aircraft carrier carrier-based fighter is the main weapon equipped on aircraft carriers. Its performance determines the combat capability of the aircraft carrier. The more aircraft carriers carry more aircraft carriers, the stronger they are. Therefore, when there is no big gap in the quality of fighter jets between China and the United States, the number of carrier-based fighter jets that aircraft carriers can carry has become an important indicator to measure the combat effectiveness of aircraft carriers.
Currently, China has built a total of 3 aircraft carriers, namely Liaoning Shandong and Fujian . Among them, Liaoning is an aircraft carrier introduced by my country from Ukraine after the collapse of of the Soviet Union. After modification, it was named Liaoning and officially joined the People's Liberation Army to serve. According to the subsequent information released by Russia, this aircraft carrier can carry up to 24 Su-33 carrier-based fighters, and there are 14 helicopters. The number of fighter jets that China's Liaoning is also equipped with is also this standard. After all, the Su-33 and the J-15 are similar in size.
Of course, the number of 24 fighter jets is still a bit small, mainly due to the size of the aircraft carrier and the design of the deck. After all, the full load displacement of this aircraft carrier is only 65,000 tons, and the bloated skipping design of the island and aircraft carrier deck makes it impossible to set up hangars and dock aircraft on the front deck. The larger island also occupies a lot of deck area. It can be said that the gap between the Liaoning and the large nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the United States is very obvious.
Take the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier currently installed on a large scale in the United States as an example. As of now, the standard configuration of the U.S. Navy's Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is 34 F/A-18E/F fighters, 7 EA-18G electronic fighter , and 10 F-35C stealth carrier-based aircraft, with a total of 51 aircraft. This is because the US Navy no longer faces the Cold War period, and the Soviet Navy's huge threat to was streamlined. Otherwise, it would be more than enough to carry 60 carrier-based fighters. It can be seen that in terms of the number of carrier-based fighters, the efficiency of the US nuclear aircraft carrier is more than twice that of the Liaoning, and can even reach three times under extreme conditions.
my country's second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, is a carrier-based upgraded aircraft carrier based on the Liaoning. The displacement is 65,000 tons, and the Shandong ship has undergone certain optimization and improvements based on the Liaoning ship , such as expanding the available space of the hangar and upgrading the island layout, which has slightly increased the number of aircraft carrier-based fighters. It is said that the number of carrier-based fighters can be increased from 24 to 28, but even so, it is far worse than the US nuclear aircraft carrier. To truly compare with the US nuclear aircraft carrier, the Fujian must be the USS. Some netizens are very interested in this. After all, the displacement of a Fujian ship is more than 20,000 tons more than that of Shandong and Liaoning. Everyone seems to know how many carrier-based fighter jets the Fujian can carry.
In fact, based on the analysis and interpretation of foreign media, we can basically conduct a detailed analysis of the number of carrier-based fighter jets carried by the Fujian USS. First of all, the Fujian ship is much larger than the Liaoning and Shandong ships, with a displacement of 85,000 tons. At the same time, the length and width of the ship have also been increased accordingly. Large ships can set up larger hangars, and more carrier-based fighters can be carried inside the ship.
Image source network Infringement
Secondly, the aircraft carrier deck area of the Fujian ship has increased significantly, and the ship island has been further simplified and reduced, freeing up the deck space for hot air space. At the same time, the straight deck used can place more carrier-based aircraft , and more than 20 carrier-based fighters can be placed on the deck, among which the Fujian ship will be equipped with a large number of J-35 fighters. The volume of this carrier-based fighter is much smaller than that of J-15. If equipped with a large number of such aircraft, it can also save space and increase the number of carriers in disguise. After all, the previous domestic aircraft carriers were equipped with large J-15 fighters.
Compared with the two ships of Shandong and Liaoning, the number of carrier-based fighters carried by the Fujian has been greatly increased. According to the organization, it is divided into 4 squadrons, equipped with 12 J-15/35 fighters, and an electronic warfare squadron equipped with 5 J-15Ds. Hu Ge believes that it can carry at least 53 carrier-based fighters, including 48 J-15 and J-35 carrier-based fighters, and 5 J-15D electronic warfare aircraft.The Fujian, which carries 53 carrier-based fighter jets, is almost the same as the American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with standard carrier-based aircraft for the first time.
Of course, this is compared with the US Navy Nimitz class when the carrier-based fighter jet of the USS Fujian aircraft carrier is fully equipped. If the Nimitz class does not meet the standard configuration and is fully equipped, the carrier-based fighter jets it carries can be increased to more than 70 or even more. Therefore, even after the launch of the USS Fujian aircraft carrier, there is still a big gap between us and the US nuclear aircraft carrier in terms of the number of carrier-based fighters. If we want to reach the same level as the US nuclear aircraft carrier, we have to wait for the subsequent 004 aircraft carrier to emerge.
