China already has the largest navy in the world, with 370 military vessels.

China is developing a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier which would be larger and more advanced than any existing vessel in its fleet, in an attempt to keep pace with the US navy.

The new supercarrier would allow fighter jets to be launched from four parts of the flight deck, as opposed to its current ships which can only facilitate three, according to new satellite imagery reviewed by NBC News.

That would match the capability of USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest and most advanced aircraft carrier in the US navy.

Images from the Dalian shipbuilding facility in northeast China show tracks or trenches in the snow, which appear to be related to a new catapult launch system.

Analysts said that while the images don’t show construction under way just yet, they are an indication that China is moving forward with its ambitious plans.

“We think this is them testing equipment and layouts for the upcoming Type 04 carrier,” Michael Duitsman, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the US, told NBC.

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China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was commissioned in 2012 and its second, the Shandong, was launched in 2017. Both use the “ski-jump” method, which involves a ramp at the end of a short runway to propel the planes upward.

The country’s third and most advanced carrier to date, the Fujian, launched in 2022 and was upgraded with electromagnetic catapults, which are more similar to the systems used onboard US ships.

All three of China’s carriers are conventionally powered, unlike the upcoming one, which experts believe would be powered by a nuclear reactor given its size and capacity.

The tracks seen in the latest satellite images run at convergent angles, which experts say resemble the configuration of existing American supercarriers that have four electromagnetic catapults.

Mr Duitsman said that it seems likely that China’s new carrier would resemble the USS Gerald R. Ford.

China already has the largest navy in the world, with 370 military vessels, but America, with 291 vessels, has more big ships.

The Gerald Ford is one of 11 supercarriers in the US navy.

Rumours have circulated for years that China is preparing to build a Type 04 carrier. However, Beijing has refused to confirm any reports and very little information has been made public.

Last November, analysts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in the US revealed that China had built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship.

Until the satellite images from Dalian, this was the first and only piece of evidence that Beijing was developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

China has not commented on the latest reports about its plans for a supercarrier. However, last March, Yuan Huazhi, the political commissar of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army navy, told the state-backed Global Times that there was no bottleneck in China’s aircraft carrier technologies and development was progressing smoothly.

At the time, Yuan also said that more information would be made available “soon”, but little has been heard from Beijing since.

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