China receives 4 naval ships from Russia

Thanks for all the reply.

1. The name clarification is just a clarification. What Golly said about PLAN's position in PLA is correct. It's just that this English name of PLAN can be used to add some fun in articles, but it seems that after so many years (I don't remember how many years ago that I first saw this type of explaination) this name is becoming a piece of evidence of PLAN's role, although it's just a pure co-incidence. So I think someone needs to bring it up.

2. PLAN's wierd fleet building strategy is really a result of practical assessment of her threat, capability and objectives. To put it frankly, PLAN would be completely out of their mind if they decide to mass produce 051B, 052 etc... Even 052C and 054A, whether they should be mass produced are very much in doubt and debate.

Also, have a look at all the traditional European Naval Powers, how many major surface combatant ships are they building for each class? Compared to their glorious past, most of them may qualify as "failures"

US DDX, compared to what they did with AB, I think it's close to a failure by same logic.

3. Recently I've seen quite some opinions like "China has the money to do this or that". Sorry, China has some money but not much, not enough to start a couple of dozen ships mass production.

4. And, China's technical capability is also not good enough to really compete with the top of the line western ship designs yet, that's why it's better for china to concentrate on learning and trialing rather than starting to mass produce ships.

5. Yes, the sole military ship designer situation is not ideal for China. It was debated in the 90s. Unlike the overcrowded aviation industry, China's mil ship design lack some real competition. But it seems that global trend of military industry is to reduce size and China seems to be waiting for Dalian and ShangHai shipyards own commercial ship design centres to grow natually.

6. Engine is definitely a big issue for China's ship industry. No doubt about that.

7. Whether PLAN needs nuclear powered ships or not is not up to us to decide. If you happen to read some chinese periodicals, they have big interests in it. In fact, I'd say they had some unrealistic hope on nuclear power before. I do see PLAN's interest in nuclear carrier and nuclear crusier. So, do you think they should just discard what they know about steam engine? I don't think so. In fact, I do see you are thinking too much along a small to medium sized Euro country's navy requirements. But China is not in such a peaceful environment and she seems to have a more ambitious vision of the future. As I said couple of times before, we can't use too much western common sense to explain what China is doing. If she follows western countries's current common sense, she would have no chance to catch up with the western world. The current strategy and common sense of western world is for those "seen it-done that-been there" type of countries. China as the new kid, needs to try everything, INCLUDING ALL THE MISTAKES AND WASTE OF RESOURCES.

8. As of all the current old ships that need to be replaced, it seems that PLAN is doing exactly what PLAAF is doing: only replace them at a reasonable rate, defintely not in a hurry. To a certain degree, they are just letting the old equipment and old guys retire natually. Although the majority of PLAN and PLAAF's equipments are old and out of date, so what? They can afford to wait for the new equipment to come in a natual way (rather than a over hurried way). Look at their attitude towards naval landing equipment, everybody knows they don't have enough landing ships to invade Taiwan, do you see they are in a real hurry to build landing ships? No, they have being thinking about large LPD and LHD ships and carriers. Only in the last few years they ordered a moderate batch of LSTs. I admit they are tricky, but understandable.

9. Aegis type of air defense ship was a long dream of PLAN initiated in the 80s. The 89' event and the sheer technical difficulties quickly put them back to ground level, but yes, 052B/168 was the dream. (Although 052B/168 now got twisted like this, it was dreamed to use PAR and hot launch VLS)

10. ShangHai's JiangNan shipyard is China's oldest modern era shipyard. It was NO1 before 1949. After 1949, Dalian was created as another major shipyard. For the best part of the last 50 years, Dalian has been China's NO1 shipyard. In the 90s, ShangHai decided to merge all the shipyards to compete with Dalian because none of the ShangHai shipyards were any where near Dalian (ShangHai's ship quality has been good, although whether they have any clear advangtage over Dalian, that really depends on who you talk to). ZhongHua Shipyard got merged with HuDong Shipyard first. But the JiangNan and HuDong's merge never materialised. If they combined together they were bigger than Dalian. Now 10 years later, Has JiangNan surpassed Dalian yet? I havn't heard any news yet. But just look at JiangNan's physical location (downtown centre of ShangHai) you should realise there's no space for JiangNan to grow, that's why this new ChangXing island shipyard is so important to ShangHai's ship building industry. ShangHai is China's economic centre, you do hear more media coverage and forum topics about ShangHai, but in many aspects ShangHai does not have any huge advantage compared to other areas of China.

well the most important issue about the chinese warship steam engines are, (if) they are based on the one in Luda e.q to old soviet project 41 class destroyer, they basicly are the same modell as in all soviet post war preassure fired steam plants. In effect on board bigger ships like Moskva and Kiev/Kuznetsov class carriers, these all have been rather hazarous and failure in service. All soviet carriers have suffered some sort of engine fire.
Also only navy caliber of USN can afford nuclear powered ships, expecially carriers. French learned their leasson with De Gaulle, and nuclear powered cruisers were first to be decommisoned after cold war in USN thougth they could have been easilly modernised to include even AEGIS.

