Us Navy Ship Number Increase Goal Announced

[tankerwanabe]

Is there enough man-power to crew the increase in ships?

[DB]

There won't be if you count the people employed now. It's not as if the military keeps people painting rocks and peeling potatoes waiting for a change of direction any more - that's conscription era stuff.

 

Whilst "enlisted" numbers won't be there, I think that they're much less important than the officer and senior NCO/Warrant officer numbers. You can't just make those up in a year or two, although I suppose it's possible that there may be a large number of people whose promotions are blocked due to lack of posts for them.

[Halidon]

So just how long does a change in fleet numbers (upwards) follow the decision to build up? In other words,m id the Obama administration actually decide to increase numbers, or did they inherit a decision made previously? (If it was a speed typical of the way the UK works, such a decision would have probably been made in the Reagan era to start having effect now).

It's not just the current size of the fleet at any given moment which determines the real-time health of the Navy. The type, age, and condition of the individual ships matter, as does what ships are about to be retired and which are on order/under construction at the moment. CVN-78, for example, has been built primarily during the Obama administration and won't be in-service before Trump takes office, but it was ordered during the Bush administration and the decisions about when and how to build it very much rest on the Bush DoD. The last of the Frigates retired while Obama was in office, but the decisions to de-fang them and to move forward without a direct replacement occurred in the early 2000s and 90s. Trump and whoever follows him (here's hoping anyway) will have ships ordered under Obama's watch entering the fleet, and will (hopefully) order ships their successors will inherit.

 

The Obama administration has set the goal for the final size of the fleet higher (twice, counting this new 355 report), ordered and constructed more ships, and has done a better job keeping the shipbuilding industry healthy than his two predecessors.

[JasonJ]

11 Ticonderogas to retire throughout the 2020s.

 

 

 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet will start losing some its biggest guns in 2020 at a rate of two per year.

In 2020, the cruisers Mobile Bay and Bunker Hill will reach their service life of 35 years and are slated for decommissioning. But despite the age of the hulls, some observers are loathe to see the cruisers go, especially given that there is no immediate replacement for the 567-foot ship that bristles with 122 vertical launch missile tubes and two 5-inch guns.

“I think the right idea is to put them into a [service Life Extension Program] and keep them in the fleet,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with the Center for a New American Security. “It’s cheaper to do that than a new build.

“Furthermore you have 122 VLS tubes in there, and if you are replacing these with the [Arleigh Burke-class destroyers] you get a 25 percent decrease in the number of cells. We really need those tubes. We need the mass — we need the capacity.”

According to the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Navy will continue to have between 98 and 100 large surface combatants in the fleet during the years the cruisers are decommissioning. The Navy is systematically putting its newest 11 cruisers in layup to modernize them and extend their service life into the late 2030s. But a decommissioning schedule obtained by Defense News shows the oldest 11 cruisers will be out of the fleet by the end of 2026.

The rest of the schedule is as follows: Antietam and Leyte Gulf in 2021; San Jacinto and Lake Champlain in 2022; Philippine Sea and Princeton in 2024; Normandy and Monterey in 2025; and Chancellorsville in 2026.

Bryan McGrath, an analyst and consultant who runs The FerryBridge Group, said decommissioning the cruisers would hurt the surface Navy and that putting them in a Service Life Extension Program is a better alternative.

“It is a sign of the Navy’s budget problem,” McGrath said. “In order to put forward a balanced program of modernization, maintenance, acquisition, personnel and everything else the Navy has to pay for: It’s not skin; it’s not fat; it’s not muscle; they’re cutting into bone now.”

 

“The administration can talk out of one side of its mouth about the need for a 350-ship Navy, and then out of the other side they are talking about mortgaging current capacity to meet present needs. It’s sad, its irresponsible and it needs to stop.”

The cruisers, however, were only planned for 35 years, and the ships in the fleet have been ridden hard for decades. The aluminum superstructure, for example, has constantly had cracking issues.

355 ships, missile tubes

What’s unclear is what effect decommissioning the oldest cruisers would have on the Navy’s stated, but unfunded, goal of 355 ships.

None of the Navy’s force structure assessments that get the fleet to 355 ships requires the service keeps the 11 oldest cruisers in the fleet past their service life date, according to a source knowledgeable of the Navy’s shipbuilding program and who spoke on background.

What is clear is that decommissioning cruisers has been politically tricky for the Navy for years.

