Type 051 (Luda) Class DDG, News, Pics, info

Blitzo

Blitzo

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Iron Man said:
What I'm saying is that the ships themselves won't be missed. And at the rate they are building 056s, 054As, 052Ds, and 055s, I have absolutely no doubt the personnel will be reassigned with no problem at all.
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I fully expect that with the rate at which these new ships are being produced and commissioned, we will see the last few pre 1990 commissioned surface combatants get retired and replaced.

But these old ships will be kept for a few more months or years longer until their replacements arrive.


Since the mid 2000s, the Navy has been doing a delicate balance of commissioning new ships, retiring the oldest ships, and retaining old ships in a way that allows them to modernize their fleet for more immediate purposes, while also allowing the fleet to expand in total number which will allow the order of battle to more easily become not only larger but also more fully modernized in the more distant future.
 
I

Iron Man

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joshuatree said:
Have a Chinese equivalent of a Excess Defense Articles program to develop some soft power gains?
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I don't know if they have a specific program, but they certainly have in the past refurbished their older ships and sold them to other countries. And of course to their own CCG.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

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Iron Man said:
I don't know if they have a specific program, but they certainly have in the past refurbished their older ships and sold them to other countries. And of course to their own CCG.
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But who'd want those high manpower-requirement, high maintenance antiques these days? Which is why these days China would rather sell newly built boats to its allies at discounted (?) price, and provide CCG with more suitably designed cutters (though typically lacking in firepower compare with those of USCG and etc). In the CCG scenario, it was more due to the initial lack of large tonnage ships in the CCG fleet so retired DDGs from PLAN (which were puny by modern DDG standard) converted to CCG was the fastest and cheapest avenue to expand its fleet; but now with newer and better cutters churning out of shipyards, they won't need to tough it out with such old rust bucket like 051 series, which not only not designed for long endurance patrols, but also not suitable for helicopter/UAV operations.

So, either they consign the retiring 051 to museum or scrap them for recycling, they'd make good targets for live-firing exercises.
 
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Iron Man

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MwRYum said:
But who'd want those high manpower-requirement, high maintenance antiques these days? Which is why these days China would rather sell newly built boats to its allies at discounted (?) price, and provide CCG with more suitably designed cutters (though typically lacking in firepower compare with those of USCG and etc). In the CCG scenario, it was more due to the initial lack of large tonnage ships in the CCG fleet so retired DDGs from PLAN (which were puny by modern DDG standard) converted to CCG was the fastest and cheapest avenue to expand its fleet; but now with newer and better cutters churning out of shipyards, they won't need to tough it out with such old rust bucket like 051 series, which not only not designed for long endurance patrols, but also not suitable for helicopter/UAV operations.

So, either they consign the retiring 051 to museum or scrap them for recycling, they'd make good targets for live-firing exercises.
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I made no statement about who would actually want these leftover 051s, only that such ships were routinely passed off to others in the past after refurbishment. The longer these particular ships are in service the less life they will have left and the lower the chance they will ever be sold off to any potential buyers. I'm fairly certain the next stop for these ships after they retire is the scrapyard.
 
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