The Chinese Navy is attaching ever greater importance to its nuclear submarine force.
The Type 096 is the latest iteration of nuclear ballistic missile submarine, or SSBN for short.
They will form a cornerstone of China’s nuclear deterrence in the coming decades,
alongside the H-20 strategic bomber, and the country’s ICBMs. At this stage, the Type 96
SSBN is still in development, but I believe it is under constructions, for reasons I will explain.
When it enters service, the Type 96 will gradually replace the early versions of the current Type 94
SSBN. The early versions of the Type 94 submarines suffer from excessive noise levels and are limited
by the range of its JL-2 ballistic missiles. The later boats in the class are more capable.
But the Type 96 is intended to be a major advancement over all the existing Chinese nuclear
submarines. It will be the quietest, the largest, and most heavily-armed submarine the Chinese
Navy has ever built. To be clear, we don’t have enough information to do a full review. In fact,
we don’t even know what the Type 96 actually looks like. But we do have some information,
based on credible insider sources, and the little official information there is.
In this video, we outline 6 facts about the Type 96 nuclear ballistic missile submarines that are
well established in the PLA-watching community. Firstly, all indicators suggest that the class
is already under construction, although still several years short of completion. According
to credible Chinese insiders, with a history of accurately predicting naval developments,
the blueprint for China’s future Type 95 nuclear attack submarine was completed by the end of 2017,
and also that the design for the Type 96 SSBN will finish a couple of years later.
We have fairly good circumstantial evidence that China has already completed the design
for the Type 95 some time ago, and this is the expansion of submarine production capacity.
The only shipyard in China producing nuclear submarines is the Bohai shipyard at Huludao,
located at the northern shores of the Yellow Sea near North Korea. The Bohai shipyard saw a massive
expansion between 2018 and 2021. A new assembly hall for producing submarines was constructed
in 2018. You can clearly see rail tracks for moving completed submarines from the assembly
hall into a nearby drydock for launching. The Bohai shipyard was expanded yet again in 2021
with the construction of a second new assembly hall, basically the same size as the first one.
In total, the new halls can accommodate a massive increase in the pace of submarine production.
The expansion of the assembly facilities is no doubt expensive, and for the Chinese Navy
to be willing to make this expensive investment, they should already have a working blueprint for
the Type 95 attack submarines, and will soon have the blueprint for the Type 96 as well. This lends
credibility to the alleged insider information. Since 2020, new modules have appeared
outside the new assembly halls, and these are identified to be submarine components. This
strongly suggests that the new assembly hall is already being used to build submarines,
although we don’t know how many are being built simultaneously. The Type 95 is already
well under construction, and the first Type 95 boat may have already been completed.
Based on the alleged insider information, the Type 96 would have begun construction several years
after the 95 started. So, my assessment is that, currently, the Type 96 SSBN is being constructed.
Secondly, the Type 96 will have a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the JL-3,
for the delivery of nuclear warheads. The JL-3 is expected to have a range of well above 12,000 km,
far in excess of the JL-2 missiles currently used by Chinese ballistic missile submarines.
This means a Type 96 SSBN carrying the JL-3 can threaten the majority of continental United States
from the safety of Chinese territorial waters. It can strike the majority of the large American
cities from the Yellow Sea, without even having to go out on patrol and exposing itself to the risk
of detection. The JL-3 should carry multiple re-entry vehicles, each armed with a nuclear
warhead that can target separate locations. In recent years, China has tested the JL-3 a few
times, starting in 2018. The most recent test was conducted on 26 May 2022, in the South China Sea.
The whole thing was witnessed by the passengers and crew of a nearby airliner,
and filmed on camera. In the video, it is clear that a missile was launched from sea
and into high altitude. The missile left a white trail during the ascent into the upper atmosphere.
The flight path matches a ballistic missile, as opposed to a cruise missile. The most recent
test is another piece of evidence that the JL-3 ballistic missile programme is proceeding
according to schedule, and should be completed in time for the deployment of the Type 96 submarines.
