Usage of PLAN Aircraft Carrier

We see many articles in the West about PLAN's rapid growth and the possibilities of the future Aircraft Carriers. There have been a lot of questions in the west about how China might use the new hardware. If this recent OpEd on Global Times is any indication, the discussion on this has not finished in China either.

In this piece, he started off by saying that China currently does not have a battling US for sea control, nor will it have it in the future. And if US keeps regarding China as its enemy in the Pacific Ocean, then that will bring calamity to the world.

He says that overt usage of Chinese navy in solving regional territorial issues or teaching US a small lesson may bring a stronger sense of national strength in the short run, but would result in anti-Chinese sentiment across the world. It will only end up scaring the neighbors. So, the usage of aircraft carrier must be careful. He also mentions that China should use carriers to strengthen the nation's soft power through indirectly diffusing crisis around the world. China cannot achieve sea supremacy over US in the near future, not should it. It should increase national strength through all avenues. There is no reason for China not to have an aircraft carrier given its position as the only UN P5 nation to not have one. The question is how China can make the world feel more at ease about having carriers.

I think the most important part to note is that I really see no desire in Chinese public or even in the military for worldwide domination. Over the past few years, it is sensing a rapid growth in its national stature, so it is acting more boldly on international issues rather than being withdrawn. China has always claimed South China Sea as part of its sovereignty. It is only voicing these claims more loudly now that it is the world's second largest economy.

Latest F-22P news

I will first start off by posting some recent pictures of F-22P. The first two are pictures of 253 (the 3rd unit of F-22P) in sea trials. And the last picture is of the 4th unit of F-22P that is currently under construction in Karachi.




And I also have seen a recent article that interviewed Captain Mirza Foad Amin Baig, who is the Commanding Officer of PNS Zulfiqar. Since I'm not sure about whether I'm allowed to post the article on here, I will just give a detailed summary in points:

• The First F-22P (PNS Zulfiqar No. 251) was commissioned on 30th July 2009. It arrived in Karachi on 13 September and was inducted into the PN fleet on 19 September.
  
• They tested the sensors + weapons of 251, including successful firing of C-802
  
• F-22P is 3,144 tonnes and 123.4 m long -> larger than what we thought and larger than Jiangwei class
  
• ASuW uses 8 C-802 missiles, Z-9EC for OTH targeting and Chinese version of AK-176M main gun
  
• ASW consists of ET-52C 324mm torpedo tubes, RDC-32 rocket launchers and Echo Type 5 hull mounted sonar
  
• Close in air defense with FM-90N SAM, AK-176M + 2 export version of Type 730 CIWS
  
• Combat system is based on Chinese ZKJ-3C
  
• EW suite uses Chinese RWD-8 intercept system and a NJ8I-3 jammer
  
• Non-FCR Sensors include a SUR-17 air-surveillence radar, an SR-60 air/surface search radar and a Kelvin-Hughes 2007 navigation radar
  
• Uses CODAD propulsion with two Tognum MTU 12V 1163 TB 83 diesel engines
  
• Top speed of 28+ knots + range of 6000+ nm at 18 knots
  
• Core crew is 188 with capacity for 212
  

From all report, it looks like PN is quite satisfied with the F-22Ps thus far. I have not kept up with PN current effort in buying an OHP. Last I heard, they were in the process of getting one. I do believe there have already been much talk regarding to PN buying 4 more frigates of China. The only question is what will be on that ship.

Peace Mission 2010

Looks like the military exercise between Shanghai Cooperation Organization is becoming an annual occurrence instead of bi-annual.

According to rian, the next one will be this September. Previously, Peace Mission had taken place in 2005, 2007 and 2009. The article is as follows:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will conduct a series of anti-terror drills from September 9 - 25 in Kazakhstan, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

The exercise, codenamed Peace Mission 2010, will be held at the Matybulak base near the town of Gvardeisky with each of the SCO member states (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) contributing at least one operational-tactical group.

Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status in the organization.

The drills will test the interoperability of the SCO armed forces in rendering assistance to a member state involved in an internal armed conflict or subjected to a mass terrorist attack.

In many ways, these exercises have come full circle. In 2005, it involved 10,000 soldiers and was widely reported by different media circles. At that time, Russians were using the exercise as an opportunity to show off new hardware to export to China. Russians also showed themselves to be much better than PLA in all of the different missions. As time went on, PLA have improved a lot in the past 2 exercises, but there is a still a large gap between the operational capability of the two forces. Much of that is due to the less intensive and realistic training method of PLA. The Russians have had recent ground combats, so they have used those live combat experience to develop training procedure and ROE that is much more effective than that of PLA. Even as late as 2009, PLA commanders commented that they were impressed with Russian troops strictness in cleaning and maintaining equipments and their ability to fly and enter battle zones in their helicopter at much lower altitude.

J-15 finally appearing?

We've received the first good clear picture of what appears to be J-15, the naval fighter jet to be used on future aircraft carriers.


On a side note, it looks like PLAN's aviation arm is going to be taking some J-10s, although I doubt those will actually be naval fighters.

