that’s quite a fantasy.
052C/052D Class Destroyers
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
that’s quite a fantasy.
ten years ago if some one told China will build 10 DDGs in a single year in 2019 I'm pretty sure your answer would have been "haha LMAO fanboy what are you smoking".
After they have reached 150 DDG, the rate will be 2-3 DDG per year.
no, 10 years ago I would say that is an easily achievable, but utterly unsustainable, rate. I will likely say that 10 years from now too.
10 a year is not the rate of a country determined to be strong and remain strong, It is the rate of a country that fears war in the near future above all else.
Long before they reached 150 DDGs, even a rate of 2-3 more DDG per year would already be a fantasy.
But well before they stop being able to build 10 DDGs a year, what they’ve already built would have become mostly harbor queens.
This is people’s war thinking, warmed over with some more modern looking gadgets.
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manqiangrexue
Brigadier
The ability to build 10 DGGs a year is different from an actuality of doing so. While China will likely always retain that ability, of course, the number will drop off as we enter a phase of fleet maintenance rather than expansion. However, with China's technology growing so quickly, a replacement rate for technological advancement rather than ship age will likely necessitate a rate of at least 2-3 per year even for fleet maintenance (depending on the capacity for MLU of active ships). But we're not there yet and right now, looking forward to a time when Chinese military shipbuilding is on the decline is the real fantasy.
There is a noted difference (as well as many degrees of separation) between stating that Chinese military shipbuilding is on the decline and stating that the current launch (not outfitting, not induction, not crew assignment etc) rate is indicative of a sustained comprehensive program to output double or triple the numbers of major combatants that the current naval leader has.
Lethe
Captain
Currently visible construction tells us what is coming by 2025 and this points to a sustained inventory of at least 80 blue water surface combatants. After 2035 PLAN will begin retiring existing blue water vessels in significant numbers and its capacity for significant growth will therefore become much more limited. As such, the 2025-2035 period is key to determining the future shape of PLAN. Given the long lead time for warships, those trends will become publicly visible over the 2020-2030 period. The launch of 10 blue water surface combatants in 2019 is likely an aberration for PLAN, but if even half that rate is sustained over the next decade it points to a force of around 125 blue water surface combatants by 2035, or roughly double today's numbers.
I agree entirely.
My view is that after a few years, construction will be sustained somewhere between 3-6 per year.
That is still enough to maintain a large margin of superiority in the long-term.
As I have said before, this is the logical consequence of a US that decides to continue with hostile containment policies instead of engagement.
there really are no economic or industrial limitaions to how many DDGs China wants, the only deciding factor is the will of the CCP (ie: if they want more DDGs they will build more DDGs, if they want less they will build less) if anything China suffering from an economic trouble causing it to significantly reduce the DDG production is nothing more than a fantasy & wishfull thinking from China haters , they have a similar mentality to the likes of Gordon Chang & David Axe, it's similar to what some Indians think when talking about the PLAN build up just to assure themselves everything will work itself "we don't need to worry about them, the PLAN doesn't have experience, they don't have crews, quality is bad, they cant maintain ships blah blah blah.." I'm not saying that China will keep on producing 10 DDGs per year for ever, may be they would or may be they wouldn't who knows! may be after 2-4 years from now DDG production will be lowered back to 5 per year, I'm not Xi Jinping so I don't know how many DDGs the PLAN wants, but in any case the number of DDGs that have been produced in 2019 was undoubtibly a surge, in many cases a surge in weapons' production is done when a country is preparing for war that it knows will happen or intends to wage one (Taiwan sepratists better say their prayers), once the Taiwan issue is resolved then China may decide that it's pointless to maintain a huge DDG fleet & may bring down the DDG production rate to 3 or 4 per year, or may they wouldn't! it totally depends on how hawkish (or peacefull) China will be in the future.