Article

2014-06-21 China-Japan-Koreas

China's Third Aircraft Carrier Could Be Nuclear

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Uncle Phester 2014-06-21 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Revell and Testors would be proud of the flattop pictured in the article. David Axe is a clown, and should not be allowed to write anything covering the military or one's capabilities.

Posted by RJ45ACP 2014-06-21 00:14|| 2014-06-21 00:14|| Front Page Top

#2 Considering that China has yet to conduct successful carrier operations on the one they do have....

I'm not too worried. Give 'em 50 years and they might be up to it.

Then again, knowing our idiot Commander in Chief he just might give them our carriers.

Posted by DarthVader 2014-06-21 01:16|| 2014-06-21 01:16|| Front Page Top

#3 Let me get this right, the critics in the West have been harping for decades that the big carriers are Doomed(tm) and that they're just big lumbering targets. So, why are the Chinese building these very same vessels? /rhetorical question

Posted by Procopius2k 2014-06-21 08:32|| 2014-06-21 08:32|| Front Page Top

#4 Wonder what they got going for underway replenishment stuff. They will need to be ~~good eating size~~ pretty good sized and expensive, to maintain a CVN centered fleet.

We need to set up a bet, where's the PLAN CV first going to visit? Rangoon maybe? Singapore? Vladivostok? Does Hong Kong Kount?

Posted by Shipman 2014-06-21 08:44|| 2014-06-21 08:44|| Front Page Top

#5 ...Okay, let's look at a few things.

First, this particular bird farm doesn't look that big - maybe about the size of La Belle France's Charles DeGaulle. Which, I might note, took TWELVE YEARS to build and commission. If you're going to challenge the USN's carriers, this ain't the design to do it with, unless you're going to build enough to keep seven or eight at sea at any one time....and I don't care how much money the PRC has, they ain't doing that any time in the remotely foreseeable future.

Second, you know what I don't see on that deck? No AEW capability - think E-2 Hawkeye. You could, of course, jury-rig a radar on a helo the way the RN did after the Falklands, but it ain't the same thing. We've not seen them demonstrate any AEW capability yet, and you are not going to run any kind of carrier war without it. It's possible that they're going to use shore-based assets to to handle that - but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a deep-water carrier fleet if it can't go outside of the range of land-based air.

Third, we still have not seen the PRC navy show anything even close to the kind of at-sea replenishment capability that is going to be MANDATORY to keep the CVs at sea and fighting. that includes a COD (Carrier On-Board Delivery) capability like the C-2 Greyhound. Yes, you can run 'em back to port for supplies and parts...but if they're transiting back home at that point, they're nothing but a chance for our guys to get a SINKEX of legendary proportions.

Summary: Yes, a threat. Yes, something we need to keep an eye on. The end of the USN's dominance at sea? We're more likely to do it to ourselves than at the hands of the PRC's carriers.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2014-06-21 09:22|| 2014-06-21 09:22|| Front Page Top

#6 A NUCLEAR-powered Littoral Aircraft Carrier!

Yeah, that's the ticket

Posted by Frank G 2014-06-21 09:30|| 2014-06-21 09:30|| Front Page Top

#7 Considering that China has yet to conduct successful carrier operations on the one they do have....

I'm not too worried. Give 'em 50 years and they might be up to it.

Then again, knowing our idiot Commander in Chief he just might give them our carriers.

Not likely, but another possibility is that Champ will send some of our Sailors TAD to 'assist.' That would be world wide community organizing....

Posted by USN, Ret. 2014-06-21 09:55|| 2014-06-21 09:55|| Front Page Top

#8 Selling ours for scrap.
From an e-mail.

Yet another decommissioned "supercarrier" is coming to the Port of Brownsville for scrapping, and it's the biggest one yet.
In fact, the dismantling of the former aircraft carrier USS Constellation by International Shipbreaking Ltd. will be the largest ship-recycling job to take place in the United States.

Until the Constellation contract, the former USS Forrestal and the former USS Saratoga were the largest ships slated for salvaging by a U.S. ship breaker. The Forrestal arrived in Brownsville to much fanfare in February after being towed from Philadelphia, and is now being dismantled by All Star Metals.

The Saratoga, decommissioned in 1994, is expected to depart under tow from Naval Air Station at Newport, Rhode Island, this summer and will be recycled by ESCO Marine at the Port of Brownsville.

Construction began on the Constellation, the second of the Kitty Hawk-class of carriers, in 1957 at New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn. It was commissioned in October 1961. The vessel was decommissioned in August 2003 at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, then towed to the inactive ship facility at Bremerton, Wash.

