Footage Shows China’s Most Powerful Destroyer Engaging Targets in Complex Training Operation

Chinese state media footage released has shown the newly commissioned Type 055 class destroyer Anqing engaging targets during multi-ship training under complex electronic conditions. The destroyers Anqing and Dongguan were in early March confirmed to be the ninth and tenth ships of their class to enter service, and having been produced significantly later as part of a second batch of the ships, they benefit from a number of enhancements relative to their predecessors. The latest exercises emphasised fire-control correction, early warning, and combat-system integration, supporting the ship’s transition into frontline operational status under the Eastern Theatre Command facing Japan and U.S. forces based there. 

Footage of the exercises showed the Anqing operating alongside several other vessel types, and firing on simulated targets. Crew interviews highlighted both gunnery correction and early-warning drills in a complex electromagnetic environment, indicating that its first training cycle is already focused on the essentials of modern fleet combat: early detection, maintaining fire control under stress, and integrating crews and equipment into a theatre-level warfighting system. The capabilities of the Type 055’s sensors are near unrivalled, with each integrating a dual band radar system similar to the SPY-3/SPY-4, which the U.S. Navy had intended but failed to integrate onto the Zumwalt class destroyer, providing a particularly high degree of situational awareness including over-the-horizon detection capabilities.

Displacing close to 13,000 tons, and at approximately 180 meters long, about 20 meters in beam, Type 055 class destroyers are among the largest and most heavily armed surface combat ships in the world. While the United States has yet to bring a post-Cold War destroyer or cruiser class fully into service, with the three Zumwalt class ships built suffering from considerable performance issues and delays, the Type 055 is the latest of multiple generations of Chinese destroyers operationalised over the past 30 years. U.S. officials and analysts have increasingly pointed to the challenges posed by the Type 055 and its lighter counterpart the Type 052D as necessitating the development of an entirely new clean sheet destroyer type in the U.S. to avoid falling further behind, as the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyers’ room to incorporate further upgrades becomes increasingly limited. 

Type 055 class destroyers use an integrated mast carrying a four-panel Type 346B active electronically scanned array radar and additional X-band arrays, supported by hull-mounted and towed-array or variable-depth sonar. This provides an ability to search, track, classify, and assign engagements across air, surface, and subsurface domains, allowing a single destroyer to hold together a layered escort screen, which makes the ships particularly complementary to the capabilities of China’s new aircraft carriers. The ships are well suited to extending the defended battlespace through long-range area air defence, allowing naval forces to push further from shore while retaining a mobile missile shield.