First introduced into the Chinese Navy in 2021, the Type 075 is a landing helicopter dock,
or shortly LHD, at least according to its common English classification. In domestic Chinese
terminology, the Type 075 is simply called an amphibious assault ship. Despite its fundamentally
multi-purpose nature, its primary mission is to conduct an opposed landing by marine forces.
To understand the purpose of the Type 075 LHD, we must firstly review China’s geostrategic
situation. China has longstanding territorial disputes over the control of certain islands with
its maritime neighbours, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and others, although the
aforementioned countries are the most vocal about opposing Chinese claims. These disputed islands
are sprawled across a broad range of locations, including in the South China Sea and the East
China Sea, and are often a fair distance away from the Chinese mainland, and away from significant
basing facilities for PLA aircrafts. So, if any one of these other claimants decide to make a move
to seize a disputed island by force, the Chinese marine forces need have a way to respond quickly,
and often over a fairly long distance, unlike in the case of Taiwan, for example.
The Type 075 LHD provides the PLAN with ability to transport a large marine landing force where
needed on a moment’s notice, in concert with its destroyer and submarine escorts.
The accompanying destroyers would bombard the shoreline and destroy the defenders,
while the Type 075 would follow-up by dispatching amphibious armoured vehicles,
hovercrafts and large number of helicopters to secure a beachhead.
Of course, the Type 075 can also be used in a Taiwan contingency, should it ever come to that.
But in my view LHDs and even LPDs like the Type 071 are not really needed for operations against
Taiwan, mainly because the distances involved are very short, so small to medium-sized amphibious
transports are sufficient. The west coast of Taiwan is within of the range of Chinese aircraft
anyway, including helicopters, again limiting the usefulness of floating airbases. Anyway,
in my opinion the Type 075 is not constructed with the intention of being used against Taiwan. Its
main purpose is to enforce Chinese territorial claims in the more distant South China Sea,
and East China Sea. The vessel can also undertake what I believe to be secondary
missions, including anti-submarine warfare and humanitarian disaster relief missions.
The Type 075 LHD was built by the Hudong Zhonghua Shipyard in the middle of Shanghai. The lead ship,
the Hainan, was assembled extremely quickly in 2019. The first images of the Hainan being built
in drydock circulated in early June, and she was launched in less than four months,
on 25 September 2019. She was commissioned 18 months later in April 2021. During this time,
the ship caught fire on a small scale. The nearby residents of Shanghai saw thick smokes coming out
of what appears to be the ship’s floodable well-deck. The fire was quickly put out,
and the stern of the ship was very visibly blackened by the fire. Despite this,
there appeared to be basically no delays to the commissioning of the ship, and military sources
with knowledge of the incident said that the damage was essentially superficial. In fact,
over the last decade, the occurrence of fires onboard Chinese warships have been very low. The
other two ships in the class were also constructed in record speed. The Guangxi was launched in April
2020, and commissioned in December 2021. The third ship in the class, the Anhui,
was launched in January 2021, and commissioned in October 2022. Some Chinese commentators point to a
total of 8 ships being planned, but as of yet, we have not seen any signs of further Type 075
ships being built. So, we will see if China builds more Type 075s, or move onto its next LHD design.
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The Type 075 has a displacement of around 40,000 tonnes at full load, similar to the US Navy’s
Wasp class LHD, although smaller than the latest America class LHA, or landing helicopter assault.
That said, in overall size, the Type 075 is slightly shorter in length than the wasp at
237 metres, although with a slightly greater width at 36 metres. Despite being slightly shorter, the
Type 075 has a similar deck area as the Wasp, just under 8,000 square metres, due to a significantly
smaller island. The Type 075 relies on a combined diesel and diesel propulsion. It uses up to four
Hudong 16PC2-6B diesel engines, the upgraded version of the diesel engine used in the Type 071
LPD. The four diesel engines on the Type 075 put out a combined power output of 64,300 horsepower.
However, a diesel-based propulsion is generally unsuitable for achieving high top speeds,
so the Type 075 is limited to a maximum speed of 23 knots reportedly. The ship can carry over
1,000 marine landing forces, with all their equipment and an unknown number of amphibious
armoured vehicles. In the floodable well deck, the Type 075 carries three Type 726 air-cushioned
landing craft. These can carry marine infantry and armoured vehicles to shore at very high speed.
By most estimates, the Type 075 has 7 deck levels. At the very bottom is the floodable well deck
where marine landing crafts are disembarked. The floodable well dock likely separates into
two decks, with the second deck being a vehicle storage space. Decks 3 to 4 are likely composed
of the crew living quarters, the dormitory and the medical facility for treating casualties.
Decks 5 to 6 should be the aircraft hangar deck, with deck 6 consisting of an external walkway
to access weapons and equipment mounted on the sponsons. Deck 7 is obviously the flight deck.
Visually, the Type 075 appears quite similar to the Wasp class,
but that does not mean the interior is the same, and to be fair the Japanese Izumo class and the
French Mistral class bear certain resemblance to the Wasp as well. All this is saying is that
physics works the same no matter whether you are American, Japanese, French or Chinese.
