Class and type Dongbo 39 Armament Unarmed Aviation facilities None | Electronic warfare
& decoys None Aircraft carried None | |
The Dongbo 39 class barge is a little known class of naval auxiliary ship currently in service with the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The name of this class is after the first unit commissioned, with the exact type still remains unknown, and only a single unit of this class have been confirmed in active service as of the mid-2010s.
The Dongbo 39 class series barges in PLAN service are designated by a combination of two Chinese characters followed by a three-digit number. The second Chinese character is Bo (驳), short for Bo-Chuan (驳船), meaning barge in Chinese, because these ships are classified as barges. The first Chinese character denotes which fleet the ship is service with, with East (Dong, 东) for East Sea Fleet, North (Bei, 北) for North Sea Fleet, and South (Nan, 南) for South Sea Fleet. However, the pennant numbers may have changed due to the change of Chinese naval ships naming convention. The Dongbo 39 is distinct from other Chinese barges in military service in that it has the bow of a landing ship, and it has been observed that radar reflectors have been installed amidship, indicating that the ship has been used to support radar and weaponry tests in 2013.