The Jane''s Defence Weekly reported (April 9) that two Chinese research papers that emerged in early April through social media provide further evidence of significant technological developments in PLAN’s next generation of nuclear submarines. The first paper relates to the "optimisation of submarine vertical missile launchers" and the second to the "analysis of radiated noise of a no-shaft pump jet". It said if these papers reflect technology to be incorporated into PLAN’s third-generation nuclear-powered submarines, it would indicate a much greater advance than the current Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarines (SSBNs).

(Comment: The Weekly also said the papers had first appeared in the Ship Science and Technology Journal in April 2017 and another on the pumpjet in the Journal of Ship Mechanics in November 2018.