A naval honor guard at the in 2012 on board the Liaoning. Xinhua News Agency Photo
The Future Chinese Carrier Force -- Bernard D. Cole, USNI News
China’s acquisition of its first operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, has generated headlines of late. Those reports have included questions about how many additional carriers Beijing intends acquiring.
Air power is crucial to naval power, and Chinese officers have long expressed interest in acquiring aircraft carriers. Many reports of People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) carrier construction were published during the final quarter of the last century; President Jiang Zemin may have given the Navy permission to begin carrier design in the mid-1990s.
Aircraft carrier advocates in the PLAN began taking significant steps in 1985 with acquisition of the ex-Australian carrier, Melbourne. Next came construction of a carrier deck mock-up, complete with catapults and arresting gear, in Guangdong Province a few years later. The mock carrier flight deck presumably was used for some period of time to train would-be carrier pilots from the PLAN or the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), but did not last long.
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My Comment: A brief but accurate take on China's naval ambitions.
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