052/052B Class Destroyers

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

chuck731 said:

And the gun, especially if it is water cooled like the Russian original, can keep up 20 rounds a minute until the target ship runs out of CIWS ammo.

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A gliding shell (like the Vulcano) has the following problem which I think I should mention before somebody else would (and fired back at me for praising precision-guided naval ammo): it relies on tails and fins to fly, and if (some of) these were shot off, the glider would fall down My point is that CIWS could likely be ordered just to use several rounds against each incoming glider (guys here keep saying how easy it is to track a dart so why not believe them?) and those rounds would probably put it down ... that's different from how CIWS would cope with Anti Ship Missiles (they have to be set off as far as possible from the defending ship and longer bursts are needed for this -- well, that's what I think

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

planning the battle explicitly with intention to combine gun rounds with ashms is purely a range game. does one want to get close to 80-100 km from the enemy? (not 120 km because one wants multiple rounds on target effect or doesnt want to use a few times more ships than the enemy while upkeeping 120 km range)

why wouldnt ranges be 200-300 km? if attacking ship has a vague idea where enmy is - missile is shot half blindly, then ranges will be less as the missile will spend a lot of its range searching for exact position of enemy ship. but in the same situation the gun rounds wont be fired at all as one cant rely on vague location of the enemy.

if attacking ship knows exactly where target is and wants multiple direction threats the missile's ranges will be cut by 30-40 km, enough so the missiles cross the horizon to the target 90 degrees from original point of origin . of course, if one insists on 180 degree deviation the missiles ranges will be cut further, by perhaps 80 km or more.

that still leaves the likes of yj62, jsm, brahmos etc with ranges of 200 or more. even yj83 should be able to do 150-200 km if its reported ranges are true.

but of course, sometimes missiles' whole ingress routes are full of zigzags. those can drop the ranges considerbly, even half them. but why do attackers use such routes? because other senors, not just the target, are possibly in play, and they want their missiles to reach the target undetected. in the same manner, a ship that wants to attack with its gun would also need to sneak around to approach the target. but we're talking about a ship. much slower, much easier to find. it just doesn't make sense even to try to sneak with a ship like that. either the situation allows for fairly straight approach, which enables the missiles to use their almost full ranges, or the situation calls for extreme caution which puts any ship that approaches the target in danger.

plus no one commented on ship borne helicopters. those are a mainstay of today's warfare. when there are are no airplanes around, helicopters reign. and theres a reason why burkes are regularly equipped with penguin missiles for their helos, why jsm is being integrated with helicopters and why china developed z9d with its missiles. and all those can potentially increase reach of a ship to 400 or more km.

anti-ship missile will run out really fast against a well defended fleet and likely not to have done much damage.

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only if we're talking about ship versus fleet situation. a fleet could perhaps defend against a saturation attack.
if we're talking about a ship versus ship - today's ships are more likely to kill each otehr with missiles than defend themselves. if we're talking about fleet versus fleet -its the same thing. total number of missiles being higher than total defense capability of fleet per one ship. as only one ship will get saturated at a time. and fleet defenders wont even sail close enough to each other to overlap all of their systems. ciws wont overalp for sure, possibly even some short ranged missiles.

at the same time, that fleet will make short work of a lone attacking ship with gun support. it doesnt matter if its fleet versus same fleet with guns. the fleet that waits until it gets in range to use guns as well will lose. its extra time given to other fleet to manouver its assets, extra time to try several attack runs (with helos for example) and the missile attack of *same fleet versus same fleet* won't really fail.

yes, there is always the possibility that misssile fleet will at one point run out of missiles, after say 3 destroyed ships, and the sole remaining missile/gun ship will get a chance to shoot. but at that point - it will have to go through combined defense of all opposing ships. IF it has enough expensive guided shells - it might even succeed. but i hope its clear at what sort of lengths one has to go to get to a situation where missile/gun combo has an advantage. in practical real world situations such opportunities may simply not present themselves.

i will repeat myself for a third time - having such option as guided antiship gun rounds is great. if its there, i'd want it for my ships. but its not something to rely on in high threat or symmetrical threat enviroments. its best used as cheaper way to take care of lesser threats.

