China begins construction of another large ship, probably a landing ship
Online images and social media posts by workers at China's top shipbuilder show the country is likely building a next-generation amphibious assault dock equipped with an advanced electromagnetic aircraft launch system, analysts said. This comes just a few days after the news that the new Fujian superaircraft carrier is ready for sea trials.
On Sunday, workers at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard , a Shanghai-based subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), posted a photo on the social media platform Weibo – China's equivalent of Twitter or themselves as they celebrated finishing pouring the floor of a new dry dock at the shipyard on Changxing Island.
The photo showed workers holding a banner marking the completion of the engineering work, but did not specify the date.
According to Lu Li-shih, a former instructor at the Taiwanese Naval Academy in Kaohsiung, progress in building the new dry dock suggests that China is pushing ahead with the construction of a giant new warship, and that ship will most likely be the Type 076 assault dock.
Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard specializes in developing and building amphibious warships for the Chinese Navy. It built all 10 active Type 071 amphibious transport docks and the four advanced Type 075 helicopter landing (LHD) docks. The latest Tipo 075 is almost ready to be launched.
The Type 075, which has a displacement of nearly 40,000 tons, is slightly smaller than the U.S. Navy's Tarawa- and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships. It is, however, a significant upgrade over its predecessor, the 25,000-ton Type 071.
The Type 076, which will be similar in size to the Type 075, is expected to be equipped with the most advanced type of electromagnetic launch system – the technology used on the aircraft carrier Fujian – but the catapult system will be used primarily for vehicle launches unmanned combat aircraft (UCAV), according to Beijing naval expert Li Jie.
The new class of amphibious assault ships is also expected to be larger than similar American ships. The armament will be combined from both fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and drones of various types, both reconnaissance and attack. Like their American equivalents, this new class of ships will be able to operate both as support for landing activities and as a sort of aircraft carrier suitable for both fixed-wing and vertical take-off aircraft.
In the USA, the Tarawa classes can operate vertical take-off aircraft, such as the F 35B, successors to the Harrier II. In China there will probably be a focus on the use of drones and some fixed-wing aircraft and STOL take-offs. At the same time, these ships constitute a direct threat to Taiwan on the one hand, but on the other they are a threat to any country in the area. These ships, with the new supercarrier, constitute a formidable naval group that could intervene in any island from Japan to the Philippines to Guam.
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The article China begins construction of another large ship, probably a landing ship comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-cina-inizia-la-costruzione-di-unaltra-grande-nave-probabilmente-da-sbarco/ on Fri, 15 Sep 2023 10:30:23 +0000.