PLA Navy: From 'Green Water' to 'Blue Water'

Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda
Tuesday, July 30, 2002

New Purchases of Kilo Submarines and Sovremenny Destroyers From Russia

On Jan. 3, 2002, Rosoboronexport signed a contract with the Chinese for $1.4 billion for the construction of two Sovremenny-class destroyers for PLA needs. Let''s look again at the Rosvoouruzheniye catalog (text is excerpted):

"Sovremenny Class is a Russian class of destroyers designed to engage hostile ships by means of missile attack, and to provide warships and transport ships with protection against ship and air attack. Intended primarily for anti-ship operations, it was designed to complement anti-submarine warfare (ASW) Udaloy destroyers (of a previous generation). The ships have anti-ship, anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and coastal bombardment capability. The ships, with a maximum displacement of 8,480 tons, are similar in size to the U.S. Navy''s Aegis-equipped missile cruisers, and are armed with an anti-submarine helicopter, 48 air defense missiles, 8 anti-ship missile launchers, torpedoes, mines, long-range guns and a comprehensive electronic warfare system.

Unit Cost: $425 Million
Build Time: 15 Months" (end of description)

So, why is China paying Russia $700 million per destroyer?

According to the understanding of the authors, the major reasons are as follows:

China''s People''s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) intends to obtain these two destroyers as early as possible â?" ideally by early 2006. PLA strategists know that the probability of a conflict around Taiwan and/or in the South China Sea â?" with U.S. forces as the major adversary â?" is growing, and there is no time to waste. That''s why PLAN is ready to spend extra money.

These destroyers will be equipped with the very best weapon systems available in Russia.

Without doubt, in parallel with the two destroyers constructed in St. Petersburg, the shipyards in Dalian city would master the technology for constructing similar (or even better) vessels.
Let''s look for the details of these items.

According to Russia''s Interfax agency (June 28), the Severnaya Verf (Northern Wharf) shipyard in Petersburg began building the first of two Sovremenny 956EM Project destroyers for China in June 2002. E and M in the project designation stand for "export" and "modernized." Construction of the second destroyer should start at the end of July. The two destroyers are to be completed and delivered to the customer in early 2006.

The ships were developed by the St. Petersburg-based Severnoye (Northern) Design Bureau. Several Russian shipyards competed for the contract, Baltiysky Zavod (St. Petersburg-based Baltic Shipbuilding Plant) and Severnaya Verf shipyards being the principal competitors. Eventually, the order was placed with Severnaya Verf, which was engaged in building two 956E destroyers for PLAN from 1997 to 2000.

The project 956EM destroyers will boast cutting-edge armament assets. This vessel has been designed for countering hostile surface ships and landing craft (its major duty), countering anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses of combat and transportation ships, providing fire support to landing units, and patrolling and carrying out various missions as part of a formation or separately.

The 956EM destroyer is fitted with advanced missile and artillery assets and torpedo, radar and anti-submarine systems, as well as the Moskit supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. Length of the destroyer is 150m, and beam is 17m; it is capable of traveling at a speed of 34 knots (60 km per hour). (end of brief description)

Severnaya Verf, indeed, constructed for China two Sovremenny 956E destroyers in 1997-2000. Both destroyers â?" by 1997 â?" were about 40 percent ready. The Russian navy â?" the initial customer â?" terminated the order due to lack of funds. Severnaya Verf got the new order for the ad***ional two destroyers, to be constructed from scratch, in terribly heavy competition with Baltiysky Zavod (no room here to describe this New Russian-style thriller).

Remarkably, (a) this time, construction should take place much more rapidly (by early 2006 the two destroyers should start service in Qingdao or Zhanjiang naval seaports) and (b) the 956EM destroyers will be much more advanced than the 956E ones; the ''M'' means a lot here. According to Western experts, these destroyers â?" according to their design, at least â?" are the naval vessels of the 21st century.

And they are incomparably more advanced than two Luhai-class destroyers, the best and largest Chinese-made naval vessels, whose construction was finished in Dalian in 1997 and 2000, respectively (there is some uncertainty regarding the second destroyer).

According to an article in Moscow-based Novyye Izvestiya newspaper (June 27), China is preparing for the American occupation of the naval base at Cam Ranh, Vietnam, recently abandoned by the Russian navy. That''s why, according to the Chinese-Russian contract signed on Jan. 3, 2002, Severnaya Verf must produce two Project 956EM ships for PLAN as early as 2005.

The Chinese were primarily attracted by the Moskit anti-ship strike system with its supersonic missiles, which NATO calls the "aircraft-carrier destroyer." Two 956 E destroyers, received in 1999-2000, increased greatly PLAN''s capability regarding conflict with U.S. Navy aircraft carrier groups. And there is information that the two new 956EM destroyers, which Severnaya Verf has begun to build, are to be equipped with more improved weapons, namely, Yakhont systems, whose effective range reaches 280 km (as opposed to 100 km for the Moskit missiles).

China''s naval strategy is not limited to the struggle over Taiwan. Chinese interests are increasingly shifting south, and the PLAN has been given the mission of defending oil- and gas-rich islands in the South China Sea. (end of article briefs)

Important comment: The Yakhont missile launcher and its anti-ship missile are much more compact than the Moskit (Sunburn) launcher and its missile. That''s why it is possible to deploy, on a 956EM destroyer, at least 16 Yakhont systems (up to 24, according to some sources). One 956EM could have the combat potential of two to three 956E destroyers!

As the authors mentioned in the recently published article "Chinese multi-level air-defense network," sometime in April 2002 Russia and China signed a contract to sell two S-300F (RIF) ship-borne anti-aircraft complexes to China for $200 million. Beijing plans to install the RIF complexes, with a 120-km range, on two new-generation missile destroyers to be built in China by 2005.

According to Hong Kong media reports in mid-June, these two destroyers aren''t inferior to the Sovremenny 956EM; they will be constructed by "436th plant" (evidently, in Dalian) and use Chinese-made gas-turbine engines of 26,700 kW capacity. Earlier, China had to import these engines from Ukraine; now China is capable of producing them (based on technology from the Ukrainian Zarya Corp.).

There is some speculation (also in the Hong Kong media) that purchasing two 965EM destroyers for $1.4 billion means the delay of the Chinese-made destroyers project. In the authors'' opinion, this is absurd. To the contrary, payment of such money to Russia means that China will get every bit of manufacturing technology and use it at its own shipyards.

So, by the beginning of 2006, PLAN could have up to eight comparatively modern missile destroyers: two Luhai, two Sovremenny 956E, two Sovremenny 956EM, and two Chinese-made Sovremenny replicas. This is a great challenge to U.S. aircraft carrier groups.

New-Generation Diesel Electric Submarines

The leading U.S. papers published, in May-June 2002, dozens of reports on a Chinese-Russian contract for PLAN to purchase eight Kilo 636 diesel-electric submarines for $1.6 billion. We''ll describe the most remarkable features of this bargain.

1) These submarines are much more advanced than the four Kilo submarines received by PLAN in 1995-98. They are equipped with two new-generation weapon systems:

