The Liaoning, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s first aircraft carrier, recently set out for a voyage and hosted fighter jets carrying out takeoff and landing exercises, in an attempt to minimize the impact of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) outbreak on the training of more carrier-based fighter pilots. Under difficult sea conditions in the early spring in the Bohai Strait, multiple J-15 fighter jets took off from the flight deck of the Liaoning and successfully landed several hours later, indicating the success of the technique rehabilitation training for instructors at Naval Aviation University. Training for war preparedness will not be stopped even in the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic, and the training of carrier-based fighter pilots must continue.
Liaoningis a Chinese Type 001 aircraft carrier. The first aircraft carrier commissioned into the People’s Liberation Army Navy Surface Force, she was originally classified as a training ship, intended to allow the Navy to experiment, train and gain familiarity with aircraft carrier operations. Following upgrades and additional training in late 2018, state media announced that the ship would shift to a combat role in 2019. Originally laid down in 1985 for the Soviet Navy as the Kuznetsov-class aircraft cruiser Riga, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, construction was halted and the ship was put up for sale by Ukraine. The ship was rebuilt and commissioned into the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) as Liaoning on 25 September 2012. Its Chinese ship class designation is Type 001. In November 2016, the political commissar of Liaoning, Commodore Li Dongyou, stated that Liaoning was combat ready.
