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Old 08-11-2011, 10:25 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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The PRC's carrier is the former Russian "Varyag", second of the Kuznetsov-class.

Accordinging to "Combat Fleets of the World"; full load displacement is 67,000 tons, she has 4 sets of boilers/steam tubines that deliver 200,000 shp and gives the ship a max speed of 32 knots. Like the previous Kiev-class, the Kuznetsov carries a heavy armament of 16 SS-N-19 Shipwreck SSMs (reloadable!!!), 24 SA-N-9 VLS SAM (each VLS capable of launching up to 384 SAMs!), 8 CADS-1 CIWS (8 tube laucher for SA-N-11 SAMs and 2 30mm gatlings),6 AK-630 CIWS 30mm gatling guns as well as 2 RBU-12000 ASW RL (10 barrels). Air group consists of 24 Su-27 Flanker and 9-12 Helix-A and -C ASW/AEW helicopters.

Sooooo, just what does this all mean?

The PRC's design will carry heavy SSM and SAM armament, well in excess of any US carrier. But the weapons loadout comes at a heavy price. The real weapon of any carrier is not the number of missiles it can carry, but the size of her air group and her ability to maintain that air group for extended operations.

This was the real weakspot of the Kiev and Kuznet-classes, they are incapable of fielding large air groups and they do not have the on-board resources to maintain their aircraft or the magazine/fuel tankage to support the aircraft for more than 3-5 days.

Most likely, their operational role will be that of fleet air defense, early warning and anti-submarine warfare.

Of course, this is all conjecture, there has been no reliable, released info on their armament/air group. I talked with a couple of air dales in my office and they are of the opinion that the PRC's carrier will very likely be a near-copy of the Soviets, at least as far as its armament/air group mix. Even removing the SSMs and many of the SAMs will only free up enough space to increase the air group to 45-55 aircraft.
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