But as mass production, I mean more like class of 6-8 eigth ship per class in order to create homogenious and effective flotillas of modern fleet units to accompany to future carrier, but also aviable for general convoy escort and sea controll. Something to base on all future devolpemnt and not a hotch-potch of various ships all whit different porpulsion and equipments. It makes UNREP operations and genral maintannace a unfavorable in terms of other bigger navyes that can enjoy commonability of major supply items and stuff...

And also, the old Luda and Jiangju class ships tie considerable ammount of personel. Retiring them, but not to replace them in similar levels will couse manning proplems and requires lots of skilled personel to be fired or replaced in other dutyes, and that expertise is lost for good.

But otherwise, I must say that its nice to have fresh members to join the naval discussion that will remember to emphasiss other aspects of naval warfare than SSMs for exhange. Welcome aboard:china:

I have to say that I find constant repeating about how ships will be obsolete if you build them in larger batch quite amusing…

First USN A. Burke class destroyer was commissioned in 1991 and you still can’t call it obsolete. Newer ships of the class were constructed in batches whit some improvements and older ones received constant modernizations. First Australian ANZAC was commissioned 10 years ago and they will son be upgraded. Even without modernization ANZAC class frigates are still quite modern ships…. Ships aren’t cars; hulls aren’t obsolete in few years and equipment can be replaced if you have designed ship whit updates in mind…

I don’t see why PLAN would have problems doing same thing whit 052C or 054A?
Build ships in larger batches (at least 6 ships) considering future improvements and you will have modern, capable, homogonous fleet now and not in decade or two...
Per unit cost will be lower, maintenance costs will drop significantly and training is quite simpler if you have same basic platforms.
For example if type054 frigates were build whit future upgrades in mind they could be simple modernized to type054A standard and PLAN wouldn’t have two frigates whit limited usefulness…
As for older LUDA class how useful are these ships today? How much cost maintenance of this ships (1940 era type of steam plants aren’t to cheep to maintain), how well trained are sailors on those ships (for modern warfare)? If LUDA class would be replaced whit type 054A frigates maintenance costs would drop quite significantly, PLAN capabilities would be seriously improved and training would be much easier so quality of sailors would rise…

isthvan said:

I have to say that I find constant repeating about how ships will be obsolete if you build them in larger batch quite amusing…

First USN A. Burke class destroyer was commissioned in 1991 and you still can’t call it obsolete. Newer ships of the class were constructed in batches whit some improvements and older ones received constant modernizations. First Australian ANZAC was commissioned 10 years ago and they will son be upgraded. Even without modernization ANZAC class frigates are still quite modern ships…. Ships aren’t cars; hulls aren’t obsolete in few years and equipment can be replaced if you have designed ship whit updates in mind…

I don’t see why PLAN would have problems doing same thing whit 052C or 054A?
Build ships in larger batches (at least 6 ships) considering future improvements and you will have modern, capable, homogonous fleet now and not in decade or two...
Per unit cost will be lower, maintenance costs will drop significantly and training is quite simpler if you have same basic platforms.
For example if type054 frigates were build whit future upgrades in mind they could be simple modernized to type054A standard and PLAN wouldn’t have two frigates whit limited usefulness…
As for older LUDA class how useful are these ships today? How much cost maintenance of this ships (1940 era type of steam plants aren’t to cheep to maintain), how well trained are sailors on those ships (for modern warfare)? If LUDA class would be replaced whit type 054A frigates maintenance costs would drop quite significantly, PLAN capabilities would be seriously improved and training would be much easier so quality of sailors would rise…

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The order of 054A would be in the 20s even if it is intended to just replace the Jianghus and older jiangweis.

Luda, those will eventually be replaced by 052Ds hopefully, but you might not see the production peak for a few years.

