052/052B Class Destroyers
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Seemed that it was quite early
It looks like 168's overhaul/upgrade is almost finished. All the scaffoldings have been taken down.
The back part is the most important thing as I don't recall the 052B in its original configuration to have a TAS. What it has was a towed torpedo decoy. Now it has a new second port hole which has to be a TAS. The image is not sharp enough to determine if there is a VDS, as I get the impression that there might be some very faint lines that make up an upright rectangle between the two mooring holes but it can be an image processing issue so a sharper image to the back is needed. But the fact that the torpedo decoy is moved from the center of the stern to the side and the TAS is offset to the port and not center between the two mooring holes suggest something is there in between.
The target illuminators looks like the old style. Decoy launchers are moved from the front to the back, 052D style.
Mineral ME datalinks, which used to be globular, now changed to the 366-2 datalinks, adopting the 052D bell type domes, which were also used in the 956EM refits.
Can't see the detail on the EW equipment but it's got the 052D style ESM mast.
For comparo.
All the 054A already have those, it's old news. The HHQ-16 illuminators looks to me like they were deliberately made to look like MR-90, but their construction methods are not the same. The MR-90 Front Domes looks like they were riveted from plates, but the Chinese copy looks like the entire shell was pressed by a machine as one piece. The domes between the two do not have the same shape either. It reeks to me that Chinese emitters were deliberately made to look like copies when underneath they are not.
My theory is that the Chinese emitters maybe using a different technology or antenna design from the Russian one, but the exterior looks like the original deliberately because the designers were ordered to copy the Russian ones to appease higher ups in the PLAN, who at that time early 200X, might have pro Russian views or fanbois. Not wanting to copy the Russian design inch by inch, they pushed their own original indigenous design instead, and hid their different design through a familiar looking shell. You only need to check the evolution of the Buk vs the HHQ-16 series that despite using similar looking missiles and the same guidance methods, the radars they use on each are quite dissimilar.
The Buk radars to the M1, uses an inverse cassegrain called Fire Dome. I would assume that design was inherited into the MR-90 Front Dome. However the land based HQ-16 uses an optically spaced phase array like on the S-300 radars. I would assume the Chinese designers would take the easiest path by trying to adapt their own proven land design into a naval version.
We need more pictures. Unfortunately people are not that interested about the ship to take them.