PLA Navy news, pics and videos

Miyayaya said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1850919199029280822

Some kind of new flattop?

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Very likely to be a flatdeck testbed platform ship seen in a tender announcement document from September 2022. Pretty good chances that fixed-wing UAVs will be operated from this ship.

Matching details include:
- Overall (flight deck) length of 200 meters;
- Beam/flight deck width of nearly 40 meters; and
- Twin island superstructures.



The only things still unverified as of present are the presence of a well deck to the aft and a hangar deck to the fore of the ship.

More recently, the flatdeck is getting coated. Seen from a satellite photo of the same location earlier this month:

Forward "island" looks placed rather awkwardly. Could it be an elevator instead?

It's a semi-submersible platform to recover the sunken SSN from the Yangtze river

snake65 said:

Forward "island" looks placed rather awkwardly. Could it be an elevator instead?

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Notice the shadow casted by the ship onto the pier. The protrusion of the smaller forward island superstructure shadow from the flight deck level shadow is obvious, albeit not as high up as the larger island superstructure amidship.

Was it this rumor?

ACuriousPLAFan said:

Notice the shadow casted by the ship onto the pier. The protrusion of the smaller forward island superstructure shadow from the flight deck level shadow is obvious, albeit not as high up as the larger island superstructure amidship.

View attachment 137953

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Shadow? That's a sunken submarine!

Is it possible it is some sort of target ship that would be used for missile testing?

SlothmanAllen said:

Is it possible it is some sort of target ship that would be used for missile testing?

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You generally don’t build a ship just to sink it, target ships are usually old ships you no longer need. You could simulate a carrier out in the ocean by tying some smaller ships together in the middle of the ocean for example. Or by just aiming an anti ship ballistic missile at a smaller ship and seeing if it lands within a certain radius.

SlothmanAllen said:

Is it possible it is some sort of target ship that would be used for missile testing?

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Unlikely.

In fact, it is highly doubtful that a target ship would require a fully-functional flight deck (with a 25-meter wide runway), hangar deck and well deck, as per listed in the tender document from 2 years ago.

Also, it doesn't really seem to even largely resemble any foreign flatdeck warship designs that we know of, unlike this DDG-looking target ship (which actually bears resemblances to the Arleigh Burke, Maya and Akizuki-classes):

Miyayaya said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1850919199029280822

Some kind of new flattop?

Click to expand...

Additional satellite photos and measurements of said flatdeck research and testing platform ship when she was still being constructed inside the drydock at Guangzhou. Posted by @MT_Anderson on Twitter.





Verified that the two superstructure islands exist.