Commissioning of China’s Latest Carrier Type 001A Imminent - But Where Will the PLA Deploy It?

China’s first fully indigenous aircraft carrier the yet unnamed Type 001A Class warship embarked on its fifth sea trails on May 25th, which are expected to conclude in the first week of June. The Type 001A Class was launched on April 26th 2017, and is a 70,000 ton turbine powered warship derived from the Soviet Kuznetsov Class aircraft carrying cruiser design. Unlike the Kuznetsov, the Type 001A makes use of a far more modern propulsion system and carries a larger complement of up to 40 aircraft - but lacks the older design’s heavy armament of P-700 cruise missiles and retains only a light defensive armament of HQ-10 surface to air missile batteries and close in weapons systems. The warship uses a simple ski jump launch system, which though easy to maintain and operate restricts the armament and fuel capacity of aircraft taking off from its deck. The warship is expected to deploy 32 Shenyang J-15 air superiority fighters, a derivative of the Air Force’s J-11B, alongside Harbin Z-9 and Change Z-18 transport helicopters and Ka-31 airborne early warning helicopters.

The Type 001A set out on its first sea trial on May 13th 2018, with the second and third sets of sea trials beginning on August 26th and October 28th of that year and the fourth on February 27th the following year. The new Chinese carrier has successfully tested its avionics, sensor, communication and propulsion systems, and is expected to enter service sometime in mid 2019. The warship will joint the Liaoning as the second aircraft carrier in Chinese history, with the People’s Liberation Army Navy expected to deploy up to seven carriers by 2025 with five currently under construction. The Liaoning underwent a refit in early 2019 which saw its classification altered from a training ship to a fully combat ready aircraft carrier. While the majority of work on the Liaoning was done in China, the warship was first laid down as a Kuznetsov Class cruiser in the Soviet Union and was purchased from Ukraine in the 1990s - alongside extensive details on the Kuznetsov Class design. With China hiring Ukrainian and other former Soviet shipbuilding experts in large numbers after the superpower’s collapse, the technologies needed to develop an advanced military shipbuilding industry were effectively transferred and built on domestically resulting in an advanced derivative of the Kuznetsov far superior to the original design. China’s plans to manufacture supercarriers, the 85,000 ton Type 002 and the Type 003 which is speculated to be nuclear powered and reportedly displaces 110,000 tons, have also likely benefitted a great deal from technologies transferred from the Soviet sueprcarrier program. The USSR had laid down the keel of its first supercarrier just months before its collapse, with research and development for the warship complete.

The Type 001A is likely to be deployed in a similar role to the Liaoning, namely for the defence of China’s maritime claims rather than long range blue water power projection in the manner of more offensively oriented Western carriers such as the Gerald Ford Class and Charles De Gaulle. As the Liaoning is currently assigned to the Navy’s North Fleet, it is likely that the Type 001A will be assigned to either the East or South Fleets. These fleets both face hotspots with considerably higher tensions, the East China Sea or the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait respectively. Whether or not the carrier will be assigned to the East China Sea could be heavily dependant on the state of Japan’s own carrier program, with the two East Asian powers having overlapping maritime territorial claims. Assigning the Type 001A away from the East China Sea could be seen as an attempt to avoid provoking Japan into investment more in its own carrier program, with the country currently fielding four light carriers - the heavier two which each displace 27,000 tons and were designed to deploy F-35B carrier based vertical landing capable fighters. Wherever it is deployed, the Type 001A is set to be escorted by some of the world’s most capable surface combat warships - namely the Type 052D and Type 055 Class destroyers which integrate multilayered long range air defences and some of the most capable anti ship cruise missiles in the world.