Galrahn

Actually the restore appears to be going better than I would have expected. The coat of primer appears completed. Next would be tower work and electronics if it is going to sea.

True it is speculation, but again, the Pentagon is who has been speculating. The speculation I am specifically reffering to cites the dry dock in Dalian is not big enough to fit propulsion on the Varyag, so once the military work is completed the Varyag would likely be towed to Zhoushan, where there are several new state of the art large drydocks more than able to handle the ship.

While Dalian is where a lot of the Naval construction has taken place lately, the facilities simply aren't big enough to build larger warships. Bloggers recently pointed out quite a few FACs and Amphibious ships have recently been upgraded/built on Zhoushan Island, ships previously unknown about.

Because virtually all modern Chinese warships have been built and worked on in Dalian, it would make sense to tow the ship to where your industrial design base is. Until this summer, there weren't any large drydocks big enough in China to handle a warship that big, but now there are.

highsea

Is that supposed to be a joke?
Pretend I'm from Missouri- show me. I've seen a hell of a lot of PS'd pics of the "new" FACs in the last 2 years. Also, please show me these new amphibious ships.
According to the President of COSCO, the largest floating drydock in China is in Dalian. That's 300,000 dwt with a lifting capacity of 65,000 dwt. The large one under construction in Zhousan will be the same size, slated for copmpletion mid-2007. There is a smaller one that was scheduled for complation mid-2006, but it is about 1/2 the size, and I don't know if it's in service yet. Also, these are not covered docks, and they will not lift as 100,000 dwt ship as you claimed previously.

I'm still waiting.

If you can show that there are larger ones available, please post a link. (and not some blog, please)

__________________
My baby called me up. She said- Why don't you ever take me out? Pick me up in your brand new car....You shake the short change from the old fruit jar...

gf0012-aust

They have done some work to the citadel as far as the comms shack is concerned and that leaves a wider door open to speculation. In the past (eg their AWACs programme) they stuck the radome on a land based control tower. by rights, that would and could be the normal approach for testing the comms for the carrier - its interesting to note that they have elected to stick these things on the carrier itself rather than on a land based mule.

on another note - they could always fit pods to the sucker - that would eliminate the need to cut into the hull or deck to shove in a russian derived MTU

either way, IMV, they're 5-10 years away from having single capability at an operating level - and one carrier is almost useless in the context of redundancy, availability, training, work ups, fleet handling exercises etc....

the new navy boss is not fond of carriers either - he's biased towards subs, and you only have to see the dramatic shift in chinese shipbuilding to see that he's weilding far more influence than the prev Adm ever had.

china is a continental power - she's not well placed to be a naval power for a variety of reasons.

my 2c worth anyway