It’s just a new, small Chinese stealth ship. But its arrival is terrifying

American destroyer USS Zumwalt. Stealth warship designs are becoming more common - US Navy/Getty

In 2020, the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin won the contract to build the first ship in a new class of guided-missile frigate for the US Navy. The yard laid the keel in 2022. Two years later, the Navy admitted the first frigate, Constellation, was four years late – owing to labour shortages, mostly – and wouldn’t deliver to the fleet until 2029.

Now compare this with the lightning-fast construction of the first in a potential new class of guided-missile corvette for the Chinese navy.

Foreign analysts first noticed the sleek, approximately 300-foot corvette under construction at Liaoning Shipyard in northeastern China in November. Six months later, the vessel was underway for trials. It’s possible the ship was built, launched and delivered in roughly a year – seven times faster than Fincantieri is completing that first US Navy frigate.

The new Chinese warship is a mystery. We don’t know exactly what it’s for or what it can do. We don’t know what it costs. We don’t know whether Beijing plans to build more copies, or when.

But we doknow the Chinese built it fast. And that’s a problem. The Chinese navy already has nearly 350 combat warships – dozens more than the US Navy has.

Yes, American ships are bigger, more heavily-armed and more sophisticated – for now. But US naval shipbuilding is in the throes of a labour and management crisis that is profoundly slowing the work-rate and squeezing deliveries to just a few ships a year. Meanwhile, Chinese naval shipbuilding is expanding and accelerating – and delivering bigger and bigger, better and better ships, faster.

It probably won’t be long before the Chinese aren’t just building morewarships – they’ll also be building betterones, too.

The new corvette has stealth features: clean lines, a downward-sloping hull and weapons and sensors tucked away in the superstructure and hull. These features could reduce the corvette’s radar signature and help the vessel blend in with the background clutter of coastal waters.

Stealthy warships aren’t new. The US Navy has three destroyers with radar-evading features. The Swedish navy operates five stealth corvettes. The Chinese navy doesn’t yet operate stealth vessels in front-line roles – but it may intend to.

The new corvette could be a test platform for a new hull design and other specific subsystems that naval architects could add to future ship designs. Or it could be the lead vessel in a whole class. We won’t know unless, and until, Chinese shipyards start building more of the angular ships.

If the corvette isthe lead vessel in a new class, it’s obvious what the Chinese navy would do with such vessels. Corvettes are the smallest ocean-going warships. They lack the heavy armament and endurance of larger frigates, destroyers and cruisers. But this isn’t a flaw.

A corvette has just enough firepower and endurance to patrol coastal waters, alone or in small groups. Corvettes can protect long vulnerable coastlines so that other warships don’t have to. In that way, corvettes free up bigger ships for more dangerous, further-flung duty: for example, sailing thousands of miles from shore in a task force with other big ships in order to engage an enemy fleet.

The Chinese navy already has dozens of corvettes, but they’re unsophisticated vessels. A new class of stealthy corvette could replace these ships, boost China’s coastal defenses and ensure Chinese commanders never need to waste a frigate, destroyer or cruiser on a low-stakes, near-shore mission.

Think of a corvette as a ship for fleet-optimization. It gives planners options, allowing them to meet a full range of maritime obligations – from patrol and constabulary missions to high-intensity warfare – without assigning too much ship to a particular task.

Notably, the US Navy has struggled to optimize, and is rushing to decommission its practically brand-new Littoral Combat Ships – which are between corvettes and frigates in size – in order to spend more money on destroyers and frigates. Incredibly, the US fleet still assigns some of its best destroyers to counter-drug patrols in the Caribbean Sea. That’s the kind of mission practically begging for a corvette.

If the Chinese navy opts to build more stealth corvettes, it could happen fast. It’s a truism of naval shipbuilding that the first ship in a new class takes the longest to build. If the Chinese built their first-in-class new corvette in just a year or so, imagine how fast they could build additional vessels in the same class.

One new corvette won’t affect the balance of power between the Chinese and US navies. But the speed with which this ship was built, and the fact that it is clearly a sophisticated design, clearly illustrate the glaring differences between the US and Chinese defence-industrial bases. And that definitely can tip the balance of power.

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.