054B/new generation frigate

[AndrewS]

054B may not be suitable for outside of the First Island Chain, but good enough for extended anti-sub patrols within it.

Outside of the *very* niche capability to keep up with the few CSGs currently in the Chinese Navy, the Type-054B should be good enough for its ASW and medium-range air defence missions.

I would also expect it to have sufficient electricity generation capacity to support a 600KW laser as a future upgrade.

 

[AndrewS]

Maybe that’s the crux of the problem, PLA doesn’t think it can wait two or more years because of the possibility of the Sino-American War in the next few years. PLA may think it needs as many ships (with proven/conservative designs) ready for battle as soon as possible.
054B may not be suitable for outside of the First Island Chain, but good enough for extended anti-sub patrols within it.

Or maybe the Navy has already contracted for 4 Frigates per year. So they have to produce something.

And if the Type-054B is ready, they might as well produce a batch now, instead of continuing with the Type-054A.

And there's the possibility that major issues arise with the Type-057 successor class.

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Come to think of it, in a few years time, we will have a much clearer idea of how powerful and widespread lasers will be.

We're also in the middle of a military technology revolution comprising AI, satellite tracking constellations, airborne drones, underwater drones, and ASW detection technologies.

So they might be holding off on the Type-057 until then.

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I'm also reminded of the Ford-class being specified with 600MW of electricity, compared to just 200MW for the preceding Nimitz-class.

 

[tphuang]

The warship curve, including weapons (which you were also complaining about). Not the engine curve in isolation. Likewise, the test and tweaks are happening in regard to integration with all the other ship systems. And remember that the 054B program didn't start yesterday; this thread was created in 2020. You mention rapid advancement in the past 2 years; do you expect them to throw out all their design work and start from scratch just because cool things are happening in the civilian sector? Maybe you can justify that sort of last-minute switch with something as big and important as 003 carrier catapults. But the downside costs of finishing a couple frigates you already started is pretty low.

Worst comes to worst, PLAN will simply use 054B as a transition class. Which is hardly unprecedented, and indeed might still happen.

Well, they officially revealed the most SOTA stuff recently, like today in fact. But the reality is that they have been making pretty good progress for several years now and PLAN would've had insight to that. Otherwise, they would not have installed it on Type 076. By anyone's standard, it would have been a very risky move to put a whole new propulsion system on your first drone carrier. But they did it, because they knew it was ready.

So given what we know today, if you follow what I posted on the marine propulsion tech, you'd see that CSSC now has up to 10MW diesel version of CS27 and they have developed this new S-POD propeller (10MW each) that allows much better rotating propellers and also shielded inside a pod, so much better for NVH and space savings inside the ship. If they are develop the next variant today, they could go for an option like that.

But even back a couple of years ago, they could have gone with 4 7.5MW diesel engines connected to IEPS. It seems to be there is a lot of space efficiency, fuel efficiency & NVH improvement you get using a IEPS vs CODAD.

 

[tphuang]

Is there possibility of refit the IEP engine on existing ships 3 years down the line?

That's a major MLU, you need to redo the ship grid and likely face compatibility issue with electronics. Better and probably cheaper to build a new ship instead.

it doesn't really make sense to refit with IEPS. I actually don't recall PLAN ever doing that with any of their ships.

054B using CODAD propulsion is still a good ship. I just think it was an unnecessary step toward a new 5500-6000t surface combatant that can also serve the role of long deployment in a CSG.

 

[Gloire_bb]

054B using CODAD propulsion is still a good ship. I just think it was an unnecessary step toward a new 5500-6000t surface combatant that can also serve the role of long deployment in a CSG.

054b is evaluation of 054a experience, both shord and long range (gulf and further); it's hard to tell whether it isn't necessary.
Can we expect that 054a can effectively defend itself from modern rear/secondary theater threat? Small salvo of NSM/prsm/sm-6, B-21, Virginia, Taigei?
PLAN did run its simulations, and real world events aren't very promising either.

 

[AndrewS]

Well, they officially revealed the most SOTA stuff recently, like today in fact. But the reality is that they have been making pretty good progress for several years now and PLAN would've had insight to that. Otherwise, they would not have installed it on Type 076. By anyone's standard, it would have been a very risky move to put a whole new propulsion system on your first drone carrier. But they did it, because they knew it was ready.

Remember that MVDC/IEP and the EM catapult was actually pioneered by the Fujian aircraft carrier.
And it looks like the Type-076 uses a similar MVDC/IEP setup, and the same EM catapult.

So the Type-076 doesn't look that risky. It's actually the Fujian that looks risky.

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But given that they developed a combination diesel/gas turbine IEP setup on the Type-076, perhaps they want to see how that performs first, before committing to IEP for Frigates and Destroyers.

Currently, Frigates and Destroyers don't get that much benefit from IEP. In comparison, I expect an EM catapult benefits significantly from IEP.

So given what we know today, if you follow what I posted on the marine propulsion tech, you'd see that CSSC now has up to 10MW diesel version of CS27 and they have developed this new S-POD propeller (10MW each) that allows much better rotating propellers and also shielded inside a pod, so much better for NVH and space savings inside the ship. If they are develop the next variant today, they could go for an option like that.

But even back a couple of years ago, they could have gone with 4 7.5MW diesel engines connected to IEPS. It seems to be there is a lot of space efficiency, fuel efficiency & NVH improvement you get using a IEPS vs CODAD.

 

[Wrought]

Well, they officially revealed the most SOTA stuff recently, like today in fact. But the reality is that they have been making pretty good progress for several years now and PLAN would've had insight to that. Otherwise, they would not have installed it on Type 076. By anyone's standard, it would have been a very risky move to put a whole new propulsion system on your first drone carrier. But they did it, because they knew it was ready.

So given what we know today, if you follow what I posted on the marine propulsion tech, you'd see that CSSC now has up to 10MW diesel version of CS27 and they have developed this new S-POD propeller (10MW each) that allows much better rotating propellers and also shielded inside a pod, so much better for NVH and space savings inside the ship. If they are develop the next variant today, they could go for an option like that.

But even back a couple of years ago, they could have gone with 4 7.5MW diesel engines connected to IEPS. It seems to be there is a lot of space efficiency, fuel efficiency & NVH improvement you get using a IEPS vs CODAD.

They did have insight, and they chose to go with CODAD. Perhaps the increased cost/complexity is justified for larger ships, but not for frigates.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Excerpts from an academic paper on the temperature distribution of the dual-face rotating AESA radar array cabin found on the 054B FFGs. Posted by SOYO on Weibo.