052C/052D Class Destroyers

A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Bltizo said:
imo this discussion about building 50-60 055s over the next 20 years has some sensible reasoning and big blindspots on both sides of the argument.

I personally do not expect the Navy to need quite that many 055s (i.e.: including variants of 055 I assume) over the next 20 years, and while I agree that such a number should definitely not be thrown around as if it is assumed to be going to happen, I also think that at this stage it is yet so unrealistic.

These sort of predictions are always dependent upon extrapolating from past/current trends, into the future. At the moment, 055 production has only really just begun, and we don't know if the rate of production will be sustained, and we don't know how much of the 055's potential required numbers have been fulfilled based on the current 4 confirmed hulls.

It might turn out that the navy will only build 4 hulls initially and take a few years off before ordering some more, which would cause our predictions to be lower. Or the navy might continue building at JNCX and DL at the rate they've been doing into the future, with 8 ships in the first batch. Or, some of the previous rumours about HPLX building 055 might come to fruition and we might see three shipyards building 055s at the same time, causing our predictions to be much higher.

Other factors, like the future growth rate of the chinese economy, and the state of what China's geopolitical/naval ambitions will be, are also not guaranteed to enable a 50-60 055 production run over two decades to work out.

But otoh, 50-60 055s over 20 years is 2.5-3 055s commissioned per year, and while that is on the higher end of the commissioning rate and the higher end of the length of sustained continuous production, I don't think it is pie in the sky unrealistic either, given we are still in the very early stage of tracking 055's production trajectory and it's hard to track where it may go.


So IMO such a prospect should definitely be treated with a lot of caution, but at the same time it shouldn't just be laughed off.
In a couple of years we may have a better picture of current (of the time) 055's production rate and the future production trajectory based on it.
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Well, how many high-end destroyers are needed for the 1st island chain?

How many would be needed for the 2nd island chain in 15-30 years time?

On the second question, I get a minimum of 90.

---
It doesn't make sense to split an initial order of 4x Type-55 against 2 shipyards.

If they want to validate the design, why not just build 4 from Jiangnan?

It would only take another year to launch the extra 2 ships, plus the cost will be a lot lower because of the learning curve, and it provides for extra time to evaluate the design and then incorporate improvements into the later ships.

And it's not like there is an urgent requirement for the Type-55 over the Type-52D, because the delay is only 1 year for the following 2 ships and we're not talking about a revolutionary increase or need for that capability

And we could have Dalian continue with Type-52D which is now proven.

So that is why I conclude the initial Type-55 production run for the next few years will be a lot bigger. But then they might as well continue building 3 destroyers per year like they are already doing.
 
I

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
AndrewS said:
Of course there is no way to know what the actual TCO for the Type-55 is at this point. But we do have a detailed lifetime Total Cost of Ownership analysis for the Arleigh Burke to compare against.

And in the grand view, it is the generality that matters, which goes back to Chinese strategic requirements and capabilities. I'm using the stated GDP growth targets set by the government, along with a modest 2% of GDP being spent on the military. Given the strategic environment is becoming more uncertain, I doubt China will reduce this. If anything, I think Chinese military spending will undergo a modest rise from 2% to 2.5% of GDP. So in 10 years time, that $800 Billion (2%) would actually be $1000 Billion (2.5%) in military spending.

And it's obvious you haven't been keeping up with the economic analyses.

During the last Great recession, the growth gap between China and the US grew even larger. That was primarily because the US government was ideological unable to intervene and make common sense decisions, because it meant government intervening in the market. In comparison, China accelerated its development plans by 5-10 years, taking advantage of the low cost of land/labour/materials during the global recession.

Plus remember even today, China faster-growing economy already has a PPP economic output which is roughly 20% larger than the US. On balance, that already suggests that China will build a larger military in the long-run.

And I say that China is benchmarking against the US Navy, but that does not mean copying the force structure. China's strategic requirements are somewhat different, but one of those will be to build a navy that can exercise maritime superiority within the second island chain.

