As many PLA watchers following Chinese social media have already noticed, photos have surfaced (pun, yes) of a second UUV mothership under construction in Guangzhou. The vessel appears to be in a fairly advanced stage of construction. From the available images (see below), with temporary supports and scaffolding still visible around the bridge structure, it is clearly not the same design as the first UUV mothership previously spotted in Shanghai.
Others have already written good technical analyses of the two vessels. My interest is less about the ships themselves and more about what they tell us about how the PLA approaches procurement and innovation.
Wait a minute, did I just say "innovation"? If some YouTubers are to be believed, China is incapable of innovation and does nothing but copy foreign designs. They have their arguments, of course. Anyway, moving on.
One thing I have written about before is that defense procurement is not just about building the best platform. It is usually a balance between three factors:
- Performance: Does it meet the requirement?
- Cost: What does it cost to buy and sustain?
- Scale: How many can be built, and how quickly?
Performance gets the headlines. Cost gets the finance department's attention. Scale wins wars.
The UUV mothership program appears to fit neatly into this framework.
Some observers have argued that the PLAN often builds one or two "working prototypes" before committing to large-scale production. The Type 054 frigate program is a good example. Only two original Type 054s were built before the far more numerous Type 054A entered service.
The Type 052C program followed a similar path. The lead pair, 170 Lanzhou and 171 Haikou, were commissioned in 2004 and 2005. After several years of operational experience and refinement, additional ships followed before the PLAN transitioned to the Type 052D, a class that has since grown into a fleet of more than 35 hulls with more still under construction.
The recently observed specialized landing barges believed to support cross-strait operations appear to follow the same logic. Prototype, test, refine, then scale.
Seen through that lens, the appearance of two different UUV mothership designs may not be particularly surprising.
In fact, it resembles a pattern seen elsewhere in Chinese procurement.
Earlier this month, StarAir's SA218 conducted its maiden flight and emerged as one of several contenders for the PLA's future basic trainer requirement, intended to replace the aging CJ-6. Alongside competitors such as the TA-20, the program illustrates how China is often willing to let multiple organizations pursue parallel solutions to a common requirement.
At first glance, this resembles the old Soviet design bureau system, where organizations such as MiG and Sukhoi competed for military contracts. The comparison works only up to a point. Modern Chinese firms such as Chengdu, Shenyang, and other AVIC subsidiaries are not merely design bureaus. Many are vertically integrated organizations capable of handling design, testing, development, and manufacturing under the same corporate structure.
The result is competition, but competition within a highly coordinated industrial system.
That distinction matters.
If China's EV industry, drone industry, and shipbuilding sector have demonstrated anything over the past decade, it is that once a design is considered mature, Chinese industry can often scale production very rapidly. In that environment, running multiple prototypes in parallel may not be viewed as wasteful. It may simply be viewed as a faster way to identify the best solution.
This is where I think some outside observers miss part of the picture.
A common criticism is that building two different UUV motherships simultaneously wastes resources. That's a fair argument. If shipbuilding capacity is constrained, parallel development can certainly appear inefficient.
However, if you possess the world's largest shipbuilding industry, massive civilian construction capacity, and extensive supplier networks, the calculations change. The cost of building two prototypes may be relatively small compared to the value of accelerating the learning process.
The same thinking can be seen in other sectors. China's civilian automotive industry supports military vehicle programs such as the Mengshi family. Its commercial drone ecosystem provides technologies and expertise useful for military UAV development. Its commercial shipyards contribute directly to naval construction. The broader concept is often described as Military-Civil Fusion, where civilian and military industries share parts of the same industrial ecosystem.
Whether every aspect of that strategy succeeds is open to debate. China has had its share of procurement problems, cost overruns, and corruption cases. No defense acquisition system is immune from bureaucracy.
Still, the appearance of two different UUV motherships under construction serves as another reminder that China's procurement process is often about more than just building a single platform. It is about finding the balance between performance, cost, and scale.
The Shanghai and Guangzhou UUV motherships may ultimately prove to be competing concepts, complementary concepts, or simply steps on the road to a future production design. Regardless of the outcome, they fit a pattern that has become increasingly familiar: let multiple ideas compete, iterate quickly, and once a winner emerges, leverage China's industrial base to produce it at scale.
As the old saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. Performance, cost, and scale are not competing ideas. They are simply three parts of the same equation.
