Unraveling the secrets of China's mysterious stealth corvette

A year ago, a novel military ship was spotted in a Chinese shipyard. Having extensive stealth features, it was instantly an interesting find. But there were simply not enough good images out there, from enough different angles, to attempt to decipher its role. But given that the corvette-sized ship has been involved in sea trials since this May, more and more images steadily emerged. Enough so that Binko feels confident enough to attempt an analysis. This video will cover the basics, like the size, but it will quickly go into interesting features pointing to a possible new role. Making the ship potentially quite a force multiplier for the Chinese navy. In August 2023, Tom Sugard, a former US Navy officer now doing open source analysis, spotted the new ship as it was being built in the Dalian-Liaoning South shipyard. The same shipyard that churned out dozens of type 056 corvettes in the 2010s. First good images appeared in November 2023. Coupled with satellite images, size estimates could be made. Little under 100 meters in length, and around a dozen meters in width. When sized to other ships of similar role and dimensions, one gets a likely displacement estimate of 20 to 24 hundred metric tons. That's a bit bigger than China's 056 corvette, but still smaller than the smallest US combat ships, the LCS ships. China still has a more defensive posture than the US. That's why it has missile boats of just several hundred tons. And why it made small corvettes. It's also why this ship is also not big. US LCS ships are actually oversized for their capability, as they're designed to traverse the pacific ocean. Chinese small ships are designed to stay somewhat close to China's shores. Of course, the US LCS and this Chinese corvette have widely different roles. The US LUSV may be closer to the Chinese ship role wise. But more about that, later. What's interesting about the Chinese corvette is the height of its superstructure. We can compare it to the type 054A frigate, which is a 4000 ton ship. And is here moored right next to it. The new corvette sits high in the water as it's not fitted out yet. But even when it's completed, its main deck level is not gonna be really lower than that of the 054 frigate. Here's an image of the oldest China's type 056 corvette next to the 054 frigate. Its main deck height is a bit lower. The most striking feature is ship's stealth shaping. This is the first time we've seen a Chinese ship with stealth shaping applied to this extent. When items such as the main gun enclosure and even the rear missile launcher get special shaping, then you know the rest of the ship is stealthy enough that those two would otherwise be radar return hotspots, had they not been redesigned as well. There's no way to precisely know what sort of radar signature the new Chinese ship may involve. US Navy Zumwalt destroyers are famously 50 times harder to spot than Berg destroyers. Swedish Visby class boat had its designer claim the radar return of the ship got a 99% reduction, though the baseline comparison value is not known. Visby is also interesting as it's generally fairly similar in shape to the new Chinese ship, though it's some four times smaller in displacement. Not to get into the time consuming specifics of why that is, stated radar cross reductions will get you roughly a two thirds reduction in typical detection ranges against non-stealthy ships. That can still be useful, but even this kind of a stealthy corvette is likely to be detected from 200 or 300 kilometers away by more powerful aerial radars, and from 100 to 200 kilometers away by radars found in most fighter jets. Remember that Earth's surface is curved, so the radar horizon is usually capped at 450 kilometers even for high flying planes. In practice, very stealthy ships cut that down in half. That will allow the Chinese ships some leeway in operations, but not too much. It certainly can't expect to venture too far from China. Say, approach Okinawa or Luzon and make it out alive. While there are many ships out there with stealth features, ones with this comprehensive stealth shaping are fairly rare. But if stealth is not the most important characteristic of this new Chinese corvette, what is? Before we answer that, let's talk about what this ship is and what it isn't. Right now, it isn't a class of ships that's in service with the Chinese navy. It's not assured it will ever be built in numbers and serve actively. A little after the ship itself was photographed, another photo appeared, showing the ship and a team of its builders, and a banner reading Integrated Experimental Test Platform. So it's a one-off test ship. Now, test ships aren't rare. The Chinese navy uses a few such ships, and even a dedicated unique submarine to test new stuff, before it's implemented into other serial standard classes. This corvette, however, seems different. As mentioned, it integrates various new components into a wholly new ship. It's not a regular ship which got a few novel subsystems to test. Instead, it's designed from the ground up to test various features, integrated one into another. For example, it could very well be testing a novel power plant. Perhaps it's an electric motor driven ship, powered by diesel generators. But there's no way of knowing that, guessing just from the images. Still, there are details that can be observed from all the imagery. Ship's sensors are fairly simple. Beside some communications equipment behind the mast, the only place for actual sensors seems to be inside the mast, pointing to a fairly small radar. Likely a multipurpose one, for both surface search and limited air