While the U.S. Navy awaits the delivery of the first-in-class aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in 2016, the Chinese navy appears to have its own flattop-construction milestone on the horizon. According to media reports, China’s second carrier is under construction and slated for delivery in 2018. It’ll join the Liaoning, which debuted in 2012. It’s not exactly an armada, but every carrier fleet has to start somewhere. The Chinese carrier fleet, for example, started in the Ukraine. In 1998, a Hong Kong travel agency reportedly bought the unfinished, Cold War-era carrier Varyag from that former Soviet state, claiming it planned…