Pics of the week: Flight ops aboard China’s aircraft carrier
It’s happening. Limited flight operations appear to have begun aboard China’s new aircraft carrier, Liaoning. A couple of weeks ago, Killer Apps pointed out that someone made tire skidmarks on the ship’s flight deck just before its commissioning ceremony. These new photos from the Chinese Internet (via China Defense Blog) show that those skidmarks were ...
It's happening. Limited flight operations appear to have begun aboard China's new aircraft carrier, Liaoning.
It’s happening. Limited flight operations appear to have begun aboard China’s new aircraft carrier, Liaoning.
A couple of weeks ago, Killer Apps pointed out that someone made tire skidmarks on the ship’s flight deck just before its commissioning ceremony. These new photos from the Chinese Internet (via China Defense Blog) show that those skidmarks were likely been caused by Chinese J-15 fighters doing touch-and-gos on the ship.
While the photos don’t show a Shenyang J-15 fighter jet performing an actual landing or takeoff aboard the ship, they do show several of the jets practicing landing approaches to the ship. Other photos show China’s Z-9 naval helicopters (a version of France’s ancient Super Frelon chopper) conducting flight ops off the deck.
The J-15 is China’s version of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter.
Here are the rest of the photos. Enjoy.
John Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.
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