aircraft carrier, and the century-old aircraft carrier dream has finally been realized. A year later, on November 19, 2013, China's first domestically produced aircraft carrier began construction, launched on April 26, 2017, and commissioned on December 17, 2019, renamed Shandong Ship, hull number 17. The successful construction of the Shandong warship marks that China has officially become one of the few countries in the world that has the ability to build aircraft carriers, laying a solid foundation for China's subsequent construction of more advanced aircraft carriers.
Type 003 aircraft carrier image
At the same time, in order to enhance the comprehensive strength of the Chinese Navy and improve its status in the world, it is far from enough to have the Liaoning and Shandong warships, and China must be committed to developing the next generation of more advanced 003 aircraft carriers, only in this way can we fundamentally narrow the huge gap between China and the United States in the development of aircraft carriers, and at the same time open up the gap with other countries. For now, neither the Liaoning nor the Shandong warships can compete with the comprehensive combat capabilities of the United States, have no nuclear power, no catapults, have small tonnage, and the gap is all-round.
Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
So from the perspective of size alone, how big is the gap between the Shandong warship and the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier? In order to make an intuitive comparison, we have specifically listed some of the size data for comparison, and from the data we can clearly see the specific size gap between the two. Since the design of the Shandong ship is basically the same as that of the Liaoning ship, here we will compare the size of the Varyag aircraft carrier. The Varyag aircraft carrier is 306.5 meters long, 70.5 meters wide, has a draft depth of 10.5 meters, a maximum speed of 30 knots, a maximum cruising range of 8,000 nautical miles, and a full load displacement of 65,000 tons.
Comparison of Shandong (top), Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (center) and Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier (bottom).
Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier length of 332.8 meters, a total width of 76.8 meters, a draft depth of 11.3 meters, a maximum speed of more than 30 knots, unlimited mileage, full load displacement of 104,000 tons, from the data of the two, the size of the size does not seem to be as obvious as the difference in tonnage, Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is only 26 meters longer than varying aircraft carriers, 6 meters wide. However, the displacement difference between the two is 40,000 tons, and the difference in the carrying capacity of carrier-based aircraft is huge. This is actually related to the design of the two, although the size difference between the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is not large, but the hull is higher, the number of layers is more, the internal space is larger, and the internal space is also larger, plus the use of direct access to the deck, the island is also very small, making the internal space larger and the deck usable area is also larger.
The J-15 carrier-based aircraft was on board the Liaoning ship
At the same time, the F/A18 "Hornet" carrier-based aircraft is also smaller than the Su-33/J-15 "Flying Shark" carrier-based aircraft, which leads to an increase in the carrier-based aircraft carrying capacity of the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Just like the Shandong and Liaoning ships, the Number of J-15s carried by the Liaoning Ships was only 24, which was optimized to 36, while the only improvements were the islands and internal hangars, and the size did not change. Finally, we hope that China's 003 aircraft carrier can be launched as soon as possible and shorten the gap with the United States!
(Periscoper, March 25, 2021, please do not reprint without authorization, plagiarism will be investigated!) ）