China's iterative ship designs illustrate an advantage when successive batches can perform broadly the same missions. Four separate classes of ten might each generate only two or three available ships, giving about twelve in total. In the forty-ship common-pool example, ten are normally at sea and another six are operationally available. A further eight can be available in a dockside or similar state, raising total availability to twenty-four without implying that all twenty-four are deployed. The remaining sixteen cover refits, maintenance, and work-up. These are illustrative readiness categories and totals, rather than measured availability figures for the Chinese fleet.
Notable Point · 11:40-13:21
Chinese iterative designs enlarge the available fleet
An illustrative forty-ship common pool produces more usable capacity than four separate ten-ship classes, with deployed and dockside availability kept distinct.