At one of Shanghai shipyards, construction is underway of new ship for chinese Navy, which should be mother ship or base for underwater naval drones.
This ship will have quite substantial dimensions, for example hull length will comprise minimum 205 meters. Against this backdrop question arises about what trends this news describes.
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More specifically, Naval News portal publication serves as primary source here. Its authors in their assessments of future chinese underwater drone mother ship rely on available satellite imagery.
By their estimates, future ship will have hull length of 205 meters and hull width of 27 meters, one dry hangar on upper deck 95 meters long and 17 meters wide, and one hangar on lower deck 55 meters long and 13 meters wide, which if needed will be flooded with water.
Such internal structure size will enable receiving XXLUUV-class remotely controlled underwater vehicles, with hull length of even 35-45 meters, possible quantity up to four such naval drones in ship internal hangars.
Expected employment scheme is as follows: in port, underwater drones will be loaded aboard this mother ship, in open sea they will be lowered into water using special cradle. Likely this ship will also be used for technical maintenance of these remotely controlled underwater vehicles when needed.
Defense Express adds two points here. First — apparently chinese military planners consider they have sufficiently broad resource in naval experimentation segment.
Because before this story with underwater drone mother ship, there was also discussion about secretly built strange catamaran-aircraft carrier for UAVs, and mysterious aircraft carrier with three islands, whose purpose remains secret.
Second point — it appears china itself is not confident in reliability level and actual range of its naval drones, especially XXLUUV-class underwater vehicles. Therefore it proceeded with constructing separate 205-meter base ship.
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