071 deploying to Aden officially

According to this Xinhua article, China will be deploying 998, 170 and 887 to Gulf of Aden. It also reports that the flotilla will have more than 1,000 personnel, including Navy special forces troops. We also find out that 998's displacement is 18,500 tonnes in its mission configuration. It should be not a surprise that 998 is going on this mission. China has been sending all of its new naval toys out there. They waited until the LCAC is in service before sending 998 on this mission. The more interesting part are the photos that came out.

First, we have a really nice detailed diagram of 998. It looks like the well deck can only hold one LCAC, but it will also hold a couple of high speed patrol boat. I presume that these will all be used against the pirates. It also looks like the hangar is large enough to hold 4 Z-8s (assuming they do 2 side by side on top of 2 front and back). The Z-8s accompanying 998 were specially fitted with gun pods to assist in attacking pirates.

Here are some photos of the LCAC from the same magazine. Looks like the one traveling to Aden will be 3320. There is also a nice photo of LCAC going at high speed.



A picture of the well deck with patrol boat.

Finally, more pictures of 998 going on this mission.




Anyway, good to see we are finally getting more details on this ship.

071 deploying to Aden + More photos

I've noticed on CDF that they posted a blog entry on 071 possibly going down to Gulf of Aden. There are some photos here showing a PLAN Z-8 helicopter pilot leaving his 1-year old son to "train for a long range" mission. At present time, Z-8s are pretty much only operating on the large ships like 071 and the new hospital ship. It also makes sense that they would want to send 071 down there to test it out a little bit in a long range deployment. They have already sent all of their other new toys down there. We have seen recent photos of gun pod armed Z-8s flying around. This is similar to the modifications they made on Z-9s that were part of the Gulf of Aden expedition. Here are some of those photos:



As a sign of confidence to the 071 platform, they are building a new ship that looks like another unit or a successor of 071 in HuDong shipyard. Here are some of the pictures of its modules. We should have a better idea of its configurations in a few months.




Now, we have a bunch of photos from different shipyards recently. Most of these are coming from HuDong shipyard in Shanghai.
Here is the photos of the recently launched 054A. It is the 4th unit launched from HD shipyard. I don't think there are any new units currently under construction, so this is probably the last 054 series ship we see for a while (like a year). They normally build in bunches of 4s. The next 4 might just have minor improvement on this 4 or might have major changes to become 054B. We will see.
I do find the development for this ship kind of amazing because it was actually launched last week. Meaning, we went from the last set of pictures (which was still unpainted and without many sensors) to launched in 10 days.




Here is the final one of the 3 F-22Ps being built for the Pakistani Navy. It's given the number 253. And it should be sailing off to PN sometimes this year.



Also, we have elint ship 853 getting all of the sensors added and scaffolding removed. This is an improvement upon the current elint ship 851. This ship should be going on sea trials any day now.



And finally, we have some updated photos of Varyag. The sensors still have not been installed on the island yet. And there are still plenty of sheds on the deck indicating the amount of work left to be done.

Latest pictures from Shanghai

I haven't posted anything recently, because I've been extremely busy at work and there is not many new extraordinary things coming out. But when I got home today, there was a host of new pictures coming out that I thought was worth sharing. Most of them come from Shanghai.
The first one is showing 092 SSBN after the major refitting that it underwent recently. It's not a new ship by any stretch of imagination, but we don't normally get to see PLAN SSBNs.


Now, we also got a bunch of pictures from Shanghai.
The first two shows the 4th 054A (or 8th overall) under construction from HD shipyard. Now, this one has actually seemed to have taken a lot longer than expected. The 4th one from HP shipyard launched a while ago and this one probably has another month to go before launching. And from that latest pictures coming out of HP shipyard, there won't be another 054A coming out anytime soon. Looks like they are continuing the policy of building ships in batch of 4s.


This ship is 112 (of 052A class). It was built in the early 90s and is powered by LM2500, which was purchased prior to the embargo. It looks like they are doing are major works on this ship by pretty much taking it apart. It has been sitting next to HD for the past 6 months. It'd be interesting to see if they will actually do anything to it.

This is PLAN's new ELINT ship. It was launched a while ago, but it looks like all of the sensors have been installed now and the scaffolding are all removed. Looks like this might be ready for sea trial soon. Unlike with frigates and destroyers, the big ships like this only get built one at a time. Or maybe they are just experimental unit until mass production. Although, PLAN doesn't really need to have the kind of numbers that would require mass production.



The pictures below are probably the most important development recently. The first one shows a module of a new LPD under construction. It looks like after all of the testings they did with the experiment class of 071, they are finally ready to mass produce it with whatever modifications they put in.

The two pictures below show the "Chinese LCAC" being delivered to PLAN. Now this is kind of interesting. We actually saw pictures of this starting in 2007. However, it took a good 3 years for it to complete all the work and testing needed to actually join service with PLAN. And with follow-ups coming in the 071 class, more of these units should join in.


And finally, more pictures of the first 071, 998 sailing around in Shanghai. 071 really represents the first major step that PLAN took in becoming a blue water fleet. So, it's quite significant that we are seeing its mass production starting and LCACs finally accompanying it.