Many military fans and friends will think when they see 051C, what is there to say about such an old ship? In fact, not long ago at the 4.23 Navy Festival, there was a 051C Type 116 Shenyang destroyer open for a visit, and I was quite touched after seeing it. It is known that there are only 2 ships of 051C, and one of them is the 115 Shijiazhuang. For a large ship with a domestic production of 7,000 tons 20 years ago, there must be a reason for only building 2 ships, which is not unrelated to its spare tire in the 052D vein, but it has achieved the last glory of 051C as the Russian Red Navy.
In fact, friends who are familiar with the development of the domestic military industry know that the military industry has encountered many difficulties after the "reform", and after the Iran-Iraq war, we were scared into a cold sweat. Under the two-level reversal, many equipment routes can only walk on two legs, so as to make up for the arrears of the past ten years steadily and quickly, such as the tank is divided into two lines of domestic self-use and foreign trade, with the "784" battle has accumulated experience, but after many years to have 99 type, this middle needs some spare tire models. Okay, it's far away, take it away, in fact, 051C is the introduction of equipment line, and it is also the spare tire of 052C, a domestic self-developed line, and 052D was derived after the development of 052C.
To put it simply, 051C is a model that reduces the risk in order to prevent accidents during the development of 052C-052D, so that there will be no mature regional air defense capabilities in China around 2000. Therefore, although 051C is a spare tire, it is aimed at the world's advanced regional air defense, and the full set of Russian-style equipment introduced was also top-level in those years. For example, the well-known "top plate" three-coordinate radar on 051C, which has been used in China for many years, as well as the "Warship Bird-M2" anti-air search radar, can search for fighters and Western missiles and other targets within 130 kilometers by oblique installation, which greatly made up for the domestic long-range measurement capability of ships at that time and solved the urgent need for a while.
Of course, here we want to talk about the "Reve-M" regional air defense system, in fact, many military fans are also familiar with this. However, many people may not know that the Russian side has only produced a total of 3 sets of this system, one of which is given to the proud "Kirov" class Peter the Great cruiser of the Russian Navy, and it is also the last giant ship of the Red Navy. And the remaining two sets were all given to it, that is, the 051C destroyer.
And the most valuable of this set of "Reeve" is not the S300F air defense guide, but a set of 30N6E1 "Tombstone" passive phased array radar, which can search for a range of 300 kilometers, guide 12 missiles to strike 6 targets at the same time, and can stably track ballistic missiles, which was very scarce at that time. And when we got 2 sets of Riv-M, in addition to a certain amount of affection, we also spent a lot of money, which was a price that the Russian side could not refuse at that time. However, it is not difficult to see from this that the gold content of the "Reve-M", the Glorious-class with a smaller tonnage can only use the simplified version of the "Reeve" plus a "top cover" radar, while the complete version of the 051C "Reve-M" is of the same level as the Kirov-class regional air defense. Therefore, before 052D came out, 051C can be said to be the strongest regional anti-missile in China, which can be understood by looking at what fleet 115 and 116 are in and where they are guarded.
It is worth mentioning that the name of the "tombstone" radar may imply that this is the tombstone of the United States, the West and NATO, but it backfired, and it became the "tombstone" of the Red Navy. When the time comes to 2024, Russia has long been unable to produce large-tonnage capital ships such as the Kirov and Glorious-class, and the size of the navy has been greatly reduced, mainly with frigates of several thousand tons, mainly offshore platforms for launching Caliber cruise missiles. On the other hand, some of the Russian Navy's family backgrounds, whether it is Kirov or Kuznetsov aircraft carriers, are either under maintenance or stationed in the dock, but on the contrary, a full set of Russian-style equipment on China's modern class and 051C have achieved the last glory of the Red Navy, and also retained the last glory and dignity of Russian-style carrier-based weapons.
Of course, 115 and 116 also have their own embarrassments, the most obvious is that 051C may face three embarrassments if it is in the middle of maintenance and improvement. First, the hull was changed to the super-large vertical hair design of the Rive-M, and this hull was changed to a domestic vertical hair, which would be a waste of space. Second, if this set of Russian-style air defense is changed to AJK-16, it will become a large 054A again, but it will be downgraded from regional air defense to medium and close air defense. The third is that the 051C lacks a hangar, and it has become a simple air defense destroyer, rather than a universal destroyer, which also makes future improvements more troublesome.
Generally speaking, the decline of the Red Navy and the rise of the domestic navy are fundamentally behind the change in national strength, and we are taking the line of independent development, while the Russian side has had illusions about the West led by the United States for a long time, and this result was planted decades ago. It is conceivable that for a long time, the Russian side may not have the ability to deploy ship-based regional air defense capabilities on a large scale, so from this point of view, when the 115 and 116 are retired in the future, I wonder if the Russian side intends to rehire them back and continue to shine?