As for Russian ships, I don't think the problem is the technology level of the ships themselves, but it's the servicing and workmanship of these ships. The Chinese shipyards are not at the level of the South Koreans/Japanese, but they have had enough commercial orders to be able to produce much higher quality ships than the Russian ones. And after the fire setting off on the 139 and the contract squabbling amongst Russian shipyards, the last Sov order just left too much bad taste amongst Chinese. It's a real shame, since I actually wish that China can get a couple of Udaloy II. It's clear that Sov currently provides no real technology improvement for PLAN. Top Plate, shtil and Bandstand clones are already all over the latest PLAN ships.

Both 051C and 052C were already on drawing boards when China signed contract for the two new Sovremannies back in January 2003. The intention was that the Sovremannies was intended as stop gap before the 051C and 052C was introduced. The Sovremannies were never ordered because 051C or 052C "failed'.

Rather, it was the Russians who failed major in delivering the two Sovremannies in the time span the Chinese wanted. They spent valuable months haggling over which shipyard would get the contract from the Russian government. During that time, while the assignment was being "footballed" across the field, the Russian media was having a marvelous time documenting the bad laundry being aired by one shipyard over the other. And because of the corruption, Russian officials would side one shipyard, while another set of Russian officials side the other, all forcing the hand of the government to move the contract assignment.

So pissed off the Chinese then forced the issue with the Russian government and gave them an ultimatum. They wanted one particular shipyard to do it, I think it was the one in St. Petersburg (Baltic shipyards). The Russian government who usually has the authority to assign the contract, acceded to the Chinese utimatum and let the Chinese assign the contract. But after that, it turned out that the other shiphyards who didn't get the contract also makes other parts for the Sovremanny and refused to release the parts.

So you get delay after delay after delay.

The Sovremannies were supposed to be recieved by China BEFORE the 052C destroyers were launched. Certainly NOT AFTER.

The Sovremanny experienced so turned off the Chinese, but on the other side, the success of the 8 new Kilo contract just might be the Russian's savior.

But again, because of what the Chinese experienced on the Sovremannies, the Chinese decided they wanted to approach the Kilo contracts in a different way. Instead. the Chinese demanded that they, not the Russian government, would be the ones to assign the contracts to each and every specific shipyard.

So instead of one shipyard making all 8 Kilos, each Kilo was assigned to seperate shipyards all over Russia. Which is why when they were finished, they were coming out quickly in succession in a matter of months from all ports in Russia. Some of the subs have to navigate from the Baltic to the Atlantic then the Indian ocean to the Pacific. While other subs went down from the Amur straight to the Pacific and across the seas from Japan and Korea.

One must add that China also didn't like that one of the MKK contracts was assigned by Sukhoi to Irkutsk when China wanted KnAAPO to produce the MKKs. Remarkably the minor MKK scandal happened at about the same time as the Sovremanny scandal did. By all possibility, the second order of MKKs could have been built to the Su-30KN standard Irkustk was designing and not the original MKK style KnAAPO had. But China got where it wanted the contracts to be.

Suffice to say, the cumulative negative experiences China had dealing with the Russians makes it extremely unlikely that China would order another vessel from Russia again. At this point in time, there isn't enough tension with Taiwan (Chen Su Bien practically a lame duck president by now) to merit a rapid military built up in the near future, and China is once again projecting their modernization plan in a more modest and long term scale.

isthvan said:

I have to say that I find constant repeating about how ships will be obsolete if you build them in larger batch quite amusing…

First USN A. Burke class destroyer was commissioned in 1991 and you still can’t call it obsolete. Newer ships of the class were constructed in batches whit some improvements and older ones received constant modernizations. First Australian ANZAC was commissioned 10 years ago and they will son be upgraded. Even without modernization ANZAC class frigates are still quite modern ships…. Ships aren’t cars; hulls aren’t obsolete in few years and equipment can be replaced if you have designed ship whit updates in mind…

I don’t see why PLAN would have problems doing same thing whit 052C or 054A?
Build ships in larger batches (at least 6 ships) considering future improvements and you will have modern, capable, homogonous fleet now and not in decade or two...
Per unit cost will be lower, maintenance costs will drop significantly and training is quite simpler if you have same basic platforms.
For example if type054 frigates were build whit future upgrades in mind they could be simple modernized to type054A standard and PLAN wouldn’t have two frigates whit limited usefulness…
As for older LUDA class how useful are these ships today? How much cost maintenance of this ships (1940 era type of steam plants aren’t to cheep to maintain), how well trained are sailors on those ships (for modern warfare)? If LUDA class would be replaced whit type 054A frigates maintenance costs would drop quite significantly, PLAN capabilities would be seriously improved and training would be much easier so quality of sailors would rise…

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1. If China is as advanced as US, you will see PLAN acting like USN. But ...

