Almost a decade has passed since the People’s Liberation Army pulled the trigger on President Xi Jinping’s plans for a massive overhaul of the world’s biggest military. In the sixth of a series on Chinese weapons systems, we look at the country’s guided-missile destroyers.
The blue-water role of China’s newest variety of naval destroyer was on show last week when Type 055 destroyer Zunyi led a small flotilla to conduct live-fire drills in international waters off the Australian east coast, prompting alerts from both Australia and New Zealand.
In October, three Type 055s fanned out across the Pacific on a range of missions. The Xianyang docked in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in the first southern Pacific deployment for the fleet.
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Meanwhile in the western Pacific, Xianyang’s sister ship, the Anshan, had just finished taking part in the Joint Sword 2024B exercise around Taiwan, sailing through the sensitive Taiwan Strait as part of the Liaoning aircraft carrier strike group.
In a third corner of the Pacific, the Wuxi was leading a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval fleet in an exercise and joint patrol with Russian warships in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk.
The deployments are a small part of the big roles the eight Type 055s in the PLA Navy fleet are playing in China’s ambition to become a global maritime power.
All eight were in service by 2023, adding to the navy’s two new aircraft carriers, four Type 075 landing helicopter docks and many more destroyers, frigates and submarines.
The shipbuilding spree not only gave China the world’s largest navy by number of vessels, but also massively upgraded the quality and combat power of its maritime forces.
And more are in the pipeline. Work is already under way at Chinese shipyards on a second batch of Type 055s, according to commercial satellite images.
From launch to commissioning, it takes about three years and around 6 billion yuan (US$827.4 million) to complete a Type 055.
Officially classified by the navy as a guided-missile destroyer, the Type 055 is bigger and more powerful than a standard destroyer.
When the first in the series, the Nanchang, was launched in June 2017, it immediately became the most advanced and biggest warship in Asia. In a paper in early 2020, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said it might even be “the most capable multi-role surface combatant currently at sea”.
At more than 180 metres (590 feet) long and 20 metres wide, the Type 055 is designed with stealth features, including a simple cross-section and angular, sloped surfaces that minimise radar signal reflection, as well as a low-reflective material coating.
Powered by four 28 megawatt gas turbines, the vessel can sail at up to 30 knots and range over 5,000 nautical miles without resupply.
By the time the third Type 055 was in the water, the design had been upgraded to include more efficient integrated electric propulsion systems, enabling the use of more powerful electric equipment and even weapons such as rail guns and laserlike devices.
Armament-wise, the Type 055 carries more firepower than any other destroyer class in service in the world. It is loaded with a 130mm dual-purpose naval gun and close-in weapon system, and two anti-submarine helicopters. It can also fire bigger missiles than its US and South Korean equivalents.
In addition to surface-to-air, anti-ship cruise, and land-attack cruise missiles, the Type 055 is equipped with missile-launched anti-submarine torpedoes and a hypersonic anti-ship missile.
US reports also suggest that it could house anti-ship ballistic missiles.
In terms of sensing equipment, the destroyer has an advanced X-band radar in four active electronically scanned arrays and an integrated electronic system similar to the Aegis combat system on US naval ships.
Compared to the most advanced land-attack destroyer in the world – the US Navy’s DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class – the Type 055 lags in stealth and electronic systems, but has more balanced air-defence, anti-missile, anti-ship and anti-submarine abilities.
The vessel was developed to guard aircraft carriers as well as Type 075 amphibious assault ships, playing a similar role to the Ticonderoga-class cruisers in US carrier strike groups.
Equipped with the most advanced available sensor, radar and other electronic systems, the Type 055 is also a centre of situational awareness and information processing.
PLA Navy footage shows one of the destroyers, the Yanan, acting as an electronic warfare hub during a drill with the Shandong aircraft carrier.
When operating outside the carrier strike group, the Type 055 can also become a command centre for its own multipurpose task force to carry out a wide range of deployments, including air defence, anti-submarine and surface combat missions.
The Nanchang was deployed as the flagship of a destroyer flotilla as soon as it was combat ready in late 2020. It repeatedly took the lead in joint foreign exercises and international patrols, and headed “freedom of navigation” operations in the Bering Sea off Alaska in 2021, 2022 and 2024.
For now, the Nanchang, Lhasa, Anshan and Wuxi have been assigned to the PLA’s Northern Theatre Command, or the North Sea Fleet, overseeing the Yellow and Bohai seas from Qingdao.
The Dalian, Yanan, Zunyi and Xianyang are under the Southern Theatre Command’s Navy, or the South Sea Fleet, and headquartered in Zhanjiang, with responsibility for the contested South China Sea.
The next two ships in the class – and possibly more – are expected to be assigned to the Ningbo-headquartered Eastern Theatre Command, or the East Sea Fleet, which monitors the East China Sea and Taiwan.
They are expected to be in service by the time the Fujian, China’s third aircraft carrier, is combat ready this year or the next.
Additional reporting by Hayley Wong
More from South China Morning Post:
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- PLA sends 3 advanced Type 055 destroyers for training exercise in South China Sea
- Chinese military tests advanced 055 destroyer Dalian on evacuation mission skills
- China makes progress on advanced warship bigger than Type 054A frigate, according to new satellite images
- New Chinese destroyer Lhasa circles Japan in first far-sea training run
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