It already has the world’s largest navy, but new satellite imagery shows that China is developing a huge nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that would rival the biggest vessel in the American fleet, five analysts told NBC News after studying new satellite imagery.

The images of China’s Dalian shipbuilding facility in northeast China suggest that the new ship will allow fighter jets to be launched from four parts of the flight deck, leading analysts to conclude that the images suggest a new ship design — unlike anything now in the Chinese fleet.

The analysts made the assessment after examining images provided to NBC News by Maxar Technologies, a defense contractor headquartered in Colorado used by the U.S. government.

China’s three current aircraft carriers have the capacity to launch jets from only three parts on the front and the waist, or center, on the deck. Its latest supercarrier, the recently launched Fujian, a Type 003, has three electromagnetic catapult launching systems to propel fighter jets, said Michael Duitsman, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a California-based nongovernment organization devoted to curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has 11 supercarriers that can launch from four places.

“We think this is them testing equipment and layouts for the upcoming Type 04 carrier,” Duitsman said in a video call this week.

The general consensus, he said, is" that the new carrier will have four catapults,” which would allow more planes to take off and match U.S. carriers like the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy's largest and most advanced aircraft carrier. To accommodate four catapults, the ship will need to be larger than the Fujian, matching American tonnage and powered by a nuclear reactor.

The satellite images of China’s Dalian shipbuilding facility in northeast China show an engineering prototype of a module with two tracks, or trenches.

These tracks “obviously are related to catapults,” said H.I Sutton, an independent naval analyst based in the U.K. “But this is not the actual carrier under construction. Instead what it suggests is that the yard is gearing up to produce carriers,” he said in a telephone interview last week.


China has not acknowledged it is developing a new supercarrier, and Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the embassy in Washington, had no comment when asked about the new design. He said that the country’s national defense policy is “purely defensive in nature.”

The United States has nonetheless made no secret that it sees China as a priority. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told NATO leaders this month that they should take up more of the security burden in Europe to free up American firepower.

He said the United States faced a “peer competitor in the communist Chinese, with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific.” He added that the United States was “prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific.”