汉和评述中国096和航母的最新情况

5、6）The low voltage switchboards and emergency switchboards
74）Varyag in Dalian shipyard in 1996
70）Varyage in Dalian earlier time

There are multiple indications that the PLAN’s aircraft carrier program has entered the stage of designating specific enterprises to manufacture aircraft carrier subsystems. This also means that the design of the PLA Navy’s aircraft carrier has been principally finalized. At the latest ship-borne equipment exhibition held in Guangzhou, several manufacturing enterprises indicated that they had been designated to produce subsystems of the PLAN’s aircraft carrier.

A source from the Chinese military industry says that Zhenjiang Marine ElectricalAppliance Co. Ltd. ZMEA has been designated to produce the low voltage switchboards and emergency switchboards used for aircraft carrier. The low voltage switchboard is composed of the con-safe bristolia platform MSB and the MCC. The low voltage switchboards and the control console systems fitted on most of the PLAN’s surface combatants are all manufactured by this factory. KDR has learned that the low voltage switchboards the company plans to manufacture for aircraft carrier will have a modularized and highly integrated design. These switchboards will form an automatic power station management system capable of protecting, monitoring and giving instructions to the generating system and the ship-borne electrical network. The management system can also automatically switch and cut off power, give alarms and examine the technical problems of the generating sets.

ZMEA (photo 5733) is also one of the key suppliers in designing and producing ship-borne power units systems. Very probably, the power units systems of the Chinese aircraft carrier will be supplied by this company. The design work of the naval power units systems is at the No.704 Research Institute. The AC & DC uninterrupted power systems jointly produced by ZMEA and No.704 Institute have been widely applied on the latest built PLAN surface combatants.
The production of a variety of ship-borne control consoles is also at ZMEA. In recent years, the photos of all kinds of surface combatants released by the PLA Navy show that the wheelhouse central consoles, the intergraded bridge system consoles and the engine room control consoles fitted on these ships have very westernized designs. KDR has learned that this is largely because of the technological support from the Dutch Imtech Company. A subsidiary of Imtech, Imtech Marine & Offshore has been helping ZMEA for years in designing and producing power switchboards and different types of control consoles. The cooperation between Imtech and ZMERA has been undertaken in the name of civil applications. In addition, the Shanghai Marine Instrument Co. Ltd. under CSSC is another key designer and producer of wheelhouse control consoles for surface combatants.
China is also accelerating the R&D of automating welding and cutting technologies. KDR reported earlier that in order to build new generation nuclear submarine SSBN/SSN, China had imported automatic welders from Russia. The new generation 052C and 052B DDGs’ welding technologies are inferior to that of the Japanese and S. Korean ships, an evidence that the overall technological standard of the Chinese shipbuilding industry in welding and cutting is still far behind Japan and S.Korea. Nonetheless, most of the welding and cutting operations on the PLAN battleships are using semi-automatic equipments. A source from the Chinese shipbuilding industry says that Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Welding Technology Research Institute and Jiangnan Shipyard are jointly developing robots for cutting operations. Shanghai Shipbuilding Technology Research Institute has also successfully developed a three-dimensional automatic butt-welding system, claiming that the new system can improve operation efficiency by several times.

With the construction of Chinese aircraft carrier being put on the agenda, major shipyards of the country are now starting to compete for the production of the aircraft carrier itself and the supporting surface ships of the aircraft carrier battle group. Because of this, these shipyards have invested heavily in expanding the production facility for the building of military vessels and in upgrading production equipments as well. The construction project of Nanshan Long Xue Dao Shipbuilding Base under Guangzhou Huangpu Shipyard has already started. A source says that the total investment in new facilities for building military vessels alone is RMB 1.4-1.9 billion yuan, including a 150,000-ton class military dock and a 1,050m long system installation dock. Meanwhile, Huangpu Shipyard also plans to build one indoor special maintenance berth. KDR believes that no matter where the PLAN aircraft carrier will be built, the South Sea Fleet (Nanhai Fleet) has the greatest chance to receive the first Chinese aircraft carrier, which means that all minor services, major maintenance or even overhaul operations will be undertaken at the shipyards to the south of Guangzhou. In the articles published by the PLA Navy in recent years on the “Questions of aircraft carrier”, the authors gave detailed analysis of the causes of “short-lived Soviet Union aircraft carriers”, drawing to the conclusion that untimely minor and major maintenance and long distance between the aircraft carrier home base and shipyard had led minor problems to fatal consequences. Consequently, the construction of a 150,000-ton class military dock at the shipbuilding base deserves further attention.

KDR’s analysts believe that Shanghai’s Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Group Ltd. will be a strongest candidate to build the first Chinese aircraft carrier. This shipyard has two 480x160x12.3m shipbuilding docks, the largest in the Chinese shipbuilding industry. The Vayage Aircraft Carrier that the PLA Navy purchased from Ukraine has a measurement of 280x37x10.5m. The FPSO ship that this shipyard built in 2006 is 300,000 tons. In addition, the other strong candidate shipyard for aircraft carrier building is Shanghai Changxingdao Shipbuilding Base, where a total of 4 large docks will be built and the largest one will be 580m long and 120m wide.
During the 2007 “NPC and CPPCC” sessions, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged unexpectedly that China was conducting R&D in aircraft carrier, and a PLA Navy Vice Admiral told a pro-China medium based in Hong Kong that China may build (the original wording of the report was “will complete building”, which is logically senseless) aircraft in 2010. Judging from the latest indications, China has started to make public opinion preparation for the building of aircraft carrier at official levels, which is obviously aimed at guarding against the resurgence of higher-decibel “China threat” clamors. A military intelligence source from Taiwan also claimed that China had formally launched its aircraft carrier construction program.