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

tphuang said:

Quite possibly this has become less of an issue than I think, but what we see on brochures vs actual conflict after several minutes of salvo might be quite different.
...

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oh sure, anything and everything can fail; says "This system can track up to thirty targets, engaging the four most urgent." about the Goalkeeper CIWS; so what if 25 darts (which can be allegedly shot from a 127/54 gun during one minute) were coming at it? Would it work exactly as designed during that couple of seconds? The hope of defenders would be it did, while of the attackers ...

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Totoro said:

planning the battle explicitly with intention to combine gun rounds with ashms is purely a range game. does one want to get close to 80-100 km from the enemy?
...

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Totoro what if hostilities started if you ALREADY WERE within that range (like if you were just called by your Admiral the war began and ordered to engage the enemy's ship, which you knew was let's say 20 miles from you)?

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Jura said:

Totoro what if hostilities started if you ALREADY WERE within that range (like if you were just called by your Admiral the war began and ordered to engage the enemy's ship, which you knew was let's say 20 miles from you)?

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that question has a pretty self evident answer. in that particular situation gun rounds would surely be used as there'd be nothing to lose.

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Jura said:

A gliding shell (like the Vulcano) has the following problem which I think I should mention before somebody else would (and fired back at me for praising precision-guided naval ammo): it relies on tails and fins to fly, and if (some of) these were shot off, the glider would fall down My point is that CIWS could likely be ordered just to use several rounds against each incoming glider (guys here keep saying how easy it is to track a dart so why not believe them?) and those rounds would probably put it down ... that's different from how CIWS would cope with Anti Ship Missiles (they have to be set off as far as possible from the defending ship and longer bursts are needed for this -- well, that's what I think

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Steerable shells don't fly. They follow essentially ballistic trajectories modified by some guidance input. If their guidance software is smart, then they would only need a few corrections before continuing with a ballistic trajectory all the way to target. So one that has happened, shooting off a fin would likely not cause the round to deviate much.

Also, modern guns often have multiple round, simulataneous impact capability. This means the gun can fire 5 rounds or so over 15-20 seconds, and use differences in propellant charge and barrel elevation to ensure each shell follow a different trjectory to all arrive on target at the same time. This would further complicate the CIWS's task by forcing it to engage multiple targets at the exact same time.

Modern shells have terminal speeds on the order of 2000 kph, which is around 3 times that of most sea skimming AshM. Assume a CIWS can effectively engage a shell from 2 kms. It would have roughly 3.5 seconds in which to engages a shell, ensure it is shot down, repoint the barrel, engage another, etc, 5 times. Even so those last few shells would have to be engaged so close to the ship that even if the shell is hit, so long as it is not detonated, the shell would probably still follow a ballistic trajectory into the ship.

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

vulcano ammo actually does glide. its on the italy's defense website that i provided link to. it has large fins and canards near the nose that, i would guess, are slightly deflected so they provide some lift for the glide phase.

actually, that whole design might make it harder to try for multiple shells on target trick at long ranges. if long ranges are achieved by gliding then certain shells moving away from ideal gliding trajectories might suffer even bigger range drops than regular shells being fired at unfavorable angles to achieve the same effect.

and as far as i could find , modern shells dont go past transsonic when falling high up from the sky, at long ranges. thats for regular shaped shells. of course for a missile like projectile like vulcano there's no precedent so... we don't know how fast they fall. flight on the average is highly subsonic, except for the deceleration phase right after the projectile leaves the gun. that one graph for 155mm projectile is quite illustrative: it starts off at 2750 feet per second, drops to 1000 fps at 17.000 yards, at nearly 40 seconds of flight time, then speeds up to perhaps 1150 fps before it hits the ground, with last 20 seconds (of total 100 seconds for 24.000 yards total range) the terminal velocity is almost constant due to ever increasing air drag.

