China's early carriers and the limits of hull life

Once China settles on its preferred carrier design, should it convert its first three carriers into drone motherships?

The expectation here is that China will retain their carrier role until enough replacements exist, by which time hull age and purpose-built drone ships could make conversion unattractive.

Converting China's early carriers into drone motherships would first require enough newer carriers to replace their flight decks. In this projection, they remain conventional carriers for several years while successor construction continues. Purpose-designed drone motherships already under construction also reduce the attraction of conversions. Liaoning's older hull is a particular constraint, because waiting for replacements adds years even if the ship has not spent all of its life in operational service. Assuming China wanted to retain six carriers and took another sixteen years to release Liaoning, the hull launched in 1988 would then be about fifty-three years old. That conditional calculation also underlies the rejection of a later sale to Russia. Later carriers could have more scope for reuse, but eventual scrapping or preservation is considered more likely than conversion.