The US Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) sails through the Red Sea in September 2013. Despite its advanced age and upcoming retirement, the Nimitz is still a far more capable vessel than its Chinese counterpart. (US Navy/Mass Communication Spc. 3rd Class Samuel Souvannason)

Liaoning vs. Nimitz: America’s and China’s Aircraft Carriers, Head to Head

Share this link on Facebook

Share this page on X (Twitter)

Share this link on LinkedIn

Share this page on Reddit

Email a link to this page

The USS Nimitz is nearly twice as large as the Liaoning, with a crew complement two and a half times larger.

Most comparisons of the US and Chinese aircraft carrier forces tend to focus on the newest ships, America’s Gerald R. Ford class and China’s Fujian. But a more useful comparison, perhaps, would be between America’s Nimitz-class carriers and China’s Liaoning, which say more about the respective maturity of the two countries’ carrier forces. 

The Nimitz class represents decades of American experience operating nuclear-powered supercarriers. China’s Liaoning, by contrast, started life as an unfinished Soviet hull, the Varyag, before China purchased and rebuilt it in 2012. A second carrier, Shandong, was completed in 2018 and commissioned in........

© The National Interest