054/A FFG Thread II

[Iron Man]

@Lethe @Iron Man

My point is simple. The PLAN is voting with their pocket book and shown its intent with the sov and the Type 051B.

They have done an expensive refit to that 1st SOV...they did not do this to retire her in the next five to eight years.

Especially of we see them refitting the other three Sovs, I expect all the Sovs will stay around into the 30s. OTOH, if we see them not refitting the others, then they may well have decided it was not worth it.

If they do refit the others, then I expect them to do a similar refit to the Type 052Bs and keep them around too.

...and all six of those, with VLS, with stronger ASuW, and newer sensors would be valuable in any SG and any other show the flag or escort duties outside of a CSG.

I believe the same holds true for the Type 051B (which has also recently been refit) and the two Type 051C vessels.

Again, all three of those have very decent anti-air even into the early 2030s and would make, like the others I spoke of, decent vessels for any mission outside of CSG coveverage...and help ensure, depending on how many carriers are built, that there are always more than enough Type 052Ds and Type 055s to allow for maximum protection to five or six carriers...or however many are built tino that time frame.

Every warship gets a half-life major refit/overhaul, but this doesn't mean any warship will stick around longer than about 3 decades. In the case of the 051B and the Sovs, they are essentially one-off ships that don't integrate well at all into the logistics of the rest of the PLAN and are comparatively deficient in combat capability to boot. After all uniformity has a quality all its own. I think the 051s and 053s have overstayed their welcome due mainly to that fact that until recently total number of PLAN warships and warship production rate have not been high enough to justify early retirement, but with the 056, 054A, 052D, and 055 all being actively and rapidly produced there is less and less reason with every passing year to keep any older ships past their due dates. 051B reaches 30 years old in 2029. The first two Sovs reach 30 years old in 2029 and 2030. I expect that all three of these ships will be retired by then.

 

[PiSigma]

Every warship gets a half-life major refit/overhaul, but this doesn't mean any warship will stick around longer than about 3 decades. In the case of the 051B and the Sovs, they are essentially one-off ships that don't integrate well at all into the logistics of the rest of the PLAN and are comparatively deficient in combat capability to boot. After all uniformity has a quality all its own. I think the 051s and 053s have overstayed their welcome due mainly to that fact that until recently total number of PLAN warships and warship production rate have not been high enough to justify early retirement, but with the 056, 054A, 052D, and 055 all being actively and rapidly produced there is less and less reason with every passing year to keep any older ships past their due dates. 051B reaches 30 years old in 2029. The first two Sovs reach 30 years old in 2029 and 2030. I expect that all three of these ships will be retired by then.

Maybe. But it is also a numbers game. If destroyer production slows down, and I think it would be all the other 071, 075?, carrier Etc. being build. Not all destroyers need to be 055 or 052 newest build even by 2030, or whatever is new by then. I'm sure by 2030, fan boys will be screaming scrap all 052D and 055As because they are soooo ancient.

Remember, most navies near China are very weak, only USN, JPN, and RKN are strong. Nothing in the SCS can really threaten china, not vietnam and certainly not anyone else. So there is no reason to patrol with brand new ships when old ships will do.

 

[Iron Man]

Maybe. But it is also a numbers game. If destroyer production slows down, and I think it would be all the other 071, 075?, carrier Etc. being build. Not all destroyers need to be 055 or 052 newest build even by 2030, or whatever is new by then. I'm sure by 2030, fan boys will be screaming scrap all 052D and 055As because they are soooo ancient.

Remember, most navies near China are very weak, only USN, JPN, and RKN are strong. Nothing in the SCS can really threaten china, not vietnam and certainly not anyone else. So there is no reason to patrol with brand new ships when old ships will do.

Note that I'm not actually saying any of these ships will retire early, merely that they will be retired at around 30 years, which is pretty much at the end of their services lives, instead of being kept around for 35 or 40 years like some of the Type 051 and 053 ships. I think we'll have a test case fairly soon with the 052s. These two ships will reach 30 years in 2024 and 2026.

