China's Fujian aircraft carrier can launch 'new type' aircraft

The country's most modern aircraft carrier has yet to enter service, but is expected to form a core part of the Chinese Navy's force, capable of operating in vast oceans and far from shore.

China's new aircraft carrier fujian can accommodate new aircraft, picture 1 — Fujian is China's third aircraft carrier. Photo: CCTV

The Chinese navy currently operates two aircraft carriers. The Liaoning, a modified Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier, entered service in China in 2012.

The country's first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, which recently participated in large-scale exercises around Taiwan, entered service in 2019.

Neither of the older carriers has the Fujian's distinctive catapult system, which allows aircraft to launch faster and carry more fuel and ammunition.

Instead, aircraft taking off from older carriers relied on a ski ramp, which also limited the number of aircraft that could be accommodated on the flight deck.

The program, broadcast by CCTV on the eve of the 74th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Navy, did not go into specifics about what types of “new types” of aircraft might be launched from Fujian, but said they could include folding-wing fighters and fixed-wing drones.

“When Fujian completes further sea trials and is finally combat-capable, the People's Liberation Army Navy will truly enter the era of three aircraft carriers,” the CCTV report added.

“But due to China's vast oceans, the demand cannot be met with just three aircraft carriers - Liaoning, Shandong and Fujian. Therefore, new aircraft carriers will definitely be built in the future,” the report added.

Fujian is the first of the Type 003 class of the Chinese Navy, the second type of aircraft carrier to use an electromagnetic catapult system to launch aircraft from the deck, after the US Gerald R. Ford class.

This launching system is more efficient than older steam-powered catapults, a technology developed shortly after World War II that is still used on some US ships and France's sole aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.

China launched the Fujian at the shipyard on June 17, 2022. It has a displacement of more than 80,000 tons when fully loaded, is about 320 meters long and 73 meters wide, nearly the size of the US Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.

Mai Anh (according to SCMP)

Source