PLA’s First Carrier ‘Ready by 2012’: Blue-Water Navy Plans Advancing, U.S. Says
Greg Torode, “PLA’s First Carrier ‘Ready by 2012’: Blue-Water Navy Plans Advancing, U.S. Says,” South China Morning Post, 1 April 2010.
China could have its first aircraft carrier operational in two years, according to the most senior US military official in the Asia-Pacific region.
Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the US Pacific Command in Hawaii, told a recent US congressional hearing that the Soviet-era carrier Varyag, bought from a Ukrainian shipyard in 1998, would be “operational around 2012 and likely be used to develop basic carrier skills” after a 10-year refit. His statement is the most specific yet from the Pentagon on Beijing’s aircraft carrier ambitions. …
Andrew Erickson, a China scholar at the US Naval War College, said getting the Varyag operational was merely the start. “China’s refitting of Varyag to make it operational around 2012 seems to be part one of a two-part approach – outfit a foreign-purchased platform to enable basic training, while preparing a more capable [domestically made] platform for higher-level military operations,” he said. …