again, vulcano is probably different in some ways, but we don't have any data on it. still, since its unpowered and does have a gliding profile which is draggier than simple ballistic trajectory, i seriously don't think it will be doing mach 2, let alone mach 3. it could very well be similarly transsonic during the terminal approach. (not to mention subsonic during 40ish km away from target as it glides)

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Totoro said:

vulcano ammo actually does glide. its on the italy's defense website that i provided link to. it has large fins and canards near the nose that, i would guess, are slightly deflected so they provide some lift for the glide phase.

actually, that whole design might make it harder to try for multiple shells on target trick at long ranges. if long ranges are achieved by gliding then certain shells moving away from ideal gliding trajectories might suffer even bigger range drops than regular shells being fired at unfavorable angles to achieve the same effect.

and as far as i could find

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, modern shells dont go past transsonic when falling high up from the sky, at long ranges. thats for regular shaped shells. of course for a missile like projectile like vulcano there's no precedent so... we don't know how fast they fall. flight on the average is highly subsonic, except for the deceleration phase right after the projectile leaves the gun. that one graph for 155mm projectile is quite illustrative: it starts off at 2750 feet per second, drops to 1000 fps at 17.000 yards, at nearly 40 seconds of flight time, then speeds up to perhaps 1150 fps before it hits the ground, with last 20 seconds (of total 100 seconds for 24.000 yards total range) the terminal velocity is almost constant due to ever increasing air drag.

again, vulcano is probably different in some ways, but we don't have any data on it. still, since its unpowered and does have a gliding profile which is draggier than simple ballistic trajectory, i seriously don't think it will be doing mach 2, let alone mach 3. it could very well be similarly transsonic during the terminal approach. (not to mention subsonic during 40ish km away from target as it glides)

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Even if the terminal velocity is only 1150fps (1262kph) the CIWS with range of 2km still has only 4.5 seconds in which to engage the incoming shell. If 5 shells are fired in MRSI mode then CIWS has 4.5 seconds in which to shoot down 5 shells coming in on different trajectories.

Gliding shells would have longer range but are probably a little slower over most of the flight because induced drag of its lifting surfaces, unless it is either fired at higher velocity or has rocket assist during flight.

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

But it is possible to overwhelm the ship's defense with shells simply because there are a lot more of them than say AshM, so there is no reason to stop firing until the defender runs out of defending munition, assuming you are not taken out yet.

Re: PLAN Type 052 Class Destroyer

Totoro said:

planning the battle explicitly with intention to combine gun rounds with ashms is purely a range game. does one want to get close to 80-100 km from the enemy? (not 120 km because one wants multiple rounds on target effect or doesnt want to use a few times more ships than the enemy while upkeeping 120 km range)

why wouldnt ranges be 200-300 km? if attacking ship has a vague idea where enmy is - missile is shot half blindly, then ranges will be less as the missile will spend a lot of its range searching for exact position of enemy ship. but in the same situation the gun rounds wont be fired at all as one cant rely on vague location of the enemy.

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that seems to work during board, but how successful is OTH targeting in blue water? We saw in the INS Hanit attack what it's like to just fire missile as a vague area. One missed and the other caused some damage to a really small ship.

if attacking ship knows exactly where target is and wants multiple direction threats the missile's ranges will be cut by 30-40 km, enough so the missiles cross the horizon to the target 90 degrees from original point of origin . of course, if one insists on 180 degree deviation the missiles ranges will be cut further, by perhaps 80 km or more.

that still leaves the likes of yj62, jsm, brahmos etc with ranges of 200 or more. even yj83 should be able to do 150-200 km if its reported ranges are true.

