China's Deadly Missile Boats Outpacing Similar U.S. Craft

Speed, agility, and a weapons system designed to destroy much larger ships define the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) triple-hull Type 022 missile boat.

Wired is reporting that China has already built a fleet of these missile ships, which are designed to dominate shallow water, shore-hugging maritime missions, and function as an inexpensive anti-ship platform compared to traditional frigates and destroyers.

But what is perhaps most distressing is the creation and deployment of this major Chinese weapons systems over the past few years has blown away U.S. efforts to build a similar vessel.

China plans to crank out a reported 83 of the new missile boats, but the U.S. equivalent of the Type 022- the Littoral Combat Ship- has seen many budget and technical problems over the years, and so far only two have been built. One vessel, the Freedom,  has been relegated to drug interdiction missions in the Caribbean. As Wired recently wrote to compare the programs in cost and capability:

"In just seven years, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has built 83 of the 400-ton Type 022s at an estimated cost of $40 million per ship. And production continues at a high rate in several shipyards. The U.S. Navy, by comparison, has finished just two LCS in the same span of time, each at a cost of more than $600 million.

The Chinese ships sport eight anti-ship missiles apiece plus defensive guns and surface-to-air missiles. The American vessels, lightly armed in their own right, are designed to accommodate “plug-and-play” weapons kits, none of which are complete."

Clearly, the Chinese appear ahead in the race to efficiently build shallow water attack craft capable of deploying serious firepower, but it may not matter to the U.S. Unlike on land, where asymmetrical tactics have dominated resistance to the U.S for the past decade, on the ocean's surface, major military hardware (carrier deployed aircraft, nuclear subs, destroyers) still carries the day. Any Chinese ship built to dominate littoral missions may ultimately be too vulnerable in practice to U.S. aircraft and submarine attacks.

However, the Type 022 is part of a broader Chinese naval build-up that includes the recent news this summer that China is putting its first refitted aircraft carrier out to sea- and likely plans to build much more advanced carriers in the next couple of years.

So while a shallow water missile ship like the Type 022 may not be a threat to U.S. forces, it could be useful in the near term if China pushes its spheres of influence into disputed maritime territory. China may find fast-moving missile ships quite useful in intimidating Japanese or Philippine naval vessels.

And by the time the U.S. catches up to China's small attack ship programs, we might already be more concerned about their newly christened aircraft carriers, and the continued expansion of their naval power deep into the western Pacific Ocean.

(h/t Wired)