I've begun digging up early pop3 articles as they are fantastic and shed a ton of light on PLAN history, capabilities, and doctrine. One of these articles give a brief summary of
.
In 1983, research into VLS technology began. However, owing to a variety of reasons including shortage of funding, by 1985, the research progress had essentially ground to a halt. In 1986, under the seventh 5-Year Plan, VLS technology was designated a foundation and practical field and appropriate amounts of funding was allocated to its development. All VLS developed by China so far were developed by 713th Institute in Zhengzhou.
In December 1997, the first Chinese VLS passed evaluations and, in 1998, was installed onto Vessel 970 (later test vessel 891). Later that year in August, the system underwent at-sea testing and live firing. This was the H/AJK-03 cold-launch VLS used on the Type 052C.
The H/AJK-03 is a revolver-type VLS hosting solely the HHQ-9. When firing, the cells have independent doors and can fire even if neighbouring cells malfunction. This is an improvement over the Soviet Rif-M VLS that uses one door for the entire 6-cell module, which could prevent the firing of all missiles if the rotating mechanism fails during combat. The rotation feature of the H/AJK-03 is only used when loading so that the loading crane only needs to be calibrated for one position and the five other cells can simply be rotated into place to receive a new missile. This allows the reloading process to be more efficient than if the crane has to be readjusted for every single cell.
The H/AJK-03 was developed when China had no experience fielding VLS and thus, was not developed with modularity in mind. The design is no longer manufactured now that all 052Cs are fully outfitted.
The second VLS design developed by China is the hot-launch H/AJK-16 used on the 054As. This newer design incorporated a limited capacity for modularity and is reloaded by sealed canisters. The H/AJK-16 can fire HHQ-16 SAM and Yu-8 ASROC. The cannister length of the HHQ-16 is 5.2m and 5.4m for the Yu-8.
The HHQ-16 is given target information by the Type 382 radar and guided to impact by the illuminating radars. The Yu-8 is guided by shipboard sonar or helicopter-borne sonar communicating with the ship via data links.
The newest VLS is the type employed by the 052D. This design is truly modular and can fire the HHQ-9B, YJ-18, YJ-18A, etc. The YJ-18 is a LACM while the YJ-18A is an AShM. There are also variants of the YJ-18 developed for submarine launch.
