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[Wrought]

Could you add enough armor everywhere to prevent this thing from being mission-killed by a modern subsonic Anti-Ship missile?
Who care if you can add armor if you can't add "enough" armor?

This discussion sounds like happening in Admiralty or Seekriegsleitung 100 years ago ...

Cost of production and duration of production will rise, and it will decrease speed to get to the LZ.
Adding armor will not help against an anti ship or even anti tank missile. It's also useless against artillery barrage since shrapnel doesn't work when hitting water and a direct hit is going to hurt regardless because it is such a big ship that you have to add a LOT of armor to make it practical useful.


Might as well just make more of these.

What they can add is some passive defense like laser dazzler or drone jammer but I suppose that PLAN is going to relegate that duty to other hardwares as it beaches.

Do none of you understand that modern blast-fragmentation warheads on anti-ship missiles are not designed to penetrate armor? Because modern warships are obviously not armored. Rather, they are designed for maximum damage to soft targets. Nobody puts armor on their ships anymore because simply redesigning the warhead will defeat it, and that's a lot easier than building ships. But if you armor just this one ship, a ship which is already far more difficult to mission-kill because it lacks sensitive electronics and sophisticated weapons of its own, then all of those anti-ship missiles will struggle to knock it out.

Anti-tank missiles are a different story since they are of course designed to penetrate armor. But those range of such missiles are literally orders of magnitude shorter, as is the size of their warheads and extent of damage they can deal, so there is a lot of value in forcing your enemy to make themselves more vulnerable to land a smaller hit.

 

[amchan]

Do none of you understand that modern blast-fragmentation warheads on anti-ship missiles are not designed to penetrate armor? Because modern warships are obviously not armored. Rather, they are designed for maximum damage to soft targets. Nobody puts armor on their ships anymore because simply redesigning the warhead will defeat it, and that's a lot easier than building ships. But if you armor just this one ship, a ship which is already far more difficult to mission-kill because it lacks sensitive electronics and sophisticated weapons of its own, then all of those anti-ship missiles will struggle to knock it out.

Anti-tank missiles are a different story since they are of course designed to penetrate armor. But those range of such missiles are literally orders of magnitude shorter, as is the size of their warheads and extent of damage they can deal, so there is a lot of value in forcing your enemy to make themselves more vulnerable to land a smaller hit.

Are you referring to armor belts and citadels like in battleships? I feel that that amount of effort would be better spent on improving the firefighting systems as if it is on jacks the main risk is burning down rather than hull damage by missiles.

 

[Wrought]

Are you referring to armor belts and citadels like in battleships? I feel that that amount of effort would be better spent on improving the firefighting systems as if it is on jacks the main risk is burning down rather than hull damage by missiles.

Well that's the most recent reference point for naval armor, so designers would probably start there. There are big differences though, for example with the main magazine (or lack thereof).

Firefighting is obviously important as well, but also not mutually exclusive with armor.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Certainly, but adding armor provides redundancy against the risk of damage. Obviously it would be ideal if these ships were never even targeted, or if all attacks were intercepted perfectly, but wartime contingencies are rarely ideal.

Just sprinkle in some 056A among these ships.

 

[Wrought]

Just sprinkle in some 056A among these ships.

I'm sure they will, but that is also not mutually exclusive.

 

[lcloo]

We have to consider these bridging barges as post-beach assault assets like any thin skin RORO ships or large landing transport ships. Added armor would be nice but today's navy ships are all thin skin ships compare with WW2 warships.

Even beach assault ships like type 072 and 073 are not armored. Their 37mm guns (some variants carries 25mm or 57mm gun) have doubtful effectiveness against missiles.

Deployment is post-beach assault, and after the area has been declared as safe zone for landing supplies by sea.

 

[by78]

Another satellite image of the large landing barges conducting training exercise.

 

[escobar]

From Aug.1 to 5, Russia and China will hold joint naval exercises called Maritime Interaction 2025.The russian group will be led by the destroyer Admiral Trubets, while the chinese group will be led by the destroyer Shaoxin. The exercises will also involve submarines and MPA from both countries.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1950521915895873728

 

[Sczepan]

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[jnd85]

We have to consider these bridging barges as post-beach assault assets like any thin skin RORO ships or large landing transport ships. Added armor would be nice but today's navy ships are all thin skin ships compare with WW2 warships.

Even beach assault ships like type 072 and 073 are not armored. Their 37mm guns (some variants carries 25mm or 57mm gun) have doubtful effectiveness against missiles.

Deployment is post-beach assault, and after the area has been declared as safe zone for landing supplies by sea.
View attachment 156976

Entirely agree about these things being held at a distance until the smoke clears. There is a reason for military units having an order of battle. Different equipment and units perform different roles at different times, and for very important reasons.

But despite similarities to the Mulberry bridges, this design of bridge barge will likely be deployed in a different way and have different safety requirements for their deployment.

The Mulberries were more modular and had more numerous types of component sub-vessels. The Mulberries had at their head specially designed beaching craft, so-called "gooseberries" that were relatively cheap and simple yet ruggedly made (thus if one failed others could take their place), followed by a series of other special-purpose craft behind farther to sea.

In contrast, new variants are all seemingly roughly of similar design, just at different scale, and all very sophisticated. Their relative complexity and high cost may actually be a vulnerability, insofar as they are likely going to be too expensive to risk getting close to shore until the land, sea, and air environments around the beaches completely clear.

For instance, the first sub-components of the Mulberries were beached within hours of the attack, and it is debatable whether beaches can be cleared nearly so quickly in a Cross-straits scenario for these kind of ships.

Further, the types of equipment these jackup vessels will have to be on guard against are much more sophisticated and more deadly than anything the Mulberry designs had to deal with, from manpads to loitering munitions and undersea explosives, etc., the range of threats is just much greater. If I were an enemy combatant, those jackup legs would certainly be an attractive target!

This is where my inner engineer says, "sometimes simpler is better."