From The National Interest's "
China Cancelled Two Super Aircraft Carriers. Here's the Story Why", December 26:
China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy takes many of its cues from the
U.S. Navy as it develops its carrier aviation branch. It is seeking
similar flat-deck carriers to its U.S. counterpart, and has developed airborne early warning planes and electronic attack jets comparable to American E-2D Hawkeyes and EA-18 Growlers.
But that tendency may have backfired for once. That’s because the
U.S. Navy has been beset by major cost overruns and delays in deploying
its new generation Gerald Ford-class supercarriers due to persistent
flaws in their catapults, arresting gear, radars and weapons elevators.
You can read more about these many problems in an earlier article.
Similar problems apparently are affecting China’s carrier program. On November 28, Minnie Chan of the South China Morning Post reported
that Beijing was scrapping plans for a fifth and sixth nuclear-powered
carrier, once it finished construction of two new steam-powered vessels.
The reason? “Technical challenges and high costs,” including issues
particularly linked to development of the latter two vessel’s
electromagnetic launch systems—the same system bedeviling the U.S. Navy....
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