China Launches Mysterious Stealth Warship

A new stealthy Chinese corvette or light frigate has ostensibly made its maiden voyage.

The ship's design has some broad similarities to Sweden's radar-evading Visby class corvettes, including a main gun that sits concealed inside low observable cupola when not in use, but is larger by all indications.

How fast work on this vessel seems to be progressing also speaks to the scale and scope of China's shipbuilding capacity, something that presents huge challenges for even the country's most well-equipped competitors, principally the United States.

Just two weeks ago, China's first indigenously-designed carrier, which features catapults and other major enhancements, also set out on its inaugural sea trials.

This is of course symptomatic of China's rapidly expanded shipbuilding capability of late. Almost a year ago, the Office of Naval Intelligence sounded the alarm that China's shipbuilding capacity is over 200 times that of the U.S. Mixed in with this, the country has been able to build increasingly more capable ships too, meaning that quality is improving, at least in some regards, with overall quantity.