Well, the list posted by A. Man in # 694 has Huangpu HP 5 as 538 YANTAI, North Sea Fleet, but typhuang will tell you, do not trust anything until you have seen it with your own eyes.
The table presented by A. Man in # 826 takes us to Hull 13 (7 HP, 6 HD), which is not quite enough. It curiously inverts the numbering of the hulls, e.g. HD 1 as Hull 1, HP 1 as Hull 2. I suspect that was the order planned, cf. 054, where Hull 1 was actually launched by HD before Hull 2 from HP. Hudong has from the outset been running late with the 054A and still is, no doubt because of its other naval work: the two 071 and three F22P for Pakistan.
An interesting detail is that after the first four 054A the list calls them 054A II. That corresponds to another source calling Hulls 5 and later the 054A+. If there has been a (not visible) design modification, it would go some way to explain the two-year pause between Hulls 3-4 and Hulls 5-6.
I am beginning to think that the 2011-2015 surface combatant programme reproduced by A. Man (I really like his contributions) in # 460 in the 052C thread is basically accurate. Accepting it as such, we should have a total of 14 054A – so as to form four complete frigate squadrons with the two 054, two in ESF and one each in SSF and NSF – before switching to 054B, building the first two of these by 2015.
It shall be interesting to see whether they will squeeze in eight 056 between 054A and 054B. It should be doable – being a much smaller and simpler ship, it could be built relatively fast – and I still think that we have seen components for 056, in particular the recognisable funnel, at Huangpu.
