The United States Navy (USN) has recently awarded the contract for its future frigate project – FFG(X) – to the Italian company Fincantieri, adopting their FREMM frigate design, outfitted with various U.S. developed sensors and weapons systems. The FFG(X) will be a much-needed warship for the USN, balancing cost with capable and proven subsystems, and will help to augment the USN's current surface combatant roster when the first ship enters service, possibly around 2027.
With the USN's future frigate path more or less set for the next decade, it is a good time to review where the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sits with its own frigate class of warship. This article will briefly consider the current state of the PLAN's primary frigate fleet and summarize current rumors and information for its upcoming frigate trajectory.
Whispers of a Type 054A successor
The Type 054A class frigate was first launched in 2006 and commissioned in early 2008, and the 30th and final vessel was launched in mid 2018 and commissioned in early 2019, making for 30 such frigates commissioned over the course of 10 years. For much of the 2010s, the 054A class served as the PLAN's workhorse surface combatant, offering a good combination of acceptable combat capability and blue water capability, while serving in increasingly significant numbers. Four 054A derivatives, called 054APs, are currently being produced for export to Pakistan, and are likely to see certain subsystem modifications from the PLAN's current in-service 054As.
It is only with the large-scale production of the 052D destroyers (likely to end at about 25 ships) that the PLAN's 054A fleet will begin to be matched by a similar number of modern, larger, and more capable destroyers.
However, the end of 054A production for the PLAN had been long rumored to be followed by a successor design to the 054A, sometimes called 054B, sometimes called 057. As of early mid 2020, various Chinese PLA watchers have begun to report rumors that an 054A successor frigate could be expected to emerge within the next few years. The prospect of a successor class to the 054A is an important development to watch, as the rather fast production rate of the 054A and its respectable anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare (AAW, ASW, ASuW respectively) capabilities provided the PLAN with its first true mass-produced modern surface combatant.
For the purposes of this article, the future frigate will be referred to as Type 054B, which appears to be the consensus designation at this present moment in time.
Mission Requirements
In many ways, the Type 054A offered an exceptional balance of capability, range, cost, numbers, and technological maturity for the PLAN and the Chinese shipbuilding industry of the time, and fit the roles of a frigate within the overall fleet structure quite comfortably. The 054A was well suited to conduct blue water missions and conduct low and medium intensity missions independently as well contribute to higher intensity missions alongside more advanced combatants and task forces. The 054B is likely to aim for a similar capability profile for the PLAN fleet structure of the 2020s and beyond.
For AAW missions, the 054B will likely aim to achieve at least medium-range air defense, with potential for long-range air defense, and also with an emphasis to defend against small- to medium-scale saturation strikes, preferably with a way to balance cost effectiveness and increased sensor range and radar horizon. The 054B will likely seek to enhance the 054A's ASW mission as well, by integrating more modern ASW sensors as well as adopting a more capable ASW helicopter (namely the Z-20F helicopter), and new propulsion systems are expected to be quieter as well. The ASuW mission will likely leverage modern but existing weapons systems that have been fielded such as the YJ-18 or YJ-12 anti-ship missile (AShM), which is substantially more capable than the 054A's YJ-83.
The 054B is also likely to enjoy improvements in speed, range, and endurance compared to the 054A. In terms of speed, one of the most consistently rumored goals is to achieve greater speeds than the 054A's top speed of about 27 knots, for the purposes of keeping up with a carrier strike group as well as to chase hostile nuclear submarines.
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