Chinese aircraft carrier enters new journey
——Written on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the entry of the Liaoning ship
◎Mo Xiaoliang Sun Fei reporter Zhang Qiang
September 25 marks the 10th anniversary of my country's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, officially joining the People's Navy.
Standing at the outfitting pier of Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard, a major officer of the Navy looked at the majestic Fujian ship with a thousand thoughts and mixed feelings.
He is Gao Feng, a crew member of the Fujian ship. He has served in the Liaoning and Shandong ships successively, and has witnessed the struggle and development of the Chinese Navy's aircraft carrier business with his own eyes.
After graduating from the National University of Defense Technology, Gao Feng was directly assigned to the aircraft carrier unit.
For Gao Feng, the formation of the Liaoning warship and the entry of the Shandong warship seemed to be just yesterday.
In June this year, he ushered in the launch of China's third aircraft carrier, the Fujian ship.
"Catch up with the aircraft carrier era, we are happy naval soldiers. It is the historical mission of our generation to build a world-class navy in an all-round way," he said.
The aircraft carrier business continues to bring surprises
At the beginning of August 2022, a report attracted people's attention: In the recent joint military exercise around Taiwan Island, our military organized aircraft carrier formation deterrence exercises to build a three-dimensional maritime combat system...
The rarely reported aircraft carrier formation turned out to be doing big things silently.
Back in time 10 years ago——
On September 25, 2012, the Liaoning ship officially joined the People's Navy sequence. The Chinese Navy had its own aircraft carrier for the first time, opening the era of aircraft carriers for this great eastern country.
On the morning of November 23, 2012, Dai Mingmeng flew the J-15 carrier-based fighter jet number 552 from the land-based airport to the Liaoning ship, searching for the ship, circling the ship, sliding down, aligning... "Bang", the tail hook The arresting cable was hooked accurately, and the aircraft stopped steadily on the flight deck of the Liaoning ship.
Before Deming Union got off the plane, people were already excitedly surrounding him.
Researchers, builders, and aircraft carrier crew members embraced and cheered heartily.
For the first time, the carrier-based aircraft of the aircraft carrier realized the ship-based blocking and landing, and the Chinese naval aircraft carrier appeared to the world for the first time in "full state"!
There has never been any kind of weapon and equipment that affects the hearts of the Chinese people like an aircraft carrier, and holds such a heavy hope.
Some netizens wrote excitedly: "From the first atomic bomb to the first hydrogen bomb, it took us only 2 years and 8 months; from the commissioning of the first aircraft carrier to the first carrier-based aircraft, there were only less than 2 separations. Yue, you can always believe in our great motherland!"
At the end of 2016, the Liaoning ship broke through the first island chain for the first time and went to the western Pacific to conduct high-sea training.
It was a fine morning, and the reddish morning glow sprinkled on the broad deck, and the light spots on the electronic chart marked the location of the Liaoning ship.
In the well-ordered cab, someone whispered, "We finally got out."
Yes, the aircraft carrier formation has finally come out, and this solid and powerful pace will never stop!
On December 17, 2019, the Shandong ship was commissioned, and the Liaoning ship had "brothers" and was no longer alone; on June 17, 2022, my country's third aircraft carrier Fujian ship was launched and named, and the "three-born" landed.
The ship is the first catapult-type aircraft carrier designed and built by my country completely.
Compared with the initial stage of the Liaoning ship's entry into the fleet, the composition of today's aircraft carrier formation has changed a lot. Large-scale comprehensive supply ships, 052D guided missile destroyers, and 0.55 million-ton destroyers have joined in one after another.
From "the ship is active and the ship is on board" to the normalized voyage, from the application of a single system and a single platform to the integration of the formation system, from the offshore test trial to the actual deployment in the distant sea, from the "only child" to the "three-child" landing... In the past ten years, the aircraft carrier has The development of the business continues to bring surprises to people and bring a full sense of security!
China's aircraft carrier has accumulated a lot
Sharp-eyed military fans found that the Liaoning ship, which was unveiled recently, has more aircraft on the deck.
From the first one or two, to 5, 8, 13, and more today.
The continuous increase in the number of aircraft is behind the continuous exploration of the combat capabilities of the formation system by the officers and soldiers of the aircraft carrier.
People often use "crossing the river by feeling the stones" to describe the difficulty of starting a business, but in front of the strugglers of the Chinese aircraft carrier business, the foreign countries blockade related technologies like iron barrels, and there are not even stones that can be touched.
Zhang Zheng, the former captain of the Liaoning warship, once said: "The largest warship I have ever worked on is 6,000 tons, and the Liaoning warship is 60,000 tons, which is ten times bigger. The training, combat, management and other subjects it brings are brand new. "We're going to completely change our mindset and start from scratch."
The life of the first batch of Liaoning crew members began with the identification of the way, with more than 20 decks, more than 300 gangways, and more than 3,000 cabins, they would get lost if they were not careful.
Compared with recognizing the way, what really puts pressure on officers and soldiers is how to familiarize themselves with hundreds of third-level systems, tens of thousands of sets of new equipment, hundreds of thousands of technical documents, and hundreds of millions of spare parts in the shortest time. Mastery and effective control.
The aircraft carrier is a giant system platform, and there is still a long way to go from "in hand" to "playable".
As China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning ship has been accompanied by attention and doubts from the outside world along the way - "China's technical reserves cannot build an aircraft carrier", "Even if China is given an aircraft carrier, they will not be able to start it in a short time." ...even an admiral of a certain country asserted: "Even if the Chinese have an aircraft carrier, they will not be able to play with carrier-based aircraft within ten years."
They may have experience and know technology, but they don't understand the spirit of Chinese soldiers, how can they calculate the speed of China's take-off?
In a short period of time, China's aircraft carrier has not only realized "the ship can move and the aircraft is on the ship", but also realized the continuous generation of the combat capability of the aircraft carrier system!
Carrier-based aircraft are the core of the aircraft carrier's combat effectiveness, and pilots are the soul of the carrier-based aircraft. Cultivating a team of carrier-based aircraft pilots with sufficient numbers and excellent quality is the key to generating the combat capability of the aircraft carrier system.
The "model of the times" group of naval carrier-based aircraft flight instructors are the runners who are running hard on this road of talent training.
Over the years, they have realized that the training of carrier-based aircraft pilots has changed from the previous training of army refits to professional, large-scale and systematic training in colleges and universities, forming a dual-track training pattern of "modification mode" and "growth mode", creating a new A number of records such as the largest number of people certified in a single batch, the smallest average age, and the shortest certification cycle.
When one by one is broken through for the first time, the capabilities of China's aircraft carriers are accumulating little by little!
The three giant ships are the three leaps in China's aircraft carrier technology - from continuing to build a ski-jump take-off aircraft carrier, to building a fully localized aircraft carrier by itself, to building a large aircraft carrier with a straight through long-deck electromagnetic ejection, the Chinese Navy's aircraft carrier era is continuing. Write new stories!