PLAN Type 051B/C Class Destroyers

FugitiveVisions said:

I agree that it's really an issue of doctrine whether the Chinese will upgrade the 051C. However, since you raised the issue of cost, I just merely pointed out that sunk cost, the cost of acquiring Rif, should not be used in future investment decisions.

And I don't honestly believe that anyone on the internet really knows how many HQ-9 system China is going to order in the next few years. If China has intentions to make 9M96E missiles compatible with the 051C, it is reasonable to infer that they at least have some intention to upgrade their current S300PMUs with this missile.

And if the 051C can indeed carry both 9M96E and 48N6E, wouldn't it be advantageous for the Chinese to have a ship capable of providing multi-layered air defense? While the ship has shortcomings, the issue here isn't whether to build more of this class, but rather how to make improvements on the current platforms. I think I made that point clear in my previous post.

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As for someone's claim that 5000 sets of HQ-9 missiles have been ordered, which you have posted on the "Chinese SAM" thread, the guy can't possibly be someone who worked on the HQ-9 project, because he said that he initially believed that the large order for the component is due to replacement on the missiles, only to learn later that once a missile is fired, there is no need to replace the components on that missile. Doesn't sound a whole lot like someone who knows a lot about missiles. Also says that he make an educated guess on the number of sets ordered based on the number of a certain missile component in the order list. Again, you'd have to seriously doubt that anyone who posts on the internet, much less someone who knows little about missiles, has access to the entire order list of all the components of the HQ-9 missile. If that is in fact the case, I can't imagine the job of a CIA China expert being hard at all. Then goes on to make more educated guesses on where the missiles will be allocated. Sounds like an chinese military forum boy seeking some attention.

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tphuang said:

I already stated in the past why I think 051C is a wasted class, but two main ones are:
1) The Russian VLS are known to take up a lot of space and before 9M96E had no common VLS. And considering that China would not be interested in my opinion to purchase Russian ASROC type or AShM type, it would be a huge problem to integrate their own anti-ship missiles, LACMs and ASROC onto a Russian VLS. And with the size of VLS, you see on 051C that they don't even have hangar space.
2) Buying naval S-400 means they would have to use the Russian naval system of having that one huge illuminating FCR in one direction (unless they choose to build cruiser, they won't be able to have more than that. You are basically back to using the Soviet cold war AD philosophy rather than the more modern western AD philosophy that China is finally subscribing to with 052C. And you have the other problem of how that will fare in a AD system with ships operating the HH-9/APAR combination.

One final issue is cost:
I remember reading on kanwa that the cost of each rif-m system is $150 million, now if they are getting this upgrade for anti-missile capability + 9M96E missiles, the cost will easily go up to $200 million and maybe more. So, you will end up paying more for just the long range AD of this ship than the entire cost of a 054A.

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ioaz10 said:

Many of the Chinese built ships are light coloured.

Is this is good camouflage in the seas?

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