In 2012 and in 2013, the Obama administration proposed decommissioning nine of the Navy’s cruisers as a cost-saving measure but was repeatedly blocked by Congress — an effort led by then-Rep. Randy Forbes, a Republican from Virginia. But the cruisers the Navy planned to decommission had about a decade of service life remaining, and the cruisers now being planned for decommissioning are all up against their sell-by dates.

The Navy is currently executing what’s known as the 2-4-6 plan, a compromise hashed out between Congress and the Navy to keep at least 11 cruisers in the fleet to run shotgun on the air defense of the 11 carriers in the fleet into the 2040s.

The 2-4-6 plan calls for two ships at a time to be sidelined for no longer than four years and that no more than six ships will be in this inactive status at one time.

In a statement to Defense News, the Navy said the current decommissioning plan abides by the congressionally mandated 2-4-6 plan and keeps the Navy within its budget.

“The cruiser modernization plan provides the most effective balance of war-fighting requirements, legislation and fiscal constraints,” said Lt. Seth Clarke, a Navy spokesman.

According to the schedule obtained by Defense News, the last cruiser, the Cape St. George, would leave the fleet in 2038, with 40 years in active service, accounting for the four-plus years it will have spent in what’s known has “phased modernization.”

As to the issue with reduced number of VLS tubes, a one-for-one swap of a cruiser with a new destroyer would reduce the Navy’s available VLS real estate by nearly 300 tubes. But what’s unclear is how, for example, the new Virginia Payload Module and a new guided-missile frigate program might offset the reduced number of cells currently being toted around by cruisers.

What is crystal clear is that there is no shortage of demand for the Navy’s VLS capability, especially as missions such as ballistic missile defense become increasingly important and put an ever-larger strain on the Navy’s surface ships.

The Navy currently has 34 ballistic missile defense-capable ships (32 if you subtract the two ships that are currently inoperable due to collisions over the summer). The Navy proposes to keep upgrading and extending the life of the destroyers in its inventory to cover its BMD missions, which can impact the Navy’s ability to use the ship in multiple roles because it has to stay in a certain location to ensure it can have a good shot at a ballistic missile shot by North Korea or Iran.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/10/09/the-us-navy-will-start-losing-its-largest-surface-combatants-in-2020/

[Nobu]

The Japanese Navy, reduced to the support/logistical mission in Japanese home waters. Literally carrying water for the USN.

 

From the Imperial Japanese Navy to the Herbivore Navy in 2.5 generations. It has come to this.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Nobu

[JasonJ]

The Japanese Navy, reduced to the support/logistical mission in Japanese home waters. Literally carrying water for the USN.

 

From the Imperial Japanese Navy to the Herbivore Navy in 2.5 generations. It has come to this.

 

ASW, BMD, and Soryu subs too you know.

[rmgill]

There won't be if you count the people employed now. It's not as if the military keeps people painting rocks and peeling potatoes waiting for a change of direction any more - that's conscription era stuff.

 

No, now they have Consideration for Others and SHARP training ad infinitum.

[Ken Estes]

Ho hum. It remains Amateur Hour in the Wrong Washington. Do try to sleep it off.

[ScottBrim]

Ho hum. It remains Amateur Hour in the Wrong Washington. Do try to sleep it off.

 

Ken, if the Cascadia Fault lets loose with The Big One at 02:00 in the morning, all you Puget Sounders will be having quite a few more headaches to deal with in addition to the ones you may have had before you turned in.

 

In other news, my youngest son has now been offered career status. My advice to him is that he hasn't yet done all the useful things he can do in the USMC, and that he should stay on through another contract while getting the kind of diverse experience that will serve him well whatever he decides to do next in life.

[futon]

WASHINGTON -- Struggling to keep up with China's naval shipbuilding spree, the U.S. is looking to reopen closed or inactive American shipyards with the help of Asian capital, engineers and shipbuilding expertise.

Last week, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro visited two shipyards in South Korea and one in Japan, pitching at each stop the idea of joining projects to revive dormant shipyards in the U.S.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who accompanied Del Toro to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' shipyard in Yokohama on Thursday, told Nikkei Asia that the visit had a dual purpose: to inspect the repair work conducted on the fleet replenishment oiler USNS Big Horn and to gauge the interest of the Japanese company in investing in a closed U.S. shipyard.

"There's a closed plant in Philadelphia. There's a closed Navy shipyard in Long Beach. And there are a couple of others," Emanuel said. "We wanted to see if Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies would be interested in potentially investing and reopening one of those shipyards and being part of building Navy, commercial and Coast Guard ships."