And that at would require China to at least match the USA in terms of high-end AEGIS type destroyers.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on China's long term performance and plans, and let time take its course.
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Oh, you have a detailed TCO of the Arleigh Burke to compare against. But you haven't done it. You also have absolutely no idea how close to the Burke the 055 would compare. So even at birth your wild claims are stillborn, with no way for you to demonstrate numerically that any of your fantastical declarations are realistic.

And I love how you keep using PPP GDP to estimate how much military spending China is going to have. PPP is much less relevant when it comes to the military where big ticket high tech weaponry is much closer to international norms, with the only thing you can really give a China Discount to being labor costs. How much that saves you depends entirely on the individual item, so PPP GDP-based military spending projections are voodoo magic guesswork at best, nonsensical blubbering at worst. Additionally, the only thing that I've heard about any official Chinese government GDP growth forecasts is a rosy "6.5%" growth per year until 2020. IMF forecasts an average of 6.4% until 2020 when it will start dropping at a faster pace, falling to less than 6% by 2022.

Also, you say you're not modeling PLAN force structure against the USN when in the next breath you talk about "matching" 3 destroyer/year construction rate and obviously and gratuitously attempting to get as close as possible to USN Aegis destroyer numbers. And of course you outright say it here: "And that at would require China to at least match the USA in terms of high-end AEGIS type destroyers." LOL In truth there is nothing that "requires" China to "at least" match the US in high-end destroyers. Not only do you not recognize basic facts like the fact that the USN is a two-ocean navy while the PLAN is a single-ocean navy, you also don't understand the tyranny of distance, you don't recognize the CURRENT inability of the US to pay for its CURRENT navy, you don't recognize its inordinately (and now self-acknowledged) top-heavy force structure, or it's stated (and formalized) mission to fight and win two wars at the same time. The needs of the PLAN clearly do NOT dictate its needing anything close to what the USN is fielding currently or its outlandish goals to build up to a 355-ship navy in the future with money it doesn't have and hasn't had for decades. But for you it's all about equalizing the numbers for equalization's sake. Well I'm glad and confident that the PLAN doesn't feel the need to measure e-peen size with the USN and will go its own way, as it always has.
 
Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
my after-lunch thoughts:

twenty years from now, the PLAN may match the USN not because of the large buildup envisaged
#272 AndrewS, Jul 29, 2017
but because of the USN issues like retiring Ticos Monday at 4:02 PM
Jura said:
not sure what to say
The U.S. Navy will start losing its largest surface combatants in 2020
13 hours ago
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Click to expand...
(I'm not in the mood to write about the quality of LCS Project again)
etc.; I was bewildered (not sure if that's the right word) after I had realized this:
Sep 23, 2017
Jura said:
here's what I now scrambled while waiting in a mall:
5dd2af6d954a50f6d1fcecbc01f0db61.jpg

it's based on
US Ship Force Levels

1886-present
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data

...
Click to expand...


one of Chinese advantages is its facilities are new, I mean not as old as US facilities, for example
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talks about drydocks still in use which previously might had accommodated the Oregon (BB-3), a predreadnought:
300px-USS_Oregon_in_dry_dock%2C_1898.jpg
picture dated 1898 ... personally I found this connection very interesting, but the situation isn't good for the USN
 
A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Iron Man said:
Oh, you have a detailed TCO of the Arleigh Burke to compare against. But you haven't done it. You also have absolutely no idea how close to the Burke the 055 would compare. So even at birth your wild claims are stillborn, with no way for you to demonstrate numerically that any of your fantastical declarations are realistic.

And I love how you keep using PPP GDP to estimate how much military spending China is going to have. PPP is much less relevant when it comes to the military where big ticket high tech weaponry is much closer to international norms, with the only thing you can really give a China Discount to being labor costs. How much that saves you depends entirely on the individual item, so PPP GDP-based military spending projections are voodoo magic guesswork at best, nonsensical blubbering at worst. Additionally, the only thing that I've heard about any official Chinese government GDP growth forecasts is a rosy "6.5%" growth per year until 2020. IMF forecasts an average of 6.4% until 2020 when it will start dropping at a faster pace, falling to less than 6% by 2022.

