Future PLAN orbat discussion

Lethe said:

Probably because Rick Joe is Bltizo.

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FriedRiceNSpice said:

Came across this randomly:

Predicting the Chinese Navy of 2030
Making predictions for the Chinese Navy a decade in advance is difficult given the PLA’s overall opacity.

By

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February 15, 2019


Predictions for the Chinese Navy’s (People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN) growth have often focused on the quantitative number of ships or submarines. Even

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commentary surrounding the PLAN describes it as the “world’s largest navy” in terms of the number of ships fielded, rather than using more sensible metrics such as tonnage. A 22 class fast missile boat and an 052D class destroyer are both counted as “one” ship, but the difference between a 220 ton craft and a 7,000 ton surface combatant is significant.

Some future predictions for the PLAN have been more acknowledging of the qualitative advancements in addition to quantity. However, only a

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commentaries have considered the number of each warship type which may be produced. This piece will seek to paint a picture of what the PLAN may look like in 2030 among major warship categories.

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Future factors

In summary, an early 2019 prediction for PLAN ships in service by 2030 are broken down as such:

• 16-20 055/A destroyers (12,000 ton category)
• 36-40 052D/E destroyers (7,000 ton category)
• 40-50 054A/B frigates (4,000-5,000 ton category)
• Approximately 60 SSKs
• Anywhere from 16 or more SSNs (including six to eight existing SSNs)
• Anywhere from eight or more SSBNs (including four to five existing SSBNs)
• At least four aircraft carriers (two ski jump, two catapult)
• At least eight 071 LPDs (25,000 ton category)
• At least three 075 LHDs (36,000 ton category)

Of the above, frigates, SSNs, SSBNs, and carriers are currently the most difficult to predict, with the most margin for error.

Other ships of note include the approximately 60 056/A corvettes that will complete its production run within the next year or so, as well as the 11 older “non-Aegis” type destroyers and dozen or so older frigates that will likely remain in service as “second line” surface combatants. The 25-30 ship fleet of 072s will likely be retained. It is unknown if the 60 odd fleet of 22 class missile boats will be retained. The numbers of replenishment ships are not predicted here, due to lack of long-term regular production rates that can be extrapolated, though fast launch rates have been demonstrated.

Making predictions for the PLAN a decade in advance is difficult given the PLA’s overall opacity. Unforeseen confounding factors – such as project mismanagement, technological hurdles, economic adversity, military conflict, and natural disaster – are also difficult to consider.

The projection laid out here is not concrete and final, and is likely to evolve in coming years as 2030 approaches. However, use of critical extrapolation and consideration of Chinese naval requirements can provide a gauge for how the PLAN may evolve in the medium term future.

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Overall, the predictions in the article are not that far off from @Bltizo , just a little more conservative for both the 055/A and the 052D/E.
I have no idea how credible the author or source is, both those numbers don't look too unreasonable.
I think it would be a mighty fine accomplishment for China to have a fleet of that size and caliber. Should be more than sufficient for her goals and needs.

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FriedRiceNSpice said:

Ugh I feel so stupid now! I guess for some reason I always envisioned @Blitzo to be of Chinese descent.

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What If the U.S. Could Fight Only One War at a Time?

The post-Cold War idea of combating to win on two fronts gives way to the realities of great-power competition.

Over the past 18 months, the Pentagon has been pursuing a radical change in U.S. defense strategy. The Department of Defense has been working to overhaul the “two-war” defense strategy of the past quarter-century, in favor of one that focuses on winning a single high-stakes fight against China or Russia. This one-war strategy is rooted in an entirely correct judgment that defeating a great-power adversary would be far more difficult than anything the U.S. military has done in decades. Yet it also runs the risk that America won’t have enough military power to deal with a world in which it could face two or more major threats at the same time.

