China’s navy has retired its only fire support frigate.
China’s PLA Navy (PLAN) felt the need for large surface combatant ship in 1960s. The solution was provided by the 701 Research Institute based in Wuhan. A Type53H was designed to create an anti-surface ship with anti-ship missiles.
One of these ships, pennant No 516 named Jiujiang, was converted into a fire support frigate in 2002. The anti-ship missiles were removed and replaced with five 2x25 tube 122mm multiple rocket launch systems (MRLS).
Thus in one salvo the #516 Jiujiang could fire 250 rockets on the target, annihilating it. The ship could also launch old-style rocket-assisted UAVs from a specially created launch pad.
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The multiple rocket launch system has not been spotted on any other ship, suggesting that ship-based MRLS was not successful in the Chinese Navy.
The ship was spotted recently on open source Google Earth imagery on March 2, 2017. The ship took part in many realistic exercises as recently as April 2016.
It is learnt that the ship #516 Jiujiang has been decommissioned after 41 years of service from 1976-2017.
The local population of Jiujiang town, after which the ship was named, wish to convert it into a museum near the town.
(Colonel Vinayak Bhat is a military intelligence veteran of the Indian Army. He specialises in satellite imagery interpretation and analysis. He tweets @rajfortyseven)
