All of these are "old" orders from the end of 14th FYP, there are no new 052Ds ordered for 15th FYP.
Next Generation DDG and FFG thread (after 055, 052D, 054B)
- Thread starter ACuriousPLAFan
- Start date
I dont think China should go for a sino zumwalt.
After recent wars and seeing the efficacy of drones, missiles and drone ships. I think the entire naval warfare doctrine needs a fundamental change.
Ultra expensive ships simply cannot survive mass drone and missile strikes. They will simply run out of ammo or get taken out as some will get through.
The better approach is probably go all in on cheap unmanned ships. Destroyers will need to stay far away from shores, perhaps thousands of miles away.
Satellite detection will make any kind of ship stealth ineffective, therefore no point making super expensive sino zumwalt like stealth ship. Ships are slow moving and can be tracked by satellites in real time, unlike planes.
Overall, Navies all over the world are in big trouble I would say and losing relevance in a world dominated by drones.
It was China the first one to escalate the tonnage race for surface combatants in recent years with 055s. USN wanting to field combatants big enough to pack medium and intermediate range weapons is the answer.
China doesn't have the same naval or political doctrine as the people dreaming of the Trump/Defiant class. China near term intrest is securing or rather pushing out the island chain while the others are in the "expedition" navy buisness
It doesn´t matter. Look shipbuilding programs around the world. Everyone is making ever larger and more heavily armed surface combatants. The trend started with 055 and there is no reason to believe China won´t continue the trend.
Unlike most countries, China has a very comprehensive screen of smaller ships.
Naval drone development is rapid and they're going to get far more proliferated and far more dangerous. It might make sense for corvettes and frigates to become much more capable in anti-drone warfare.
Not sure what this means for larger capital ships though.
These things aren´t mutually exclusive. We´ll be getting greater degree of robotization together with the race towards larger surface combatants.
Unmanned surface ships will take on a greater role for navies in the future, but it is too early to dispense of large manned surface combatants because there are certain tasks, mission sets, and subsystems (and groupings of subsystems) that can only be done with a proper large destroyer or even cruiser sized hull.
It's generally accepted that the PLAN will go for a class of larger surface combatants than the 055 in the near future, but 40-50k tons is far too outrageous.
Something in the 16-20k ton category would be much more logical.
For a DD, of course 16-20 is to be expected. But I wouldn´t rule out them trying out the cruiser concept, especially if the Trump class "Battleships" aren´t cancelled.
In a fleet of upsized platforms I’d expect a 16-20k class ship to be the cruiser and a 9-12k class ship to be the destroyer. One path they could take is to reassign the basic 055 template into the destroyer role and position a new 20k design into the future cruiser role. The legacy 052D fleet can then slide into a light destroyer/heavy frigate role, since it seems most attempts at a modern frigate design end up looking like a light destroyer anyways.