052C/052D Class Destroyers

Jeff Head said:

I show six commissioned (I believe) 172, 173, 174, 175, 154 and 117. I believe the others that have been launched are either in trials or outfitting.

For example, I know 118 and 119 are launched and in the water, but I have not seen them with their pennant numbers, or heard that they are commissioned.

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sanblvd said:

Thanks for the reply, it confirm what I have thought, but this is still super weird, its not like US is behind AESA technology you would think they would be the 1st one to switch to AESA way before any other country.

From what I read, Flight III won't commission before 2025, China 052C first commissioned in 2006, so that will be a wopping 19 year gap from China's first AESA ship to US first AESA ship. Something just don't look right in this situation.

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They are not behnd.

They have upgraded these radars they do have, and integrated all sorts of cooperative engagement, additional sensors, and other superior capabilities into them.

With all of that, and the many years of operational experience and testing they have, they feel it is sufficient for current and furutre threats.

At the same time, they will start building the Flight III ships soon that do have a new, and more powerful AESA radar integrated into all of the abive. And they will probably build 18-24 of those vessels before all is said and done, depending on when the new Tico replacemtn is designed, developed, and put into produxtion,

By that time there will be close to 100 Burkes in operation...just thinking of that number of 8,500-10,000 ton destroyers with all of that experience boggles the mind,

And those are the US AEGIS vessels.

You have Japan, S Korea, Australia, Spain, Norway, etc. with their own AEGIS vessels. Those foreign countries are operating about 30 more AEGIS vessels. It is simply a huge force of very capable vesels...and the exercise together quite often.

jobjed said:

That's not to say the SPY-1 is bad, it's just not as advanced, but advanced enough. Also, the radar is just one component, albeit the most important, of the entire combat system, which the USN has thoroughly mastered with three decades of operational experience with Aegis. Perhaps the USN knows something about combat system development that no one else does due to sheer experience. In any case, even if the Aegis is legitimately outmatched by newer systems from other countries, it would be a very marginal level of outmatched and the Burke Flight IIs would still be among the best alongside the rest of the big boys like the Darings, Horizons, Gorshkovs, 052Ds, etc.

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That's just something people love to repeat because they think whatever US does must automatically be superior even when outdated. Parabolic radars have been in operation far longer, but you don't see people use "sheer experience" in attempts to equate these radars to modern phase-array radars.

PESA radars are technologically behind. That's the simple fact. Even the USN realizes this with the adoption of AESA radars. Had the USN just launched the Flight III program as soon as AESA technology became available, the Arleigh Burke would have gotten AESA earlier than the 052C. Instead, the USN put all eggs into the Zumwalt basket and suffered for this decision.

Engineer said:

That's just something people love to repeat because they think whatever US does must automatically be superior even when outdated. Parabolic radars have been in operation far longer, but you don't see people use "sheer experience" in attempts to equate these radars to modern phase-array radars.

PESA radars are technologically behind. That's the simple fact. Even the USN realizes this with the adoption of AESA radars. Had the USN just launched the Flight III program as soon as AESA technology became available, the Arleigh Burke would have gotten AESA earlier than the 052C. Instead, the USN put all eggs into the Zumwalt basket and suffered for this decision.

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There's a really nice explanation (William Keim) of the difference between PESA/AESA on Quora:

tl/dr: Both are roughly the same in capability with PESA being larger/heavier and more expensive to build/mantain. AESA is inherently more robust due to inbuilt redundancy.

I am Dungeons Dragons fan so I am gonna use it as analogy, PESA is like a two handed sword where you have to focus your attention span and specialize 1 on 1 duel like a knight , where AESA is duel wield multi task perfect in hectic situation whirlwind ninja

Max Demian said:

There's a really nice explanation (William Keim) of the difference between PESA/AESA on Quora:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

tl/dr: Both are roughly the same in capability with PESA being larger/heavier and more expensive to build/mantain. AESA is inherently more robust due to inbuilt redundancy.

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Yes, there are fanbois out there who think that any AESA is automatically superior to any PESA in capability just because it's newer, when the actual details are far more complicated.

Iron Man said:

Yes, there are fanbois out there deprived of reason who think that any AESA is automatically superior to any PESA in capability just because it's newer, when the actual details are far more complicated.

