China’s Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (DSIC) shipyard launched two 10,000-tonne Type 055 destroyers simultaneously on 3 July. The first Type 055 was launched at the Jiangnan Changxingdao shipyard near Shanghai in June 2017 and the second one in April 2018. The latest ships are the third and fourth to be launched, with all four entering the water in a little over a year.

The Type 055 will be equipped with new types of air-defence, missile-defence, anti-ship and anti-submarine weapons, according to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). These destroyers are the largest surface combatants built for the PLAN and are an upscaled development of the Type 052D (Luyang III)-class destroyers. The class features an integrated mast in which a number of newly designed planar sensor arrays are installed.

The ships are 180 m long, 20 m wide and will be equipped with 112 vertical launching cells capable of firing various kinds of missiles, including China's long-range, land-attack cruise missile.