Drone catapult on wheels: China's “arsenal ship” Zhong Da 79 is refitted again

Military analysts and naval experts around the world are currently watching a Chinese cargo ship just under 100 metres long in the port of Shanghai, which now also carries a drone catapult. The reason: around Christmas, the People's Republic of China began converting the freighter “Zhong Da 79” into an “arsenal ship” with a wide range of military equipment.

Containerised vertical launch systems were mounted on the deck of the small freighter; according to analysts, these are 48 to 60 launchers for large missiles. Roughly calculated, this gives the ship the capacity of a US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Also visible are a large rotating phased-array radar, likewise on a container, and another container with large radomes that presumably house communications equipment.

In addition, there were a close-in weapon system with a 30-millimetre cannon, decoy launchers and droppable emergency life rafts.
The first photos were taken on 25 December.

Drone catapult instead of missile containers

Since then, the ship has been converted again. Photos from 2 January show fewer vertical launch containers: on the port side, there are now only two rows of missile containers. On the starboard side, a mobile drone launcher has been set up instead.

The wheeled catapult is probably an electromagnetic one. It consists of four sections with four axles each, each as long as a 40-foot container (around 12 metres); in total the installation thus measures just under 50 metres. As the images suggest, each section is built as a four-axle truck.

It remains questionable whether drones can actually be launched from the ship – around 12 to 15 metres in front of the catapult, the bow rises up. The drones themselves are also puzzling: under tarpaulins, at least one model can be identified that was briefly shown at China's large military parade in September of last year .

In the White House, it is US President Donald Trump who dreams of developing new battleships. China, on the other hand, leaves experts guessing whether the equipment on the freighter really works or is merely life-size mock-ups.