Friday, July 25, 2025
PLA Landing Barge Photos Of The Day: East Engineering 403
At last, a clear image of the landing barge bearing the pennant 'East Engineering 403.' According to PLAN naming conventions, 'East' clearly denotes she as organic to the East Sea Fleet, while 'Engineering' signifies the vessel's role as a support unit within the fleet. Note the Bow thruster marking next to 'East Engineering 403.'
Should all "other roles" fall through, the PLAN might as well turn those barges into a sightseeing destination. People will pay good RMB to see them.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
122mm Naval MRL for Amphibious Firepower: Back in Service, or Never Bothered to Dismount?
Continuing from the previous discussion on the PLA/NORINCO approach to procurement, particularly the way a successful concept gets replicated, adapted, and squeezed for every possible application, another interesting example recently surfaced. Pun fully intended.
Two photographs circulating on the Chinese internet appear to show a pair of 122mm multiple rocket launchers still mounted aboard a PLA Army Landing Craft Medium (LCM) from the Southern Theater Command. The vessel itself resembles a downsized version of the Type 073 landing ship medium, but what immediately caught attention was not the hull. It was the rockets.
Some readers may remember the considerable online discussion back in the early 2000s when the PLAN mounted five 25-round 122mm multiple rocket launchers on the Type 053H frigate Jiujiang (Hull 516). At the time, the concept struck many observers as unusual, if not outright bizarre.
My view then was largely the same as it is today.
Four launchers carrying a total of 250 rockets sounds impressive until one starts doing the math. Unlike dedicated shore bombardment platforms, there was no rapid reload capability. A 122mm unguided rocket also lacked the accuracy needed for precision strikes, particularly from a relatively small frigate moving in open water. Against hardened defensive positions, saturation and volume of fire matter, and 250 rockets simply did not seem sufficient to justify the effort.
By comparison, the U.S. Navy's WWII-era rocket support ships were built around overwhelming volume. During amphibious operations in the Pacific, particularly Okinawa, an LSM(R) could carry roughly 480 rockets dedicated solely to supporting troops ashore. That is not fire support. That is landscaping on a military scale.
Eventually the online debates faded away. Jiujiang was decommissioned in 2017, and many observers concluded the entire naval MRL experiment had been a one-off curiosity. An interesting chapter, perhaps, but not one with a future.
Fast forward to today, and these newly surfaced images suggest otherwise.
The appearance of 122mm MRLs aboard PLA Army amphibious craft raises an interesting possibility. Perhaps the concept never died at all.
In fact, there is an equally plausible explanation: the PLA Army and the PLAN may have been experimenting with the concept simultaneously all along. While Jiujiang received most of the public attention, the Army side may have quietly continued operating its own rocket-equipped landing craft with little outside notice.
And if that is the case, there is another factor that should surprise absolutely nobody. The PLA is famously reluctant to throw away a solution that still works.
This brings us back to the Bv206-inspired articulated tracked vehicle discussed previously. Once the PLA identifies a concept that proves useful, it tends to expand it across every imaginable role. Ambulance becomes command post. Command post becomes logistics carrier. Logistics carrier becomes something carrying a machine gun. The platform never really retires; it simply acquires another mission.
The same logic may apply here.
A rocket launcher mount already installed on a serviceable landing craft still launches rockets. The hull is still operational. The supporting logistics chain already exists. Why spend money removing a capability that still functions?
To borrow a phrase that has probably appeared on more than one procurement briefing somewhere:
"New equipment costs money. Existing equipment is already paid for."
Viewed through that lens, the continued presence of navalized 122mm MRLs aboard amphibious craft becomes far less surprising. It may not represent a revived capability at all. It may simply be a capability that never went away because nobody could come up with a compelling reason to remove it.
After all, this is the same military culture that sees a useful idea and asks, "How many different jobs can we make this thing do?"
Sometimes the answer is an articulated tracked carrier that ends up doing everything short of filing taxes.
Sometimes the answer is a rocket launcher that remains bolted to a landing craft for two decades because taking it off would require a budget request.
And if there is one lesson from watching PLA procurement over the years, it is this: Never underestimate the lifespan of a capability that is still "good enough" and already paid for.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
PLAN decommission of the day: FFG516 "Jiujiang" China's only MLR fire-support frigate
Cal: 122mm
No tubes: 50 x 5 (250)
Weight: 5,000kg
Max effective range: 20km
Max range with extended range rocket: 30km
elevation: 0-60 degrees
Field/angle:+- 120 degrees.
Rate of fire: 50 rounds: 18-20 seconds.
Max change rate of elevation: 16 degrees per second.
Max change rate of direction: 16 degrees per second.
