Overview
Type 055 guided-missile destroyer was a guided-missile destroyer associated with People's Liberation Army Navy.
Developed for People's Liberation Army Navy, Type 055 guided-missile destroyer belongs to the Cruisers family and is associated with Post-Cold War and Twenty-first century. Its documented designations include Guided-missile destroyer, while its intended roles include Air defense, Surface warfare, Anti-submarine warfare, and Command and control.
Development and construction
records the ten officially named/numbered Type 055 ships reported by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense in March 2026 without treating ten as a final program ceiling.
The documented program for Type 055 guided-missile destroyer lists 10 laid down, 10 completed, and 0 cancelled. These figures provide the clearest available measure of the class's planned and completed scale.
Design characteristics and intended role
The surviving classification data associates Type 055 guided-missile destroyer with Vertical launch system and Phased-array radar. Read together with the recorded roles of Air defense, Surface warfare, Anti-submarine warfare, and Command and control, these attributes show the operational problem the design was intended to address without implying specifications that the sources do not establish.
The class record identifies People's Liberation Army Navy as the principal design or service authority. Where individual ships changed navy, name, or pennant, those later identities are retained on the ship pages rather than treated as separate vessels.
Service history and class roster
Public Chinese reporting is uneven by class, so preserves explicit uncertainty instead of converting estimates into invented ship identities.
The class roster currently links 10 ships. Named members include Anqing, Anshan, Dalian, Dongguan, Lhasa, Nanchang, Wuxi, and Xianyang. The linked ships are associated with People's Liberation Army Navy.
Historical significance
The class is retained as a representative modern combat-fleet anchor for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
Type 055 guided-missile destroyer is most useful when read as both a design and a group of individual careers. The class page establishes the shared technical and operational context; the linked ship pages preserve differences in construction, service identity, deployment, transfer, preservation, and fate where those details are documented.
Ships in this class
Showing 10 recorded class members.
Sources and further reading
- Two new Type 055 destroyers commissioned to PLA Navy ↗Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China · accessed 2026-09-21