Bizarre reason why China keeps aircraft carrier in the middle of a desert
Published on Jul 25, 2025 at 7:22 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Jul 25, 2025 at 9:15 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Alessandro Renesis
China maintains an almost exact copy of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the middle of the desert.
Yep, it’s not a hoax or a conspiracy theory.
The ship is indeed ‘parked’ right there in the middle of the desert.
But there’s a reason why.
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The reason why this ship is parked in the middle of the desert
China maintains a mock-up of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, a replica of the USS Gerald R. Ford, in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is an autonomous province in the northwest of the country, not far from the Kazakhstan border.
In case you’re not familiar with it, the USS Gerald R. Ford (Named after the 38th US President) is among the largest aircraft carriers in the world today.
It measures 1,106 feet in length and has a 256-foot-wide flight deck, capable of accommodating up to 90 aircraft.
The aircraft carrier replica is used as a target for testing anti-ship ballistic missiles and equipped with masts to simulate radar signature.
The Chinese government put it there to help Chinese air force cadets and pilot ‘practice’ their landings and take-offs.
What exactly is an aircraft carrier?
An aircraft carrier is basically a ship that’s also an airbase.
Most aircraft carriers are designed to accommodate fighter jets like the Darkstar used in Top Gun: Maverick or the Lockheed Blackbird SR-71, one of the fastest planes in the world, or even the F-18.
They are also quite large, and they need to be because they need a sizable runway that aircraft can use for take-off and landing.
Once decommissioned, aircraft carriers don’t automatically go to die.
They sometimes end up in a museum or giant ‘boneyards’, just like Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (pictured above) in Arizona where more than 3,000 aircraft are parked.
Sometimes, they’re simply repurposed.
That’s what happened to a former U.S. Navy ship that was converted into a $5 billion car transporter.
After all, if the ship is big enough for about a dozen aircraft, just imagine how many cars you can fit in there.
