I was wondering what happened to those type 52D that they have launched. Why it take them so long to commission the ship?. I guess they are working hard quietly and will soon commission a bunch of ships simultaneously. But I haven't seen DDG Xining , DDG Urumqi and DDG Xiamen on trial yet.
Even when money is no problem. It takes a long time to built strong navy. Japan has 10 comparable DDG and US 60. Still a long way
because we only see these ships once they are nearly complete and launched -- we do not see the ships from initial steel cutting to launch.
more importantly, the process from launch to commissioning is almost definitely far more complex and lengthy than steel cutting to launch.
From launch to commissioning, you have to fully fit out the ship, put it on shipyard trials, put it on naval trials, and also have a crew ready for the ship as well, before you can commission it. Combine that with the likely relatively faster pace of steel cutting to launch, it means that there will also likely be cumulative delays between launch and commissioning as all that work would have to be gradually spread among more and more newly launched ships that "accumulate".
So frankly, the length of time from launch to commissioning is pretty reasonable (about two years), it's just that the shipyards (JN, really) are able to build them so fast that we've become spoiled, that we might expect them to commission the new ships that quickly as well, when in reality the process from launch to commissioning is a far more arduous and time consuming thing to do.
===
edit:
by the way, you say that you haven't seen xining, urumqi or xiamen on trial yet -- but to be honest I don't think we can really expect to see them on trial anymore, because there are now so many 052Ds in the wild and launched and in the sea trials process that it's virtually impossible to identify between them because they only get pennant numbers once comissioned. the latest photo shows DDG 117 (Xining) with its pennant number, suggesting it has already been under trials and is on the likely cusp of commissioning.
This is despite us not having seen pictures of DDG117 on sea trials, probably because nobody's bothering with taking pictures of 052Ds without pennants going to sea anymore (and possibly not bothering to post them here).
