Pentagon officials say they are confident that the new Gerald R. Ford class of Navy supercarriers would dominate in any conflict, but China is rapidly constructing its own carrier and is eager to join the “supercarrier arms race” to project power well beyond its territorial waters.
After a troubled debut, the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is undergoing final testing and maintenance checks as it prepares for its maiden deployment as early as next year. China has been paying close attention and is working on its own state-of-the-art supercarrier at the Jiangnan Shipyard near Shanghai.
Pentagon officials often refer to China as their primary “pacing challenge,” and analysts say the new “flattop,” known as Type-003, marks another leap forward in the country’s advance as a naval power.
The People’s Liberation Army navy began construction on its second domestically built carrier in 2018. Unlike American aircraft carriers, the Type-003 won’t be powered by nuclear reactors. But like the U.S., it will be able to launch fighters with a catapult system rather than a ramp that most other carrier-capable navies use.
“This is a significant improvement from hulls one and two,” said retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who commanded the Japan-based USS George Washington carrier strike group. “China is closing the gap technologically with the United States, with the exception of nuclear propulsion.”
Adm. Montgomery, now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it will take the Chinese navy a significant amount of time to develop the air wing — the fighters and support aircraft assigned to the carrier — and create the crucial cohesion necessary for any fighting unit.
“That is a hard process to replicate except through learned behavior,” he said. “It is going to take years of development to get that ship-airwing integration down.”
The USS Gerald Ford and the supercarriers that follow will replace the Nimitz-class carriers, which have played prominent roles in crises and conflicts around the world for more than 40 years. They will carry the Navy‘s most advanced aircraft, such as the F-35C Lightning II, and will integrate future manned and unmanned aircraft with minimal alteration to the ship’s design or construction, officials said.
With the exception of its propulsion system, the size of Beijing’s Type-003 and its ability to launch aircraft with a catapult puts it in the same category as a Nimitz-class carrier — still the backbone of the U.S. fleet, said retired Navy Capt. James E. Fanell, a former senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Chinese profited mightily from American technology in the process.
China‘s “theft of our secrets has given them both a financial and time advantage in catching up and even in surpassing American military power,” said Capt. Fanell, now a fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy in Switzerland. “The [PLA navy] has achieved in one decade what it took America 100 years to accomplish.”
Analysts say China could have close to 10 aircraft carriers by midcentury, particularly if they use their carrier-capable shipyards in Shanghai and Dalian for round-the-clock production. Richard Fisher, a senior fellow for Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said aircraft carriers will be essential tools for the Chinese regime as it pursues President Xi Jinping’s goal of military preeminence and political dominance by midcentury.
China “may require as many as 20 carrier battle groups to achieve global hegemony and military containment of the United States,” Mr. Fisher said.
A new generation
The Ford-class carriers feature a variety of improvements over the Nimitz generation, including better hull design, greater space on the flight deck to allow more aircraft sorties per day, and the advanced weapons elevators, which will provide faster movement of ordnance from storage magazines deep within the ship to the waiting aircraft.
One major feature of the Ford-class carriers will be the absence of steam-powered catapults that have been flinging fighters off carriers for decades. The new flattops will have an electromagnetic-powered launch system, known as EMALS. Navy officials say the system offers smoother acceleration at both high and low speeds and the ability to quickly adjust between launching heavy-strike fighters and light unmanned aerial vehicles.
China‘s navy also has made rapid progress in developing electromagnetic launch technologies and likely will feature the launch system on its new Type-003 carrier, Mr. Fisher said.
“Their apparent success with an EMALS for their next carrier bodes well for similar advances with an electromagnetic railgun, which the U.S. Navy has recently abandoned, as well as electromagnetic space launch,” he said.
Analysts say much of the technology in China‘s new carrier has been stolen from other nations. Beijing has mounted a “spectacular” intelligence-gathering operation since the 1970s to gain access to aircraft carriers from the U.S., Russia, France and the United Kingdom, including purchasing and transferring two carriers to China, Mr. Fisher said.
“It has inspected American carriers and has observed operations on French carriers,” he said. “American carrier museums have regular visits from Chinese ‘tourists,’ who ask very detailed questions of the docents.”
China‘s shipbuilding industry is more than capable of replicating the production of another 80,000-ton Type-003 carrier. The Jiangnan Shipyard is more than four times the size of the one in Newport News, Virginia, where U.S. carriers are produced.
China‘s newest supercarrier could pose legitimate threats to regional neighbors such as Japan, South Korea and India in five to seven years, but that’s another story for the U.S., Adm. Montgomery said.
“In a U.S.-Chinese conflict, they’re insignificant. They would just be targets for our submarines,” he said. “By the time they catch up with us, carrier-wise, who knows if they’ll even need carriers?”
China‘s effort to develop anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles that can be launched from a variety of platforms and threaten U.S. surface combatant vessels is an immediate concern.
“Aircraft carriers are a much longer-term issue,” Adm. Montgomery said.