Klub anti-ship cruise missiles with a range up to 200 km; the Klub or 3M54E1 is developed by the Yekaterinburg OKB (Experimental Design Bureau) Novator; no counterpart has been invented in the world. They have three stages: The first two define movement at subsonic speeds, the third goes into operation 20 km from the target at supersonic speed, which guarantees invulnerability from enemy air-defense weapons and destroys the enemy''s ship. The Kilo-636 submarine with the Klub system is capable of salvo firing of missiles simultaneously from six torpedo tubes â?" and not only at surface targets, but also at submarines.
The Shkval torpedo, whose speed reaches 100 meters per second. After launch under water, it flies through the air and descends by parachute into the region where the hostile ship was detected and then again travels under water. Under such con***ions the commander of the targeted submarine simply cannot perform an anti-torpedo maneuver. Incidentally, the Russian navy has no ships yet with such a weapon. In 2001, China acquired at least 40 Shkval torpedoes from Russia and/or Kazakhstan. It is supposed to use them on "093 project" nuclear submarines also.
2) Just like the Sovremenny 956EM contract, the contract for Kilo submarines caused intense competition among Russian enterprises. This resulted, by early July 2002, in the following: Five submarines will be produced by the Komsomolsk-na-Amure shipbuilding plant (the Khabarovsk region of the Russian Far East), two by the St. Petersburg-based Admiralteisky Verf plant, and one by the Sormovo shipbuilding plant on the Volga river, in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The contract for constructing two submarines will be transferred from the Komsomolsk-na-Amure plant to Northern Machine Building Enterprise (NME) in Severodvinsk city, on the White Sea. That''s despite NME having no experience in Kilo submarine construction (in contrast with the other three shipyards), and getting the Kilo submarines from Severodvinsk to China will be very difficult. 3) The authors conclude that, simultaneously with the eight submarines constructed in Russia, at least four submarines of the same kind will be built at China Shipbuilding Industry Group Corp.(SIGC) shipyards in Shanghai, Wuhan or Guangzhou cities. As early as 1997, the Chinese and Russians negotiated for China''s purchase of about 10 Kilo submarines in exchange for their manufacturing technology.
In 1999, China finished the construction of a "super-Kilo submarine" â?" the improved version of China''s Song diesel-electric submarine. China already has part of the Kilo construction technology; now SIGC will get the entire technology. 4) The order for eight submarines is distributed between three Russian enterprises, in order to accelerate the project''s realization. The Chinese will spare no efforts to get all the submarines by 2006 (despite the contract prescribing project completion by 2007).

Finally, by 2006, PLAN could get an entire fleet of comparatively advanced diesel-electric submarines: three to four Song, four old-generation Kilos, eight new-generation Kilos, and at least four Chinese-made Kilos of the new version. Such a fleet, united with the aforementioned advanced destroyers, could greatly affect the naval balance not only around Taiwan, but in the South China Sea and East China Sea as well.

First Chinese Aircraft Carrier

No information about construction of a Chinese aircraft carrier from scratch is available; however, China now has the Varyag unfinished aircraft carrier.

The latest information about the fate of Varyag could be reduced to the following:

Varyag, after spending 110 days being towed by tugboats through the Black Sea, Me***erranean Sea, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea, arrived at Dalian seaport in late March 2002. In April-May, the vessel showed no outward signs of becoming "the world''s largest floating casino and hotel" (Macao-based company Agencia Turistica bought Varyag from Ukraine under just this pretext, for $20 million, in 1998).

Heavy security measures bar any civilian access to Varyag at the Dalian shipbuilding plant (which of the two plants is unknown). This has fueled speculation, in the Hong Kong and Taiwan media, that Varyag is being used by PLA for the attempt to build its first operational aircraft carrier.

Varyag is stripped of its armaments, it no longer has the nuclear reactors installed earlier by the Ukrainian company Generating Systems of Crimea. Still, the Kuznetsov-class carrier Varyag is 70 percent complete and weighs 33,600 tons.

According to Hong Kong media, it is extremely doubtful that Agencia Turistica will ever turn Varyag into a floating casino. Moreover, this company''s owners are closely connected with PLAN. (end of Varyag-related information briefs)

It looks like the probability of Varyag becoming PLAN''s first aircraft carrier should be estimated as at least 70 percent. And this also could be accomplished by 2006.

Conclusions

1) The PLA intends to accomplish a major PLAN overhaul by 2006.

2) At that time China will have complete technology for manufacturing advanced submarines and destroyers.

3) The balance of power in East Asia (let alone around Taiwan) would be tilted in favor of China.

Đọc lạnh gáy. Thế nhưng bao giờ thì Tàu dám đùa với Mỹ nhỉ?
Lúc đấy thì ta có thể là gặp rắc rối lớn mà cũng có thể thuận lợi lớn.

