Last Sunday China’s leadership announced that a J-15 tactical jet had landed on the Liaoning, the refitted Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag, for the first time. The news came as little surprise. The flattop has been in commission for over a year now and has undergone a series of sea trials preparing it to conduct flight operations. True to its tradition of fleet experimentation—a praiseworthy tradition to my mind—the PLA Navy has trodden a leisurely, methodical path to carrier aviation.So let’s not hyperventilate. Trapping a J-15 at sea represented no “show of force” of any consequence. It was a milestone to an eventual show of force, and a modest-sized milestone at that.
The PLA habitually keeps the testing and evaluation of new hardware out of public view, making it hard for outsiders to gauge China’s military progress. Still, suppose the carrier’s hull and machinery have reached some acceptable standard of readiness. Now our focus should shift to the human side. Many navies of the past have put working aircraft carriers to sea. Few have found grooming a corps of naval aviators quick or easy. Success has eluded some of them—as it may elude China’s navy.
Sometimes the roadblocks are bureaucratic. During the 1920s and 1930s, for example, British governments subjected the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm to an uneasy system of “dual control.” Both the Admiralty, the ministry in charge of the Royal Navy, and the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force—a force that operated from ashore—had to agree to every advance in naval aviation. “In the personnel area,” notes King’s College professor Geoff Till, “dual control reduced the flow of recruits into [the] Fleet Air Arm, slowed their training, and impeded their promotion.” Both in hardware and human terms, naval aviation remained a stepchild of more pressing, more glamorous missions such as strategic bombing and fighter air defense. Whether Beijing will liberate its own naval air arm from bureaucratic dysfunctions that could stunt its growth remains to be seen.
Sometimes culture gets in the way. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), for instance, seemed gripped by a kind of guild mentality vis-à-vis aircraft and combat pilots. Japanese officers were obsessed with quality at the expense of quantity. During World War II, as Williamson Murray and Allan Millett point out, it took the IJN fully fifty months to train a flier. The U.S. Navy did it in eighteen months while rotating its pilots through combat theaters to gain stick time under battle conditions. The result: the U.S. Navy could replace pilots and aircraft lost in action. As the war ground on, the Japanese could manufacture planes but had fewer and fewer pilots to man them. Nor did the IJN infuse combat experience back into the training community. Seasoned pilots stayed out in the fleet until they were shot down rather than rotate back to Japan to train their successors.
Whether Beijing will avoid such ill-conceived practices is another open question. If not, the PLA Navy’s will be slow to achieve a critical mass of experienced aircrews. And lastly, technology can interfere. Launching and recovering jet aircraft from floating airports is no easy feat. Robert “Barney” Rubel, our dean of naval warfare studies, recalls that the U.S. Navy lost 776 and 535 airmen in a single year, 1954. Will the PLA Navy undergo travails of such scope? I doubt it. Technology has moved on since the 1950s, while Chinese airmen and seamen can learn from past navies’ failures. But I also doubt history will exempt the PLA Navy from bureaucratic, cultural, and technological pitfalls.
As the strategist Clubber Lang once put it: “Prediction? Pain!”
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bill
china are building six more aircraft carriers, Africa and Asia will wake up one morning to the projected power.
HAN Fei
Yep, "one landing does not make a carrier". But, one operational MAGLEV railway in Shanghai, which was provided by Chengdu Aircraft Industry group, approached the EMALS for the Chinese future carrier.
hushashi
What a mess that thing will make when it goes haywire on a flight deck full of fueled and armed aircraft… as you know it enevitably will, at some point…
Lauren Garza
It's not the plane, nor the pilot, nor even the ship. It's the doctrine and the willingness to build individualisum, free thinking and initiative into one's officers and men. And take away that video link off the bridge so that the home office is looking over your shoulder and the political officer isn't standing there second guessing the captains and crew for their every decision. The technology may be 21st century (albeit, bought or stolen from the West and Russia) but the doctrine is pure Han dynasty. And that is the elephant on the bridge.
a_obama
I would argue "the doctrine is pure Han dynasty" is the clearest sign that China will continue to suceed, because all Han dynasty contemporaries, including the once powerful ancient Roman Empire, which is considered hundred times more powerful than the USA, are dead, and China remains the only living ancient civilization on earth. There were many historical juctures where China could have been killed over the past 3000 years, but it survived. There must be some reasons.
Watch how gratefully the whole nation to bet its last farewell to the deceased J-15 program CEO, how strongly the J-15 program personnel are motivated to dedicate their last drop of blood to their nation's defense and security, how deeply the whole society is committed to take care of the deceased's remaining family, and how steadily the J-15 program is still moving on despite the death of its CEO on test scene, you know the whole country is determined, is working as a team, not as many individuals, to chase the dream of building its new Great Wall on the sea. This probably is the most significant factor that keeps all Chinese living together as a people, not individuals.