International Shipbreaking is expected to begin towing the 62,000-ton carrier -- nicknamed "Connie" -- from Washington in late summer.

Unlike the Navy's contracts for the Forrestal and the Saratoga, in which each ship breaker received the symbolic sum of $0.01, the Navy is paying International Shipbreakers $3 million to take apart the Constellation.

Robert Berry, vice president of the company, said that's because the towing distance is much longer -- all the way down around the Horn of South America and up the other side -- compared to the other two carriers.

Berry said the trip would take 110 to 125 days and guessed that the Constellation could dock in Brownsville sometime in December. In contrast, the Forrestal took only two weeks to get here from Philadelphia.

Berry said the company had just won the contract and was preparing to visit the ship soon to determine what will be required in terms of rigging and other matters related to towing.

"We'll probably have some information to release as we get moving here," Berry said.

The Constellation job will take roughly two years to complete, he said, while declining to estimate how much money the company expects to make from the salvaged metal. The steel salvaged from the ship may go to mills in Texas, Mexico or elsewhere around the world, depending on demand, he said.

"We don't know," Berry said. "The market changes month to month."

The recent spike in large vessels coming to the port for dismantling has led, naturally, to a boost in hiring of workers good with a cutting torch. Fortunately, such people aren't hard to come by in Brownsville, Berry said.

"There are quite a few experienced people," he said. "We've been doing this in the area since the mid- to late '60s. A lot of people have gotten experience at it over the years."

Berry said the Navy prefers to work with more than one recycling company, which is why it has contracts with three ship breakers at the port. And with plenty of other decommissioned carriers awaiting the scrapper's torch, the sight of rusty, fading giants gliding down the Brownsville Ship Channel on the last leg of their final voyage could become increasingly common.

Now that initial recycling contracts have been awarded to each of the three ship breakers, the Navy said it's in a position to award additional contracts for scrapping non-nuclear-powered carriers over a five-year period, with All Star, ESCO and International Shipbreaking competing against each other for the work.

After the Constellation is dismantled, the Navy will have four conventionally powered carriers left: the Kitty Hawk, the Independence and the Ranger, all at Bremerton; and the John F. Kennedy, moored in Philadelphia.

While the Kitty Hawk is being kept in reserve and the John F. Kennedy available for donation as a museum/memorial, the Independence and the Ranger are designated for scrapping.

"They'll be more carriers coming," Berry said.

Still, even if they do become a more common sight in Brownsville, he thinks their arrival will continue to be a pretty big deal -- filled with history and loved by their former crews as they are.

"These carriers are pretty special," Berry said

Posted by Besoeker 2014-06-21 10:02|| 2014-06-21 10:02|| Front Page Top

#9 Besides the AEW , UNREP and COD that Mike pointed out, the other thing that makes the US carrier force so powerful is the concept of a carrier battle group. A carrier never travels alone. It is surrounded by other ships that form protective rings around it. The US Navy uses defense in depth. And not all of thee assets are on the surface.

Developing and implementing these doctrines takes time and experience.

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2014-06-21 12:46|| 2014-06-21 12:46|| Front Page Top

#10 And we couldn't give the carrier's to India? Or better yet, give one to Isreal?

Posted by Charles 2014-06-21 13:32|| 2014-06-21 13:32|| Front Page Top

#11 What would Israel do with an old-style aircraft carrier?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2014-06-21 14:01|| 2014-06-21 14:01|| Front Page Top

#12 Besoeker,

The JFK note is kind of interesting - she was scheduled for a SINKEX, but my understanding is that the Kennedy family raised holy hell, and she was instead designated for a museum donation...which is never gonna happen. Once they named the next Ford class JFK, that mollified the family and I think you'll see her sent for scrap soon.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2014-06-21 14:10|| 2014-06-21 14:10|| Front Page Top

#13 Need to do a SINKEX on it with robotic damage control units, fully fueled and moving.

Posted by Shipman 2014-06-21 19:57|| 2014-06-21 19:57|| Front Page Top

22:49 USN, Ret.
22:15 Squinty
21:45 KBK
20:55 Shipman
20:49 Shipman
20:38 OldSpook
20:34 KBK
20:19 SteveS
19:57 Shipman
19:53 Shipman
19:48 SteveS
19:42 Shipman
19:37 Shipman
19:33 Shipman
18:34 Squinty
18:32 Squinty
18:29 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:29 Frank G
18:27 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:24 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:23 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:21 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:20 Ulung Thravirt1475
18:19 Ulung Thravirt1475