Video | First Live Fire of Ship-to-Air Missiles Hits All Targets! Rare Footage of the 10,000-ton Destroyer Nanchang Released

The Nanchang, commissioned in January 2020 with hull number 101, is the first ship of China's independently developed Type 055 10,000-ton destroyer. Now, six years have passed since the Nanchang was commissioned, and today we reveal the story behind its first live-fire exercise.

In March 2021, one year after its commissioning, China's first Type 055 guided missile destroyer, the Nanchang, undertook its first air defense and anti-missile mission with a real combat background.

Naval Officer Qiao Peng from the Nanchang: The difficulty of the mission was equivalent to a world-class air defense challenge at that time, as we had never experienced live-fire shooting before. The pressure on the entire team and the ship was particularly high.

At that time, the average age of the missile team members was only 23. They were both nervous and excited, facing such a high-difficulty challenge for their first live-fire mission, and everyone was anxious about whether they could pass the test smoothly.

Naval Officer Qiao Peng from the Nanchang: You don't know when these target drones will come, whether they will come at the same time or separately. We also need to observe the changes in dozens of data points within a few seconds, so our biggest enemy is time; we must be fast and accurate.

More than a month later, the assessment arrived as scheduled, and the battle alarm echoed throughout the Nanchang. Everything was ready, and everyone was eager to go.

At the command, the missiles shot towards the target like swords piercing through the clouds, hitting five out of five, demonstrating the combat capability of the 10,000-ton destroyer to the world.

Naval Officer Qiao Peng from the Nanchang: At that moment, everyone in our team jumped up from their combat chairs, cheering in various ways. The missiles are like the first line of defense for our ship, and after this live-fire exercise, we indeed felt much more confident when going out to sea in the future. (Source: China Central Television's Defense and Military Channel program "Forging the Sword")