055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread
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In my opinion, China will sail one 055 destroyer for quite a while and root out as much bugs as possible so that the second and third 055 will be more stable. Perhaps, it will be a couple of years before the second and third 055 began service in the Navy. Or maybe by that time, we will be seeing 055A which is a more matured design.
PLAN would usually sail, not one, but two or more ships to root out the bugs. Why is that so? In order to make sure the bugs are not due to manufacturing defects unique and particular to one ship. If the same bug occurs in both ships, you might have a design defect. If a bug occurs in one ship but not the other, then its likely its a manufacturing defect or error.
The PLAN originally worked with the one ship debug theory --- the DDG 167 Shenzhen --- but ever since then, worked in twos: two Type 051Cs, two Type 052Bs, two Type 054, two Type 052C, two Type 093, two Type 094, etc,.
Kunming and Changsha were both launched in the same year, but it was the second ship, Changsha, that had a longer "incubation" period of fitting and trials than the Kunming. Kunming, the first ship of the class, has one of the shortest fittings and trials time for any Type 052D and did it well below two years, when the average period for the ship class afterwards has been between 2 to 3 years.
They are not certainly waiting for a ship to finish debugging before they would start to build another ship, given that Heifei was already launched before Kunminng and Changsha were commissioned.
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You usually do that before the ship is commissioned, and that's what the sea trials are for. Even then, you have two ships that were launched in 2012, and one launched in 2013. Post commissioned bug issues, if these were design defects, would not have been resolved on the second and third ships.
Its quite clear that the PLAN does not wait for a ship to be 100% debugged before starting to build another one. Even before the Kunming was commissioned, the fourth ship, Yinchuan was already in the final stages of construction, and was launched days after the Kunming got her commission.
So there is no pattern of waiting, and whatever issues they had, were minor, not fundamental to the design, and could be quickly resolved. It does not mean the ships can be improved from the lessons, and that's what goes into the later ships.
In the case of 055, I expect the lead ship 101 to undergo something similar to 052D and 172, where 101 will likely be commissioned relatively "quickly" to learn procedures and debug, while later ships are commissioned slightly slower.
However, neither 052D and 055 are following the build a pair and trial/test doctrine of 052B, 051C, 052C, 054 etc as a number of 052Ds were already confirmed to be built well before the lead 052D entered service, and we have confirmed six 055s under various stages of fitting out, launch, construction, before the lead 055 has entered service.
Putting it another way, 052D and 055 (and other more recent classes like 056) are in quite a different category to ships that you mentioned in #5283. Back then it was build a pair, rapidly iterate and advance, and then build another pair. Now they've reached a point where they are likely confident enough in their industrial capability and the capability of their weapons systems to be willing to build a large number of ships before the first ship has been commissioned, or even before the first ship has been launched.
A lot of the equipment are pretested in land sites --- like was there a pic of a place in the desert that had a lot of Type 346 panels mounted and being tested --- and there is a lot more confidence in shipbuilding. Since you already have six 055s (and maybe more if there are more dry dock space) that already shows a lot of confidence with the type, with a lot of testing and debugging on the individual components and systems done on test sites before they go into the ship.
There is something different about the 055 that you cannot compare to the 052D. There were only two 052D that were being built in 2011-2012. But there are SIX Type 055 spotted within a year, which in comparison, took a while before there were six Type 052D finished or in construction to appear.
The way to explain this is that there are now new procedures, and even simulations --- that is 'testing' the ship even before it was built for potential bugs and other issues. The quality control and testing is much more rigorous before all the components are assembled, before the systems are all installed.
antiterror13
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