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Again, you talk as if you can easily track moving targets from that far out. How reliable do you think it is for a ship like 052D to track targets from 150 to 200 km out?

but of course, sometimes missiles' whole ingress routes are full of zigzags. those can drop the ranges considerbly, even half them. but why do attackers use such routes? because other senors, not just the target, are possibly in play, and they want their missiles to reach the target undetected. in the same manner, a ship that wants to attack with its gun would also need to sneak around to approach the target. but we're talking about a ship. much slower, much easier to find. it just doesn't make sense even to try to sneak with a ship like that. either the situation allows for fairly straight approach, which enables the missiles to use their almost full ranges, or the situation calls for extreme caution which puts any ship that approaches the target in danger.

plus no one commented on ship borne helicopters. those are a mainstay of today's warfare. when there are are no airplanes around, helicopters reign. and theres a reason why burkes are regularly equipped with penguin missiles for their helos, why jsm is being integrated with helicopters and why china developed z9d with its missiles. and all those can potentially increase reach of a ship to 400 or more km.

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the missiles carried by the helo are pretty light. Generally effective against small ships, but not sure how effective they will be against larger ships. Again, each helicopter can carry at most 2 missiles, likely one, you are not adding much additional firepower in play.

That's

only if we're talking about ship versus fleet situation. a fleet could perhaps defend against a saturation attack.
if we're talking about a ship versus ship - today's ships are more likely to kill each otehr with missiles than defend themselves. if we're talking about fleet versus fleet -its the same thing. total number of missiles being higher than total defense capability of fleet per one ship. as only one ship will get saturated at a time. and fleet defenders wont even sail close enough to each other to overlap all of their systems. ciws wont overalp for sure, possibly even some short ranged missiles.

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even one solid air defense ship plus a couple of escorts can defend against 8 Anti-ship missiles. you don't need a fleet to defend it. You make it sound like this saturation attack has that many missiles. You can't overcome a type 45 with that.

Against a fleet, you make it sound like it's that easy to find another fleet in the blue waters. For example, a US carrier group is really fast and hard to find out there.

at the same time, that fleet will make short work of a lone attacking ship with gun support. it doesnt matter if its fleet versus same fleet with guns. the fleet that waits until it gets in range to use guns as well will lose. its extra time given to other fleet to manouver its assets, extra time to try several attack runs (with helos for example) and the missile attack of *same fleet versus same fleet* won't really fail.

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does the word supplement mean anything to you? You are going to start with AShM, but you will run out against a solidly defended ships. So, it's good to have other options to form attack salvos.

yes, there is always the possibility that misssile fleet will at one point run out of missiles, after say 3 destroyed ships, and the sole remaining missile/gun ship will get a chance to shoot. but at that point - it will have to go through combined defense of all opposing ships. IF it has enough expensive guided shells - it might even succeed. but i hope its clear at what sort of lengths one has to go to get to a situation where missile/gun combo has an advantage. in practical real world situations such opportunities may simply not present themselves.

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With what you are saying, they are going to run out of missiles in a minute. Those 8 AShM aren't likely to score any kind of mission kills on opposing ship.

i will repeat myself for a third time - having such option as guided antiship gun rounds is great. if its there, i'd want it for my ships. but its not something to rely on in high threat or symmetrical threat enviroments. its best used as cheaper way to take care of lesser threats.

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You threw down your view point earlier against main gun playing a big role in ASuW. You spent a bunch of time repeating the same points that missiles are more effective, have longer range. None of which is disputed. The point is that using main guns can be helpful when you do get into range and I think that's quite possible going forward. It's really hard to find a mobile fleet. Whether you can actually find the other fleet from 100 km out is hard to say when you are operating in the blue waters away from fixed wing aviation assets. But you keep on playing down the important of developing such a system. Yes, there are technical difficulties, but it looks like we are getting closer to the point where they can play a solid role in OTH ASuW attacks. the number of anti-ship missiles that a ship can carry including helo ones is quite limited. It's likely not enough for any conflict that 052D will get into, so it would have to rely on other ASuW options.