PLAN breaking news, pics, & videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
This image appears to originate from mid 2011 (). Several of the Type 022 operating bases have areas of hard standing where the boats can be taken out of the water, with a capacity for 8-10 boats (so presumably the whole squadron). Past GE imagery of the bases shows instances of a number of boats out of the water on the hardstanding but subsequent images show they have been refloated. So I don't think the photo indicates that the 022s are being mothballed.
I expect they like to take the boats out of the water when they remain in port for a longer time seeing that the hulls are made of aluminium.
Blackstone
Brigadier
Interesting PLAN is mothballing the 022, I expected it to sell some of the FACs to Pakistan or North Korea.
antiterror13
Brigadier
they would love having them .. or alternatively donating to Thailand, Cambodia or even the Philippine
I believe PLAN having so many 022 missile boats is the direct result of 1996 Taiwan strait crisis. It forced PLAN to develop a strategy to fight off a carrier battle group with inferior force. Type 022 is perfect for the job. Cheap, fast, stealthy, and carries way too many anti ship missiles for its size. But they can only be effective with a sufficient number of them. Thus 80+ of them are built.
It's pretty much useless now for PLAN as it has evolved so much in the last decade that less radical tactics are available. And there is no need for anti-ship missile boats at peace time, they can't do patrols either due to the low endurance and high maintenance cost. They tired it in SCS, I assume it didn't work well.
It is a surprise indeed as it is much more modern than many other PLAN vessels but if you see it from a cost&benifit perspective, you'll see that it's nothing but a liability. Mothballing them would mean the funds that were spent at maintaining these can be put to somewhere more useful.
It's pretty much useless now for PLAN as it has evolved so much in the last decade that less radical tactics are available. And there is no need for anti-ship missile boats at peace time, they can't do patrols either due to the low endurance and high maintenance cost. They tired it in SCS, I assume it didn't work well.
It is a surprise indeed as it is much more modern than many other PLAN vessels but if you see it from a cost&benifit perspective, you'll see that it's nothing but a liability. Mothballing them would mean the funds that were spent at maintaining these can be put to somewhere more useful.
joshuatree
Captain
Wouldn't that just add more cost and time delays in moving the boats in and out of the water? Dampens reaction time.
Cambodia would be another prime candidate. Boats would not be too large an asset to overwhelm the Cambodian navy's resources and would certainly require Vietnam to commit more naval assets down south, stretching their modernizing yet finite sized naval assets.
Maybe Sri Lanka as well since they employ quite a few FACs themselves.
Iran would be a hot issue as that would irritate the US.
It would. But sometimes they need some work to be done on them or the weather is unsuitable and while a conventional vessel would remain in the water these boats could be taken out with advantage.
It is what the Greeks and Romans did with their warships some two millenia ago.
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Taking out might be some time.
But what if they could just slide them in 1 by 1 or all together towards the rear?
putting in is faster then out haha