Originally Posted by
ORAC
Of note, the QLZ and POW don’t have fan tails or an engine test area either, but are still considered long-range blue water carriers….
https://qr.ae/psRYtV
As it seems, this is one of the clearest recent images of the PLANS-18 „Fujian“ after being in the water again since 14th February.
The most obvious question for this angle is yet again what sort of facilities, if any Fujian has to test aircraft engines onboard. There may not be any, pointing to the possibility that the carrier is primarily intended for operations not too far abroad. Pure guessing of course.
To illustrate what I am referring to, here you see the related fitting (door and sponson) on Nimitz CVN. The area in question is the sponson carrying the writing "Harry S Truman" and the opening above it on the first image.
I wouldn't get too worried about that. It's entirely possible they've got such a facility - all you need is a seating / test bed with fuel and control system and a duct to ensure you get clean non-fodded air.
Its also possible that they're assuming their engines will be so reliable they'll get minimal use out of such a facility...(ho ho ho) or that they'll be delivered by the engine OEM via magical COD (ho ho ho again).
To be fair, it may be that the engine test facility is a legacy holdover from previous engines - I'd suspect frequency of use depends on frequency of engine change and whether you need to do a bench test prior to strapping it into the cab and testing that, noting that full-power runs might be challenging in tie down terms!