China Defense Blog: Counting Down the PLAN's Kilo Class

Photos out of China today show what appears to be the second of the PLAN's two original Project 636 submarines, ordered in 1997, making its way toward the Mawei Shipyard waterfront in Fuzhou as a future museum ship. The first Project 636 already ended up in Guangdong. At this point, both of the original 636s are doing what they were ultimately brought to China for: serving as atmospheric backdrops for military fiction writers and tourists looking for a submarine selfie.

"The novel concerns an attempt by the People's Republic of China to obtain a fleet of Kilo-class submarines from Russia, and a series of covert operations carried out by the United States Navy using a Los Angeles-class submarine and Navy SEALs in order to prevent the Chinese from receiving the new boats. The submarines are wanted by China because their ability to operate silently at low speed would make it possible to dominate the Taiwanese Strait even against US Naval opposition. The novel is set in the United States, Russia, China, Taiwan and the Southern Ocean Kerguelen Islands." (Link)

Back to topic:

Back in March, I blogged that Kilo 877EKM pennant 365 had already been decommissioned and pointed out how the boat underwent extensive modernization during its service life, including the replacement of Russian subsystems with Chinese communications and electrical equipment, along with installation of the H/ZQQ-5 photoelectric mast. The imported platforms rarely stay purely imported for long in China. If a subsystem can be replaced with a domestic equivalent, eventually it usually is.

That gives us three confirmed retirements from China's total Kilo acquisition:

2 Project 877EKM boats (ordered 1993)
2 Project 636 boats (ordered 1997)
8 Project 636M Improved Kilo boats (ordered 2002)

Three boats down, nine to go. For a class that once represented the cutting edge of the PLAN's underwater force, the retirement process seems to be gathering momentum. The Kilos are slowly losing weight in the fleet structure (Kilo pun, inserted, ha)

The retirement of these boats highlights something that often gets lost in discussions about hardware. The PLA increasingly evaluates platforms not as individual weapons, but as nodes inside a larger combat system. A submarine, destroyer, aircraft, or missile battery is valuable to the extent that it contributes to an integrated kill chain. The platform itself is becoming secondary.

The modern PLAN fights as a strike package.

A submarine is not simply a submarine. It is a sensor and shooter connected to satellites, maritime patrol aircraft, over-the-horizon radars, unmanned systems, shore commands, and surface combatants. The value of the platform lies in how effectively it can exchange data, receive targeting information, and contribute to the wider network.

This is where many of the older Russian-origin systems begin to run into problems.

Historically, if the PLAN can retrofit a platform with domestic weapons, sensors, communications gear, combat management systems, and C4ISR architecture, it will find a way to keep it around. The PLA has never been known for discarding useful hardware before extracting every last bit of value from it. There are many blog post on this very topic here

On paper, the Project 877EKM and 636 are not particularly old submarines. Many navies around the world would happily operate boats of similar vintage after a life-extension refit. The issue may be less about hull age and more about whether the platform remains worth integrating into the PLAN's evolving combat ecosystem.

Simply put, not every platform is worth dragging into the future.

Another data point is China's handling of retired Ming-class submarines. Rather than scrapping them, the PLAN transferred two Type 035G Ming-class boats to Bangladesh and one Type 035B Ming-class boat to Myanmar.

On paper, the Kilo is clearly the superior submarine. But from the perspective of Bangladesh or Myanmar, there is an argument that a former PLAN Ming may actually be easier to operate than a second-hand PLAN Kilo. The Ming sits entirely within a Chinese logistics, training, maintenance, and support ecosystem. The Kilo may be more capable, but it remains fundamentally Russian in origin, with all the associated sustainment challenges that come with it.

Which raises an interesting question: why haven't we seen retired PLAN Kilos exported the way the Ming-class boats were?

One possibility is simply that they are not attractive enough. Another is that they are too complicated to support outside of the PLAN. A third possibility is legal rather than technical.

Most modern arms sales contracts contain end-user and third-party transfer restrictions that prevent a buyer from reselling military equipment without the original supplier's consent. That would mean China could not simply pass a Kilo submarine to another customer without Russian approval.

I went looking for details on the original Sino-Russian Kilo contracts and found nothing publicly available that addresses this question. That doesn't prove such restrictions exist, but it does leave open the possibility that Moscow still has a say regarding any future re-export.

For now, the evidence suggests that retired PLAN Kilos are heading to museums rather than foreign navies.

And perhaps that tells us something important. The Kilos were purchased as an emergency capability during a period when China's indigenous submarine programs were struggling. They filled the gap, provided valuable operational experience, and likely influenced later Chinese submarine development. But in today's PLAN, platforms increasingly live or die based on how well they fit the network.

A Kilo operating alone is still a capable submarine. A Kilo that cannot fully participate in the PLAN's integrated combat architecture is just another aging platform taking up pier space.

That's a very different calculation, I think.

Wednesday, March 04, 2026

Kilo Class, Boat 365

Kilo 877EKM pennant 365 was imported from Russia, arrived in 1995, and decommissioned in 2021. During her service life she saw relatively limited operational use, spending long periods undergoing refits. One major focus of these refits was the integration of Chinese‑made communication and electrical subsystems. A notable example is the installation of the H/ZQQ‑5 photoelectric mast, which replaced the traditional optical periscopes originally fitted on Project 877 boats. Later variants of the improved Kilo class (Project 636.3) are built with modern photoelectric masts from the outset. Bonus photo of PLAN's encrypted communication system

Much like the PLAAF, the PLAN consistently prioritizes domestic subsystems over imported ones, even on foreign‑built platforms.

Encrypted communication system

Friday, June 19, 2020

Photos of the day: Sino-ized Sovremenny-class destroyer on patrol.

First pair commissioned into the ~~PLAN~~ China Navy in December 1999 and November 2000. After a prolonged period of midlife upgrade, they are now back into 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, Eastern Theater Command Navy's orbat.

They ripped out everything - including the kitchen sink - out, leaving only the AK-130 automatic naval gun mounts in place. Type54A's electronic warfare and radar suites are clearly visible