In 2002, China announced it would purchase two more Russian-made Sovremenny-class destroyers. The purchase for the People''s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) adds to the two operational Sovremenny destroyers, the Hangzhou and the Fuzhou. Unlike the Hangzhou and Fuzhou, which were assembled on hulls laid before the fall of the Soviet Union, the two destroyers will be new warships. According to Russia''s Interfax agency (June 28), the Severnaya Verf (Northern Wharf) shipyard in Petersburg began building the first of two Sovremenny 956EM Project destroyers for China in June 2002. E and M in the project designation stand for "export" and "modernized." Construction of the second destroyer should start at the end of July. The two destroyers are to be completed and delivered to the customer in early 2006. the 956EM destroyers will be much more advanced than the 956E ones; the ''M'' means a lot here. According to Western experts, these destroyers â?" according to their design, at least â?" are the naval vessels of the 21st century.

em thì thà thân Mỹ hơn thân thằng Tàu! Vì mình với thằng Tàu sát nhau, quyềt lợi đụng chạm lung tung với thằng này, từ biên giới đường bộ, và mạnh nhất là đường biển!

Mình biết Trung Quốc đang có hai dự án tự đóng tầu chiến mới , đó là
1-Chinese Sovremenyi
2-Chinese Aigis

Type 052B DDG
KANWA NAMED TYPE 052B DDG AS KITAISKI SOVREMENNI
Kanwa June 10, 2003> The Type 052B No. 168 and 169 DDG currently under building now have much stronger characteristics of the Russian Type 956E DDG. For this reason, Kanwa names it the "Chinese Sovremenni" (Kitaiski Sovremenni) Class.
Photos of the vessel released on May 29 indicate that No. 168 has been added with Russian "Band Stand" track radar, which is mainly used for 3M80E (SS-N-22) and X35 SSM. Kanwa''s judgment is that 052B will very likely be outfitted with 8 3M80E or 16 X35 (SS-N-25) SSMs at the rear of the chimney.
The building process of 052B has revealed some of the major issues the Chinese ship-building industry is now in face of. In the earlier stage, a concise stealth version hull was designed for 052B, while the weapon and electronic radar sub-systems were all 1980s Soviet technologies. As the building projects progressing further, the bridge of 052B started to look odd, and the original carefully designed stealth hull was set off much of its stealth feature as a consequence. <Kanwa Digest news. For full story, see Kanwa Issue June 10>


The Type 052 DDG is a new class of Guided Missile Destroyers developed by the PLAN and could include for the first time in the PLAN a true fleet Air-Defense capability. Armament may include the indigenously developed HHQ-9 Air-Defense Missile System in a ship-borne vertical launch variant. Also 2 x 30 mm 7 barrel CIWS of project 730, one at the front, one at the back. Capable of 4600-5800 rounds/min. The new DDG could also have a new 3D phased array radar. The Type 052B could be powered by DA80/DN80 gas turbines imported from the Ukraine.
Stealth features are included in the design of the ship. According to report 3 Hulls of the 052B have been laid down at Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, with the first ship being launched in May 2002 and the second one in late 2002. A larger type of the 052B, the O51C is also planned.




MR750 3D radar on the Chinese DDG No.168. SHTIL-1 SAM will be installed on this class DDG

Chinese Aegis No.170 DDG will be launched soon.

