Combat Fleet Count - China vs. U.S. Comparison

I’m beginning a combat fleet count for China to use as a comparison to ours.  I’ll use the same criteria for inclusion.

To refresh your memory, the combat fleet is composed of carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, and amphibious ships (CVN, DDG, CG, FFG, SSN, SSBN, SSGN, LHA, LHD, LPD, and LSD).  Vessels like patrol ships, minesweepers, hospital ships, tugs, salvage ships, and ships whose designation starts with “T” or “A” are not counted as part of the combat fleet.  Yes, I know that China doesn’t necessarily use the same designations we do but I’ll do my best to apply the same categorization regardless of what the Chinese designations are.

I’ve included the Chinese missile boats (Fast Attack Craft – FAC) due to their heavy offensive firepower which makes them a significant battle fleet asset.  This is a reasonable inclusion but it does distort the total fleet size number comparison so take that into consideration.

Here are the numbers and breakdown as of the start of 2018

                  China(1)    U.S.

SSN                    14      51

SSBN                    5      14

SSGN                    0       4

SSK                    58       0

CV                      1      10

LHA                     0       1

LHD                     0       8

LPD                     4      11

LSD                     0      12

LST                    32       0

LSM                    31       0

CG                      0      16

DDG                    29      66

FFG                    49       0

FS (Corvette)          39       0

FAC (Missile Boat)    203       0

Total                 474     193

Here’s a few noteworthy considerations:

• The U.S. has more “heavy” ships such as carriers, cruisers, and high end destroyers and, therefore, retains a firepower advantage.

• The U.S. Navy has a huge advantage in carriers and, therefore, mobile aerial firepower but the Chinese have begun an aggressive carrier construction program and will likely match the U.S. carrier fleet in about 10 years.

• China has a heavy investment in lower end ships such as frigates, corvettes, and missile boats, all of which are heavily armed for their size and would constitute a significant firepower threat.  This is the U.S. Navy’s vaunted distributed lethality realized.  We’re talking about it and the Chinese have done it!  So, all the U.S. Navy’s claims of disproportionate impact that distributed lethality will have on the enemy’s operational complexity and confusion, the Chinese have already applied against us many times over.  ComNavOps has severe doubts about the validity of distributed lethality but according to the U.S. Navy’s claims, China has already hugely overmatched and beaten us in this arena.

• China’s fleet is, for the most part, new and getting newer all the time.

• The U.S. fleet still possesses as qualitative advantage in technology although this gap is shrinking rapidly. 

I’ll continue to update this from time to time.

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(1)Wiki, "List of active People's Liberaton Army Navy ships", retrieved 12-Mar-2018,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_People%27s_Liberation_Army_Navy_ships

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