Emanuel is advocating for the use of Japanese private shipyards to conduct maintenance, repairs and overhauls of U.S. warships. Initially it would involve ships deployed to Japan, but eventually could be expanded to ships ported in the U.S.

He pointed to the strategic and industrial value of such a move. "It keeps ships in theater so that we don't lose time on the travel back and forth from the United States when it comes to repair work. The repair work being done here would relieve pressure on American shipyards so they are building new ships," he said.

But while quick repairs on damages suffered through deployment are allowed, like the Big Horn at Mitsubishi, U.S. law prohibits U.S.-based ships to undergo full-scale overhaul, repair or maintenance at a shipyard outside the U.S. or Guam. Changing such a law -- put in place to protect U.S. jobs -- may face headwinds, especially in an election year.

Meanwhile, Del Toro's proposal of reviving dormant shipyards in the U.S. with international investment would not require legislative measures and could be faster to implement.

Earlier in the week, Del Toro visited Hyundai Heavy Industries' shipyard in Ulsan, the largest shipyard in the world, and Hanwha Ocean's shipyard on Geoje Island, both on the southern end of the Korean Peninsula.

...

U.S. Navy ships are currently built by seven private shipbuilders, including two non-American players: Italy's Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin and Australia's Austal USA in Alabama. The involvement of two international shipbuilders serves as a precedent as the Asian players contemplate entry.

Maintenance of the most sensitive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines are conducted exclusively at four public naval shipyards -- in Virginia, Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

The U.S. previously had 13 public naval shipyards, but nine of them are currently inactive.

A number of the closed shipyards have been turned into national parks, container terminals or naval air stations. But some are seen to have the potential to be revived for shipbuilding or maintenance.

The need to revamp shipbuilding capacity stems from an alarm at China's rapid fleet expansion. Supported by the world's largest shipbuilding industry, China is expected to expand its battle force of over 370 ships and submarines today to 400 by 2025 and 440 by 2030.

The need to revamp shipbuilding capacity stems from an alarm at China's rapid fleet expansion. Supported by the world's largest shipbuilding industry, China is expected to expand its battle force of over 370 ships and submarines today to 400 by 2025 and 440 by 2030.

The current size of the U.S. Navy at just under 300 ships and submarines is already smaller than China's. The Navy leadership has called for a future fleet size of around 380, but the pace of construction pales in comparison. American shipyards, both private and public, have been struggling to hire enough workers, as the industry struggles to compete with other industries in pay.

The most serious bottleneck is with nuclear-powered submarines -- considered one of the few areas that the U.S. is known to have a distinct advantage over China's People's Liberation Army Navy. Nuclear-powered submarines have been procured in recent years at a rate of two per year, but the submarine construction industrial base is currently able to build them at a rate of about 1.2 to 1.3 boats per year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Similarly, the two producers of the Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyers, Bath Iron Works in Maine and Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi have been delivering 1.5 to 2 destroyers per year, compared to the desired rate of at least 2 per year.

...

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/U.S.-seeks-to-revive-idled-shipyards-with-help-of-Japan-South-Korea

[futon]

...

But, Cooper said, the opportunities for collaboration "have to be balanced" against the opposition by U.S. shipbuilders that are protected from foreign competitors by the Jones Act.

That act, passed in 1920 in response to German U-boat attacks during World War I that crippled the U.S. Merchant Marine, requires that any vessel carrying goods between two U.S. points be built, owned and crewed by Americans and registered in the U.S.

Terence Roehrig, a professor of national security at the Naval War College, said the U.S. faces a lack of "shipbuilding capacity that can crank out the needed number of vessels at a cost that can be sustained."

He continued via email on Tuesday: "It will be difficult for the U.S. to match the size of the PLAN but the United States retains advantages in technology and weapons systems along with certain classes of ships including aircraft carriers and submarines."

Roehrig added that South Korean and Japanese investment could help the U.S. increase its capacity to keep up with China.

The U.S. Navy currently operates public shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia; Portsmouth, Maine; Puget Sound, Washington; and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Seven public shipyards closed from the 1960s to 1990s.

Seven shipyards owned by four contractors in the U.S. build warships for the Navy while China operates more than 20 shipyards to support naval shipbuilding, according to the U.S. Naval Institute.

Funaiole said: "The gap in shipbuilding capabilities can be attributed to several factors, including China's focused efforts on accelerating military modernization through dual-use applications, strategic prioritization of naval expansion to assert its maritime interests, and effective utilization of its commercial industrial capacity."