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Well it is actually better more reliable, cheaper, smaller and lighter, more efficient. No single failure etc
In very critical mission you try to avoid single point failure that is paradigm in engineering
Plus it can be built from solid state. come on even US navy is now moving to AESA
China has the advantage of late comer so it doesn't hold by legacy system I am not saying China is ahead of US . But latecomer has advantages and can leap frog legacy system
Hardware is one side of equation but software too. I don't buy the argument just because US has more experience it is necessary better China is very strong too in software and they have at least a decade now with this system so I imagine there must frequent update

AESA also allows the use of solid state devices for RF generation and amplification. Single solid-state devices were never capable of generating the power needed at a single source for a PESA radar. But when split up over thousands of elements, now you can use solid-state, and you end up getting much better radar efficiency, and can take advantage of modern solid-state advances in silicon technology.

Hendrik_2000 said:

Well it is actually better more reliable, cheaper, smaller and lighter, more efficient. No single failure etc
In very critical mission you try to avoid single point failure that is paradigm in engineering
Plus it can be built from solid state. come on even US navy is now moving to AESA
China has the advantage of late comer so it doesn't hold by legacy system I am not saying China is ahead of US . But latecomer has advantages and can leap frog legacy system
Hardware is one side of equation but software too. I don't buy the argument just because US has more experience it is necessary better China is very strong too in software and they have at least a decade now with this system so I imagine there must frequent update

AESA also allows the use of solid state devices for RF generation and amplification. Single solid-state devices were never capable of generating the power needed at a single source for a PESA radar. But when split up over thousands of elements, now you can use solid-state, and you end up getting much better radar efficiency, and can take advantage of modern solid-state advances in silicon technology.

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I have already mentioned all the benefits of AESA over PESA and that all other things being equal, the AESA will be superior. The problem is that we don't know the strength of the software running the various PESAs and AESAs out there, so we don't really know if all other things are actually equal. People saying something like "I have full confidence in the software developers because they're young, vigorous, smart, Chinese software tech is mature, etc." means nothing to me. In the end we will never really know how the SPY-1 compares to the Type 346A in terms of overall capability, or really any other comparison of a specific MFR to another MFR.

Alright thanks guys, so the consensuses seems to be that China leap frog 1 generation ahead of US on deploying AESA on ships, however PESA and AESA's function are very similar and since US have decades of experience ahead in deploying PESA so even with older technology they get to make it up with experience.

In that case I think China won't be that far behind, the first 052C launched 12 years ago in 2015 and now they are deploying 2nd generation of AESA on the new carrier and 052D so they also have plenty of time to work on their own experience.

So now when compare 052D to Burke, both ship performance's as on par with each other, but since Burke are bigger so it can carry more VLS tubes and they probably have better ASW ability so its slightly ahead in firepower but 052D is still comparable,

So in the end its all about numbers, all about who can build more ships, is that the correct assessment? If so, I'm afraid we will see a cold war style arms build up.

Follow on question, is there any technology in the experimental/theoretical stage that will replace AESA technology like PESA/AESA replaced Pulse-Doppler?

sanblvd said:

Alright thanks guys, so the consensuses seems to be that China leap frog 1 generation ahead of US on deploying AESA on ships, however PESA and AESA's function are very similar and since US have decades of experience ahead in deploying PESA so even with older technology they get to make it up with experience.

In that case I think China won't be that far behind, the first 052C launched 12 years ago in 2015 and now they are deploying 2nd generation of AESA on the new carrier and 052D so they also have plenty of time to work on their own experience.

So now when compare 052D to Burke, both ship performance's as on par with each other, but since Burke are bigger so it can carry more VLS tubes and they probably have better ASW ability so its slightly ahead in firepower but 052D is still comparable,

So in the end its all about numbers, all about who can build more ships, is that the correct assessment? If so, I'm afraid we will see a cold war style arms build up.

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It's not really fair to compare a 7,500t warship to a 9,200t warship. But yes the Burke's overall capability is obviously greater than that of the 052D. As for the radar performance specifically, as I said before, there is really no way to tell from our perspective, and anyone trying to tell you something definitive one way or the other based on generalities alone is smoking crack.

sanblvd said:

Follow on question, is there any technology in the experimental/theoretical stage that will replace AESA technology like PESA/AESA replaced Pulse-Doppler?

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Not that I know of, but there is technology that will massively enhance the capability of AESAs already coming down the pipeline, namely GaN (gallium nitride) that will replace standard GaAS (gallium arsenide) MMICs. This technology will increase the power output of individual MMICs by several times, e.g. 10W vs 50-80W or even more for a comparable MMIC. Probably every new military radar design going forward is going to use GaN instead of GaAs. The SPY-6 will use GaN and Raytheon's claim is that it will detect an object half as large at twice the distance compared to the SPY-1. If there is a "Type 346B" (055/A?) it will probably use GaN as well.