Some cool (new) Chinese carrier footage

BeachAV8R

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The Liaoning certainly looks to be in better shape than her Russian sister. I wonder if they ever got the toilet situation sorted out.

Interesting footage. They (the Chinese Su-27s) don’t really have much speed when taking off do they. Compared to a western carrier with the catapult which you can really see them shooting off fast, this seems so slow in comparison. I wonder if standard operating procedure for them is to have some sort of tanker flying around in order to top off these aircraft when they leave the carrier…seems they would burn a lot of fuel just getting airborne.

I also wonder whether we’ll ever get carrier operations in DCS from the Russian-Chinese perspective? I know we’ll get it with the F/A-18C but it would be nice to fly those from both perspectives plus open up mission design. I’ve always thought a good Taiwan Straits map would be fun to fly on.

From my understanding, the biggest complaint the PLAAN has with the J-15 is it’s engines. They don’t have the oompf to get over the bow with anything resembling a combat effective payload. I’ll have to look it up, but I’ve heard something along the lines of a 125 km combat radius from the boat when fully loaded. That combined with the the lack of any organic tanking capability put a bit of a dampener on the whole naval aviation thing for the time being.

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@RedBravo65 - Yeah…my observations mirror yours…its seems that those airplanes are almost staggering into the air at the end of their takeoff run. If they crap an engine at the top of that ski-jump, I doubt there is a way of saving the airplane with the Vmc type roll that they’d encounter. Of course, I’m not sure if an F/A-18 has the oomph to survive an engine loss during the cat stroke either…might be a mandatory ejection call perhaps (?). I wonder too if the Su-27 is perhaps a bit of a better performer at those high AOA though…might be quite the difference.

The ski-jump carrier takeoffs are cool though… Even with the SFM, I still enjoy flying the Su-33 in DCS World from the carriers…even if I’m not very good at it…

BeachAV8R

Or…well…maybe it can…LOL…

If you are correct near_blind about not being able to carry a full combat load due to weight restrictions on carrier aircraft that would certainly raise some questions. I mean what’s the point of having a carrier if your carrier aircraft are hamstrung with less than needed combat loads for fighting or bombing? Kind of defeats the purpose don’t you think? Of course this all could be and probably is just a test bed for their own home built carrier which I believe they have begun constructing. I think you BeachAV8R actually posted an article on this a bit back.

You’re looking at it through the lens of US carrier aviation; and while that’s not a wrong interpretation to take, remember that our navy has exceptional experience in tactics and doctrine gained during nearly 100 years of existence and something like 10 wars.

The Liaoning is basically China’s USS Langley. They’re trying to figure out how to operate the planes aboard a ship, how to organize their air groups, how to operate that group in conjunction with the ship and task force. All those things it took us about twenty years to do with biplanes, they’re doing with Supersonic Gen 4 fighters. They undoubtedly see the Liaoning as limited but necessary stepping stone to bigger and better things.

So…whaddya think…maybe one year…perhaps two before we get Chinese cruise videos with cool Chinese music and dubstep effects?

More’s the better.

I will say whoever the people who decided to start posting Strike Fighter and Hornet Ball videos on YouTube and Vimeo are, they’re my personal heroes.

Yeah…I’m responsible for a few dozen of those YouTube counts. This one is one of my favorites (besides the Wingnut ones)…but I don’t think it was a squadron vid…

BeachAV8R