re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer
What is it so special about SSF? they are also blocked by Taiwan, philipines, malaysia and vietnam. Besides, the navies of those countries are outgunned by PLAN. Why should PLAN require carriers and even large destroyers to those waters?
Makes more sense to boost ESF, where they are at the same time somewhat unblocked by japan/south korea and at the same time close enough that they can engage with japan/SK navies which lets face it, are the biggest threat to china, not the philipine navy.
SSF would be responsible for securing China's Sea Lines of Communication to the ME, Africa and Europe in the event of conflict.
They would have no chance if the USN tried it, but against anyone else, they have a decent chance, and will only get stronger as they get new ships and carriers.
The NSF and ESF are mainly local defence fleets with the main job of keeping China's Eastern seaboard safe from hostile sea based attack. The ESF has the added responsibly of taking Taiwan if the need arises, but ultimately, those fleets do not need to be true blue water fleets as they will be operating within range of land based sensors, weapons and aircraft support in all likely combat scenarios.
The SSF is the only one likely to be operating independently far from home in any realistic combat scenarios, so it makes sense to make sure it is the best equipped for independent blue water operations.
The decision to send the Liaoning to the NSF pretty much confirms what I have said all along, in that while the Liaoning is fully combat capable, the PLAN sees it as primarily a training platform and will use it as such unless in extremes. I also think the Liaoning will be significantly weaker than the indigenous Chinese carriers, both in terms of hanger size, ability to conduct CATOBAR ops, and general layout, which again will relegate her to a secondary training role while the new carriers would be first pick for actual combat deployments.
The Liaoning will stay near home waters and focus on training crews and pilots for the first few years of its service. After a few years, once the PLAN has a good handle on carrier ops and the new indigenous carriers start to come online, I would expect either the PLAN to have a full set of crews and pilots trained up ready to crew the new carriers, and/or the Liaoning will have the cream of its crew and pilots stripped out for the new carriers while the Liaoning gets on with training a new batch.
