High-definition video has emerged of China's lone aircraft carrier, CV-16 Liaoning practicing aircraft takeoffs and landings. The video was apparently shot during a visit to the carrier by the head of China's Navy during drills in the Bohai Sea .

Named after the province in which it was built, the Liaoning is China's first and only aircraft carrier. Built during the 1980s for the Soviet Navy, after the end of the Cold War it was sold as scrap to a Chinese businessman, who claimed to want to convert it to a casino. Somehow, Liaoning passed into the hands of the Chinese military, which rebuilt the ship from the ground up into a modern aircraft carrier.

Commissioned into the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in 2012, Liaoning displaces 67,000 tons, has a crew of about 2,500, and carries approximately 40 aircraft. Liaoning is considerably smaller and less advanced than American aircraft carriers; lacking catapults to launch her aircraft into the air, the Liaoning uses a "ski jump" instead. Taking off from a carrier equipped with a ski ramp and not a catapult severely limits the amount of ordnance, fuel and sensors an aircraft can bring aloft.

Despite her shortcomings, the Chinese are happy with their carrier. Liaoning is considered a training ship, designed to train a cadre of aircraft carrier crew and pilots to help man the next generation of Chinese carriers currently under construction. As a training carrier, Liaoning will likely never sail the kind of force projection cruises the U.S. Navy does.

The video shows People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fighter pilots practicing takeoffs and landings with J-15 "Flying Shark" fighters . The J-15 is China's first and currently only carrier fighter plane—derived from the Russian Su-27 series of fighters, the J-15 is a multi-purpose strike fighter capable of air to air and air to ground combat. The engines used to power the J-15 are Russian AL-31F "Saturn" afterburning turbofan engines.

The video shows Admiral Wu Shengli observing flight deck operations and even eating with the pilots. The video even shows a Foreign Object Damage walk by the carrier deck crew: two rows of deck crewmen walk shoulder to shoulder down the flight deck, looking for small items that could be sucked into an air intake and cause serious damage to fighter engines.

The admiral on board the ship is Wu Shengli , the head of China's Navy. Wu has presided over the PLAN for the last nine years, overseeing the Navy's growth from a coastal defense navy into a blue water fleet with global reach. Central to all of this is the establishment of a Chinese carrier force. Liaoning is—simply put—Wu's baby. (That's him sitting in the captain's chair at the 0:47 mark.)

Watch the video here:

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