 

[Blitzo]

Whether and to what extent China will seek to retire older vessels ahead of schedule (i.e. at less than 30yrs old) going forward is certainly one of the great unknowns.

However with respect to numbers alone I suspect it doesn't make much difference. That is to say, if older vessels are retired at a faster rate, it will be because newer vessels are coming online at a faster rate to replace them. I recall that Blitzo anticipates just such an acceleration in future to 3-4 destroyers per year, plus frigates etc. In that context, early retirement of pre-052C vessels makes sense.

On the other hand, if future production continues at rates established in recent times, i.e. 2 destroyers and 2 frigates per year, the case for early retirement of older vessels diminishes. My own projections assume just such a rate, even while acknowledging PLAN's growing resources, not only out of a basic conservatism, but in light of the assuredly greater cost of destroyers (i.e. 055s) going forward, and the increasing depth and breadth of demands on PLAN budgets as it seeks to transition to a USN-class navy, i.e. expenditure on submarines, helicopters and ASW, carrier air wings, amphibs, etc. China has a lot of stuff to build these days, and surface combatants will not get as much of the budgetary pie as they have in the past. That said, 2 destroyers and 2 frigates per year would still be more than adequate to generate both a quantitative and qualitative transformation over the medium term, i.e. out to 2035.

I personally expect many of the pre 052C ships to begin to be retired, mothballed, or even sold off once they approach and exceed the 30 year mark.

Production rate of surface combatants is definitely an interesting question.

Specifically, over the last decade or more of Chinese naval surface combatant construction, I think we have yet to see all production lines running at "full" capacity that they've shown each can independently peak at.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s we saw 054A (frigate) production rate reach a sustained peak at 3-4 launched per year, and 052D (destroyer) production rate reached a sustained peak between 2014 and 2016 at 3 launched per year.

This clearly shows there is the ability to launch 3-4 frigates and 3 destroyers per year, but my question is whether a sustained peak production rate for both can be maintained in future, rather than only having a 3-4 frigate production rate with a slightly lower sustained rate for destroyers, or vice versa.


Then there is the question of class transition -- I think at this point in 2017 the Chinese Navy is in the middle of another transition in terms of surface combatant transition, that is to say, current classes are being produced but will either soon be replaced by or are being supplemented by new classes in production, and I think that is going to cause a slight reduction in terms of production rate in the next couple of years as 054A production begins to slow and stop in favour of 054B production picking up, and as 052D production either shifts to a new shipyard and/or a modified 052D variant emerges with continuing sustained production of 055...

Once this transition period of 054A/054B and 052D/052D-mod(?)/055 finishes, I expect full fledged sustained production of frigates and destroyers/large destroyers to occur around 2020.
Between now and 2020 I expect maybe 2 destroyers and 2 frigates launched per year on average.


But from 2020/early 2020s, I would not be surprised if production of the new generation of frigates and destroyers reaches the sustained peak we saw for both frigates and destroyers in the late 2000s/early 2010s and 2014-2016 respectively, with 3-4 frigates and at least 3 destroyers launched per year... but the only difference in this case being the production rate of frigates and destroyers in the early 2020s onwards era will have both frigates and destroyers produced in a high rate at the same time.


So from 2020/early 2020s, if we see a sustained production run of a total of 6-7 frigates+destroyers until 2030, that may mean new blue water capable surface combatants of 50-60 in number, on top of the frigates and destroyers that are already in service, fitting out, or launched before 2020.



Therefore, IMO a lot hinges on just what the Chinese surface combatant production rate for destroyers and frigates will look like by 2020, as that will probably be about when a number of new designs and shipyard reorganization will reach a stage where they will have the capacity and maturity to produce the new designs in a high and sustained manner.




