Taiwan reported China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier group sailing to the island’s south. The sighting came hours after the Chinese military put out a video saying it was “prepared for battle.”
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Sunday it was “on alert” after a Chinese aircraft carrier was detected to the south of the island.
The incident comes three days after Taiwan’s president angered Beijing during a speech to mark the self-ruled island’s National Day.
China considers Taiwan as part of its territory and tensions between the two have spiked in recent years over the near-constant deployment of Chinese ships to waters near the island.
Seeing how empty that flight deck is, I wouldn’t be too worried
Do they typically keep aircraft on the deck when just sailing around?
To add on, most of us are probably used to seeing American Nimitz- and *Ford-*class carriers, which have flight decks covering approx. 4.5 and 5 acres respectively, while the Liaoning only has about 3.5 acres, and loses a lot of that real estate to the ski jump. American carriers tend to be built with extra parking spaces for aircraft on the deck, partially to get more bang for our buck, but also because you can park planes on a CATOBAR deck without much difficulty.
In addition, Nimitz- and *Ford-*class carriers each carry approx. 90 aircraft of various types, compared to the Liaoning’s 45 or so.
The bottom line is American carriers tend to keep aircraft on deck while sailing around, because they carry so many of them and have more space on the deck for parking, while the Liaoning likely has enough hangar bay space for her much smaller complement of aircraft.
Not all.
Carriers tend to have internal hangar spaces, repair/loadout spaces, machining capability, assisted takeoff/landing systems on the flight deck, etc.
To “carry” the aircraft and expect them to perform their roles, the carrier has to be a mobile light airfield and not just a deck to land and take off from.
Edit: Not to say they can’t sail or don’t with any of them on the flight deck of course, but that’s maintaining a certain level of readiness that has some posturing inherent. I guess that’s true for all military readiness doctrines.