The Japanese have 4 LHDs and the South Koreans have 2. I doubt China will have less than 6 LHDs.
I highly doubt that the 4 Japanese flat-decks can be called LHDs. 2 of them are proper aircraft carriers (Izumo), and the other 2 are helicopter carriers (Hyuga) with potential to undergo similar conversion as the Izumos.
However, the PLA should just consider all 6 of them as proper light aircraft carriers.
A lot of analysts seem to claim that China is trying to out build the US Navy or something. But to me, when I look at the numbers, it seems more like just an attempt to keep parity with US aligned forces in the Pacific like the Japanese, South Korean, and US fleets forward deployed there.
Indeed. Although, compared to the United States, China does have a
home-front advantage where the PLAN can reliably depend upon the PLAAF, PLARF and some elements of the PLAGF to share portions of the burden.
In that regard, for the closest timeline, the PLAN should build and expand her fleets that would
achieve parity with the expected deployable naval forces of the US and her allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia, UK, France, Canada) in the Western Pacific in order to
guarantee both numerical and qualitative edge for the PLAN. No need to outbuild the USN just for the sake of outbuilding the USN.
Hoping that they will field the amount that they can maintain and not build to much with half their capacity non working... a good navy is a navy with functionning ships. Hoping that they will not have these kind of problems:
Drone carrying carrier will be a thing too so the types of ships used will evolve soon so it's hard to put numbers. If they want power projection on the globe scale, they will need at least 8 CV and 8 LHD+LHA. For territorial defence oriented fleet, we can see less CV and maybe drone carrier and LHD+LHA taking more space.
That's true.
However, what really does matter is how the PLAN views their 075s and 076s.
This is because -
The
075s are functioning as:
Type:
LHD
Role:
Launching, commanding and supporting amphibious assault operations;
ASW
Meanwhile, the
076s would function as:
Type:
Mixture of LHD and small CATOBAR CV
Role:
Launching, commanding and supporting amphibious assault operations;
ASW; and most importantly,
UCAV carriers
Therefore, it is still an open question on how the PLAN would eventually distribute and assign roles to their non-CV flat-deck warships. In my opinion, the 075s are more geared towards amphibious warfare, and the 076s are more geared towards providing UCAV squadrons to the main fleet CVs (i.e. 001, 002, 003 etc) on the high seas.
Speaking of which, according to
pop3 (Haven't heard from him for quite a long time, anyone knows how he's doing right now?), the 2nd phase of amphibious assault ship construction in China has already begun, with orders for
5 ships of the 2nd batch 075s being placed. This would bring the number of
075s to
8 ships in
total.
Simultaneously, pop3 also claimed that the
076s are
expected to begin construction work within the 2nd phase of amphibious assault ship construction too. However, it is unclear whether the 076s would begin construction simultaneously as the first 075 of the 2nd batch, or sometime afterwards. The possibility of features meant for the 076s are included in the 2nd batch 075s should not be discounted as well.
