Hello everyone, it’s time for an update on China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier, the Fujian. It’s been
85,000 tons, the ship is approaching the size of the supercarriers of the US Navy,
such as the 100,000-ton Nimitz class and the Ford class. The Fujian is a thoroughly modern
‘CATOBAR’ carrier design, which stands for ‘catapult-assisted take-off barrier
arrested recovery’. In fact, she will rely on the advanced electromagnetic catapults to
launch fixed-wing aircraft, a technology that has only just entered service in the US Navy.
When she finally gets commissioned, she will be the most capable aircraft carrier outside of the
United States. Anyway, what has the Fujian been up to after she was launched from the
Jiangnan shipyard? When will the ship begin sea trials? We will be answering these questions.
The first major event the Fujian went through is called ‘mooring trials’. This is done entirely
at the dock, while the ship is berthed in the wet basin within the shipyard. The main purpose
of the mooring trials is to test the ship’s main propulsion, to make sure it is working properly.
Secondary goals are to test the quality of the hull construction and the quality
of the installation and reliability of various machineries, systems, pipelines, instruments,
and special devices, etc. During the test, the carrier is moored alongside the quay and all
equipment are switched on to check their operation at full capacity while stationary. As part of this
test, temporary facilities and equipment have been set up by the wharf. Large amounts of pipes and
cables connect the onshore facilities to the ship. The Fujian's steam turbines and other
components of her power systems were successfully tested. This was done by piping steam from a
large onshore boiler to the steam turbines on the ship via a special steam delivery system.
Sometime after the New Years, the mooring trials appear to have been successfully completed,
with most of the onshore facilities built for the test having been removed. More recently,
the onshore steam delivery system has been disconnected from the Fujian,
signalling the testing of the propulsion has been finished. Completing the mooring
trials is an important first step towards getting the ship ready for sea trials.
Another notable development is the completion of the ship’s main mast, with the installation
of the main air search radar. This is an active electronically scanned array, reportedly in the
S band, and arranged in four panels on the island, each facing a different direction.
As you can see in the photo showing before and after the installation, the large holes where
the AESA radars should be in the before photo has been filled in the after photo,
and in their place the radar panels have been mounted. The scaffolding around the island
has also been removed, suggesting the external work on the island has been largely complete.
Let’s take a moment here to appreciate the gradual miniaturisation of the island in Chinese carriers,
from the fairly large island on the Liaoning, China’s first carrier,
to the far smaller island on the third carrier the Fujian. In this side-by-side comparison,
you can clearly see the island becoming noticeably smaller, as the Chinese Navy
progressed from the Liaoning to the Shandong and to the Type 003. From the point of view
of carrier flight operations, having a smaller island is beneficial, all else equal, because it
allows a larger number of aircraft to parked on the deck, ready to be armed and launched.
Several significant indications point to the carrier starting sea trials in the coming months.
Firstly, in an interview by the Global Times, an authoritative Chinese newspaper, a senior
captain of the Fujian stated unambiguously that the carrier will undertake sea trials in 2023.
Now this doesn’t mean that it will happen for sure, but it is the officially announced plan,
and it will take pretty substantial delays for this not to happen. Other more circumstantial
evidence also point to sea trials pretty soon. For example, several dredging vessels have been
operating in the wet basin where the Fujian is berthed. In fact, the Fujian had to be relocated,
because of the dredging work in the spot where she was. For reference, dredging is the removal
of sediment from the bottom of a body of water. In the case of a wet basin, one that is fairly new,
the purpose of dredging is to deepen the basin, so it can accommodate a vessel with a larger load.
Deepening the basin is not for the benefit of large cargo ships, because they are empty while
fitting out and therefore, being high on the water, do not need a deeper basin. Deepening
the wet basin can only be for the benefit of the Fujian. The Fujian will be putting on additional
weight just before sea trials, from things like fuel, water and additional machinery,
and therefore the carrier will be very low on the waterline. Deepening the basin will prevent the
Fujian from touching the bottom during low tides, and is a part of her preparation for sea trials.
Furthermore, a PLA Navy barrack ship can be seen parked just behind the Fujian. The
barrack ship is likely to be housing the personnel required for the sea trials. So, my point is that
all indications point to the sea trials of the Fujian starting in the coming months. It could
be around July or August, or something like that. At this point on the flight deck, the grey sheds
covering the aircraft catapults have not yet been lifted. This likely means the installation of the
electromagnetic catapults remain in progress. The Fujian has three such catapults, two in the front,
and one towards the middle position on the portside. The electromagnetic catapults have
several advantages over the steam catapults used by the vast majority of US Navy aircraft carriers.