He continued that the U.S. should warn its international partners about engaging with Chinese commercial shipbuilders.

"These entities often bolster China's military through its Military-Civil Fusion strategy," which aims to eliminate barriers among commercial, scientific and military sectors to enhance its defense.

https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-navy-looking-to-s-korean-japanese-shipbuilders-to-revive-american-shipyards/7518826.html

[Burncycle360]

Funny that they mention the source of the problem in the article. The US Navy could just petition for an end to, or reform of, the Jones Act and tap into existing Japanese and Korean shipbuilding capability today with ships built at a fraction of the cost to the taxpayer. This would have the same effect of expanding our capability to produce ships overnight without a decade of lead time required to build up the domestic infrastructure (which we should also do, but the narrative is the Chinese threat is imminent and there's no time for such things).   We can apparently only go the routes and speed at which we can ensure it's a lucrative endeavor for corporations, which leads me to believe they don't think the Chinese are all that big of a threat after all; like banks still offering 30 year home loans on beachfront property to wealthy politicians virtue signaling about sea levels rising.

People that use total number of ships to describe which Navy is winning is a big fat red flag, along the same lines of complaining about inequality.   It's an awful metric without context.

 

[Josh]

Certainly the Jones Act needs to be revisited. I'm not sure what the optimal situation would be - you certainly would not want to crush what little ship production actually is accomplished in the US. But clearly the Act has had the opposite of its intended effect at this point.

[Burncycle360]

Yep. The jones act was supposed to protect US industry and to maintain a robust merchant marine.

What does our industry and merchant marine look like today? 

Did the jones act work, as intended?  Self evidently not.  The answer is simple, on the military side the no brainer reform is this: As long as US shipyards are working to capacity, permit contracting out to allied shipyards overseas. Allow them to compete with each other for the contracts, with US inspectors ensuring compliance with regards to QA at every step.

In the time the constellation here at home is done building, you can have 3-4 delivered for the price of 2.  Not only does it save taxpayer money, it reduces the shortfall of hulls rapidly.  Of course GFE with regards to combat systems is going to still be overpriced because that has to be sourced here at home, but everything else can be had at a fraction of the time and price.

On the commercial side, the only downside is that the demand for truck driving careers is going to drop significantly. But the industry only became that large because of the jones act, so it was artificial to begin with, this is a corrective action and they'll adapt.  It's like ethanol subsidies -- it never panned out how the good idea fairies thought it would, and yet an entire industry sprung up around it... so now if you suggest getting rid of it, people will clamor and squeal.

Let them. When the dust settles we'll be better off, leaner, more capable... and all for less money.

 

Edited March 20, 2024 by Burncycle360

[Josh]

It might still behoove the U.S. to limit military production to in house or specific allied projects based here. Outside of that, it might be best to scrap the Jones Act altogether.

[futon]

At the time of the start of the thread, Dec 2016, the modern destroyer PLAN fleet was at.. 

Six Type 52Cs in service (the last 4 came out at brisk production rate for all destroyers that started around 2012). Today.. just those six. 

Around twelve total Type 52Ds accounted for of which five were in service (the other seven at various stages.. parts assembly in dry dock, launched and testing out, or final add on of fittings). Today.. a total of 31 or 32 accounted for with 25 in service.

Only word of Type 55 destroyer class in the works but no actual confirmable hull. Today.. eleven total is accounted for, with eight in service. 

Essentially at the time this thread was started, the total amount of  modern destroyers in service with the PLAN was eleven. Today it's thirty-nine. Two years from now, the currently other accountable 8 or so are firmly added on.. to become about forty-seven. And surely new emerging accountable ones still emerge at that point.

Edited March 20, 2024 by futon

[Ol Paint]

7 hours ago, Burncycle360 said:

Funny that they mention the source of the problem in the article. The US Navy could just petition for an end to, or reform of, the Jones Act and tap into existing Japanese and Korean shipbuilding capability today with ships built at a fraction of the cost to the taxpayer. This would have the same effect of expanding our capability to produce ships overnight without a decade of lead time required to build up the domestic infrastructure (which we should also do, but the narrative is the Chinese threat is imminent and there's no time for such things).   We can apparently only go the routes and speed at which we can ensure it's a lucrative endeavor for corporations, which leads me to believe they don't think the Chinese are all that big of a threat after all; like banks still offering 30 year home loans on beachfront property to wealthy politicians virtue signaling about sea levels rising.

