When will China’s Fujian aircraft carrier be ready for active duty?
- Observers say the ship’s cutting-edge electromagnetic catapults and other systems will need months of tests
- The US Navy is the only other military to use the technology and its carrier the Gerald R. Ford was in testing for years before combat readiness
But the Fujian is far from combat-ready. “It needs around 18 months of testing,” said Zhou Chenming, a researcher at the Yuan Wang military science and technology think tank in Beijing. “It’s a very complex set of tests.”
The PLA Navy said initial testing would cover the Fujian’s mooring and navigational capabilities, but the catapults as well as the carrier’s performance in different waters and operational environments will also need to be put on trial, according to Zhou.
China’s first carrier, the Liaoning, was only commissioned in 2012, after it was bought from Ukraine in 1998 as a half-finished Soviet vessel. Seven years later, the Shandong became China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier. Both carriers use ski-jump ramps to help jets take off.