And in case the idea of 50-60 frigates+destroyers in the 2020-2030 period sounds too unrealistic or beyond the scope of the Chinese shipbuilding industry, I'd like to point out that this is based on some of the production rates we've seen the Chinese shipbuilding industry as able to manage for a sustained period of three years or more with the 054A and 052C/D classes, and I am merely asking whether frigate and destroyer production rate can reach those heights again but at the same time, and whether that production rate can be sustained for a greater period (say 8-9 years rather than merely 3-4 years).

 

[Lethe]

I have no doubt that China could produce an awful lot of destroyers and frigates it was deemed necessary and an appropriate allocation of resources. The question is what level of resources will be provided to PLAN and how PLAN will choose to allocate those resources.

 

[delft]

I have no doubt that China could produce an awful lot of destroyers and frigates it was deemed necessary and an appropriate allocation of resources. The question is what level of resources will be provided to PLAN and how PLAN will choose to allocate those resources.

PLAN needs to cooperate with PLAAF and PLA so major decisions will be taken at the level of the Central Military Commission.

 

[plawolf]

CEC isn't about using the largest radars to serve as the eyes and the little ships to serve as the missile trucks.

And I never suggestion anything of the sort about relegating an 054B to a mini-arsenal ship.

CEC uses multiple radars from multiple ships to build a highly redundant and highly robust picture of the battlespace. An X-band AESA from a notional 054B is a perfect complement to an S-band AESA from a 052C/D or 055, especially at engagement distances of 200km or less where both types of radars will have the range to simultaneously detect and track targets.

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I should have been, my objection was not about PARs categorically, but more about the quad fixed array and Sino-Aegis back-end set up most people imply with PARs.

A single or dual array PAR on a mechanically rotating mount in place of Top Plate is totally sensible.

IEP is nice and all, but any ship can serve as a test ship for this technology, and if you're actually still testing this technology rather than implementing it outright, putting it on several dozen ships to test the technology is the epitome of recklessness.

The Chinese had been testing IEPS on a few test ships and coast guard cutters for quite some time now. It's not out of the blue that there are authoritative announcements coming out of China that their net gen SSNs and SSBNs will be using IEPS.

Implementing it on a 054B class would further validate the design in a naval major surface combatant application context and pave the way for implementation on larger ships like 055Bs and maybe even carriers.

I would take an X-band AESA paired with a large VLS magazine over IEP any day of the week. It would allow a frigate-sized ship to fill a niche role that the PLAN still currently lacks, i.e. medium range defense against saturation attacks, a role that the 054A cannot adequately fulfill. This role, combined with ASW work that is most efficiently done by a smaller ship and other duties like patrol, convoy escort, etc., makes a 054B a perfect complement to larger ships like the 052D and 055, who are then freed up to concentrate on large ship tasks like fleet air defense, BMD/anti-sat warfare, land attack.

Which is pretty much what I have been saying, with new universal CCL VLS a top priority, and why I don't think a mini Sino-Aegis set up and capacity should be a top priority for the class.

 

[plawolf]

Even with the refit the 051B should be retired by the late 2020s given there is really no good reason to keep this ship around for longer than 30 years. Same with the first two Sovs. OTOH the latter two Sovs, the two 052Bs, and the two 051Cs will all stick around till the early to mid 2030s IMO, though I definitely wouldn't mind seeing them retired early with the other ships. The Ludas, Jianghus and even Jiangweis should have been retired years ago but they are still putzing around for no good reason these days. It's not like in a modern shooting war these ships are going to have any real usefulness. They would more likely be liabilities IMO, unless of course the PLAN wants to use them as cannon fodder during a conflict. Thankfully I think they will be all or almost all gone by the end of this decade.

Not ever ship in a navy needs to be a ship of the line.

Even, hell, especially in time war, there will be routine, mundane tasks that a navy needs to perform for which a top of the line FFG or DDG would prove wasteful.