Also, you say you're not modeling PLAN force structure against the USN when in the next breath you talk about "matching" 3 destroyer/year construction rate and obviously and gratuitously attempting to get as close as possible to USN Aegis destroyer numbers. And of course you outright say it here: "And that at would require China to at least match the USA in terms of high-end AEGIS type destroyers." LOL In truth there is nothing that "requires" China to "at least" match the US in high-end destroyers. Not only do you not recognize basic facts like the fact that the USN is a two-ocean navy while the PLAN is a single-ocean navy, you also don't understand the tyranny of distance, you don't recognize the CURRENT inability of the US to pay for its CURRENT navy, you don't recognize its inordinately (and now self-acknowledged) top-heavy force structure, or it's stated (and formalized) mission to fight and win two wars at the same time. The needs of the PLAN clearly do NOT dictate its needing anything close to what the USN is fielding currently or its outlandish goals to build up to a 355-ship navy in the future with money it doesn't have and hasn't had for decades. But for you it's all about equalizing the numbers for equalization's sake. Well I'm glad and confident that the PLAN doesn't feel the need to measure e-peen size with the USN and will go its own way, as it always has.
Click to expand...

I looked at the Arleigh Burke TCO analysis previously, and decided that a comparison with the Type-55 was not relevant to the point I'm making.

And from a strategic point of view, China would eventually want to have a large enough navy to fight and win a long naval conflict in the Western Pacific. It means the Chinese homeland is secure from any conventional threat. And as time goes on, we can expect the US to transfer most of its military capabilities to the Pacific, rather than the 60:40 split today.

"Ask most China scholars whether Xi and his colleagues seriously believe that China can displace the United States as the predominant power in Asia in the foreseeable future. They will duck the question with phrases like “It’s complicated . . . on the one hand . . . but on the other . . .” When I put this question to Lee during a meeting shortly before his death in 2015, his piercing eyes widened with incredulity, as if to ask, “Are you kidding?” He answered directly: “Of course. Why not? How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?”

Source
Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World
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So sizing against the US is required against China's strategic goals. Plus China needs to demonstrate that it does have a larger fleet in order to get certain US policymakers to understand that the US is no longer number 1 and that there are limits to US influence in the Western Pacific.

And you will have to disagree with American and British academics on how PPP is a better indicator of military potential and capabilities.

===

"Among those for whom American primacy is an article of faith, the IMF announcement stimulated a vigorous search for metrics by which the US is still number one. These include GDP per capita, new data that take better account of quality of life and well-being, and new rationales for the previous standard that measured GDP at market exchange rates. Since a number of my respected colleagues disagree, I asked the world’s leading professor–central banker, former MIT professor Stanley Fischer, how we should measure the US economy against China’s.

Fischer wrote the textbook on Macroeconomics, taught Ben Bernanke (former head of the Federal Reserve System) and Mario Draghi (head of the European Central Bank), served as the chairman of the Central Bank of Israel, and now serves as the vice chairman of the US Fed. He knows whereof he speaks. And in his judgment, PPP truly is the best benchmark—and not just for assessing relative economic strength. “In comparing the size of national economies,” he told me, “especially for the purposes of assessing comparative military potential, as the first approximation, the best yardstick is PPP. This measures how many aircraft, missiles, ships, sailors, pilots, drones, bases, and other military-related items a state can buy and the prices it has to pay in its own national currency.” The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ authoritative annual The Military Balance concurs, noting that “the arguments for using PPP are strongest for China and Russia.”

Source
Destined for War, Graham Allison, Harvard
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I

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
AndrewS said:
I looked at the Arleigh Burke TCO analysis previously, and decided that a comparison with the Type-55 was not relevant to the point I'm making.
Click to expand...
Of course it isn't. The point isn't that a Burke TCO is available to you, the point is that you have no way to financially legitimize your massive 055 navy.

AndrewS said:
And from a strategic point of view, China would eventually want to have a large enough navy to fight and win a long naval conflict in the Western Pacific. It means the Chinese homeland is secure from any conventional threat. And as time goes on, we can expect the US to transfer most of its military capabilities to the Pacific, rather than the 60:40 split today.