Compared to steam catapults, the electromagnetic catapults can launch heavier aircraft, as well as
far lighter ones, like UAVs and UCAVs for example. They also incur far less strain on the airframes,
increasing the service life of the carrier fighters. The electromagnetic catapults are
easier to maintain, in particular because they are less prone to corrosion than steam catapults.
By equipping the Fujian with these new catapults, the Chinese Navy has effectively skipped
a generation of carrier catapults, and is now rivalling the US Navy in this critical technology.
The installation of the catapults on the Fujian should be completed before the ship begins sea
trials. By the time the Fujian sails out, the grey sheds on top of the flight deck should be removed.
The next thing I want to mention is that the Fujian has four weapons elevators for
arming aircraft on the flight deck. They carry ordnances from the storage magazine
deep inside the bowel of the ship directly to the flight deck. This may seem like a simple system,
but the benefits can be easily underestimated. By transporting ordnances vertically, the weapons
elevators minimise the necessary horizontal movement throughout the ship, making traffic
within the ship more efficient, and interfering less with aircraft movement from the hangar. It
also helps to reduce the risk of battle damage to the hangar becoming catastrophic, thereby
improving survivability. The US Navy’s Gerald R Ford class carriers have something similar,
and indeed the Ford has eleven weapons elevators scattered around the flight deck, far more than
the four weapons elevators on the Fujian. However, the older Nimitz class has no such systems.
In general, the flight deck should be the last area to take shape before commissioning. Most of
the earlier changes happen to the interior of the ship, before visible changes to the flight deck
can be observed. The important stuff on the flight deck includes things like the landing arrestor
gears, the aircraft catapults, and the flight deck markings, and on the edges the sponsons for
the defensive weapons, such as the CIWS. These are things the ship does not really need in the
initial sea trials. Most of these things, except for the catapults, will only be installed in a
later stage of the fitting out process, once the ship is ready to incorporate flight operations.
The majority of the work done so far has been to the inside of the ship, and therefore hard to
visually identify. The flight deck will only begin to take shape later on in the fitting out process.
However, Chinese researchers have been spending a lot of time figuring out the
best way to use the flight deck on the Fujian. Several Chinese academic papers have been
published over the past year, which explore various aspects of carrier flight operations,
such as aircraft and UAV handling, ammunition handling, maintenance, and flight deck operations.
Some studies employed complex mathematical modelling and algorithms to achieve optimal
flight operations, with an eye on automating the key processes. The Huazhong University of Science
and Technology alone employed 20 post-graduate students to conduct research in this field. To
get a sense of what these research contained, here’s an abstract from one of the papers:
“The task planning problem of carrier-based aircraft dispatching and recovery operation
has the characteristics of diverse tasks, distinct layers and complex constraints,
and it is difficult to solve. In the future, more and more unmanned aerial vehicles will be carried
on the aircraft carrier. It is an inevitable trend that the automated planning method will
play an important role in the field of carrier mission planning. The purpose of this paper is
to study the automatic planning algorithms, considering the complex constraints for the
task planning problem of the carrier-based aircraft dispatching and recovery operations.”
Like the US Navy aircraft carriers, the Chinese carriers are operated in a cyclical
fashion. This means they launch a large number of aircraft all at the same time,
which clears up the space on the flight deck, to allow the carrier to recover a large number
of fighters immediately afterwards from a previous sortie. Chinese aircraft carriers do not undertake
simultaneous launch and recovery operations. To get a sense of what the flight deck of the Fujian
will look in the end, a PLA naval watcher has done some informed speculation based on
operation of the Gerald R Ford. During the launch phase on the Fujian, the fighters will be parked
behind the catapult, and behind the jet blast deflectors, waiting for their turn to be launched,
like in this diagram. The catapult tracks will be cleared of any aircraft to allow a safe
launch. In the recovery phase of the Fujian, you can expect to see something like in this
diagram. The angled flight deck running across the carrier has been cleared of all aircraft,
which allows the returning fighters to land safely on the angled flight deck.
If everything goes according to plan, their tailhook will be caught on the landing arrestor
cables, which will bring them to a halt. The newly recovered fighters will then be parked
in the front of the ship, ready to be received onto the elevator and back into the hangar.
China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is progressing rapidly towards operational service.
The Fujian has successfully completed all the major steps before sea trials. It has finished the
mooring trials that confirmed all of its internal systems and machinery are working properly. It
has finished installing the main radar systems, and the installation of its catapults should be
well underway. We can expect the Fujian to begin sea trials in the coming months, and she could be
commissioned by 2025 or so – we will see. Chinese carrier forces are steadily expanding. Over time,
the expansion of the carrier fleet will provide China with a bigger and bigger
punch for power projection further abroad. Of course, the carrier taskforce is far more
than just the aircraft carrier. It will have a huge number of escort warships and support
vessels. If you like to see what China’s future Fujian carrier battle group will look like,
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