China’s Fujian aircraft carrier spotted in new position, bringing it a step closer to sea trial, analysts say

On Sunday, undated video clips began circulating on social media platform Weibo that apparently showed the Fujian launching an object into the basin where it was berthed in what could be a dead-load test. The test involves launching a wheeled vehicle with the mass of an aircraft to emulate a plane taking off.

The clips show a water splash in front of the Fujian’s bow, but not a vehicle leaving the flight deck. The authenticity of the clip cannot be verified, but passengers on commercial planes have been known to take videos of the Fujian as their planes leave or approach the nearby Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

H.I. Sutton, a naval analyst who was the first to notice the Fujian being moved by tugs, said on his website that this could indicate the ship was a step closer to sea trials.

Sea trials test how well a ship’s systems and components operate. Sea trials for the Fujian are likely to take more than a year.

Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said the Fujian could have been moved away from the quay to launch the test vehicles.

“Catapulting the small vehicle itself is a step in the testing of the aircraft carrier for sea trials,” he said. “I don’t know if the video is real, but this is something that needs to be done eventually.”

He pointed to signs such as the berthing of the Fujian’s support ship, the Lidaoyuan, behind the Fujian in the Jiangnan shipyard since March as indicators that sea trials would start soon.

The covers protecting the three electromagnetic catapults were removed from June to October. Photos circulating on Chinese social media also showed smoke coming out of the Fujian’s chimney in September.

‘Substantial threat’ from PLA’s Fujian carrier: Taiwanese defence ministry

The Fujian, a 316-metre supercarrier, was launched in June 2022.

According to analysts, aircraft carriers could be used to block foreign forces from aiding Taiwan from the east, including US forces based in Guam and Japan’s Okinawa.

Because J-15 jets are designed to be carrier-borne, their presence in the east of Taiwan suggested that they had taken off from the PLA’s Shandong aircraft carrier, which was positioned nearby.

The PLA has developed a variant, the J-15T, to be used with catapults.