Ahh, ignore me, its late in the night.
PLA Navy news, pics and videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Lethe
Captain
The data was still too spiky for my liking so I have reworked this as a column chart. Compared to previous chart I have added the former Soviet and now Russian Navy, and dropped the displacement floor from 1000 to 650-tonnes which has the practical effect of permitting the inclusion of the Karakurt- and Buyan-M class missile boats for Russia, ASW-SWC craft for India, and Nanuchka-class vessels for both Russia and India. I am not including the Vasily Bykov or Ivan Papanin patrol ships for Russia, nor the Krivak III Coast Guard frigates.
The most impressive takeaway I have to say with these charts regarding the PLAN's force development is how close they've managed to get to the USN's peak tonnage of the later part of the Cold War despite starting from a disadvantageous initial economic and technological position. Even the German Kaiserliche Marine at the start of its naval competition with the British Royal Navy was in a more favorable starting position economically and technologically speaking and still couldn't come close to the tonnage of the RN, so this speaks volumes on how well the PLAN managed its force development.
That is partly reflective of the fact that these graphs compare surface combatants and do not include the capital ships of our era -- aircraft carriers, and to a smaller extent, nuclear submarines.
In that era that you describe, the capital ships were battleships and battlecruisers.
I suspect if we included aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, the graph would be somewhat more sobering.
This isn't to say that the PLAN's achievements so far are unimpressive, nor is it to say that they won't in the future show similar growths in carriers and nuclear submarines in the same manner as they did for surface combatants -- but context is very much still useful to understand what Lethe's graphs do and do not show.
Oh, I do know that the graphs aren't the entire picture by any means, but the critical thing is that for nearly anyone else starting from China's position (or even somewhat better like the Indians were), to even manage half that in the given time frame would be something of a miracle in itself, let alone what the PLAN reached in that timeframe. The productive capacity and capability for further technological development is the far more important aspect than the raw tonnage in the overall picture.
Yes, it is a very impressive advancement by every measure.
I was just saying that I think the point would be a stronger one if it didn't compare the Imperial German Navy and British Royal Navy competition (or other comparisons that involve the requisite capital ship equivalents of their time).
So what, PESA don't work?
What they have done so far is quite impressive, but nuclear submarines and carriers are the most important portion of a blue water fleet. You can't have blue water operation without carriers and you can't move carriers around without modern nuclear submarine production. If you look at how much Britain has devote to its nuclear submarine programs while cutting back on its surface fleet, it should give an idea of their importance. As PLAN gets more budget in the future, most of that money will need to go to CVN and SSN.
How many nuclear-powered submarines can China build at the same time?
I know that Bohai is the only shipyard in China that is responsible for constructing nuclear-powered submarines (I do hope there could be another one), and I have heard that the recent expansion of the submarine contruction penhouse in Bohai would increase the number of submarines that can be built at once.