Fujian's flaws push China towards aircraft carrier with nuclear power

China’s latest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, represents a significant advancement as the country’s first domestically designed carrier with electromagnetic catapults and the largest conventionally powered warship globally. However, emerging technical assessments reveal critical design flaws that limit its operational effectiveness. Key issues include the island superstructure’s placement near the flight deck’s center, which reduces usable deck space and creates bottlenecks during aircraft operations. Additionally, the electromagnetic catapult arrangement intrudes into the landing area and is positioned too close to an aircraft elevator, restricting simultaneous launch and recovery operations—a capability standard on U.S. supercarriers. These layout inefficiencies, combined with a narrower and shallower angled flight deck compared to American designs, likely reduce Fujian’s sortie generation rate to about 60% of that of a U.S. Nimitz-class carrier. The identified shortcomings are largely attributed to the constraints imposed by Fujian’s conventional propulsion system, which requires large exhaust funnels and machinery spaces, limiting optimal deck and