The older gen PLAN ships are largely tasked with training and low threat threaten patrol duties.

Yes the PLAN can buy new 056s and 054s to replace all those old warships, but do you really need ships of such capacity and cost for anti-piracy and routine show the flag patrol duties?

There will also be the human aspect to consider. There will be a lot of career PLAN sailors and officers who, for whatever reason, the PLAN will decide would be ill suited to retrain for their newest warships.

It would be pointlessly wasteful to retire the ships such men have served well on for their entire careers early just so you have to create
some pointless make work for them behind a desk till retirement.

 

[Franklin]

The reason why I mention the numbers is because I feel that the PLAN should have decommissioned 4 or 5 of the Luda and Jianghu ships by now. So that more resources can go into better training and equipment for the rest of the fleet. Just like the PLA reduces its size by 300000 men so that the resources for the pay and logistics of these troops can go into improving equipment and training for the rest of the military.

The only use of the Luda and Jianghu ships during war times is that they tag along with a Type 052D so that its under its air defense umbrella and act as fire support ships.

What the PLA fleet would look like in 2020 or 2030 is of no consequence of having these outdated ships in the fleet now that consumes resources that could be better used elsewhere.

 

[Blitzo]

The reason why I mention the numbers is because I feel that the PLAN should have decommissioned 4 or 5 of the Luda and Jianghu ships by now. So that more resources can go into better training and equipment for the rest of the fleet. Just like the PLA reduces its size by 300000 men so that the resources for the pay and logistics of these troops can go into improving equipment and training for the rest of the military.

The only use of the Luda and Jianghu ships during war times is that they tag along with a Type 052D so that its under its air defense umbrella and act as fire support ships.

What the PLA fleet would look like in 2020 or 2030 is of no consequence of having these outdated ships in the fleet now that consumes resources that could be better used elsewhere.

Actually what the Chinese Navy orbat would look like in 2020 and beyond is relevant to what the current order of battle should look like.

For example, if the Chinese Navy wants to have a larger order of battle in 2020, that means they will choose a different way of adjusting their current/past order of battle to meet the future requirements, versus say if they wanted to have a similar sized order of battle or a smaller sized order of battle by that time instead.


In the case of the old 051s and 053 variants remaining in service, we need to first ask ourselves what the Chinese Navy of 2020 and beyond is wanting to look like. I think the consensus is that the Chinese Navy's orbat will definitely expand, so we'll work with that assumption for trying to examine keeping 051s and 053s in service.

Expanding an order of battle -- i.e.: the number of ships -- will involve having more sailors (yes, newer ships do mean there needs less sailors to run the same sized ship as older ships, but let's also remember that newer ships are much bigger than older ships, like 052D or even 055 versus an 051, or 054A vs an early variant 053). Those sailors need to be educated and trained.
What the old 051s and 053 variants provide, IMO, are ships that help to retain the size of the current order of battle (in terms of ships) while also providing a steady and growing pool of trained and relatively experienced personnel, who once the time comes right, can transition to newer frigates and destroyers with a degree of experience in the navy and in seamanship. And of course, 051s and 053s also provide a lower end general patrol capability for China's peripheries.

Conversely, retiring the old 051s and 053 variants would make sense, if their operating costs were very high, and/or if the Chinese Navy was not interested in expanding much in the future. In that case, retiring these obsolete ships and transferring the personnel to the few last new frigates and destroyers coming off the production line would make sense.

But as it is, I doubt the 051s and 053 variants have operating costs which are that high, all the while they provide a useful general patrol capability, and more importantly they provide ships for personnel to operate on and develop experience on (even if their capabilities, technology and doctrine are obviously multiple generations behind the leading ships the Chinese Navy have these days).


So when you bring up the PLA's force reduction of 300k troops -- mostly from the ground force/army -- sort of has its logic work in reverse for the Navy, because the Navy is not looking to shrink its order of battle or its personnel, but rather to increase it.