BEIJING, Jan. 2 -- China's aircraft carrier Shandong (Hull 17) recently completed its last maritime training mission in 2024 and returned to a military port. From near seas to far seas, during the past five years since it was commissioned, the aircraft carrier Shandong has participated in major exercises such as the "Joint Sword" to promote the rapid improvement of its comprehensive combat capability.
The aircraft carrier Shandong is China's first domestically-made conventionally-powered aircraft carrier. It was officially put into service on December 17, 2019, thus opening the era of China's domestically-built aircraft carriers and the "dual aircraft carrier" era.
Compared with the time when Shandong was commissioned, the sortie generation rate has been greatly increased, and the efficiency for reloading a round has been largely improved. Moreover, Shandong is now capable of conducting combat missions under all-weather and complex meteorological conditions.
Based on those combat-oriented exercises in past 5 years, all officers and sailors of the aircraft carrier Shandong worked with researchers to jointly tackle more than 100 problems that restricted the improvement of combat effectiveness, achieving hundreds of research results.