Chinese commission new class of warships

ap on Yahoo ^ | 9/27/05 | AP -Shanghai

[NormsRevenge]

SHANGHAI, China - China's navy has commissioned the first in a new class of domestically designed and built warships, official media reported Tuesday.

The missile frigate Wenzhou, named after a port city in eastern China, entered service Monday at a ceremony attended by East China Fleet commander Zhao Guojun, according to a brief report on the official Wenzhou Newsnet.

The report gave no other details about the ship, but Western military experts have described it as the first in the 054 Ma'anshan class, representing China's most advanced missile frigates.

Along with superior electronics, anti-submarine capabilities and air defenses, the ships boast sloped, covered sides and a special exterior paint intended to make it more difficult to spot by radar, according to the reports.

The ships are designed to operate far out at sea, part of the People's Liberation Army's development of a "blue water" navy intended to assert Chinese claims to Taiwan and other territories and protect sea lanes transporting vital natural resources.

[NormsRevenge]

The ships are designed to operate far out at sea, part of the People's Liberation Army's development of a "blue water" navy intended to assert Chinese claims to Taiwan and other territories and protect sea lanes transporting vital natural resources.

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including the Panama Canal and the Straits of Hormuz, perhaps?

[NormsRevenge]

fyi

[highlymotivated]

including the Panama Canal...

THANK YOU Jimmy Karter!

[FearlessFreep]

maybe they can team up with the Mexican Navy.

[FearlessFreep]

Wonder if the words "Made in Hong Kong" are stamped on the hull?

[SouthernBoyupNorth]

Old news.... We have known about these ships for over a year and a half.... They are capable ships but ours are better... and thats just the facts...

[Mikey_1962]

How much of our stolen technology is on this class of ships?

[wallcrawlr]

??

[2banana]

Submariners just call this a "target"

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Anything about how these ships belong to the Chinese "Clinton" class of frigates in honor of the advanced technology he transferred to them?

[grey_whiskers]

I hope they are using pirated copies of Windows to run the weapons systems...

A couple of teenage hackers and we could get them to sink themselves with their own weapons.

[TChris]

...a new class of domestically designed copied and built warships...

[Red Badger]

No wonder the price of oil is so high now! With Chinese ships like these, they fill'em up and and hour later they are empty again!...........

[Disambiguator]

Someone needs to post that graphic of Bill Richardson in a drive-up window handing out hard drives.

[laotzu]

"The ships are designed to operate far out at sea.."

Now here's a novel concept, bespeaking an intrepid spirit.

If you've seen one navy warship operating atop the Great Wall, you've seen 'em all.

[b4its2late]

The Reds must have more ships than we do now, since we dropped so many during the 90's....

[vrwc0915]

Looks like they had peeling back a US carrier task force in mind with this class. Folks make no mistake the USN is the big stick in a strategic sense. The chicoms are planning on trying to displace the USA as the sole superpower. Our carrier forces are the non nuke deterrent, if they can be countered we loose a whole lot of options in the strategic sense. http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/surface/054.asp

[PeterFinn]

"The ships are designed to operate far out at sea"

Good. Then our fast attacks won't have to go so far to sink them.

[PeterFinn]

"I hope they are using pirated copies of Windows to run the weapons systems...
A couple of teenage hackers and we could get them to sink themselves with their own weapons."

It's Windows. The Chinese will be caught rebooting the ship when the first torpedo blows up under her keel.

[AppyPappy]

Let's see. An F-18 can carry 4 Harpoons or 8 decoys that look like Harpoons. I'd say 3 F-18's would send this thing to the bottom pretty easily.