Chinese aircraft carrier moved to new location

Reaffirming Indias estimate that China will have its first operational aircraft carrier by 2012,the country has moved the defunct Varyag aircraft....

Reaffirming Indias estimate that China will have its first operational aircraft carrier by 2012,the country has moved the defunct Varyag aircraft carrier that it purchased as scrap from Ukraine to a new location where it is likely to be refurbished further and fitted with new engines.

A series of photographs that appeared on Chinese websites on Tuesday showed the ship being towed to a new dry-docking facility in the Dalian Shipyard,close to the location where it has been anchored for the past four years.

While naval analysts here are still trying to figure out whether it was just a transfer to the new location for repairs or a trial of new systems fitted onboard the ship,the movement has generated a lot of interest in maritime circles.

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The Indian Navy estimates that the refurbished Soviet-era Kiev-class warship,which has been renamed the Shilang and has been transferred to the Dalian Naval Academy,will be ready for induction into the Chinese Navy as a training platform by 2012.

Till now,China remains the only major power not to have an aircraft carrier but has made it clear that it is pursuing a project to develop indigenous carriers in the near future. It is also pursuing a deal with Russia for the purchase of SU 33 ship-borne fighters.

The latest photographs show the ship being towed by a number of tugs and a lot of activity is apparent on the superstructure,which was left two thirds complete by the USSR and lacked a propulsion system when it was sold to a Macau-based company in 1998.

There seem to be a lot of things on the deck and they may be doing a few things with the superstructure. The ship may have been moved to the dry dock as its hull still requires a lot of patch work, a senior official said.

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The ship was last moved to a dry dock in 2005 after which it emerged in Chinese Navy colours and appeared to have had work done on the ski jump that is used to launch aircraft.

However,this time around,the ship may have been fitted with a Chinese power plant. Intelligence inputs with India suggest that the carrier will be used exclusively to train Navy personnel for the three indigenous carriers that Beijing plans to induct over the

next decade.

In September last year,China started training its first batch of fighter pilots who will operate from the countrys future fleet of aircraft carriers. The first batch of 50 pilot cadets were inducted at the Dalian Naval Academy to undergo training on ship-borne operations.