The Type 075 carries around 30 helicopters as a regular complement, both inside the hangar
and potentially on the flight deck. Additional helicopters can be parked parallel to the take-off
points. There are six take-off points allowing simultaneous, or near-simultaneous vertical
take-offs. There are two aircraft elevators – one in the middle of the deck beside the island,
and the other one at the stern. This contrasts with the flat-tops of the US Navy, which features
side elevators, or deck-edge elevators. The Type 075’s middle through-deck elevator has
the advantage of operating safely in higher sea states, relative to a deck-edge elevator.
The larger elevator towards the stern provides additional lift capacity if needed. Additionally,
there is a smaller elevator for transporting weapons and personnel.
The types of helicopters carried onboard depends on the assigned mission. The Type
075 LHD is multipurpose, and can loadout for amphibious assault, or anti-submarine warfare.
In the case of amphibious operations, the LHD would focus on a mix of transport and attack
helicopters. Now, I understand that there is so far no evidence that the Z-20 has been fielded on
the Type 075 LHD, but it is only a matter of time, given that the Z-20 is the PLAN’s next
generation naval helicopter. So, I’m comfortable considering the Z-20 as a core part of the future
airwing of the Type 075. A potential composition of the airwing could be something like 10 units
of the Z-10 medium attack helicopter, 14 Z-20 medium transport helos, and 4 to 6 of the Z-8
will consist of the heavy bombardment of the target beach as a first step, followed by the
amphibious armoured vehicles supported by the attack helicopters, while the transport
helicopters follow-up with additional troops to secure the beachhead and establish a perimeter.
In the case of anti-submarine warfare, the Type 075 would load up with mostly the Z-20F medium
anti-submarine helo, and some of the Z-18F heavy anti-submarine helo. These two are the PLA Navy’s
most capable rotary ASW assets, carrying a large payload of torpedoes and sonobuoys,
while having very respectable range. The Z-18F, being significantly larger than the Z-20, has the
greater payload of sonobuoys out of the two. The Type 075 will probably have a small complement of
around 4 Z-10 attack helicopters to deal with surfaced submarines and asymmetric threats,
for example fast missile boats. Lastly, it will mostly have a pair of the search and rescue
version of the Z-9C, to rescue downed pilots. This being said, I don’t believe antisubmarine warfare
is the primary mission, or even a particularly suitable mission, for the Type 075. Helicopter
carriers optimised for the anti-submarine role ideally should have high top speed,
but the Type 075 uses a diesel-only propulsion, which limits the top speed. High speed is required
to investigate submarine detections or sightings before the associated area of uncertainty becomes
too big. This is particularly true when dealing with nuclear powered submarines,
which are much much faster than diesel ones. The Type 075 has two main search radars. On
the foremast, it has a standard Type 382 rotary air search radar, with an instrumental range
of 300 km. This is the same one as the main air search radar on the Type 054A frigates. However,
the rotary radar array on the aft mast is actually the more advanced one. This is a two-sided rotary
array, and widely speculated to be AESA. The two faces are actually not of the same size, and are
likely to be dual bandwidth. The larger of the two arrays is likely to be S-band, and is actually
angled a bit more towards the sky to facilitate aerial search. The smaller of the two arrays faces
a bit more towards the horizon and the surface, making it easier to search for low-flying cruise
missiles. The smaller array is likely to be X-band, which is better for surface search.
On the very top of the aforementioned Type 382 radar is what we call a tactical air
navigation system, or shorty TACAN. This is a navigation system used by military aircrafts,
and helicopters equipped with the TACAN avionics can use it for en route navigation.
During combat operations, the Type 075 will naturally be escorted by PLAN destroyers and
frigates, which will provide most of the missile defence capabilities. However, the LHD also has
fairly capable self-defence assets, including two of the Type 1130 CIWS close-in weapon system,
and two launchers for the HQ-10 short-range air defence missiles. In my view, the Type 1130 is
perhaps the most capable gun-based CIWS in the world. During testing, the Type 1130 reportedly
intercepted anti-ship missiles up to a speed of Mach 4 with a 96 percent success rate.
The Chinese Navy sees the Type 075 LHDs as very important capital ships. Ships of the
class – the Hainan, Guangxi and Anhui – are named after Chinese provinces, or more specifically
provincial level administrative divisions to be precise. This is the same naming convention
reserved for aircraft carriers. So clearly the PLAN attaches a similar or at least comparable
degree of import to the LHDs, which form the centre of sizable naval taskforces.
That being said, one limitation of the Type 075 is that it doesn’t have any STOVL fixed-wing
fighters, not because the ship is necessarily unable to use them, but because China doesn’t
have any vertical landing fighters, like the F-35B for example. However, China is developing
the Type 076 LHDs, which are expected to have electromagnetic catapults and landing arrestor
cables. This will allow the Type 076 to function essentially like a light aircraft carrier,
similar to the US Navy’s LHDs and LHAs. Thanks for watching. If you like my video,
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