2. Do you know the last Luda DDG166 was built in the 1990s? If they mass produce them in the 90s, far more people would be critisizing them now for short sightneess.

3. if China starts mass producing 052C now, in 2015, when number of DDX, LCS and Japan's "DDX" are operational, what do you think the observers gonna say? Just check the other thread, people are starting to critise now.

4. If a class is mass produced, yes the short term cost will be lowered: lower unit price, lower maintanence cost etc.. But if that class's basic technical level is not moden enough to last a reasonablelly long time, (I mean as advanced as what AB was in the late 80s), you end up paying a lot more in the long run and holding up your long term modernisation progress. Why Europe, also even China has deployed APAR radar (I know some people still don't believe it) on DDGs already but USN hasn't? In fact US has the best AESA tech in the world, but it's her large amount of existing equipment that slow down her step. Luckily she's so far ahead of any one in overall strength, she can afford to temporarily slow down or wait for a while until a much more advanced tech level is reached. But China does not have that kind of advantage. She has to do things differently.

I think I've figured out the reason why we have different opinions on PLAN's current wierd strategy now. What's been suggested are all good opinions. But I believe China/PLAN is still in a special transition/catching up period. It's a little bit like China's economy, currently it's growing at an extremly high speed, and you can see many strange things happening(some are obviously foolish and resource wasting), but do you really believe this is the ideal status that China is hoping for? I believe it's only a special period before China/PLAN can reach a mature and stable progressing mode, like all the developed countries and navies. During this period, I think it's wise not to mass produce too many physical assets.

Another misunderstanding is that, mainly because most of the discussions in chinese forums regarding PLAN mass production issue are using US Arleigh Burke production as a bench mark, which is around 60 ships. That's a figure that I don't think even USN will repeat in the forseeable future. Now, as Golly suggests, 6-8 may be a good figure , I agree. But there's no compelling reason for PLAN to do that. 052C(the old 052B) and 054's original order, as far as I know, was 4. It's said according to some calculation, 4 is a good balance figure for china's military ship building. No matter it's 2, 4 or 8 052C won't change PLAN's overall strength dramatically against her rivals. The main benifit is still in the experience gathering and tech verifications, rather than real combat power. If now PLAN has 24 052C, then yes that's real awsome power. But if PLAN is starting to produce 24 052C now, I think it's too late.

zyun8288 said:

1. If China is as advanced as US, you will see PLAN acting like USN. But ...

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If PLAN is waiting to close tech gap whit US we could wait for more then one decade before they start producing real combatants instead of prototypes. And you really need to start replacing older designs now and not in decade or so...
Sorry but there will always be someone that has tech advantage over someone else in certain areas…

zyun8288 said:

2. Do you know the last Luda DDG166 was built in the 1990s? If they mass produce them in the 90s, far more people would be critisizing them now for short sightneess.

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Yes I know when last “Luda” class destroyer was commissioned. But are you aware how old is basic design for “Luda” class destroyers? Naturally that people would see that as shortsighted.
On other hand (joust for example) what would you say if they managed to build batch of let’s say 8 destroyers based on typeo51B hull, fitted whit modern engines and armed whit SA-N-7 instead of HQ-7 (and whit future updates in mind)? They had all components available at the time and they could build similar ship… Would you or anyone else call that shortsighted?

zyun8288 said:

3. if China starts mass producing 052C now, in 2015, when number of DDX, LCS and Japan's "DDX" are operational, what do you think the observers gonna say? Just check the other thread, people are starting to critise now.

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If PLAN would start building 052c now in 2015 they would still have modern and capable fleet that could be modernized as new tech becomes available… Make hull improvements true batches and modernize older examples whit improvements you have developed for newer ships…
Also why should PLAN be interested in critics from kids on net? They are freaking professional navy and know better then judging ships by its looks… Also they could start development of new class and when they test improvements on older classes they could start building new class… There is more then one navy in the world that does things that way.

zyun8288 said:

4. If a class is mass produced, yes the short term cost will be lowered: lower unit price, lower maintanence cost etc.. But if that class's basic technical level is not moden enough to last a reasonablelly long time, (I mean as advanced as what AB was in the late 80s), you end up paying a lot more in the long run and holding up your long term modernisation progress. Why Europe, also even China has deployed APAR radar (I know some people still don't believe it) on DDGs already but USN hasn't? In fact US has the best AESA tech in the world, but it's her large amount of existing equipment that slow down her step. Luckily she's so far ahead of any one in overall strength, she can afford to temporarily slow down or wait for a while until a much more advanced tech level is reached. But China does not have that kind of advantage. She has to do things differently.

