AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Ever since they built the first one, China should've built and deployed a fleet of these ships. They wouldn't have to worry about tiring out crews.
Typhoon Haiyan Disaster in the Philippines
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
PLAN hospital ship Peace Ark is on duty in the Republic of the Philippines.
Say what.
The Type 920 Hospital ship for the PLAN, the Ark, is a 14,000 ton ship. It is a good ship, and is of good size.
The Ark has the following Patient Capacities:
Intensive care wards: 20 beds
Total Patient Capacity: 300 beds
Operating Rooms: 8
But it is no where near the size of some other hospital ships.
For example, both of the US Mercy Class hospital ships (USNS Mercy, T-AH 19, and USNS Comfort, T-AH 20) are 70,000 ton vessels.
The US ships have the following Patient Capacities:
Intensive care wards: 80 beds
Recovery wards: 20 beds
Intermediate care wards: 280 beds
Light care wards: 120 beds
Limited care wards: 500 beds
Total Patient Capacity: 1000 beds
Operating Rooms: 12
One US ship, and now the PLAN ship are both helping in the Philippines...and this is a good thing.
Any help of this nature is a tremendous thing, and the people being assisted do not care which country they come from as their lives and health are being saved.
MwRYum
Major
It'd need a more "outward going" policy to support building more hospital ships in this grade and capacity, meanwhile occupying shipyard slots which'd otherwise use in building new warships.
I wonder somewhere in my mind if China had offered to send naval ships to Aquino and if it was declined, or if China had simply decided not to send naval ships due to the potential negative perceptions both at home and abroad.
They'll seriously have to be a little more determined in flexing their military power in future even if it doesn't directly benefit their interests and if they're afraid the world would see it as China "projecting" its power. It took a UN mandate for China to even send naval vessels to Somalia!
In the meantime, it's good they have a dedicated and modern hospital ship, that while technically naval, doesn't carry the connotations of sending in an LPD or a destroyer or something.
Pictures below
They'll seriously have to be a little more determined in flexing their military power in future even if it doesn't directly benefit their interests and if they're afraid the world would see it as China "projecting" its power. It took a UN mandate for China to even send naval vessels to Somalia!
In the meantime, it's good they have a dedicated and modern hospital ship, that while technically naval, doesn't carry the connotations of sending in an LPD or a destroyer or something.
Pictures below
Those are awesome pictures. It's efforts like this that will do more to win the hearts and minds of neighbors over to a more friendly PRC.
The more she can do this...the better. IMHO, the PLAN should build a couple of more such vessels, and then have one for each fleet...and then use them more often like this.
I agree, having a couple more of these ready to go would definitely be beneficial.
I'm not sure what their top speed is, but they are based off the Type 903 AOR hull with probably similar propulsion, so they should make fairly decent time. Being a purpose built hospital ship would also confer various advantages in transferring patients from boat or helicopter as the case would be.
But unfortunately building one of these peace arks would be equivalent to building another Type 903 AOR, and I don't think PLAN have the time and money to afford to sacrifice a potential AOR for a hospital ship. Maybe in a few years time.
In the meanwhile, I'm left to ponder what the PLAN response would have been if the typhoon had struck a nation with no dispute with no significant territorial dispute with China, perhaps some of the other SCS countries, or maybe even bangladesh. I could imagine an 071 and a destroyer or two being despatched in that scenario. Deploying the peace ark to the phillippines will be and has been portrayed as only something done in response to foreign criticism.
Oh well, until the next natural disaster I suppose (I kid)
I'm not sure what their top speed is, but they are based off the Type 903 AOR hull with probably similar propulsion, so they should make fairly decent time. Being a purpose built hospital ship would also confer various advantages in transferring patients from boat or helicopter as the case would be.
But unfortunately building one of these peace arks would be equivalent to building another Type 903 AOR, and I don't think PLAN have the time and money to afford to sacrifice a potential AOR for a hospital ship. Maybe in a few years time.
In the meanwhile, I'm left to ponder what the PLAN response would have been if the typhoon had struck a nation with no dispute with no significant territorial dispute with China, perhaps some of the other SCS countries, or maybe even bangladesh. I could imagine an 071 and a destroyer or two being despatched in that scenario. Deploying the peace ark to the phillippines will be and has been portrayed as only something done in response to foreign criticism.
Oh well, until the next natural disaster I suppose (I kid)
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I'm not sure it would have been that different. What the western media has not addressed at all is this disaster struck in the middle of the most important political meeting of the Chinese leadership for their entire term. Historically, the third Plenum has always been by far the most important one in terms of a new set of Chinese leaders announcing their primary policy initiatives for their entire time in power, and that would have taken up pretty much all of the attention of the most important people in China and their staff.
In addition, even though Haiyan was widely known to be of unparalleled force, I don't think many people seriously expected the kind of devastation it did cause before it struck. I mean the Philippines get hit by Typhoons every year, so its almost became routine.
I think those two factors combined are the most likely cause of China's slow response rather than because of China's frosty relationship with the Philippines. The initial Chinese aid pledge may well have been decided before the Typhoon even struck, and a mid level functionary left to keep the house in order might have bulked at the idea of intruding on the most important meeting of his superiors' careers because of a Typhoon that had been tracked for some time and for which a preprepared response had already been made hit another country.
Had it been any other natural disaster, or if it happened at any other time, I think the response from China would have been far quicker and better prepared.