There have be, and will continue be, many heated debates about individualism in China, but most of Chinese still believe in collectivenism. That nation grows on, and benefits from, collective efforts from all individuals in the seciety, while all other countries arguing in favor of individual freedom over community wellbeing past away, I see no reason that China will abandon its collectivenism very soon.
Frank
Well said.
American CEOs want to suck your blood. Chinese CEOs give blood.
hushashi
Very interesting. It sounds like you are familiar with the "Chinese characteristics" of "Capitalism with Chinese characteristics" often said by leaders in the past.
Could you tell me, what exactly are these "characteristics", it sounds to me like you are close to defining them. I would love to hear your knowlege.
talking points
there are 2 landings pictured, but the report talks about 5 pilots made the landing. on a picture of people mourning the death of a j-15 manufacturer head, there are 5 pilots standing infront of a crew.
China has hard time picking qualified candidates because of physical and health requirements. hopefully they can get faster and eventually have at least 100 of them.
bert
100 is simply too modest a figure. A former Luftwaffe pilot once recalled that during (the later stages of) the Great Patrotic War whenever he and his pals flew to the front swarms of Soviet planes would fly rise into the air to challenge them. That was how the very famous and highly trained Luftwaffe was swept out of the skies on the Eastern Front. This is something that must always be remembered by any military aviator/planner worth his salt.
vic
China got lots and lots of people. Assuming that only 1% of the population can made the grade. That 1% is 13,000,000 people. Now, that is real power.
Steve
The real test for the PLAN will come when they encounter their first 'aviation incident' on this ship. The US Navy has one of these serious events about once a decade. They lose the aircraft and the usually the pilot but the ship sails on. When this occurs and the Chinese crew handles it in a professional manner then it can be said that they are 'progressing'. However, if the event turns into a inferno that damages or even sinks the ship then China's experiment with carriers will be curtailed or ended.
a_obama
No one should underestimate the Chinese's determination to protect themselves, which is the obvious answer to why China is the only living civinization on earth without interruption.
Building the Great Wall cost millions of life, but the whole nation still moved on until knives and arrows were not used in the war.
Frank
The author said the grape is sour. So what?
During Korea war, Chinese trained a pilot in a month.
Errol
And I'm certain you can guess what's the survival rate of a pilot trained in a month's time. Stalin had to send Soviet pilots to the Korean War and made sure they flew behind Norcom in case they got shot down.
Frank
Yes. 15 to 1, Chinese new young pilots learned their flight lessons with their blood just as the J-15 designer did a few days ago. That is what Chinese have done and will do to catch up. That is why the westerners and their servants under-estimated Chinese over and over.
Errol
Yeah. Democratic governments will spend dollars. Authoritarian regimes will spend lives. Which is something democratically elected governments can't get away with. Such a concept is hard to internalize though, since it's so alien and different.
Frank
Only Chinese are willing to build their "New Great Walls" with blood and flesh. Nobody. I repeat, Nobody on this earth will.
There is ONLY one country that has long lasting uninterrupted history.
a_obama
Actually, not so alien and not so different between the two kinds gov'ts, at least in the case of Texas Secession petitions. Still, something is different. The Chinese learned much earlier and have accumulated more experience, while the so-called democratic Western countries are trailing far behind, but catching up very quickly.
The Chinese believe in the collective survival. They believe "There will be no single egg remaining unbroken if the holding nest is overthrown." So, they put the surcurity of the nest (State) higher than that of individual eggs (persons). In an opposite direction, the Westerners believe in "There is no need to have the nest at all if not all eggs are surcured." However, as history and conventional wisdom have proven, the countries that have no political will and military muscule to protect themselves will likely be outlived by those that have, this raises a challenging question to the Western countries: are you ready to die before the death of China? If you are, what are the points for you to argue your democratic value when you nevertheless will die soon? If not, how will you preserve the State without infringing individual citizen's rights?
Apparently, the Western countries are not willing to die now. All talks about democratic value are just empty talks, a.k.a. propogandas. Have you seen how the democratically elected gov't in the White House is handling Texasian appeals to secede from the USA: turn a deft ear to the poor petitioners and hide the US Constitution behind the toilet in the WH. Otherewise, the US will collapse tormorrow!
Democratic or not, you have to preserve your national institutions first before you can talk about individual rights, or there is no reason to talk about individualism at all. If there is no concept of State, will there be any ideas of individualism?
If you dissagree, and if you happen to be a Teapartyer, I encourage you to take arms to go to the Wild West to support the Texasians, because they have not voted for the Obama administration in the first place, and because they have the Constitution-guarenteed right to secede from the Union if they are not happy with it! You will soon find where our democratic rights are, and how much they value against the US national interests!