search. On top of the mast we may yet see some additional sensors for detecting signal emissions. Some small sensor apertures may be added just below the dome as well. There's not too much room there, as the rear of the mast also incorporates engine slash generator exhaust. A separate navigation radar and an infrared optical sensor may later be added in front of the mast. But that's about it. What's strange is this. The ship obviously has a high main deck. Its helipad is unusually high, leaving a lot of room beneath it. On the 056 corvette, which also had a high mounted helipad, the room below was used for anti-submarine sonars. While it's still possible that some final variant of the ship may feature thawed or variable depth sonars, the images available so far show there are no openings for any sort of thawed or variable depth sonars in the back. If it was to test anti-submarine systems, there should have been some doors or openings installed. Anyway, such small radar sensor fit is typical of missile boats and perhaps small corvettes. It however doesn't allow for independent use of long or medium range anti-aircraft missiles. Basically, the ship is expected to rely on point defense missiles for its own protection. Unless it uses a cooperative engagement capability network. That's something that US Navy ships have been using since the 2000s and other countries like China have been adding it to their ships in the last decade or so. Basically, the ship can serve as missile storage. An arsenal ship of a sort. It could launch a missile, but then it wouldn't have to do much. It would just use the sea capability to hand off the missile to other friendly platforms in the vicinity. Those can be another ship or an aircraft with a potent radar. Their role would be to track the missile and to give it coarse updates, until the missile is close enough to the target that it can guide itself to the final interception point. Thus, the ship launching the anti-air missile doesn't need a big expensive fancy radar. The missiles can be distributed over multiple smaller ships spread around the area, making the whole firing network more robust and providing better coverage over an area. So far no sea capability arrays have been spotted on the corvette, but that's to be expected at this stage of testing. It's currently testing its maritime capabilities, and fitting out the electronics should come later. Structural changes like cutting out the rear to fit the sonar door are not as likely. We will likely see further tests in the future with the sensor fit fitted, and the mast will likely get a taller and more elaborate structure with many arrays. There's another use for the corvette which doesn't even require the complex data links serving the CE capability. Anti ship missiles and land attack missiles. The corvette obviously has a VLS well up front, but images don't show it well. Binkov even bought a satellite image taken on new years but it was of too low resolution. Luckily, an end of august satellite image does shed a bit more light on which kind of VLS the ship might use. China has two different VLS systems currently in use on its ships. One is the smaller VLS used by its 054A frigates. It fires medium range anti air missiles and rocket assisted anti submarine torpedoes. The other is the larger VLS used on the 052D and 055 destroyers. It uses long range anti air missiles, a few different kinds of anti ship missiles, and possibly land attack missiles. Images available are sadly of too low resolution. While some outlines of the VLS are visible, and while 5 by 4 meters is a plausible figure for the VLS well, it could just as easily be half a meter more or less, for either dimension. Basically, though the measurements slightly favor the larger VLS, the test corvette might have either one installed. Better future images will answer that question. Looking at the height available, one might wonder why such a high VLS deck, unless the bigger VLS was planned. Remember that image comparing the corvette with the 054 frigate parked next to it, which uses the small VLS. Ship deck height standard is around 3 meters between decks. Using people on the helipad for comparison, one easily gets over 8 meters between the VLS deck and the waterline. Given the corvette's displacement, the draft is likely 4 meters. But due to keel's shape and structure, only a part of that height is available. The bottom line is, the tallest VLS system may not fit height wise. That one takes missiles up to 9 meters long, but is overall 11 meters tall. But then there's this, the big VLS china uses also comes in shorter variants. One of those is made for 7 meter long missiles. It's thus to be 9 meters tall. That should be able to fit height wise. Issue there is that not many missiles that china is known to use in its big VLS are just 7 meters tall. The HQ-9 anti air missile is. But neither the YJ-18 or YJ-21 anti ship missiles fit. Those are both over 8 meters long. So unless there are some new, unknown missile types available, it's looking a bit implausible that the new corvette is going to be launching either the YJ-21 ballistic anti ship missile or the YJ-18 combined subsonic and supersonic anti ship missile, based on a russian missile design. The corvette may be able to launch some novel subsonic land attack cruise missile, as those could be made to fit into the 7 meter tall VLS cell. Simply using a cruise missile similar to the russian caliber, that might not fit. Russian buyan-m boat, which is just shy of a thousand tons in displacement, is designed around an 8 cell VLS well, which goes all the way to its topmost deck. Said ship is basically a simple missile attack boat, using