Type 911 degaussing/deperming ship

Type 911 degaussing/deperming ship is the newest class of degaussing/deperming ship currently in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

Plans for Type 911 originated from PLAN requirement over several decades ago but due to the backwardness of Chinese industrial capability and technical bottleneck, the requirement was simply to advanced to achieve a the time for China. Furthermore, the political turmoil in China at the time, namely, Cultural Revolution, further disrupted any effort to push the program forward. As a result, the production plan was cancelled and the entire program was put on hold. It was not until more than a quarter century later when the social, economical and political environment in China matured enough to resurrect the program and as of mid 2014, two units have been completed.

The first ship of Type 911 degaussing/deperming ship was completed in Shanghai by Shenjia Shipyard (申佳船厂), also known as the 4805th Factory of PLAN in Shanghai. Construction begun in 1995 and was completed after more than two years later. Design of Type 911 incorporates electrical components and VLSI from Siemens, and the ship can reach a speed of 16 kt. New features utilized includes centralized computerized control which can automatically control speed and degaussing/deperming system. This control system is dubbed as Full Digitized Programmable Control and it is the first of its kind to be adopted on ships in China. The advanced control system onboard enables Type 911 to complete degaussing/deperming mission in much shorter timespan, reducing the time by as much as more than two days in comparison to degaussing/deperming ships of older designs when performing mission for ships of the same tonnage. After first unit went into service in South Sea Fleet, a second unit was completed by Dalian Niaonan Shipyard (大连辽南船厂), also known as 4810 Factory of PLAN, went into service in East Sea Fleet two years later. More units are planned, but it is rumored that the pace of the program is significant slowed because plans of domestic production of onboard system encountered technical difficulties, but such claims (mostly from Chinese internet sources) have yet to be confirmed by official or independent sources.

Type 911 series in PLAN service are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by three-digit number. The second Chinese character is Qin (勤), meaning service in Chinese, because these ships are classified as service ship. The first Chinese character denotes which fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong, 东) for East Sea Fleet, North (Bei, 北) for North Sea Fleet, and South (Nan, 南) for South Sea Fleet.