People that use total number of ships to describe which Navy is winning is a big fat red flag, along the same lines of complaining about inequality.   It's an awful metric without context.

 

Once again, the Jones Act has nothing to do with the problem.  The Jones Act only controls shipping internally to the United  States.  It has ZERO effect on transoceanic shipping capacity and capability.  There are already US flag ships that were built overseas. 

Doug

[Burncycle360]

Quote

Once again, the Jones Act has nothing to do with the problem.

Once again, it's protectionist garbage that doesn't even do that right.
 

[Ol Paint]

Let's look at the construction records as published on the late Tim Colton's website.

Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula:

Between 1971 and 1980, the yard delivered 4 product carriers, 4 SSNs, 4 ammunition ships, 7 C6 freighters, 5 LHAs, 30 DD-963, and one cement barge.  56 hulls @ 676,626 lightship tons.

Between 1981 and 1990, the yard delivered 1 LHD, 2 battleships (that we won’t count), 17 drilling rigs, 13 CG-47s, 4 DDG-993s, and 1 DD-997.  38 hulls @ 260,478, not counting the reactivation of the battleships.

Between 1991 and 2000, the shipyard delivered 6 CG-47, 13 DDG-51, 3 Sa’ar Corvettes, 14 OSVs, 1 liftboat,  5 LHD, and 41 barges.  83 hulls @ 348,963 lightship tons

Between 2001 and 2010, the shipyard delivered 14 DDG-51, 1 LHD, 1 LHA, most of one cruise ship, 1 LPD-17, and two National Security Cutters.   20 ships @ 263,000 lightship tons

Between 2011 and 2020, this yard delivered 19 ships @ 263,000 lightship tons, including 7 National Security Cutters, 6 LPD-17 class, 2 LHA-6 class and 4 DDG-51 class. 

Same yard, same acreage.  The Jones Act was in place for all of this.  The construction and operating differential subsidies went away at the end of the 1970s with Reagan, killing the US commercial shipbuilding industry.

 

NASSCO

1971-1980            39 hulls 1,228,364 tons (mixed gross & deadweight)

1981-1990            22 hulls @ 710,962 tons (mixed gross & deadweight)

1991-2000            13 hulls @ 390,473 tons (mixed gross & deadweight)

2001-2010            25 hulls @ 926,294 tons (mixed gross & deadweight)

2011-2020            19 hulls @ 576,201 tons (mixed gross & deadweight)

NASSCO benefited from the OPA90 phaseout, which required replacement of the single-hull tanker fleet in the late 90s and early 2000s.

 

Electric Boat

1971-1980            12 hulls @ 64,357 tons

1981-1990            32 hulls @ 315,622 tons

1991-2000            16 hulls @ 175,258 tons

2001-2010            5 hulls @ 43,339 tons

2011-2020            5 hulls @ 39,000 tons

Electric Boat is a really good example--they ramped up considerably for a period of 20 years, then got hit by the post Cold War drawdown moreso than some of the other, more diversified builders.  There's noises being made about the need to get production of Virginias up to 2 per year.  We seem to forget that the program actually achieved that for a while until we quit buying them at that rate.

Bath Iron Works

1971-1980            7 hulls @ 62,776 tons

1981-1990            25 hulls @ 99,235 tons

1991-2000            21 hulls @ 182,269 tons

2001-2010            6 hulls @ 55,428 tons

2011-2020            6 hulls @ 64,030 tons

I didn't run numbers for Newport News, but I can remember when we went from building carriers on 5 year intervals to 8 years to 10 years to whatever schedule the Ford-class thinks it is on. 

In every case, these yards have previously demonstrated the capacity to push through more tonnage than they currently are.  But private yards aren't going to put capacity online (whether it's hiring personnel or investing in tooling and buildings) if the orders aren't there to support the investment. 

41 minutes ago, Burncycle360 said:

Once again, it's protectionist garbage that doesn't even do that right.
 

The Jones Act, and other protectionist legislation is the only reason we even have a rump of an industry left in this country.  The countries you and Josh want to go running to have been heavily subsidizing their shipbuilding industries for decades while the globalist free trade fools pretend the difference is free market competition.  And the geniuses in the current administration think the solution to our problems is to go get those subsidized companies to come here to open additional facilities, probably with more US taxpayer money, to further harm our existing shipbuilders.  Ask Aker how that turned out.

What idiocy.

Doug

 

Edited March 21, 2024 by Ol Paint
Extraneous carriage return.

