I don't think you appreciate just how casual a setting Chinese military forums are...imprecise and lax communication is one of the reasons why so many of the leaks we get end up being ambiguous and become subjects of prolonged arguments and clarifications. Big shrimp aren't exactly working hard to deliver official reports here...some degree of frivolousness is not atypical.
055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread
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I'm not sure what you're getting at here, that pop3 said 12,000t and that this number is frivolous? This number as far as I can remember predates anything pop3 said and has been bandied about for years in association with the 055. Not only that, it sounds about right (as a max displacement figure) given what we know of the 055's rough dimensions, i.e. somewhere in between Ticonderoga and Zumwalt in size.
Wut, no? From ;
055 is never getting up to 16k tonnes. I don't know if that's max or standard Zumwalt displacement, either.
I'm not sure you appreciate the brevity and sublimity of the 万 character in Chinese. It plays a similar role to the English word "million". It's used in countless proverbs and colloquial sayings. Just as Anglos would say "million man army" for an army that's actually 1.6 million, the Chinese like phrases that sound short and snappy and conveys enough information to the audience. It's only weirdos like us that give a shit about whether it's actually 10,000 tonnes or 12,000 tonnes.
No, that his use of the character 万 (10,000) can be kind of loose and frivolous. He treats it as a quick round number to refer to, not the actual specific displacement weight for the ship.
Or we could actually go straight to the horse's mouth instead (i.e. Northrup Grumman, the builder):Wut, no? From ;
055 is never getting up to 16k tonnes. I don't know if that's max or standard Zumwalt displacement, either.
I'm not sure you appreciate the brevity and sublimity of the 万 character in Chinese. It plays a similar role to the English word "million". It's used in countless proverbs and colloquial sayings. Just as Anglos would say "million man army" for an army that's actually 1.6 million, the Chinese like phrases that sound short and snappy and conveys enough information to the audience. It's only weirdos like us that give a shit about whether it's actually 10,000 tonnes or 12,000 tonnes.
14,564LT = 14,798 metric tons.
Yes yes, I know about 万. It's the same as crore, myriad, etc. in other parts of the world. Its "sublimity" is not lost on me. Doesn't mean you are making some kind of compelling argument that this sublimity is what is prompting people to say that the 055 displaces 10,000 tons, however.
The people who are saying 万吨级 are news anchors and non-insiders. When literal insiders are indicating 12,000 tonnes normal, why are you still insisting on treating a vernacular phrase as a technical phrase?
Grumman says 14,800 tonnes, US Navy says 16,000 tonnes, guess former's standard and latter's full. That sounds about right for a ship that's the same length but 3m wider than the 055.
For context, in his longer writeup on the 055 he literally categorizes the PLAN's fleet structure as 1000吨级、4000吨级、6000吨级和10000吨级. Essentially, he's treating these round numbers as general weight classes. I don't think they're meant to denote the specific tonnages of the ships, so that's why the 10,000 tonnes figure is regarded as unspecific.
So here's something interesting on 055 procurement plans. While digging around old leaks I realized pop3 addressed this matter in one of his comments about the 055 back in 2014.
At least 4 055 by 2020. Start production of 055A with IEPS in 2020. 15+ by 2025, 30+ by 2030. He also included some details about the potential growth capacity of the design, including the ability to stretch the hull length to 200 meters with a displacement of 16000 tonnes. Keep in mind these leaks were in 2014, so plans could have changed (some of the details he discussed in the same leak seemed to have, like the beam being 23 m and the length being 186 m), but at least this should give us a rough idea of what the PLAN is thinking in terms of build pace.
At least 4 055 by 2020. Start production of 055A with IEPS in 2020. 15+ by 2025, 30+ by 2030. He also included some details about the potential growth capacity of the design, including the ability to stretch the hull length to 200 meters with a displacement of 16000 tonnes. Keep in mind these leaks were in 2014, so plans could have changed (some of the details he discussed in the same leak seemed to have, like the beam being 23 m and the length being 186 m), but at least this should give us a rough idea of what the PLAN is thinking in terms of build pace.
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The devil is certainly not in the details when we're looking at if the PLAN is planning to build 90 destroyers in the next 30 years.
For that sort of timeframe, we look at overall requirements and financial/industrial capabilities, which argues for China doing so.
Hence there is no point in going over exactly how the Chinese navy plans to maintain a force of 90 destroyers, given that China should have a substantially larger military budget than the USA.
That is the issue you should be arguing against. Not nitpicking on irrelevant details.
Or taking as literal gospel, a newsreader stating that the Type-55 has a displacement of 10,000tonnes, when we can see that the physical dimensions of the Type-55 mean it should be a lot heavier.
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