land attack cruise missiles and anti ship missiles. The russian caliber cruise missile is longer, at 8 meters, requiring a taller VLS system. Moving on to the possibility of the smaller chinese VLS. For the chinese corvette, it would be illogical to launch the U-8 rocket assisted torpedo from the smaller VLS, as the ship lacks a decent sonar suite. Rocket assisted torpedoes generally lack range to be used far from the ship, acting on third party sensors. And even if the corvette has a helicopter nearby, it won't be an organic asset to it. Not only is there no hangar to service it, but even the doors to the helipad are fairly small and not flush with the deck, certainly not designed to haul around heavy equipment through them. Anti air missiles thus remain as plausible loadouts. Either the HQ-16 in the smaller VLS, or the HQ-9 in the bigger VLS. But with the limited sensor suite present, either one would really need the cooperative engagement capability datalinks. Expert version of HQ-9B is credited with 260 km range. It's possible the chinese navy variant is more potent, but there's no way of knowing that. Latest HQ-16 variant known as the FE, credited with 160 km range against fighters. That claim came as a big surprise during the 2022 Zhuhai airshow. Frankly, such range achieved by a 600 kg missile puts it at a patriot MSC missile or david sling technology level, at least when propulsion and trajectory management is involved. A small digression if we may. Our channel thrives on your support. If you think this video is full of interesting information, if you learned a lot and if that makes you want to support our future work, you can do so by becoming our patreon member or youtube channel member. Ok, back to our video now. We still have to keep in mind that this is a test ship. On the other hand, it's testing several concepts in a single custom designed ship in an integrated manner. If one wanted to just pick and choose systems and apply them to later ships, there'd be no need to make such a custom designed ship. Which may point to an actual requirement from the chinese navy for a similar ship. This particular one may be a test one, but there's no saying if some other ship class will be very similar to it. Here's one not so far fetched possibility. That the china's navy has a requirement for a fairly small and cheap ship, requiring not many crew members, to aid in air defenses around china, to augment the number of ship based launchers around china and take advantage of cooperative engagement capability. To have the ship be somewhat stealthy, enough so that such ships could be placed out on the picket lines. And not have the expensive destroyers risked. But not so stealthy that it is too expensive to be produced by the dozens. In time, maybe the final serial standard ship might even have some novel anti-ship missiles integrated into its VLS wells, for an additional mission. Eventually, it might even replace the type 022 missile boat. With a longer reach of both the ship and its new missiles, that too would constitute a big capability increase. Anti-submarine work would seem like a natural fit for this class of corvette, especially due to its tall rear deck. But until we see some added openings for sonars, that's not applicable. A bow mounted sonar alone, even if present, is simply not sensitive enough for today's anti-submarine work. Last item of interest we will cover is the self-defense anti-air system on the top of the ship's superstructure, near the helipad. There have been some texts wondering if that's actually a laser system, probably because the image shows a single hole in it. But that's unlikely. Laser systems require large aperture mirrors. And multiple smaller apertures as well, for targeting. Those are evident on US lasers tested on USS Ponce. And even the small laser on a US Brick Destroyer. China too was recently observed using a laser system on an assault ship. Again, multiple apertures can be seen, as with any laser weapon. So the system on the mystery corvette is likely there to test a more regular HQ-10 SAM. As a test article, perhaps only a single missile was needed, hence the single hole. The overall shape and dimensions of the system simply do not match with observed shapes of laser systems so far. One can also notice the different shape of the missile stand, compared to the regular HQ-10. Somewhat more faceted, possibly due to stealth requirements. HQ-10 is a regular self-defense system found on most Chinese ships. It's similar in capability to the US rolling airframe missile system. Future images will help analyze the Chinese corvette even better. And then, say by the year 2030, we should know if the corvette was a basis for a mass produced ship that will actually reach service. If the ship is indeed testing a distributed firing platform capability, it's be a big step up in China's abilities. Perhaps similar in concept to what the US is trying to do with its LUSV ships. Those will, despite their name, be optionally manned, and may in fact often have a very small crew. They're likely to be 2000 ton ships, carrying up to 32 VLS cells. The 2023 US request for information on LUSV, issued to possible shipbuilders, requires of the future ship class this. LUSV will support distributed maritime operations and provide the joint force with an adjunct missile magazine capability and capacity. Primary missions include the support of anti-surface warfare and strike warfare. Distributed platforms, magazines, distributed arsenal ships, those are all what the Chinese may be testing here. The US accent is on ship attack and land attack, though. It remains to be seen if China's concept will also focus on that.