Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

List of ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy
Remove ads

The ship types in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) include aircraft carriers, submarines, (both nuclear and conventional), amphibious transport docks, landing ships, tank, landing ships, medium, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, missile boats, submarine chasers, gunboats, mine countermeasures vessels, replenishment oilers and the various auxiliaries.

Thumb
A Shenyang J-15 carrier-based fighter aircraft is taking off from Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong (CV-17)
Thumb
Type 075 landing helicopter dock
Thumb
Type 055 class destroyer Nanchang in April 2021
Thumb
Type 903A replenishment ship

All ships and submarines currently in commission with the Navy were built in China, with the exception of Sovremenny-class destroyers, Kilo-class submarines and aircraft carrier Liaoning, as these vessels originated from either Russia or Ukraine.

Remove ads

Ship naming conventions

Ships of PLAN are named per Naval Vessels Naming Regulation (《海军舰艇命名条例》)[1] that was first issued by the Central Military Commission (CMC) on November 3, 1978, and subsequently revised July 7, 1986.[1] The convention for naming naval ships is as follows;[2]

Remove ads

Active ships

Summarize
Perspective

There are approximately 500 vessels listed here that constitute the active fleet. Not included here are the various auxiliary ships that together number approximately 230.

* Figure includes both coastal and ocean-going auxiliaries, from tugboats to hospital ships. Not counted towards total number of active ships.

The tables below list the various ships according to their class and date of commission. The newest class of ship is listed first, with proceeding classes listed afterwards, arranged in order of age. Column headings include: "Type" (i.e. Chinese class designation), the types "NATO designation", the ships "Pennant number" (or hull number), the ships name in English and Chinese (Han 中文), ships "Displacement" in tonnes, and the "Fleet" in which it serves (e.g. North Sea Fleet, South Sea Fleet and East Sea Fleet).

The "Status" column is colour coded, green indicates relatively new and modern classes in service, while red indicates obsolescence and being in the process of decommissioning as newer types are brought into service. A third colour, blue, specifically indicates a ship which is not yet in commission, but has been launched and is in the final stages of construction, or has been handed over for sea trials. Any ships with a status colour of blue is not yet counted towards the total number of active ships.

Remove ads

Submarines

Nuclear ballistic missile submarines

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Conventional ballistic missile submarines

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Nuclear attack submarines

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Conventional attack submarines

More information Type, NATO designation ...
Remove ads

Surface ships

Summarize
Perspective

Principal surface combatants

Aircraft carriers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Amphibious assault ships (also known as landing helicopter docks)

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Destroyers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Frigates

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Corvettes

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Coastal warfare vessels

Missile boats, submarine chasers and gunboats

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Amphibious warfare ships

Major amphibious warfare vessels (excluding amphibious assault ships)

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Minor amphibious warfare crafts

List of active People's Liberation Army Navy landing craft

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Mine warfare vessels

In addition to units in active service, PLAN also keeps a large number (up to several hundreds) of minesweepers in operational reserve,[9] and regularly conducts minecountermeasure exercises.[10]

More information Type, NATO designation ...
Remove ads

Auxiliaries

Summarize
Perspective

Unlike warships of PLAN that are named per Naval Vessels Naming Regulation which many PLAN auxiliaries do not follow, but instead, they are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by a two or three-digit number. The first Chinese character denotes which Chinese fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong, 东) for East Sea Fleet, North (Bei, 北) for North Sea Fleet, and South (Nan, 南) for South Sea Fleet. The second Chinese character is for hull classification, such as Barge (Bo, 驳) for barge, Survey (Ce, 测) for survey vessel, Oil (You, 油) for oil tanker, Repair (Xiu, 修) for repair ship, Rescue (Jiu, 救) for rescue ship, Transport (Yun, 运) for transport & cargo ship, Tuo (tug, 拖) for tugboat, Water (Shui, 水) for water tanker, etc. When auxiliaries are reassigned to a different fleet, their pennant number would change accordingly. Some PLAN naval auxiliaries perform multiple functions and thus are referenced multiple times differently under various hull classifications. Furthermore, when PLAN auxiliaries are tasked to perform certain civilian missions such as in support of civilian research or construction projects, they are sometimes temporarily assigned different pennant numbers for the duration of those missions, thus making the accurate assessment of PLAN auxiliary fleet rather difficult.

In addition, some PLAN auxiliaries especially research vessels are jointly funded by other civilian agencies of Chinese government, and frequently conduct missions for these civilian agencies/departments, just like the way Protezione Civile funded Italian San Giorgio-class amphibious transport dock of the Italian navy, and thus also performs disaster relief missions in addition to military operations.[11] When these jointly owned and/or funded PLAN naval auxiliaries are subject to civilian agencies/departments & perform missions for them, they are often assigned a different pennant number & name, just as in some cases of PLAN naval auxiliaries are sometimes assigned different pennant numbers when performing certain civilian missions, thus making the accurate count of the PLAN auxiliary fleet even more complicated and difficult. Therefore, list provided here is seldom up-to-date. For a complete list of auxiliary vessels currently in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy please see the List of PLAN Auxiliaries.(Note that it is a work in progress and often may not yet be complete.)

Ammunition ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Buoy tenders

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Cable layers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Cargo ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Crane ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Degaussing/deperming ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Diving support vessels

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Dredgers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Engineering Ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Environmental research ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Fleet replenishment

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Floating pile drivers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

General purpose research ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Hospital Ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Hydrographic survey ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Icebreakers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Museum ships

Museum ships only include those owned by PLAN/People's Liberation Army (PLA)/Chinese Ministry of Defense (CMoD) and thus still on Chinese naval registry, but do not include ships stricken from Chinese naval registry, such as those sold/transferred to local governments and private hands.

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Oceanographic research ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Oceanographic surveillance ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Personnel transports

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Range support & target ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Repair ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Rescue and salvage ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Spy ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Submarine support ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Submersibles

Most submersibles, especially bathyscaphes are civilian agencies owned but also carry out PLAN missions, while some are jointly owned/funded and operated by Chinese military and civilian agencies.

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Tankers

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Technical research ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Torpedo trials crafts

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Tracking ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Training ships

In addition to regular training ships, some retired warships are also converted as stationary training facilities at various military academies for active use, and thus remain on Chinese naval registry.

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Tugs

More information Type, NATO designation ...

UAV motherships

More information Type, NATO designation ...

Unmanned surface vehicles (USV)

Just like most Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)s are micro-UAVs, majority of Chinese USVs are micro USVs. For better efficiency, most USVs used by PLAN are owned by Chinese civilian governmental agencies or private firms contracted by PLAN to perform various logistic tasks such as maintenance, surveying and research missions.

More information Type, Pennant No. ...

Unmanned underwater vehicle

More information Type, Pennant No. ...

Weapon trials ships

More information Type, NATO designation ...
Remove ads

Decommissioned ships

Summarize
Perspective

Decommissioned ships of PLAN only include those with every ship of the class has been struck from the Chinese naval registry, but do not include those classes with ships retired from frontline service and converted to auxiliaries, and thus still commissioned and thus remain on the Chinese naval registry.

Submarines

Principal surface combatants

Coastal & riverine warfare vessels

  • The majority of Type 037IG missile boats(except for Laixi, Qufu and Shouguang) were decommissioned; two Type 037IGs, the Yuqing[41] and the Shanghang[42] were preserved as museum ships.

Amphibious warfare ships

Mine warfare vessels

Remove ads

See also

Remove ads

Notes

  1. Displacement when dived.

References

Bibliography

Further reading

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads