History
Throughout its early history from 1949 to the early 1980s, the PLAN had principally relied upon artillery and torpedoes as its main weapons. This resulted in the development of many types and calibers of anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns. Torpedoes were secondary weapons, playing an important role in PLAN's coastal defense doctrines. Many destroyers, frigates and torpedo craft all carry an array of anti-ship torpedoes to this day.
The adoption of the missile, like in most navies, has completely revolutionized Chinese naval capabilities and tactics. Also, there has been growing attention given to ASW, electronic, and airborne weaponry.
The Cultural Revolution was a major disruption to many weapons development programs of the PLAN. Advanced weaponry concepts were always in the minds of PLAN thinkers since the 1950s, even if they were unable to be implemented at the time. Therefore, a lot of modern weapon systems such as SAMs, modernized torpedoes and missile/sensor systems were not introduced into service until the early 1980s. Furthermore, economic and technical sophistication to produce the fire control, targeting systems, and tracking capabilities were not in place until the mid-1980s.
Read more about this topic: Naval Weaponry Of The People's Liberation Army Navy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)