China's first aircraft carrier

Gee....looks familiar somehow.....
Oh yeah!
The old Varyag!....or Riga...or Admiral Knuznetsov...or....

I do not know if I'd lie awake at night worrying about this one folks. While it's true that she (the Liaoning) is the PLAN's first "aircraft carrier" (just as she was going to be the Soviet Union's first aircraft carrier) she's already almost 30 years old, only weighs something like 60,000 tons, and is only rated for something like 30 fixed-wing aircraft of a type that China does not (reportedly) yet have in operation, and she has short legs, meaning that her operational range is very limited.
This isn't the flight deck that I would chose to launch an Alpha strike against a distant, hard target.
IIRC, The Soviet Union was going to use this platform as the centerpiece of an ASW/ASuW strike group under neutral/friendly skies. Yeah.....you can do a BARCAP (Barrier Combat Air Patrol) with something like the Liaoning, however (comma!!) the real purpose of a flight deck is power projection.
You can project (some) power with a baby flat top...but not against a country that has Super Carriers.
It's also conventionally powered, meaning that you have to haul fuel in addition to beans and bullets to keep her and her consorts in operation.

Great First step!
In thirty years, when China is building real super carriers, and we're bankrupt from our own excesses, they'll probably look back on the Liaoning with the same fond memories that we have for USS Langley (CV-1)

 

Floating casino is appropriate if they try to use it against a modern sea power. But, ETC(SS) is right on about the future.

 

While is is true this is an aircraft carrier... under the Chinese flag... right now, it is NOT a threat to anyone anywhere, except in the minds of the Chinese nationalist that are sailing her.

Too bad they didn't come through with the casino gig... I bet it would have made tall coins doing that.

 

From what I've read, this is mostly a threat to China's immediate neighbors. While not immediate (since there aren't any planes that can land on it), I bet it has a lot of people in the area nervous.

 

There was another ex-Soviet aircraft carrier, the Minsk, that was bought by a Chinese company about 12 years ago. People got terribly excited, thinking that it would be the first carrier in the Chinese navy. But it was actually turned into a theme park in Shenzhen. I went once: it was weird, but kind of cool. The tank rides on the dock next to the ship were the best bit: they'd built an assault course on the dock, and screwed park benches to the top of a tank. You sat on the benches, and held on tight.

It looks like this time, they've actually bought a proper aircraft carrier, and they're going to use it. Which will really annoy the Philippines.

 

Was this the carrier I read about that was turned into a floating hotel?

DBCassidy

 

When not performing flight ops the crew has a pretty decent skateboard ramp.

They should hire Charlie Sheen & Tom Cruse as instructors.

 

I've been assuming that the information embedded in it is more valuable to China than its services as a fighting platform.