via The National Interest.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is building its second aircraft carrier, several senior Chinese military officials have confirmed, a Hong Kong daily is reporting.Read it all here.
On Monday, Taiwan Focus News Channel cited the Chinese-language The Hong Kong Commercial Daily in reporting that China has begun work on its second aircraft carrier, which will have a more advanced launch system the one currently used on China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.
According to Taiwan Focus News Channel, the initial report cited Liu Xiaojiang, the former political commissioner of the PLA Navy, as saying that the “government's industrial and manufacturing agencies are now in charge of the ship's construction.” The report also cited Ding Haichun, who was promoted to the position of deputy political commissioner of the PLA Navy back in January, as confirming that China’s second aircraft carrier is under construction.
Taiwan Focus News Channel went on to paraphrase Ding as saying that “after the completion of the ship's construction, it will be turned over to the Navy for training maneuvers.”
Want China Times, which is also based in Taiwan, also carried a story about the original report on Monday.
Good luck trying to figure out this program. I just looked at the wordy website verbage in light of the FAS report of Mar 3 here which said...
ReplyDeleteRecent reports suggest the final [ACV] RFP will be issued in late March 2015 and proposals would be due in April 2016.
..And I didn't see anything on impending contractual activity (I may have missed it in all the chatter).
On the website, regarding AAV,
We have parallel survivability upgrade and sustainment programs...This program will start in FY 19...
But SNAFU! covered the SAIC press report recently:
SAIC moves forward on AAV upgrades. single-award, firm fixed-price contract builds upon SAIC's previously announced initial contract value of $16 million...upgrade AAVs to provide improved protection while gaining back land and water mobility
Clarifications are welcome.
With regard to the AAV, the SAIC announcement was for them to build a limited number of demonstrators for evaluation, other companies (BAE i've heard) are also building or have built demonstrators; the announcement was NOT that SAIC was formerly awarded the contract(s) to refit the fleet of AAV's. The FY 19 date is something like when they say they may make a formal decision about who gets the actual production contract.
ReplyDeleteBut...
Don't hold your breath. It has been stated many times here that the AAV 1.1/MPC is a tortured program because at best, production vehicles will be fielded in 10 years; well, at the rate it's going, 10 years is about when these 'upgraded' AAV's will probably be entering service too. They act like they are fielding new vehicles, yet I have seen no literature which confirms that, as far as I know, this is all for a factory refit and re-build program so who knows what is going on.
The basic truth is that replacements are years away and when they come, they will be slow, under-gunned, and in the case of the AAV, under-protected. The only relevant piece of NEW information to come over the past few days was from the interview Solomon did and that was that the EFV was never as protected and survivable as they touted it was, which explains why they canned it and have not gone back.
You will never understand this program because it's not a real replacement/upgrade program, its an ever increasing pile of bad ideas and mis-information designed to cover up a 3 Billion dollar failure from years ago.