From Henri K blog. tyoe 54 is no doubt one of the most successful program of Chinese navy. It goes a long way in improving the Chinese navy ASW and close area defense. I am not so sure if this is the last one I though they will end at 32th ship
The 30th! The end of the Type 054A frigate program?
BY
"The launch ceremony of H1204 took place on June 30 in the morning. This ship is built by our company for the Northern Fleet ... ", reads a giant sign near the entrance to CSSC
Huangpu Wenchong , one of the main Chinese shipyards at south of China. On the photos displayed, the future crew landed in front of this new frigate Type 054A which should receive the hull number 542.
In front of the Huangpu shipyard's main entrance, the 30th frigate Type 054A is announced on a sign (Photo: 唐僧 洗头 爱 飘柔)
The 30th Frigate Type 054A, well hidden behind a set of new ships built for the Chinese Navy and Chinese Coast Guard (Photo: 唐僧 洗头 爱 飘柔)
Since September 30, 2006, the two Chinese shipyards CSSC
Hudong-Zhonghua and CSSC
Huangpu Wenchong have already launched thirty vessels of this class, a ship floated every four months and ten days on average. Hudong and Huangpu shared equally the thirty ships to be built, this Type 054A numbered 542 is the fifteenth of series built in Huangpu.
Twenty-six of them have progressively joined the six Chinese navy destroyer fleets today and become one of the most deployed Chinese platforms on the various theaters of operations, from the Chinese coast to the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean. African continent, passing through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, with a record "very satisfactory" according to several sources close to the naval forces of the Chinese army.
Suitably equipped for a medium-sized multi-mission frigate - with a penchant for anti-submarine warfare - the typical 3,600-ton Type 054A is perhaps not at the forefront of technology comparing to its European and Japanese counterparts, built to smaller series, but it was primarily designed to find the best compromise between cost, capacity and maintainability to meet the growing offshore needs of the Chinese Navy.
It is therefore not without reason that the initial order of twenty-four ships has been revised as and when it has reached twenty-eight and thirty ships today. Although rumors speak of stopping the program to give way to
, still designed by the CSIC Naval Group 701 Institute but of electric propulsion this time, but nothing says that additional copies are not not added to "fill the gap", in addition to those that are
.
Key Dates and Forecasts for the 30 Frigates Type 054A (Image: East Pendulum)
Note that this thirtieth Type 054A is also the thirteenth surface vessel launched for the Chinese Navy in 2018, if our monitoring is correct. Two large 12,000-ton Type 055 destroyers were launched three days later at the Dalian shipyard, which totaled nearly 100,000 tons of fresh steel in the first half of this year.