Russian sold secrets for China’s first carrier

2011-02-15 (China Military News cited from washingtontimes.com and written by Reuben F. Johnson) -- Ukrainian authorities have imposed a six-year prison term on a Russian man convicted of spying for China who was assigned to steal military secrets for Beijing’s program to build and operate aircraft carriers.
The Russian national, Aleksandr Yermakov, was blocked from attempting to transfer to China classified data that would have significantly accelerated the Chinese army‘s effort to field its own operational aircraft carrier, according to reports in the Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya and other news outlets.

Varyag's Newsest Status in China, Feb, 2011
China's military announced last year that it had begun construction of its first aircraft carrier, confirming Pentagon and U.S. intelligence reports that Beijing was seeking the power-projection platform that requires highly skilled pilots who can take off and land from the relatively short space of a carrier deck at sea.
U.S. and defense and intelligence officials said China‘s deployment of an aircraft carrier would pose significant problems for U.S. plans to defend democratic Taiwan if the communist mainland were to use force to retake the island, which broke away after China‘s civil war.
“It not only extends the range of Chinese strike aircraft that would take out [Taiwanese] military installations, but it also would complicate U.S. Navy assistance of the [Republic of China‘s] defense if the mainland should attack,” said a naval officer and Chinese carrier program specialist assigned to the Pentagon.
China‘s intelligence service directed Yermakov to steal classified information about Ukraine‘s Land-based Naval Aviation Testing and Training Complex, or NITKA, its Russian acronym, according to reports.
The facility is in the Crimea near the city of Saki and was built when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. It remains the only training complex of its kind in the world.
The NITKA base is vital for states that operate one of the Russian-designed carriers equipped with ski-ramp takeoff decks, instead of the flat decks used on U.S. and French aircraft carriers.
The only two ski-jump carriers are the Russian navy‘s Admiral Kuznetsov and its sister ship, the Varyag, acquired by China from Ukraine in 1998 and initially announced in China for use as a floating casino. Russia continues training its pilots in Ukraine while building a similar facility in the Krasnodarsky Krai region of Russia that is expected to be completed in 2012.
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