U.S. Navy Take Notice: China is Becoming a World-Class Military Shipbuilder

By Gabe Collins and Andrew Erickson - November 01, 2012

With the advent of the Type 041 Yuan-class diesel sub and Type 056 corvette, China now has two platforms for which it is already capable of series production and for which the unit costs are likely to drop significantly in coming years. The export version of Russia’s Steregushiy-class corvette, called Tigr, currently stands at around U.S. $150 million per vessel. As China’s Type 056 production run continues to expand, it would not be a surprise to eventually see the PLAN’s unit cost end up in the U.S. $110-120 million per vessel cost range, which would make the Type 056 a serious export competitor to the Tigr and other smaller Russian warships.  To Read More….