jhungary
MILITARY PROFESSIONAL
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Sure, we will start counting by then. China needed a bigger fight deck carrier. The j15 is far bigger than f14b. The varyag based liaoning carrier is just narrow and short compared to Nimitz class carrier. Quite cramped even with a dozen j15 on deck.
British Queen Elizabeth carrier is about same length but much wider with more deck area giving ample space to f35b to operate.
Not advisable to cramp the fighters with little space on carrier deck. Remember the case zuni rocket fired itself when an f4b started engine and hit an A4 skyhawk on US carrier? The fire spread fast because the aircrafts park too close creating serious damage on deck and casualties.
Actually, the USS Forrestal Fire spread quick not because of the aircraft jam pack together, but rather the bomb is old and the cook off time is unwittingly faster, when the bomb exploded, it basically kill the whole DCT and there are no one with any know how to fight the on-board fire, which leads to multiple mistake From using water instead of foam for fuel fire, which literally spill the fire as water carry the lit fuel, to sailor did not push off the burning aircraft with crane and tractor immediately.
The bomb itself set off a chain reaction that leads to the fire becoming uncontrollable. Had the navy uses newer bomb that have better fire resistance back then, the fire would have been contained by the DCT Chief. Instead of killing him and the team outright.
US Navy still park their ready 5 aircraft close to each other. But with better safety standard employed since.
Depends on few factors, Americans didn't take long to become world power. Before ww2, they were behind the colony kings France, British, Germany. Soviet Union too was far behind having no air and naval power, was a feudal farming country. It took US and Soviet less than 10 years.
Looking at present, more and more Americans and Europeans military manufacturers engineers been idling or left out of job due to less demand for expensive high end weapons such as fighters especially followed by subs, ships, tanks, big guns, missiles, etc. In US, there was once Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, general dynamics, north american, fairchild, Northrop, Grumman, Lockheed Martin. Today, most of them either absorbed, merged or winded up with the remaining heavily downsized. This left many engineers amd researchers went to other lines leaving their military machines dream burried. Same cases happened in Europe and Russia.
As long as China has money, china could persuade these engineers to work on china project at high pay while Chinese engineers learned from them and added their ideas.
Actually the US had already overtook the UK after WW1, the very fact that at the onset of WW2, the UK have no power whatsoever to drag US into the conflict until Pearl Harbor, the US basically become World Power by staying off WW1.
And no.....US/European technology firm did not sit idle like you said, my brother is a Boeing Defence Engineer, expensive high end weapon are essential before as well as now, hence the US have all kind of crazy program other country can only dream on (Like Zumwalts, F-35 and Laser Technology)
In Ground reality, project itself overtook most defence contractor, and contractor merge itself to form a bigger branch so to earn more contract, it's the same reason why Facebook buy off Instagram....If anything, there are more engineer working in the field then before as most civilian company now dabble into Military Contracting such as Qantas Defence Contracting and Austal Ship building