China held a steel-cutting ceremony for the second Type 054A frigate for the Pakistan Navy (PN) on 19 December, marking the beginning of construction of the vessel at the Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard in Shanghai.
The contract for two Type 054A frigates for the PN is believed to have been signed in 2017 and a further contract for two more ships was announced in June 2018, when it was also indicated that delivery of all four ships was expected to be complete by 2021.
The Type 054A has become the general-purpose workhorse of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), with a class of 30 ships either commissioned or under construction.