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Well you are aware that you still have sea to protect and control in the meantime? Your example is OK if China was in situation when they started to build Luda class destroyers because at the time Chinese shipyards weren’t capable to build anything better then early post wwII Soviet design…
Today shipyard capabilities are much better then they were back then and tech gap is much smaller. Plus China isn’t isolated nation like back then… What they aren’t able to build/design alone they can develop whit outside existence…
Also as for APAR/AESA analogy if you have one modern and capable tech why would you go to other tech if you won’t gain anything from it… Until it offers significant upgrade in capabilities there is no need for that…
Joust for example Navy ships aren’t your home computer where you will install new version of windows joust because they are new… They are more like your work computer; they use proven equipment that works and change it when new version is proven stable and offered rise in capabilities…

EDIT

zyun8288 said:

Another misunderstanding is that, mainly because most of the discussions in chinese forums regarding PLAN mass production issue are using US Arleigh Burke production as a bench mark, which is around 60 ships. That's a figure that I don't think even USN will repeat in the forseeable future. Now, as Golly suggests, 6-8 may be a good figure , I agree. But there's no compelling reason for PLAN to do that. 052C(the old 052B) and 054's original order, as far as I know, was 4. It's said according to some calculation, 4 is a good balance figure for china's military ship building. No matter it's 2, 4 or 8 052C won't change PLAN's overall strength dramatically against her rivals. The main benifit is still in the experience gathering and tech verifications, rather than real combat power. If now PLAN has 24 052C, then yes that's real awsome power. But if PLAN is starting to produce 24 052C now, I think it's too late.

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Well we agree in some points here… There is no reason for PLAN to build 60 or even 24 type052c to counter USN or any regional navy… But there is need to replace older, limited useful designs that cost too much to maintain and operate. Also all I’m saying is that PLAN would be better if they stop build prototypes and start constructing real combat ships in the way that is similar to European practice… Build one batch whit tech that is available now but whit upgrades in mind, then build second batch when new tech becomes available and start upgrading previous batch etc. In the same time start developing concepts for new ships that will replace currant class… my point is that in that way you will always have capable fleet and you will much easily replace older ships… Plus I joust don’t like prospect of building prototypes rather then real combatants. You test concepts and developing tech on other ways (CAD/CAM, test models, test ships etc.) and not wit building few hundred million dollars worth prototypes…

Points taken. I think we just focused on different areas of observation.

I just think PLAN needs to wait more than a decade to finalise what to be mass produced. For mass production, I mean 20-40 ships.

Simply said the PLAN does not have the budget to "mass produce" any type of modern ship larger than Song sub or FAC. Pretty sure even the 054 costs more than the Jiangweis ever did. Certainly not with destroyers. It can only afford to acquire DDGs and large FFGs gradually, and for its it's better to improve on each acquisition as time goes by.

The bottom line is that the 052B, 052C and 051C is very compentently combative against any ship in the world right now on a one to one basis. China does need to improve its C31 and ASW capabilities but that's exactly why they should put more efforts into these than building more ships. or come up with new ships with better C31 and ASW capabilities. In both ways, these still justify a path of gradual evolution.

Every new project has teething problems even the Burkes. Seems to me that a lot of people expect that Chinese projects have to be absolutely flawless right from the get go and failed to study the history of similar Western projects, where tons of problems and accidents abound. I don't buy double standards from incompetent analysts.

I think the newest Chinese DDGs are very expensive to produce in a large scale. The cost factor is the reason why you won't see many of them, especially the 052C. In fact, it's very surprising still that there is one, not to mention two, of them in the water.

The 054 FFG is the design that remains in a transition; the current 525 and 526 FFGs offers little over the latest Jiangweis, and not until they are modernized with CIWS and VLS, can they truly justify these.

As for Goll having an explanation on larger ships, PLAN is still a green water navy and bigger ships are more appropriate to blue water navies. China has a very large coastline but the seas are surrounded too closely by island nations that are potential enemies (ROC and Japan). Its unique geographic disadvantage in terms of oceanography does not favor large combatants at all, but small fast ones.

There is absolutely nothing wrong for the PLAN to be a "lean" navy and not putting all its eggs into one basket. Some people like "over interpretation" for such policies and that's wrong. You simply have to take it for what it is.

Re the latest Sovs. Any info on the SSM fit - is it still going to be Moskits?