So sizing against the US is required against China's strategic goals. Plus China needs to demonstrate that it does have a larger fleet in order to get certain US policymakers to understand that the US is no longer number 1 and that there are limits to US influence in the Western Pacific.
Click to expand...
No, I said nothing about the PLAN having or not having a large enough navy to beat the USN. I have been talking about you trying to force your "60" (or is it "90" LOL) 055 force structure onto the PLAN so that it can somehow equalize itself with the USN. I don't in any way agree that this is necessary or sufficient to allow the PLAN to defeat the USN locally or worldwide in the future, or that dominating the world militarily is even the goal of China in the future. Being #1 according to LKY is NOT necessarily the same as being #1 according to AndrewS.

AndrewS said:
And you will have to disagree with American and British academics on how PPP is a better indicator of military potential and capabilities.
Click to expand...
Good thing your academics don't explain how they arrived at their conclusions. Maybe you can ask your academics whether the price of steel and other commodities is different in China.
 
Lethe

Lethe

Captain
Jura said:
my after-lunch thoughts:

twenty years from now, the PLAN may match the USN not because of the large buildup envisaged
#272 AndrewS, Jul 29, 2017
but because of the USN issues like retiring Ticos Monday at 4:02 PM
Click to expand...

That Ticos and then Burke Is will begin to retire in the next few years is why Andrew is projecting future USN large combatant numbers will remain at ~90 despite the fact that Burke construction is continuing.

Relatedly, a couple weeks ago I pointed out on the Navy Matters blog that USN has more large surface combatants (defined as cruisers/destroyers displacing >7000 tons full load) today than at the peak of Reagan's build-up in 1987, and that the main reason the fleet has shrunk is because all the smaller and more affordable combatants that used to exist are gone, and the blog owner deleted my post, presumably because it conflicted with his preferred political narrative of a Navy ravaged by peaceniks, socialists, eco-warriors, feminists, etc. Good times.
 
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D

delft

Brigadier
In former times there was much talk about having/developing a balanced fleet. I do not know how a balanced fleet would look today but I'm pretty sure that neither of the two traditional large navies, USN and RN, own a balanced fleet however that is defined.
China will most likely have less attention to amphibious warfare and more on sea control simply because previously USN and RN together were more than large enough to ensure sea control in nearly all circumstances even without the help from allies. That has been changing due to large changes in World economy but China will remain concerned with defence for many years to come.
Will China go for a single size aircraft carrier fleet, 100k or perhaps less, or will it go for two or even three sizes of aircraft carrier - fleet air defence and sea control / ASW? What type of aircraft carrier will operate UCAV, AEW? It depends on how China interprets the relevant political and technological developments. These choices have a major influence on the number of ships in other classes that will be desired.
 
asif iqbal

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
Some claims that the module on the dock is that of Type 052E? What is the truth and is there even such a thing as Type 052E?

Notice 4 x Type 726 LCAC

Type 055 CG

nEpUWrr.jpg
 
A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Iron Man said:
Of course it isn't. The point isn't that a Burke TCO is available to you, the point is that you have no way to financially legitimize your massive 055 navy.


No, I said nothing about the PLAN having or not having a large enough navy to beat the USN. I have been talking about you trying to force your "60" (or is it "90" LOL) 055 force structure onto the PLAN so that it can somehow equalize itself with the USN. I don't in any way agree that this is necessary or sufficient to allow the PLAN to defeat the USN locally or worldwide in the future, or that dominating the world militarily is even the goal of China in the future. Being #1 according to LKY is NOT necessarily the same as being #1 according to AndrewS.


Good thing your academics don't explain how they arrived at their conclusions. Maybe you can ask your academics whether the price of steel and other commodities is different in China.
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If you look again, it's 90 over 30 years or 60 over 20 years. They both work out to 3 per year, which is a simplification.

So we'll just have to agree to disagree as to what China will build in the future.

Plus they're not my academics. They're from Harvard, Treasury and Singapore. Note that Singapore was offered a military alliance by the USA, but they politely declined because they needed diplomatic flexibility. And if you read the actual books, their analyses do come with sources and the rationale.
 
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