052B 168 Guangzhou
Since the single 051B Luhai class DDG armed only with short-range HHQ-7 SAMs was launched in 1997, it has been speculated that Chinese were working on their next generation DDG (Type 052B?) which would possess a true fleet air-defense capability. This capability would be established around the new HHQ-9 long-range SAMs (similar to Russian SA-N-6), possibly vertically launched, and a new 3D multirole phased array radar combining electronic and mechanical scans like French ARABEL. However it now appears that 052B is fitted with SA-N-12 medium-range SAMs and Front Dome guidance radars acquired from Russia. Two radars were seen located on top of the bridge (for the SAM launcher in front of the bridge) and the other two behind the rear mast (for the SAM launcher next to the helicopter hanger), providing multiple fire channels (8 for SA-N-12). A Top Plate 3D air-search radar is installed on top of the foremast. As the result, similar to Sovremenny DDG, the ship could be designed to provide a limited fleet air-defense capability without the sophisticated Aegis type system and VLS, thus carry a cheaper price tag and can be built in a relatively short period of time. 052B is likely to be based on the hull of 051B Luhai class DDG (6,000 displacement) but having more advanced stealth designs with large smooth and angled surfaces, a common feature among the new generaton of European FFGs such as French La Fayette class. In ad***ion, a new 100mm main gun similar to French Creusot-Loire 100mm (Type 210) but with a stealth turret is installed at the B postion. Other features include SATCOM antennas, a single helicopter hanger (housing a Ka-28 or Z-9C ASW helicopter) relocated on the port side (the starboard side reserved for the rear SA-N-12 launcher), two Type 730 CIWS similar to Dutch Goalkeeper located on both sides behind the bridge, 4 large caliber multipurpose MLRS (launching ASW rockets or decoys?) on the platform in front of the bridge, 4 quadruple YJ-83 SSM launchers at midship behind the funnel, and a CODOG propulsion system with DA80/DN80 gas turbines from Ukraine. For over-the-horizon attack, the mid-course correction of the YJ-83 SSM is provided by Band Stand radar on top of the bridge. Since 2000, two hulls have been built at Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, with the first ship (168) launched on May 25, 2002 and the second ship (169 Wuhan?) launched in October 2002. A larger design (Type 052C, 7,000 class) similar to USN Arleigh Burke class DDG armed with the Aegis system is also being constructed (see below).

052C 170 Lanzhou
Rumored as a 7,000t class fleet air-defense DDG armed with a Chinese Aegis system to be built at Dalian Shipyard, this new type of DDG (Type 052C or Type 052BK?) is actually being constructed at Jiangnan Shipyard, the same place where two 052B DDGs are still being fitted. This indicates that 052 series have adopted a modular design so that different variants with different primary missions can be built quickly with standardized modules. Even though 052C appears generally similar to 052B, the biggest difference lies with the 4 fixed phased array antennas embedded in the walls of the foreward superstructure on 4 sides. Among them, two antennas are covering the forward hemisphere while the other two are covering the rear hemisphere. The same arragement can be found onboard the US Arleigh Burke class DDG and Japanese Kongo class DDG. As the result, unlike 052B, two Type 730 CIWS are relocated to the raised platform in front of bridge and on top of the rear helicopter hanger. The installation of 4 phased array antennas indicates that 052C will certainly be the first Chinese DDG equipped with the new vertically launched HHQ-9 long-range SAM system, instead of the Russian RIF-M/S-300F system, which utilizes a single Tombstone phased array radar. The forward VLS station (6 revolver launchers? 6x6) is likely to be between the forward CIWS platform and the main gun, while the rear VLS station (2 revolver launchers? 2x6) likely to be forward of the helicopter hanger. Two quadruple semi-cylindical racks are located between the rear mast and the helicopter hanger which could support the new YJ-12 long-range supersonic SSM. The ship is also expected to have a new generation of Aegis-like C3I system. Currently two 052Cs are being constructed (170-171) with the first ship being launched on April 29, 2003. All 4 PAR antennas were seen being covered by some kind of protecting shields while the intallation being carried out inside. The building of two 052Bs and two 052Cs in such a short time frame reflects PLAN''s urgent need to upgrade its obsolete air-defense systems of its surface combat ships. There have been rumors suggesting that an even bigger design dubbed 051C (8,000t class) based on 051B is being planned to be built at Dalian Shipyard. This class, possibly featuring the RIF-M/S-300F SAM system acquired from Russia, will further enhance PLAN''s air-defense capability of its surface combat ships alongside 052B and 052C.