Chinese Small-Sail Submarine

Flag China In the past month China has launched the first two boats of a new class of submarine. The new type is longer than the proceeding Type-093C designs at around 120 meters, and appears 10-11 meters across. This makes it longer but slightly narrower than the other new boat, the presumed Type-095, which was launched in February at the Huludao shipyard.

The main defining characteristic, at least that we know of currently, is that it has a comparatively small sail (fin). This is a correction on my previous article on Naval News, which reported that the submarine was ‘sailless’, but additional imagery and sources have revealed that the ‘bump’ is more of a sail. Typical of the latest Chinese submarines it features a large X-form rudder, hydroplanes on the hull (although their exact placement hasn’t been observed yet), and pumpjet propulsor.

Building two boats at once is in itself unusual, building two identical submarines at exactly the same time in two yards. The Huludao yard on the Bohai Sea is the yard normally associated with nuclear submarine construction, while the JN Yard in Shanghai is completely new to nuclear submarines. First of class submarines typically have more teething problems than their follow-on siblings, and building two exasperates this. And added to this, it complicates supply chains and quality control.

Although large, the new boats seem to small to be the anticipated Type-096 ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). Although it appears to have a relatively tall casing, it is also quite narrow, and not tall enough for the JL-3 missile.

At the same time, it seems too large to be a conventional or small-reactor ‘nuclear AIP’ boat like the Type-041 Zhou class, and doesn’t fit neatly into expected designs. The consensus is that the boat launched in February is more like the Type-095 than this.

There has been online speculation that it may be a special mission submarine, like Russia’s seabed warfare types, but the dual-yard construction seems less likely for that.

One possibility is that this is a continuation of the Type-093 ‘family’, intended to continue to advance Chinese submarine capabilities as the all-new Type-095 enters series production in the coming years. While the boat appears futuristic, the dual-yard construction suggests that it is in fact a low-risk design. And Chinese submarine naming convention is not necessarily sequential or rigidly tied to design lineage.

We can guess that the increased length, by around 10 meters, may be for a larger vertical launch system. If so, it may be driven by larger-diameter hypersonic missiles rather than more tubes. There are also clear signs of torpedo tubes arranged in the upper hull shooting forward like the preceding Type-093 Shang Class. Possibly these are larger diameter than normal, but better information is needed before we speculate wildly on that. Watch this space.

Related articles (Full index of popular Covert Shores articles)

Flag China’s semi-submersible trimaran possible arsenal ship.

Flag Chinese Type-093 Shang Class Submarine w/Cutaway

Flag Chinese Sailless Submarine