The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 1067 Type 003 Large Aircraft Carrier

The whole world's focus is on the war in Afghanistan.

Military experts from various countries believe that the US military will achieve a resounding victory and will soon end the war.

Liu Tao was in a good mood. He believed that the US military would not be able to escape so easily and would have to stay in Afghanistan for at least 20 years!
He came to Yangcheng Shipyard.

With the decision to speed up naval construction, it is now required to build another Type 002A or Type 002B aircraft carrier.

Liu Tao did not plan to build another Type 002A or Type 002B aircraft carrier, but instead wanted to build a Type 003 aircraft carrier.

The Type 002B aircraft carrier is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and uses a steam catapult as its catapult.

The Type 003 aircraft carrier is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and its catapult uses an electromagnetic catapult.

After all, he has always believed that what China needs is not light or medium-sized aircraft carriers, but large aircraft carriers!

The aircraft carrier that any major country will ultimately pursue will not be a light or medium-sized aircraft carrier, but a large aircraft carrier.

The debate over 'big' and 'small' aircraft carriers suddenly became popular a few years ago because of China's 'Type 001' light aircraft carrier and 'Type 002' medium aircraft carrier, which made many people believe that large aircraft carriers are outdated. In the future, aircraft carriers will develop in the direction of medium and light. Through the introduction of new technologies such as electrification and informatization, small and medium-sized aircraft carriers can have powerful combat capabilities comparable to those of the large aircraft carriers currently in service.

Large aircraft carriers will gradually become obsolete due to their high cost, staggering lifespan, and incompatibility with the modern military's trend toward lightweight and information-based aircraft carriers. Some people even issue a "death sentence" for large aircraft carriers like the Nimitz.

Large aircraft carriers are expensive to build and have astonishingly long lifespans, but they also have very obvious advantages.

Large aircraft carriers carry a full range of aircraft types and a large number of aircraft, and they can perform a wide range of tasks. For example, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can carry 8 or 9 carrier-based aircraft squadrons at the same time, including 4 fighter-attack aircraft squadrons, an E-2C early warning aircraft squadron, an EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft squadron, an S-3B anti-submarine aircraft squadron, and a service squadron. These carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters are responsible for a variety of combat missions such as air superiority operations, ground/anti-ship attacks, early warning command and control, electronic warfare, anti-submarine operations, and service transportation. They are powerful and comprehensive, while the tasks that medium and small aircraft carriers can perform are extremely limited. The carrier-based aircraft they carry can only perform limited tasks such as air superiority operations, which greatly limits the performance of aircraft carriers as the core of naval battle groups.

In addition, the combat effectiveness of large aircraft carriers is much higher than that of small and medium-sized aircraft carriers. The combat effectiveness of aircraft carriers is mainly reflected by their carrier-borne combat aircraft. Through combat practice and exercise tests, it has been proved that the combat effectiveness of large aircraft carriers is at least twice that of medium-sized aircraft carriers and 6 to 8 times that of small aircraft carriers. In addition, their deck area is larger, the longitudinal and lateral sway of the hull is small, and the impact on carrier-based aircraft during takeoff and landing is also small. Therefore, the accident rate of carrier-based aircraft takeoff and landing is lower and the safety is good. The opposite is true for small and medium-sized aircraft carriers.

In addition, the safety and seaworthiness of large aircraft carriers are obviously better than those of small and medium-sized aircraft carriers. Compared with small and medium-sized aircraft carriers, large aircraft carriers have high freeboard and large tonnage, and waves are not easy to hit the deck barriers, nor will it affect the normal operation of the aircraft carrier. Small and medium-sized aircraft carriers usually have only two independent propulsion devices. Once one of them fails, it will seriously affect normal navigation.

Finally, the cost-effectiveness of large aircraft carriers is also higher than that of large and small aircraft carriers. This is because although large aircraft carriers and medium and small aircraft carriers differ greatly in tonnage, volume, deck area, etc., their main functional equipment, such as power units, catapults, arresting cables, lifting devices, etc., are almost the same, only the quantity and scale are different.

China has now established a complete aircraft carrier industry system. Its shipbuilding industry has accounted for more than 50% of the world's total for many years, making it a major shipbuilding country.

Thanks to the improvement of the industrial system, the cost of building a Type 054 frigate is only 9000 million RMB, equivalent to 2250 million USD. The cost is the same as when it was first built, and this is even after the labor cost has risen sharply, and the materials have been rising compared to that year. The "Perry-class" frigate, which is almost the same as the Type 054 frigate, has inferior performance to the Type 054 frigate. The price of the first ship was as high as 4500 million USD (1973), and then its cost exceeded 1 million USD early. The Type 052 destroyer, the first ship cost 20 billion RMB, and then as the industrial chain was built, the price dropped sharply, and now the cost is 10 billion RMB, and this is the cost under the condition of rising labor costs, equipment and materials.

The Type 001 light aircraft carrier, with a relatively good foundation, had a construction cost of 30 billion yuan for the first ship. But up to now, the cost of the Type 001 light aircraft carrier has dropped significantly, and now the cost is 19 billion yuan.

The Type 002 medium aircraft carrier, based on the Type 001 light aircraft carrier, cost 40 billion yuan to build. When it comes to the Type 002B medium aircraft carrier, which uses nuclear power, the cost has not increased and is still 40 billion yuan.

Liu Tao estimated that based on the current perfection of the aircraft carrier industry, taking into account rising factors such as labor costs, the cost of building a large nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for China should be around 120 billion yuan, equivalent to 30 billion US dollars.

In addition to developing a large aircraft carrier, a more powerful destroyer and a larger supply ship must also be developed.

As the United States develops the fourth-generation fighter F-22 'Raptor', China's radar systems are being upgraded accordingly to deal with the F-22 'Raptor' fighter, and ship-borne air defense radars are also being upgraded.

Liu Tao estimated that the next destroyer would be a 10,000-ton destroyer. For large warships like destroyers, tonnage equals combat power.

When he arrived at the Yangcheng Shipyard, Liu Tao began to develop the Type 003 large aircraft carrier.

The resources Liu Tao can mobilize are extremely huge, so huge that it is unimaginable, whether it is human, material or financial resources!
He can almost mobilize the power of the entire China.

At this time, no one in the outside world knew that China was beginning to develop large aircraft carriers. All attention was on Afghanistan and the United States' huge rescue plan.

Even though the United States launched a war in Afghanistan, the U.S. stock market did not stop falling. Countless funds from all over the world were shorting the U.S. stock market, causing the U.S. stock market, especially aviation-related stocks, to continue to fall.

In order to save the market, the US government announced a massive rescue plan to save the US stock market.

They all talk about free economy and advocate less government intervention in the market.

However, the United States intervenes the most in the market, intervening in the Federal Reserve and U.S. stocks at every turn, and imposing sanctions on this and that.

Now in the U.S. stock market, except for war-related sectors such as military industry, energy, gold, and food, all other sectors are falling. Even the Internet listed companies that plummeted during last year's Internet bubble are continuing to fall, and there seems to be no end in sight.

All previous declines in A-shares are far less than this time's decline in US stocks.

(End of this chapter)