This will substantially strengthen China’s second-strike capability.
Let’s talk about the acoustic silencing technology expected on the Type 96.
The submarine is likely to have rim-drive propulsion. The rim drive is basically a marine
propeller that does not use a central shaft for the transmission of the driving torque.
The torque is essentially the force that rotates the blades on a propeller, driving the submarine
forward. So, a rim drive is basically a shaftless propeller. The propeller blades of a rim-drive are
mounted on an outer ring, where they are rotated. The main advantage of a rim drive is a much lower
level of noise emission compared to a conventional propeller, or even a pump-jet. Since the propeller
blades are not mounted to a central shaft, the elimination of a lot of the mechanical elements
eliminates a large source of noise. According to the Chinese media, the CCTV,
China’s new generation of nuclear submarines will be using rim drive propellers. I consider
this basically an official confirmation that the Type 96 will be using this technology.
A top Chinese naval engineer, Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, has also said, during an interview,
that the PLA Navy is fitting its newest attack submarines with a “shaftless” rim-driven pump-jet.
Another notable silencing technology for the Type 96 SSBN will be the natural circulation cooling
for its nuclear reactors. The nuclear reactors of a submarine require a constant level of cooling,
to keep temperature under control. The reactor cooling pumps have to keep running
regardless of the situation, to ensure the safety of the reactor. The reactor cooling
pumps are mechanical, and are one of the main sources of noise on a nuclear-powered submarine.
Natural circulation is an alternative cooling system to the conventional cooling pumps. Natural
circulation relies on seawater to cool the nuclear reactor. This reduces the mechanical complexity of
the system, leading to a lower level of noise. Natural circulation cooling is not a new concept
for Chinese nuclear submarines. It is already installed on the latest variant of the Type 93
nuclear attack submarines, and the Type 94 SSBN. So, this technology should almost certainly be
adopted by default for the Type 96 as well. The two acoustic silencing technology I discussed
reflects the fact that the Chinese designers aims to make the Type 96, and also the Type 95,
as quiet any other nuclear submarines in the world. This is my fifth observation, that the
PLA Navy’s objective is to have the Type 96 as silent as the most advanced US Navy submarines. In
the 2018 National People’s Congress, the leading scientist for submarine silencing technology said
that Chinese nuclear submarine noise levels will reach the international leading standard at around
2025. Of course, this is an aspiration, and one can argue over just how likely China is to achieve
this goal. But the rapid advancement in Chinese naval technology in the past decade suggests it
is pretty likely that China can achieve this. If this happens, the noise level of the Type 96
will probably fall to that of the ocean background noise. This would be similar to the Seawolf class
and the Virginia class SSN of the US Navy. My final prediction is that the Type 96 will
be single-hulled, unlike all the existing Chinese submarines, which are doubled-hulled. The main
reason for having double hulls is because of technological limitations in the machine
tools that are used to press metals into complex hydrodynamic shapes. The metals
for building submarines are very strong, so one’s ability to shape the hull depends on the power of
the machine tools. If machine tool technology is limited, the solution is to have double hulls.
The interior pressure hull is built from high strength metals, so with weaker machine tools,
one can only form fairly basic shapes for the pressure hull. But the exterior hull will have
thinner metals, and this can be basically pounded into any shape you want, to achieve hydrodynamics.
Chinese machine tool technology has advanced rapidly in recent years,
so it is likely to be powerful enough to make single-hulled nuclear submarines.
A single-hull design has several advantages over the double-hulled designs. A single hull means
more interior space for the same displacement. This additional space can be used to carry more
ballistic missiles, to expand the submarine’s capacity to deliver nuclear warheads.
All told, the Type 96 is the future generation of Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarine,
and will form part of the country’s nuclear deterrence for the coming decades. So far,
reliable information on the Type 96 is very scarce, but this video discusses some of the known
details, based on credible insider information and what little official information there are.
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