If this number is the unit cost not including R&D costs, it would be somewhat more within the realm of possibility IMO.
That's always been the case with costs given by pop3. PLAN sorts out R&D with the research institutes separately. The sum paid to the shipyard and subsystem manufacturers is the figure pop3 gives. The sums paid to the institutes for the different projects are unknown.
Well if pop3 said it, it certainly has much greater weight. OTOH it doesn't mean his involvement meant that he had access to the actual overall costs of the program. The other thing is we don't know the standards that each navy has wrt various things like armoring, damage control, redundancy, mil standards, and various other little details that could jack up the unit costs of a ship.
It's not just his involvement in programs that allow him to come by facts inaccessible by us. He also has contacts, colleagues, and friends in the PLAN who tell him stuff after his retirement. For example, his recent recant of the 075 prediction was due to his asking his contacts on what happened back in March when PLAN CO visited HDZH. When the visit had just occurred, he decided not to ask immediately because that'd be blatantly phishing for information, so he waited 3 months. And after asking, his contact told him 075 hasn't commenced.
But how do you know outside USN the 055 is a destroyer and not a cruiser (I mean besides China)? I'm pretty sure that outside JMSDF circles the Hyuga/Izumo class "helicopter-carrying destroyer" is a helicopter carrier, because that's what it is regardless of what Japan calls it. Actually I think inside JMSDF circles it's also a helicopter carrier because I'm confident there are realists in that organization.
I only pay thorough attention to two navies on Earth; the USN and PLAN. I don't know how other navies will classify the 055 if they were magically given the 055 to employ. Maybe the Russians will call it a frigate if they had a 055 to play with, idk.
In any case, I don't give any credence to any alleged "fleet command" capabilities of ships like the 051 or 052. We are probably talking about a room with a table and some extra phones vs a CIC with dedicated C&C and communications consoles. The 055 represents a fleet command capability unmatched by and uncomparable to any previous ship classes on both quantitative and qualitative levels.
. The PLAN fleet-command vessels are given a dedicated room with at least 20 metres squared and C&C consoles separate to the normal CIC. The Type 051 DDG 134 Zunyi wasn't initially built with fleet-command capabilities in 1985; it was modified extensively in 2004 and retrofitted with communications and encryption equipment to serve its command role. The reason the PLAN chose Zunyi for C&C testing is because the Type 051s were plentiful and they knew the design extremely intimately and could best predict the effects that installing a command room would have on the rest of the ship. The 052Ds also have this capability but the 055s have better systems integration and a larger room so, like I said, it's an improvement for the PLAN destroyer fleet but not an introduction. And no, the Liaoning has better fleet-command capabilities due to the sheer number of command consoles she carries; something like ten times more than the next most vessel.
This doesn't make sense because 12k is widely believed to be the full displacement of the 055, not the "normal" displacement. And 4k is widely believed to be the full displacement of the 054A, not the "normal" displacement. So in order for his scheme to be accurate you have to believe that he quoted standard/full/standard/full displacement figures for the 056/054A/052D/055.
I can't find the original post by pop3 on CJDBY but he did say that before he quit CJDBY (separate story), he had made numerous posts there on the 055's being 12k tonnes.
Usually, he gives normal displacement; not full or standard. So, going by that assumption, 12k tonnes is normal displacement, not full... which implies full displacement could go up to 13-14k tonnes.
Additionally, I was mistaken and these "1k tonne-class, 4k tonne-class, etc" classifications were given by the Chinese MOD, not pop3. His
on these classifications were as follows:
- 1k tonne-class: tends to understate
- 4k tonne-class: tends to overstate
- 6k tonne-class: about right
- 10k tonne-class: tends to understate
I'm sure you can tell which types of ships those weight classes refer to, and they match up well with what we think are the displacements of those respective ships.
