I think with Sovromenyys the drift in chinese naval modernisation comes clealrly present, in other side is the importance to begun building bulk and nucleous of that what in future will be chinese blue water force, and yet to have as many failry modern surface combadants to keep the current fleets fighting ability at least in some level. Despites its dating technology, the Sovs still present far superior platforms comapared to chinese domestic vessels save 052C and 054A. They are sobust and well proven vessels dedicated to to anti-ship strikes but backed with considerable ASW and AAW element for selfdefence (thus still presenting best in those fields what PLAN had at the moment they were aquired, and that fact remains with the ASW...)
So I dont see them missinvestment if you know to look them in the contest where they are in PLAN. With All things with the PLAN, you need to look the ships compared to PLANs situation and state.
What comes to the Luhai class, its bit mystical ship. In order to understand it, one must understand the state of PLAN and chinese shipdevelopment in the 1990's. Chinese shipdesign history had it's major milestone in the very late 80's when it won the contract to build frigates to Thailands navy. The frigates consistet the Jinaghu-III class already in PLAN service and two completely new and bigger "western" level frigates. Those were the Narusean (025T) class. The task was huge thing for chinese shipbuilders. Imagine that you have earlier build only tree-houses and now suddenly you had to build a officebuilding...
Chinese however recieved considerable help from Blohm & Voss in Germany and the ships featured some innovaties from the MEKO desing. But regrdless of this the ships were poorly build. For example some departments of the ships were completely isolated and you had to come to out to the maindeck in order to move along the ship. Also the damage control and other features didn't mach for western standarts.
At the same time China was building its first new generation destroyers which were by the way halted in order to get the ofboard deals completed. The Chinese were able to incorporate some of the modular design filosophies with the new "Luhu" class as well but like their export counterparts, they too suffered from the lack of shipdesign skills of chinese. For example the fisrt vessels gasturbine rooms were too small and the turbines didn't fit untill reconstruction. Also the Gasturbine availbility came very difficult after the 1989 incidence and thats propaply one of the main reasons why the class weren't duplicated.
But the need for new destroyers remained and thus chinese were forced to simply enlargening the sole destroyer that they knew how to build, the 051 class (Luda). The hull was new, pretty much same as in Luhu class, but the propulsion arragment was taken from the old Luda design. In reality, the sole ship of the class, 167 is as effective as two Ludas. (105 with the helicopter and 166 with the HQ-7, Yj83, new guns anf new radards)
The availability of gasturbines was most likely improved as the chinese did as they should have, returned to the 052 design as it was far modern and viable than the ill-famous 167. New weapons from russia and development breaktrough with domestic SAMs gave the new ships (052B/C) new modern touch.
PS. The 3d radar onboard 167 and few modernised Ludas is the Type 381A Rice Shield, a radar that was developted alongside with the chinese first SAM effort, HQ61. Its prototype was fitted, as was the missilesystems to the Jiangdong class (which was funnily enough the prototype for Jianghu class, tough only completed 20 years after its lauch). The reason why this radar wasen't fitted to the 052B was the fact that the Russian Fregat radar was superior. However chinese adopted the two array-arragment from the russian radar to their new 3d phassed array radar (I don't know its designation) which is fitted to the 054A class.
So I dont see them missinvestment if you know to look them in the contest where they are in PLAN. With All things with the PLAN, you need to look the ships compared to PLANs situation and state.
What comes to the Luhai class, its bit mystical ship. In order to understand it, one must understand the state of PLAN and chinese shipdevelopment in the 1990's. Chinese shipdesign history had it's major milestone in the very late 80's when it won the contract to build frigates to Thailands navy. The frigates consistet the Jinaghu-III class already in PLAN service and two completely new and bigger "western" level frigates. Those were the Narusean (025T) class. The task was huge thing for chinese shipbuilders. Imagine that you have earlier build only tree-houses and now suddenly you had to build a officebuilding...
Chinese however recieved considerable help from Blohm & Voss in Germany and the ships featured some innovaties from the MEKO desing. But regrdless of this the ships were poorly build. For example some departments of the ships were completely isolated and you had to come to out to the maindeck in order to move along the ship. Also the damage control and other features didn't mach for western standarts.
At the same time China was building its first new generation destroyers which were by the way halted in order to get the ofboard deals completed. The Chinese were able to incorporate some of the modular design filosophies with the new "Luhu" class as well but like their export counterparts, they too suffered from the lack of shipdesign skills of chinese. For example the fisrt vessels gasturbine rooms were too small and the turbines didn't fit untill reconstruction. Also the Gasturbine availbility came very difficult after the 1989 incidence and thats propaply one of the main reasons why the class weren't duplicated.
But the need for new destroyers remained and thus chinese were forced to simply enlargening the sole destroyer that they knew how to build, the 051 class (Luda). The hull was new, pretty much same as in Luhu class, but the propulsion arragment was taken from the old Luda design. In reality, the sole ship of the class, 167 is as effective as two Ludas. (105 with the helicopter and 166 with the HQ-7, Yj83, new guns anf new radards)
The availability of gasturbines was most likely improved as the chinese did as they should have, returned to the 052 design as it was far modern and viable than the ill-famous 167. New weapons from russia and development breaktrough with domestic SAMs gave the new ships (052B/C) new modern touch.
PS. The 3d radar onboard 167 and few modernised Ludas is the Type 381A Rice Shield, a radar that was developted alongside with the chinese first SAM effort, HQ61. Its prototype was fitted, as was the missilesystems to the Jiangdong class (which was funnily enough the prototype for Jianghu class, tough only completed 20 years after its lauch). The reason why this radar wasen't fitted to the 052B was the fact that the Russian Fregat radar was superior. However chinese adopted the two array-arragment from the russian radar to their new 3d phassed array radar (I don't know its designation) which is fitted to the 054A class.
