Huangpu class gunboat - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Huangpu class gunboats were gunboat

Gunboat

A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.-History:...

s of the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

's People's Liberation Army Navy

People's Liberation Army Navy

The People's Liberation Army Navy is the naval branch of the People's Liberation Army , the military of the People's Republic of China. Until the early 1990s, the navy performed a subordinate role to the PLA Land Forces. Since then, it has undergone rapid modernisation...

. They entered service in the 1970s and had been completely taken out of active service by the early 2000s and were transferred to law enforcement agencies. However, just like the Shantou

Shantou class gunboat

The Shantou class gunboat, was a Chinese built gunboat of the People's Republic of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. Known in the United States as the "Swatow" class gunboat; it was based on the Soviet P-6 class torpedo boat. The boat is designated as Type 55A...

, Beihai and Yulin

Yulin class gunboat

Yulin class gunboats were gunboats of the People's Republic of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. They first entered service in the 1960s, but had been completely taken out of active service by the late 1990s, and were transferred to law enforcement agencies...

classes that were transferred for law enforcement adaptation, these obsolete and aging boats are not satisfactory in their new roles due to their low maximum speed, sometime as low as 10 knots, which was not sufficient enough to catch the smugglers’ high speed motorboats. As a result, these boats were subsequently transferred again, this time to reserves, subordinated to naval militia in various Military Maritime Districts in China as training boats and port security / patrol boats within the confines of the harbors.

This class is very similar to Beihai class gunboat in that it adopts the same hull. The superstructure, however, is completely redesigned and it is only armed with 14.5 mm heavy machine gun

Heavy machine gun

The heavy machine gun or HMG is a larger class of machine gun generally recognized to refer to two separate stages of machine gun development. The term was originally used to refer to the early generation of machine guns which came into widespread use in World War I...

s. The new design incorporated a low superstructure fore and aft, providing additional accommodations for police or troops. This advantage combined with their later completion time in comparison to Shantou, Beihai and Yulin classes have made this class more active in the reserve than the others in the naval militia, However, like the Shantou, Beihai and Yulin classes, as the new class of port security / patrol boats entering service, the Huangpu class is increasingly being converted, mothballed and eventually scrapped.

Just like the Shantou, Beihai and Yulin classes, many of the surviving units are being converted to naval range support boats and target drones and thus reactivated into active service as minor support auxiliaries. It can be either used as a target control boat to remotely control the converted drones, or as a drone itself. When the drone is in operation, the crew departs the boat.

It is interesting to note that most of the range support boats in the PLAN

People's Liberation Army Navy

also shoulder the responsibility of inshore surveying and these converted boats are no exceptions, despite the little scientific instruments they carried. The reason is that originally, majority of the hydrographic surveys were conducted by civilian fishing vessels with the additional scientific equipment, naval and governmental crews on board. However, since the Chinese economic reform

Chinese economic reform

The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping.China had one of the world's largest...

and the depletion of the fishery resources, the civilian fishing vessels must venture much further out into open ocean and staying longer at the sea, thus could no longer afford to stay in the home water and performing the heavy inshore surveying duties previously assigned under the planned economy era in China prior to the Chinese economic reform. Consequently, the PLAN must come up with their own means to meet such huge demand, and converting former gunboats was one of the answers: although these boats can no longer venture out into open ocean and cruise at their maximum speed like they used to do, they are still quite capable of low speed inshore surveying tasks within the confines of river mouths and bays of Chinese coastlines.

Contrary to the commonly held but erroneous belief that the PLAN is following the tradition of having weaponry on most of its auxiliaries (though there is certainly some degree of this), the retention of weaponry on these converted boats were mainly to save money: in order to reduce the conversion cost, the original weaponry was retained unless it was absolutely necessary to remove the weapons, thus most of the converted range support and surveying boats still maintained most of their original fighting capability.

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