Posted on 2020.08.19
By
砲雷長 Pao Lei Chang
China's third aircraft carrier is being built at the dry dock of Changxing Island shipyard in the south of the Yangtze River.
The module manufacturing area has recently been expanded to include a
third assembly line.
-skipped the less contemporary part, less relevant/interesting-
As of August 15, there were eight modules in the dry dock. These modules represent the various parts of the type 003 hull from the bow to the stern, with a length of about 22 to 47 meters.
The current cumulative length of the module is
about 265 meters, indicating that additional modules will be required.
At least one additional module, 16 meters long, is located near the transfer area and is expected to be installed behind the current bow.
The hull modules of Type 003 are produced in the assembly area east of the shipyard, which has
recently been expanded. The number and scope of the manufacturing facilities indicate that
hull modules for other ship types will also be produced there.
Between April and July, a
new assembly line was added to the east side of the processing plant for the Type 003 hull module.
There are now three module assembly lines that can work independently or jointly to build hull modules for Type 003. The extra space also allows more modules to be stored in the processing plant before moving to the containerization area near the dry dock.
In addition, new construction work is under way on the western side of the nearby harbour.
To evaluate:
Once the hull modules in the dry dock are connected, it will produce an aircraft carrier similar to the Type 002 observed in Dalian in September 2015. It took about six months for the Type 002 to reach this completion level.
As the modules already exist, it is unlikely that it will take five months to assemble the lower hull, which will allow the lower section of the Type 003 to be completed faster than the Type 002. Type 002 did use a certain degree of modular construction, but it was limited to the upper deck, as most of the lower hull was built in a dry dock.
It took about 19 months for the Type 002 to be built and launched. Once the Type 003 reaches this stage after the module connection, a similar 19 month schedule is not impossible, which indicates that the Type 003 may be launched in two years. With the special facilities for the production of hull modules, it is possible to build faster.
The shipyard built a 250 meter long floating barge and moved it to a basin near the module assembly area, which led to speculation that the module would be transferred to the dry dock by waterway.
However, the modules built so far appear to have been transferred to the quay by road. It is not clear whether the size or weight of some of the upper deck modules will need to be transported by water, or whether the barge is not related to the construction of the third aircraft carrier.
... so far, the aircraft carrier looks to be in the range of American supercarriers. Of course, we will only know this definitively once all the modules have been put in place but nonetheless still very exciting.
