PLAN AVIATION. John points us to this report about a Chinese purchase of 2 Russian Su-33 carrier capable fighter attack aircraft. The Su-33 is a carrier based upgrade of the Su-27, and China reportedly may purchase another fifty or so aircraft. The People's Liberation Army Navy has played around with the possibility of carrier aviation for quite a while, purchasing a few older carriers, including the Australian Melbourne, the Russian Minsk, and the Ukranian Varyag. Minsk is currently a theme park, and indications are that the PLAN is tearing Varyag apart in preparation for the construction of a new carrier of between 65000 and 80000 tons. The IASC article indicates that China could have a couple or even three carriers operational in a decade, but that strikes me as remarkably optimistic given the difficulties of starting a carrier program from scratch. My guess is, assuming that there's no fundamental shift in PRC foreign policy, and that there's no economic meltdown, we'll probably see a second Chinese carrier in the 2015-2018 range, or at about the time when the second US CVNX (the projected replacement for the Nimitz class) comes on line. So what does this all mean? The PLAN is indicating that, after tossing the idea around for a long time, it's getting serious about naval aviation. The construction of carriers also suggests that the PLAN envisions itself as the pre-eminent Asian regional navy. Japan could compete eventually, but the construction of 2-3 carriers will give the PLAN dominance over every other regional player. As I suggested above, they won't make China a world naval power, as the carriers of the USN will be more numerous, larger, and at least a generation ahead technologically. The construction also indicates that China is thinking past Taiwan. Given Taiwan's proximity to the Chinese coast, and assuming that the PLAN wouldn't risk its expensive new carriers to almost certain loss in toe-to-toe carrier combat with the USN, the new ships will be of pretty limited utility in the Taiwan theater. The PLAN has concentrated its recent efforts around killing carriers rather than building them, a project directly related to threats against Taiwan. Still, there's no reason to be alarmist; it's hardly surprising that the most significant regional power would seek to build a navy commensurate with that status.
--Robert Farley
