On paper, Fujian appears to be exactly the fresh start that China required: an 80,000-plus-ton vessel with electromagnetic catapults to launch heavier-than-air aircrafts with greater range. As a matter of fact, the carrier has the most significant limitation, which is not the technology that appears in press videos but the construction and the equipment, which compel the deck crew to reduce their speed.
Fujian is the first Chinese designed carrier and the first CATOBAR ship where a conventional power plant is combined with three electromagnetic catapults. The latter combination produces a more contemporary appearance of a launch system without the electrical, and endurance, benefits of nuclear propulsion and places incredible stress on flight deck choreography to provide combat-credible sortie rates.
Two U.S. carrier officers who learned deck imagery explained the result in a rather straightforward way: The Fujian can only operate in 60 percent of the way the Nimitz can, said former U.S. Navy captain Carl Schuster, who served on two aircraft carriers. The key issue causing the headache in operations, retired Lt. Cmdr. Keith Stewart, a former U.S. naval aviator, identified the lack of space to launch and recover aircraft simultaneously since the deck layout into which aircraft must be staged, moved, and respotted is limited.
The choke points in question are mechanical and inexcusable. It has been noted that the positioning of catapults invades the landing field and elevators that make traffic between the flight deck and hangar difficult. Stewart captured the blood-bought quality of carrier procedure in one line that has lived with naval aviation since time immemorial: all carrier operation rules and regulations are written in blood, a quotation which reminds us that deck speed is at last limited by safety margin when space is at a premium.
The traditional propulsion carries a softer cost. Any kind of ship that needs to bunker fuel and then find space on the topside and inside to Carry that still must find a place to sail around, and that is going to present itself as lost space in other places–where a carrier can least spare it: aircraft flow, weapons spotting, and the capacity to continue launch-and-recovery operations when the deck is busy. The catapults of Fujian could theoretically allow heavier launch than the ski-jump carriers of China, though the deck will have to be configured to permit this or all launches will become traffic jams.
Concurrently, Fujian is not an cul-de-sac. the air wing idea is where the actual impetus of the program can be seen as consisting of catapult fighters and support aircraft that cannot be operated as effectively by a ski-jump. A mix of references has been referred to as being J-15T variants, J-35, and KJ-600, a strategy designed to provide the carrier with greater range and awareness of the situation than Liaoning and Shandong can provide on a routine basis.
This also has the restrictions of Fujian as to why the focus keeps shifting to the next hull. The permanent solution to range, electrical margin, and operating high-tempo operations is the jump to nuclear propulsion and China is already being associated with a greater follow-on design. The argument is not so much about prestige as about endurance: getting rid of the refueling tether, allowing the volume to be used as aviation fuel and magazines, and creating a flight deck that can recover jets and launch others without always stepping on its own feet.
At this point, Fujian can be viewed as a significant milestone with an asterisk. EMALS is able to modify what is launched. It cannot in itself alter the amount of usable deck space when the most time-sensitive evolution in the ship, the movement of aircraft, has lost room.
