China's New Catapult-Equipped Amphib Heads Out on Sea Trials

The PLA Navy's new flat-deck amphibious assault ship Sichuan has departed shipyard for sea trials, barely two years after her keel was laid and just 11 months after her launch ceremony.

The sea trials will involve standard testing of ships' systems; mooring trials and equipment commissioning have been completed smoothly and as planned, the PLA Navy said in a social media statement. Testing of the diesel-electric power system that runs both the propulsion and the ship's power-hungry combat systems will be a particular area of focus, according to Global Times.

Sichuan is the world's largest amphib, and the first ever outfitted with an electromagnetic aircraft launch catapult, a technology that first premiered aboard the American supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford in 2017. But Sichuan's deck is small by the standards of modern carrier aviation, and China already has full-size carriers, so the catapult is widely believed to be purpose-built for more compact aircraft - unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which the PLA's suppliers have been developing. This would make Sichuan the first "drone carrier" ever built specifically as a platform for UCAVs.

Previous satellite imaging shows that the open, rectangular flight deck measures about 850 feet long by 170 feet wide, making it about an acre larger than the U.S. Navy's America-class "big deck" amphibs. It has dual elevators, port and starboard, to handle a high volume of fixed-wing aircraft traffic in and out of the hangar. As a fully equipped amphib, Sichuan also has a well deck at the stern for launch and recovery of landing craft.

A trench in the flight deck was spotted during construction and identified by open source intelligence analysts as a clear indication that the ship would have a catapult. It is electromagnetic, Chinese state media has confirmed, as is its arresting gear.

The ship was built at the new expansion yard for CSSC Hudong Zhonghua on Changxing Island, and illustrates the powerful economies of scale of China's integrated civil-military shipbuilding industry. In videos taken by Chinese state media of the vessel's departure (above), a brand new methanol dual-fuel boxship for CMA CGM is visible off her starboard bow, and a second CMA CGM boxship is moored across the yard, far off the starboard quarter. A newly-built LNG carrier sits to port and another new LNG carrier is directly astern - all normal pierside activity at , a prolific builder of boxships and LNG carriers for international shipowners. These commercial orders underwrite the infrastructure, supply chain, research, training and labor pool that all underpin CSSC's warship construction program for the PLA Navy.

As a sign of the maturity of China's complex shipbuilding capabilities, Sichuan went from keel laying to sea trials in 25 months. The closest analogue in American service, the smaller first-in-class USS America, took 53 months from keel laying to the start of builder's trials (in 2014). The most recent analogue, Flight 2 America-class amphib LHA-8 (future USS Bougainville), was laid down in March 2019 and on track to deliver in August 2026, a span of 89 months.