Type 055 destroyer

The Type 055 destroyer is a type of guided missile destroyer developed in China for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). There are two versions of Type 055, the first one was a design only sample that was eventually cancelled, and recently, there is a new design using the same designation Type 055 according to many internet claims, which have yet to be verified by official / governmental / independent sources.

Proposed Type 055

The proposed Type 055 was first originated in the late 1960s order titled “Recommendations on Building Oceanic Escort Ships”, but progress was seriously delayed due to political turmoil in China at the time, namely, Cultural Revolution. It was not until more than half a decade later in 1976, the year Cultural Revolution ended, was the requirement of the ship finally completed and issued. At the time of its appearance until its final cancellation, Type 055 was the second air defense ship of PLAN, after Type 053K Jiangdong class frigate. The standard displacement of Type 055 design was in excess of 8000 tons.

Even as the requirement was completed, it was flawed with unrealistic standards that were way beyond the scientific, technical and industrial capability of China at the time, due to the influence of Cultural Revolution. For example, the sea-keeping requirement mandated that the ship should be able to navigate anywhere in the world except polar regions, but this conflicted with combat requirement: China lacked the capability to develop any multifunctional radar, so separate radars were needed for different tasks. Type 518 radar was needed for long range early warning / surveillance, Type 381 radar was needed for 3-D air search / track, and each gun and missile needed its own fire control radars. In addition, there was need for navigation, surface search, and helicopter control radars as well. Type 518 radar itself would effectively negate any possibility of meeting the sea-keeping requirement because its antenna of 8.5 meter diameter weighed 4.5 ton, and must be installed on a mast of at least 25 meters, thus severely restricting wind scale and sea state allowed for safe navigation of the ship. However, reducing the weight of radar antenna would lead to the great decrease in performance, thus not meeting the combat effectiveness requirement. The problem is further exasperated by the problem of the ship being top heavy: due to the fact each electronic system was single function only, numerous of them were needed to meet the original requirement, resulting in a total of 22 radars and 33 communication gears, which in addition to heavy weight, also generated the problem of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) problem, so bad was the EMC problem that the missile control system could not function properly when everything was turned on, potentially causing missiles to be accidentally launched.

After Cutural Revolution ended, design requirement of Type 055 completed during Cultural Revolution went through re-evaluation, as with most of projects of Cultural Revolution era, and problems revealed in the design requirement review caused the design requirement to be drastically modified, with requirement greatly scaled back. Modernization plan included adopting British subsystems including combat data system, Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles (SAM), and Rolls-Royce Olympus TM3B high-speed gas turbines propulsion system used on Type 42 destroyer. However, as with Type 051S destroyer, incorporation of British systems did not materialize, and just like Type 051S destroyer, Type 055 was also finally cancelled in the early 1980s, under the order of then commander of PLAN Liu Huaqing.

Modern Type 055

Since late 2012, Chinese internet website have circulated discussion of a new Type 055 destroyer designed in China as the successor of the highly successful Type 052D destroyer, using the same Type 055 designation.

Photos shown in early 2014 circulating on the Chinese website reveals that an engineering mockup was built in Wuhan, mainly used to test electronics, with a Type 346/348 series radar and an integrated mast similar to Advanced Enclosed Mast/Sensor on US ships. In the middle of the integrated mast, there is a X-band radar offers better resolution than the Type 346, which is important for target identification and discrimination (i.e. identifying fighter aircraft against decoys and jamming). Type 055 also have an L-band radar installed on the aft section of the ship similar to the British Type 45's S1850M system. Type 055 is expected to be armed with at least 96 cells of vertical launching system that can fire antiship missile (AShM), ASW missile, land-attack cruise missiles or SAMs. However, it’s not clear if the first three types of missiles will be housed in VLS because they can also be stored/launched in box-shaped or tube-shaped container/launchers. The following specification of modern Type 055 destroyer is speculative based on the Future Naval Systems whitepaper:

• Length (m): ~185
• Beam (m): ~23
• Draft (m): 3
• Full displacement (t): 12000-13000
• Speed (kt): 30+
• Main gun: Type H/PJ38 130 mm naval gun
• CIWS: Type 1130 11-barrel 30-mm gatling gun
• Long range SAM: HHQ-9B or later version in VLS (400+nmi Range)
• Short range SAM: HHQ-10 in 24-cell launcher (50+nmi Range)
• ASW Missile: CY-series
• Land attack cruise missile: YJ or CJ series (76 in VLS launchers)
• Helicopter: 1 or 2
• Data link: JSIDLS (Joint Service Integrated Data Link System, 全军综合数据链系统) series, the Chinese equivalent of Link 16.
• Sonar: Bow mounted and either ESS-1 type Variable Depth Sonar or H/SJG-206 series towed array sonar.