Tuesday

Chinese Type 056 Light Corvette.

A model of the new Type 056 Light Corvette was presented to Hong Kong University by the deputy commander of the PLA Hong Kong Garrison, Major General Wang Junli  on November 4th 2010. Since then, it was speculated that this 1500 ton corvette could be the possible replacement of the Jianghu class workhorse. This could be credible since the two leading Chinese naval affairs magazines covered the Type056 in their current issues.

Chinese shipyards are capable of building such a corvette -- it bears a resemblance to the Thai Navy's Pattani-class OPV which China exported in 2006. The Type 056 would up-gun the Thai OPV with four YJ-3/C803 ASM and a FL-3000N RAM launcher aft.