The development of an improved Type 054A frigate – Type 054B, which was called the mini version of Type 055 destroyer – has long been imminent. In fact, it has been nearly 14 years since the first Type 054A frigate Zhoushan was launched in 2006, and now is also the time point for the development of improved Type 054A.
The 30th Type 054A frigates “Zaozhuang” was commissioned in June 2018, and no new Type 054A frigates have been launched since then, which seems to confirm the speculation of the development of Type 054B frigate, according to analyst Ren Ran.
And according to well-known netizen “POP3” of the Dingsheng Military Forum, “Type 054B project will be launched next year; 054A will be built 20 more – Huangpu 12 ships plus Hudong 8 ships; 055 is now known 16; 052D, 071, 075 will be in batches, 075 currently set to be 8; 076 has not yet completed the procedures, and the follow-up is unknown.”
The so-called Type 054B is an improved version of China’s Type 054A frigate, Hudong is the Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding Company in Shanghai and Huangpu is the CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding Company in Guangzhou. Type 054A is the third generation of the Chinese Navy’s missile frigates and its first frigate with regional air defense capabilities.
Analysts believe that, based on China’s current shipbuilding capacity and the production cycle of Type 054A frigates, 20 Type 054A frigates will be delivered in batches in the next four to five years, with a timeline of 2025. According to the aforementioned shipbuilding plan, the Chinese Navy will have 16 Type 055 destroyers, 40 Type 052C/D destroyers, and 50 Type 054A frigates by 2025.