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China Tests New Type 055 Destroyer Anqing in First Combat-Style Live-Fire Exercise Near Taiwan.
China has fielded its Type 055 destroyer Anqing in its first live-fire exercise in the East China Sea.
Chinese state media footage released April 1, 2026, shows the warship engaging targets during multi-ship training under complex electronic conditions. The exercise emphasized fire-control correction, early warning, and combat-system integration, key elements of modern naval warfare. As one of the PLAN’s most advanced surface combatants, Anqing is transitioning from commissioning into frontline operational status within the Eastern Theater Command.
Type 055 destroyer Anqing during its first live-fire exercise in the East China Sea, highlighting China's growing surface warfare capability through advanced sensors, long-range missile capacity, and fleet air-defense command functions (Picture source: CCTV News Agency).
The footage released on April 1, 2026, by Chinese state media showed Anqing firing during a sea training event conducted with several other vessel types, while crew interviews highlighted both gunnery correction and early-warning drills in a complex electromagnetic environment. That matters because it suggests the ship’s first training cycle is already focused on the essentials of modern fleet combat: detecting targets early, maintaining fire control under stress, and integrating new equipment and crews into a theater-level warfighting system.
Official reporting indicates the opening rounds initially showed some deviation before the crew corrected the fire and achieved the expected training results. On its face, that is a small detail, but it is operationally revealing: a first live-fire period is meant to validate the ship’s kill chain under realistic conditions, not to present a flawless scripted demonstration. In Anqing’s case, the public emphasis on quick correction is a signal that the PLAN wants to show confidence in crew proficiency as much as confidence in the hardware itself. The same report also stressed detection training against real maritime and aerial tracks, underscoring that the exercise was about the broader combat system, not only the bow gun.
That broader combat system is what makes the Type 055 strategically important. The class is roughly 180 meters long, about 20 meters in beam, and displaces around 12,000 to 13,000 tons at full load, placing it well above a conventional destroyer in size and command capacity and leading the United States to classify it as a cruiser-scale combatant. Propulsion is built around four gas turbines in a combined-gas-and-gas arrangement, giving a top speed of about 30 knots and the endurance needed for blue-water escort, theater air-defense, and independent surface-action-group operations. In practical terms, the Type 055 is designed not merely to fight as a single ship, but to act as the principal air-defense and command node inside a larger task group.
Its armament explains why: the Type 055 carries 112 universal vertical launch cells, arranged with 64 forward and 48 aft, a missile magazine large enough to support layered air defense, anti-ship strike, long-range land attack, and anti-submarine missions from the same hull. These cells can fire both cold- and hot-launched munitions and commonly accommodate weapons such as the HHQ-9B long-range surface-to-air missile, YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile, and CJ-10 land-attack cruise missile; more recent reporting also links the class to hypersonic anti-ship missile integration, although the exact routine loadout of any individual ship remains undisclosed. Around that missile battery, the ship mounts a 130 mm main gun, an 11-barrel 30 mm close-in weapon system, a 24-cell HHQ-10 point-defense launcher, two triple 324 mm torpedo launchers, and aviation facilities for two helicopters such as the Z-9 or Z-20F.
Sensor fit is equally important to the class’s tactical value. The ship uses an integrated mast carrying a four-panel Type 346B active electronically scanned array radar and additional X-band arrays, supported by hull-mounted and towed-array or variable-depth sonar arrangements. Chinese and outside reporting alike describe the class as built around a stealth-conscious design and a potent, apparently well-integrated sensor suite. That combination gives the Type 055 the ability to search, track, classify, and assign engagements across air, surface, and subsurface domains, making it the sort of ship that can hold together a layered escort screen for an aircraft carrier, an amphibious force, or a high-value convoy.
For tactical commanders, this translates into several concrete advantages. First, Anqing can extend the defended battlespace for a PLAN formation through long-range area air defense, allowing Chinese naval forces to push further from shore while retaining a mobile missile shield. Second, its magazine depth gives commanders more flexibility in handling saturation threats or mixed raids, because the ship is not forced into a single mission set. Third, its sonar and helicopter facilities improve the PLAN’s anti-submarine posture, which remains essential if Chinese surface groups are to survive beyond the cover of dense land-based aviation and coastal sensors. Finally, the class’s command facilities mean a Type 055 can function as a local battle manager, fusing sensor data and coordinating fires across an entire formation.
The development story behind the Type 055 helps explain why Beijing treats the class as a flagship capability. Open-source reference material indicates that an earlier “055” large-destroyer concept dates back to the late 1970s but was halted in the 1980s when China lacked the industrial base, especially in propulsion, to realize it. The modern Type 055 emerged only after decades of naval modernization and what Chinese reporting described as two decades of rapid development and testing. Construction of the lead ship Nanchang began in 2014, the first hull was launched in Shanghai in June 2017, sea trials began in 2018, and the class made its public debut before commissioning in the 2019 PLAN anniversary parade; Nanchang formally entered service in January 2020.
Anqing’s first exercise must also be read in a fleet context. China now has ten Type 055s in service, with Dongguan (109) and Anqing (110) newly assigned to the Eastern Theater Command, the command responsible for the East China Sea and any major Taiwan contingency. That assignment gives the theater a higher-end surface combatant than the Type 052D destroyer and significantly strengthens its ability to escort carriers or amphibious groups, defend sea lines of communication, and contribute to counter-intervention operations against U.S. or allied naval forces. More broadly, the pattern is clear: Beijing is not building the Type 055 as a prestige vessel, but as the high-end backbone of a more distributed and persistent fleet architecture.
What Anqing’s first live-fire event ultimately shows is that the Type 055 program is entering a more mature phase, where the story is no longer only about shipbuilding output but about combat generation. The public material from this drill centered on gunnery correction and sensor work rather than a disclosed missile firing, yet that does not diminish its significance. A warship becomes dangerous when its crew can detect early, sort targets under electronic stress, correct errors quickly, and stay inside the tactical decision cycle. In that sense, Anqing’s first exercise is less a ceremonial milestone than a practical demonstration of how China intends to turn large numbers of advanced hulls into a credible wartime capability at sea.