China’s First Indigenous Aircraft Carrier Not Combat Ready A Year After It Was Commissioned 

Earlier this month, the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) first made-in-China aircraft carrier, Shandong, returned to its home port of Dalian after a 23-day-long voyage in the Bohai Sea, which was part of its third sea trial.

But the carrier, commissioned a year ago in a high profile ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping, is still not combat ready, a report in the South China Morning Post says. Earlier this year, state-controlled media, including the Global Times, had said that the aircraft was likely to become combat-ready by the end of 2020.

Apart from multiple technical issues which plague the carrier, it’s combat readiness has been delayed by the outbreak of Covid-19.

The outbreak of the ovid-19 pandemic has dragged out the carrier's testing and training schedule. With mandatory quarantine in place before boarding the ship and after disembarking, the ship’s crew is forced to spend more time on pandemic control measures than on testing and training.

“All sailors should be quarantined for two weeks before boarding the ship...Another three weeks will be spent in isolation after their return,” a source told SCMP. “Whether the Shandong can complete all tests and meet IOC in the beginning of next year will depend on the pandemic,” the source added.

Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming says it is “still too early to estimate when the Shandong will be combat ready”.

The Shandong has shown signs of technical difficulties since the very beginning.

Liaoning, its Soviet-built predecessor procured by China from Ukraine and refitted, had completed 10 sea trials in 13 months before it was commissioned. Shandong underwent nine sea trials over a period of 18 months before it entered service with the PLAN in 2019, suggesting that it faced technical issues.

Although it is similar in size to the Liaoning and use a STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery) system for the launch and recovery of aircraft, the Shandong has notable enhancements. This, experts have said, could have lead to some technical difficulties with the aircraft carrier.

Even India, which unlike China has operated carriers for over five decades now, has faced roadblocks in the construction of its first aircraft carrier.

While the Shandong was to be officially commissioned in April 2019, it entered service only in December 2019 — over seven months behind schedule.

The technological challenges were compounded by the lightning pace at which China built the aircraft carrier and commissioned it into service.

The J-15, China’s carrier-based fighter, has its own set of problems. A derivative of the Soviet-era Su-33, the fighter is considered highly unreliable due to the number of accidents it has suffered — there have been at least four J-15 crashes in the last few years, even though China operates a small fleet of these fighters.

“...the J-15 is a problematic aircraft – its unstable flight control system was the key factor behind the two fatal accidents two years ago,” a Chinese source told SCMP, referring to two crashes in 2016. “But the aviation experts at first refused to acknowledge that the J-15 has design problems,” the sources added.

J-15s were grounded for three months after one such crash.

The fighter’s heavy weight and the lack of either steam or electromagnetic catapult systems on the carrier have restricted fuel carriage and weapons payload capabilities of the J-15. This results in a small combat radius and a missile arsenal a fraction of the size of those deployed by US Navy fighters.

PLAN’s lack of experience in operating carriers only adds to these problems.