Type 055 Cruiser

The Type 055 building plan is necessarily speculative. After launch, a destroyer or cruier will usually take about a year to undergo outfitting procedures to install all kinds of additional equipment to get the ship ready to sail and make it combat-capable. Another year might be needed for it to conduct sea trials to see if everything works properly and make the necessary adjustments.

As of early 2017 China had four units under construction at two yards. In the United States, the nearest counterpart would be the somewhat smaller DDG-51 Arleigh Burke, which was also built at two yards, initially at a rate of four per year, and more recently at a rate of two per year. There is no particular reason to doubt that China could match this pace. The Arleigh Burke class will reach a steady state cadence, with new builds replacing retiring units, around the year 2026, with a total production of 84 vessels.

The speed of China's ship-building of the Type 052D destroyer produced from 2012 to 2017 there have been 13 built, an average of 4 per per year. Certainly, the blistering building pace of the [much smaller] Jiangdao Type-056 Corvette provides some fore-shadowing - produced at such a rate they were nick-named "dumplings" [echoing Khrushchev's remark that Soviet missiles were being produced like sausages].

Wang Yunfei, a naval expert and retired People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy officer, told the Global Times on 19 December 2018 that after gaining experience from the first batch of Type 055s, China will develop upgraded versions. Considering China needs to have about six aircraft carriers and multiple amphibious assault ships in the future, China is looking to have at least 10 Type 055s to form battle groups and escort these vessels. The basis for this calculation is obscure. It suggests that China might have ten battle groups [six carrier, four amphibious], each with one Type 055 escort. Typically the US Navy would have about three ships of this class [CG and DDG] escoring each aircraft carrier, and two such ships sailing with each amphibious group. This suggests a total program objective of about 30 Type 055 escorts. But US Navy practice normally has one Ticondaroga air defence cruiser and two Arleigh Burke destroyers escorting an aircraft carrier, so the goal 10 Type 055 seems not un-reasonable.

The Nanchang, China's first Type 055 guided missile destroyer, will soon be put into commission in the People's Liberation Army Navy, a spokesperson said at a press conference 25 April 2019. The 10,000 tonne-class destroyer had already undergone construction and most of the sea trials, according to Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson with the Ministry of National Defense. It officially debuted at the multinational naval parade in celebration of the Chinese navy's 70th founding anniversary 23 April 2019. In terms of future Chinese destroyer development, Upolitics reported in April 2019 that three more Type 055 destroyers had been launched and a total of eight were being planned for the first batch.

Just to keep things interesting, it soon became apparent that the hull numbers were not in chronological sequence. The Pennant Numbers are not painted on during construction or trials as the South Sea Fleet has a tradition to paint the number at the vessel's home port, not in the shipyard. Initial and early reports on ship names have also proven fairly unreliable.