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Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Totoro said:
I have no idea. Perhaps within another year or so there might be more info out there to attempt to answer that question.
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Do you think the explanation I described in 4674 is not unreasonable?
 
T

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
AETHER said:
"14.5 construction has started. see you all next year."
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Sorry for being daft but what does 14.5 refer to? Is that a date? Or something else?
And what ship does construction refer to? What connection do ships in the image have with the claim?

Bltizo said:
Do you think the explanation I described in 4674 is not unreasonable?
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I think it's reasonable. It's certainly one of the possible explanations. The overall length of the construction lull will, hopefully, show how plausible that explanation is.

There is always the possibility that there are additional ships already in advanced stages of modular construction, just not having their modules laid down. If so, we might even see some additional ships being launched by the end of 2022, over that estimate of 4 frigates and one carrier. Not sure how long it took for the last few 052Ds from the moment we had first images of first modules being laid down to the launch of the ship.
 
A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Bltizo said:
My belief is that rumours give us the basis to speculate, and then we correlate what we see with rumours.

In terms of the "lull" in new ships launched in these couple of years, I am not sure if there is necessarily any significant more explanation other than "previously ordered ships have had contracts fulfilled, and few new ships were immediately ordered".

If there had to be an overall overarching way of explaining this trend, I would argue that the assessment of the strategic environment and/or emergence of new systems and technologies meant they would have taken a bit of time to calibrate what they wanted to buy in numbers (rather than just plowing ahead).


But seeing as you raised the question, what do you think explains this "lull" in production?
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@Totoro

I think the surge in Destroyer construction in 2018-2019 was the result of future orders being pulled forward, given the deteriorating environment.

And remember how only 4 Type-055s were originally ordered? But that turned into another 4 immediately afterwards.

In 2019, we saw a total of 8 Type-052Ds were launched.
But if you shift 5 of these destroyers to 2020-2021, you get back to a steady 3 per year.

I also see a natural pause for the Type-075 to be evaluated before more are built
 
A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Bltizo said:
"Some sort of concern" I think isn't the right way of describing it, because virtually all platforms at any stage of their life cycle has "some kind of concern".

A newly developed platform is either too new/unproven in terms of subsystems/hull.... whereas a more mature platform is either lacking in growth capacity or using older technologies/subsystems.


In terms of the PLAN's current ongoing procurement, I think it is too easy to lose the forest for the trees.
That is to say, it is very easy to look at the 054A restarts, prospective 052D production, and newer ships like 055s, and think about the various "compromises" or "immaturities" that they have against a specific sort of weapons system that might be more well adapted to them.
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Given the procurement volumes, I don't see much financial penalty either from lulls and restarts.
If they were only buying a few ships, then yes.
And if the shipyards were solely dependent on military orders, then yes again.
But this is not the case.

The next batch looks like:

8 Type-055 Large Destroyers
20 Type-052D Destroyers
20 Type-054A Frigates
1+ Type-054B Frigates

Plus you've got Type-054 Frigates for Export and also for the Chinese Coast Guard

So we're looking at over 50 Destroyers and Frigates in the next 5 years.
In comparison, even the US Navy only has a combined total of 105 Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates.
 
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