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Gabriel Dominguez

China’s aircraft carrier programme is entering a new phase as Beijing broadens its focus to improve the recruitment and training of the crews and pilots needed for operations far from the country’s home waters, according to a new report.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy was making sweeping changes to pilot recruitment and training.
Rather than relying mainly on experienced aviators transferring from operational squadrons, the navy had expanded recruitment through civilian universities and dedicated programmes for high school graduates, replacing what analysts described as a stopgap approach with a permanent pipeline, the report said.
The shift became more apparent in 2022, when the navy said its transformation from a “shore-based force” to a “ship-based force” had been “basically completed”, and pointed to its new recruitment and training programmes for carrier aviation.
Those reforms coincided with preparations to bring the Fujian, China’s first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults, into service. The catapults increase the speed at which warplanes can be launched, allowing larger and more powerful air groups to form.
Unlike the country’s two other carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong, the Fujian is expected to operate a significantly more capable and diverse air wing, including the J-35 stealth fighter and the KJ-600 airborne early warning aircraft – something that will require a deeper pool of specialised pilots, instructors, mechanics and flight-deck crews.
Meanwhile, the shipbuilding programme continues as Beijing expands the fleet’s capabilities.
Satellite imagery indicates a fourth carrier is under construction at a shipyard in the northeastern city of Dalian.
The new Type 004 is also expected to have an electromagnetic catapult system and become the country’s first nuclear-powered carrier, marking a leap in the force’s ability to sustain long-range operations.
“The rapid expansion and diversification of the PLA Navy’s recruitment pipeline reveals Beijing’s vision for a large, institutionalised and globally deployable blue-water fleet,” said Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a US think tank.
“By shifting away from a temporary ‘refit’ method of converting land-based pilots towards a permanent ‘grow-up’ pipeline … the PLA Navy is deliberately building the human capital necessary for continuous, multi-carrier operations.”




Andreas Rupprecht, an aviation analyst who specialises in the Chinese military, said the reforms should be viewed as part of the navy’s long-term transition into a blue-water force.
“An expanded carrier pilot pipeline is the natural consequence of a growing carrier fleet, rather than a short-term reaction to individual ships entering service,” he said.
But if China’s investment in carrier aviation reflects confidence in the long-term value of these warships, it also raises the question of why it is doing this despite the growing threat posed by long-range and hypersonic anti-ship missiles.
K. Tristan Tang, a non-resident fellow at the US-based National Bureau of Asian Research, said missiles and carriers served fundamentally different operational purposes.
“Missiles can deny access, but they cannot by themselves provide persistent sea control,” Tang said. “The carriers are mobile airfields that can control the sea, conduct strikes, operate across the electromagnetic spectrum and project power without relying on foreign basing access.”
To counter these missile threats, Mulvaney said, Beijing was relying on layered fleet defences, combining advanced surface escorts, integrated air-defence networks and airborne early warning aircraft to extend the fleet’s radar horizon.
According to the report, rather than abandoning aircraft carriers in response to the missile threat, the PLA Navy was adapting how it employed them.
Beijing is developing carriers as the centrepiece of integrated blue-water task groups capable of providing sustained air cover, anti-submarine warfare, command and control, and other functions far from China’s shores.
But building the ships may prove easier than producing the highly specialised personnel needed to operate them.
Tang argued that carrier aviation – not shipbuilding – had become a bottleneck in the PLA Navy’s expansion push.

“The logic is straightforward,” he said. “If Beijing waits until the hulls are commissioned to train their crews, it will lose years of operational readiness.
“By cultivating human capital well in advance, the PLA Navy aims to drastically compress the timeline between delivering a carrier and fielding a combat-ready air wing.”
Mulvaney said it took roughly five years to produce a fully qualified carrier pilot, making personnel development one of the longest lead times in building a carrier force.
Brian Hart, deputy director of the CSIS ChinaPower Project, said Beijing must also recruit and train the sailors, pilots and support personnel needed to operate entire carrier strike groups – a process that could not be accelerated as quickly as shipbuilding.
That challenge will become even greater as the Fujian enters service with a larger and more sophisticated air wing than the two other carriers.
To help address future personnel demands, the PLA Navy is also exploring how drones could eventually reduce some of the long-term recruitment pressure.
According to Hart, those efforts could eventually transform China’s carrier air wings.


“The PLA is already experimenting with operating large drones from amphibious assault ships and exploring how uncrewed aircraft might be deployed from conventional carriers,” he said.
If successful, drones could augment manned fighters and help ease some of the long-term pressure on pilot recruitment, although they were unlikely to eliminate the need for highly trained carrier aviators, he added.
More broadly, the next chapter of China’s carrier programme might not simply be about training more pilots, but about designing a different kind of carrier air wing, he added.
If Beijing increasingly integrated uncrewed systems alongside crewed fighters and airborne early warning aircraft, its carrier air wings could evolve in ways that differed significantly from those of the US Navy, reflecting the PLA’s own operational requirements and approach to future naval warfare, Hart said.


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Beijing is committed to building a fleet that can operate far from home – even in the face of the growing threat from anti-ship missiles


Beijing is committed to building a fleet that can operate far from home – even in the face of the growing threat from anti-ship missiles.


What China’s carrier recruitment drive says about PLA Navy’s long-term ambitions

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing is committed to building a fleet that can operate far from home – even in the face of the growing threat from anti-ship missiles

Beijing is committed to building a fleet that can operate far from home – even in the face of the growing threat from anti-ship missiles