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Beating the Americans at Their Own Game
An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

China surpassed the United States in purchasing power parity in 2014 and is on track to have the world’s largest GDP in absolute terms by 2030. In comparison, our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was hobbled by unsustainable economic contradictions that ultimately crumbled under pressure. At the height of its power, its GDP was roughly 40 percent the size of the United States’.1

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The former USS America absorbed weeks of punishment from various weapons on a sinkex and still had to be scuttled. Again, this does nothing to prove the ship could have continued to be an effective fighting platform after receiving such hits. Remaining afloat and being combat effective are two different things.
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They focused on high end war with China in various scenarios. I received outbriefs on their results every year for the next thirteen years. While I cannot share much of that information, I can say that it convinced me that the aircraft carrier is the wrong platform to use as the Navy’s principal offensive weapon in that scenario.
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The bottom line on all this is that we really do not know how vulnerable aircraft carriers – as ships – are to modern anti-ship missiles. It is one thing to dash into Indian Country, make a strike and then bug out such as Enterprise and Hornet did for the Doolittle raid, and quite another to hang out continuously and support landings on Okinawa. We may wish for a quick, decisive engagement if war over Taiwan breaks out, but we have to be prepared for a drawn out slugfest; wars have a way of going on longer than anyone expects. In that case, the longer the carriers operate within Chinese threat rings, the better their chances of getting hit. If you think that there is no chance of them getting hit or if they do, they can shrug it off and keep fighting, then, in my estimation, which is not uninformed, you are mistaken.
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In order for the air wing to have any staying power, it will have to employ missiles from outside the considerable envelope of the S-300 and 400 systems, making the F-18 and F-35 expensive booster stages. Why not just use Tomahawk? Recent history shows a preference for Tomahawk strikes on defended targets.
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We figured that in an all-out fight the wing could sustain losses for three, maybe four days and still have some effect. On the positive side, we were the only game in town from a US perspective. Although the Air Force quickly had jets on the scene, it took them over a week to get ammo up from the storage bunkers down in the UAE. We showed up ready on arrival to operate for at least a week at full bore.
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On the good side, the Ike was a marvelous naval diplomacy platform, more impressive than anything else the US could deploy. When called to respond to a crisis, she was there in a couple of days and ready to fight in a sustained way with no footprint on the ground in a sensitive country. This is why presidents ask where the carriers are when trouble arises. On the down side, there were very real limits to what the air wing could bring to bear. If the issue could be handled by a one-time Eldorado Canyon-like strike, we were good to go; if the situation required a sustained air campaign in which losses occurred, then a single carrier was not enough. In any case, we needed Air Force refueling in order to reach the area of operations.
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Saying that the carrier should not be the Navy’s principal offensive weapon in a potential war at sea versus China is not the same as saying they are obsolete

What it does mean is that the Navy must come up with a new fleet design for the specific purpose of fighting for sea control in East Asia. In that design I envision the Ford Class – once the bugs have been worked out – as a key enabler for the Navy’s distributed maritime operations (DMO) force, uniquely able to support long-range, high-endurance unmanned aircraft that will perform a number of critical functions.

Bryan’s post makes a tacit assumption; that Congress will eventually produce a budget that will support both an 11 carrier fleet and development of the DMO force. So far, there is no indication that is the case, which is why the Navy elected to trade Truman for development of DMO platforms. Certainly there was some number crunching involved, but in the end it was a decision based on forward-looking strategic judgment.

There's a lot more here:

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Peter2018 said:

It looks like they can crank out 12 type 052 + type 055 per year between DL and JN.

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AndrewS said:

Possibly, but building 12 per year would be excessive, barring a wartime scenario.

Remember that if China reduces the current construction rate from 7 to 6 per year, it is still twice the US production rate.
Eventually the Chinese Navy ends up with a destroyer fleet with 200-odd ships.
That is twice the size of the US equivalent, and would appear to be sustainable given the Chinese economy is expected to be twice the size of the US economy in 10-15years.

I couldn't imagine Chinese strategists trying to aim any higher than this.

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Peter2018 said:

Chinese type 054 are too small, while the much more powerful type 052 and type 055 are still lagging the US in terms of the number of comparable ships.

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Bltizo said:

We've seen no evidence that JN and DL together can build 12 052D + 055 per year. They might be able to approach that number, such as 8-9 on a good year, but with "only" two shipyards, they probably can't consistently build 12 052Ds + 055s.

If they were able to introduce another shipyard to build destroyers then it would be viable.


.... but whether the PLAN would even be interested in ordering such a number of destroyers to be built per year is something else entirely.

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