[Burncycle360]

Quote

The Jones Act, and other protectionist legislation is the only reason we even have a rump of an industry left in this country. 

 

Nonsense.

Critical infrastructure and skill surety doesn't require the Jones Act, regular subsidies will work just fine if it's a national security priority... and I agree maintaining a baseline of capability critical to national defense is a priority and worthy of subsidies despite being non-competitive, just not to the exclusion of outside options if our defense needs require a surge of production that our industry cannot handle.  I also agree with you that it's a shame we've let our industry get in this bad of shape, but note that it occurred despite the Jones Act, it didn't just swoop in as if to save what was left just in the nick of time, it's been around since 1920.  The current sad state of our industry is a direct result of the incentive structures policymakers have put into place, to include the Jones Act. It's emergently optimized for turning taxpayer dollars into contractor profits, not delivering goods. So year after year, we get less and less at greater and greater cost, and that might be cute when we weren't $34 trillion in debt, but it ain't now.

But let's play devils advocate and say you're right.  How does my reform suggestion above ("As long as US shipyards are working to capacity...") in ANY way compromise the rump that remains, precisely?

It doesn't. And it sounds like you'd rather we go without than get the ships in a way you detest.  Frankly, if how items are procured is more important than actually procuring them when there are alternative options on the table that could be pursued with the stroke of a pen, then what that tells me is that China isn't really the threat they say it is, it's merely a pretense for opportunistic taxpayer milking, and they can sod off with the fearmongering.

And if China IS the threat they say it is, then our options are to spend trillions of dollars and decades to expand infrastructure (which they claim there's no time for), or swallow our pride, tap into available resources that are our allies, and actually get some ships delivered in numbers, in time, and for a fraction of the price.  Meantime, US shipyards still have all the low-rate production makework welfare they can stomach, rump intact. There's no reason not to acknowledge this avenue would represent some rare progress in defense procurement.

 

Edited March 21, 2024 by Burncycle360

[futon]

Japanese ship builders started receiving gov assisstance only since 2021.

https://sp.m.jiji.com/english/show/12249

Prior that, no one cared of Japanese complaints.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2041X4/

[Josh]

8 hours ago, futon said:

At the time of the start of the thread, Dec 2016, the modern destroyer PLAN fleet was at.. 

Six Type 52Cs in service (the last 4 came out at brisk production rate for all destroyers that started around 2012). Today.. just those six. 

Around twelve total Type 52Ds accounted for of which five were in service (the other seven at various stages.. parts assembly in dry dock, launched and testing out, or final add on of fittings). Today.. a total of 31 or 32 accounted for with 25 in service.

Only word of Type 55 destroyer class in the works but no actual confirmable hull. Today.. eleven total is accounted for, with eight in service. 

Essentially at the time this thread was started, the total amount of  modern destroyers in service with the PLAN was eleven. Today it's thirty-nine. Two years from now, the currently other accountable 8 or so are firmly added on.. to become about forty-seven. And surely new emerging accountable ones still emerge at that point.

I personally think there's a good chance wars will not be won by how many ships you have.

If you run the statistics of how many satellites the PRC can orbit vs the US, and how many the US is about to orbit, I think one can make a case that China is losing the space production fight at least as hard as the US is losing ship production. And it only takes a ~1$ million cruise missile to kill a ship, but killing a few satellites takes a lot more. I would argue that if China wants to win this fight, it has to do so in the next 4-5 years before the US has ubiquitous space communications and surveillance. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

There is an inherent problem with the Chinese building a fleet so fast, the same on the Americans are encountering. It looks good now, wait till 30 years down the line when entire batches of ships are going out of service at the same time. The Americans faced that problem themselves twice, both in the 1970's and Today. Cause no end of turmoil, particularly if for whatever reasons some shipyards have converted over to civilian production, or just went out of business.

[futon]

https://spacenews.com/first-satellite-for-chinese-g60-megaconstellation-rolls-off-assembly-line/

[Josh]

1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

There is an inherent problem with the Chinese building a fleet so fast, the same on the Americans are encountering. It looks good now, wait till 30 years down the line when entire batches of ships are going out of service at the same time. The Americans faced that problem themselves twice, both in the 1970's and Today. Cause no end of turmoil, particularly if for whatever reasons some shipyards have converted over to civilian production, or just went out of business.

I suspect if winning wars is won by having more warships, the Chinese will still be winning in 30 years. I'm just not convinced that is the case.