1 | The best open source information about PLAN carrier operation comes from the Japanese MoD.
From data published by 🇯🇵's Joint Staff Office we can establish some baselines for PLAN carriers' sortie rate.
Note: daily sortie rate is averaged across observation window.
2 | By just looking at the data, it seems PLAN's carrier sortie rate has seen gradual improvement.
When Liaoning was deployed in Dec.2022, its daily fighter sortie rate peaked at 20 per day and can be as low as 5 per day at the end of the deployment.
3 | After a year-long refit, Liaoning's sortie rate has seen a significant increase during the current deployment in Sep.2024.
Fighter sortie rate is at 37 per day averaged in 7 days. At the busiest day it could have reached 48 per day (2 per day per airframe).
4 | PLAN's other operational carrier, Shandong became very active when Liaoning was in her refit.
During the Oct.2023 deployment, Shandong achieved 47 fighter sorties per day across 9 days. It maintained an almost 2 sorties per day per airframe rate during the entire deployment.
5 | Similar to most open source data on PLA's capabilities, there are many caveats here.
->Are JMSDF's tally comprehensive?
->Are these fighters armed and rearmed between sorties?
->etc.
So it will be hard to make conclusive comparisons to other navies using these numbers.
6 | But we should be thanking JMSDF and Japanese MoD for their effort and transparency to put these numbers out there.
*Minor screw up here. Put Liaoning on the Shandong graph as well.
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