052C/052D Class Destroyers

Inque said:

More powerful missiles at the cost of carrying fewer? I'm not sure. Quantity matters too.

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I actually think China should have an even bigger vls and bigger ships to carry those vls. Cause hypersonic missiles with good range will be extremely large. Bigger ships can also carry bigger radar for better air and missile defense.

According to rumors, China is working on a bigger vls.

As for quantity, that can be solved with arsenal ships. A ship that carries nothing but a huge quantity of missiles. Likely unmanned.

Gloire_bb said:

Limitation is fitting lower efficiency anti-ship weapons(supersonic, hypersonic) with acceptable range into mk.41.
They don't fit well.

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What does this mean?

tamsen_ikard said:

I actually think China should have an even bigger vls and bigger ships to carry those vls. Cause hypersonic missiles with good range will be extremely large. Bigger ships can also carry bigger radar for better air and missile defense.

According to rumors, China is working on a bigger vls.

As for quantity, that can be solved with arsenal ships. A ship that carries nothing but a huge quantity of missiles. Likely unmanned.

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Arsenal ships are too many eggs in one basket. Just build more ships or ships with ~90-100 VLS. The 055 carrying 112 is already pushing it.

ACuriousPLAFan said:

Yes they can, as both the 052D and 055-classes of DDGs use the same model and the same variants of UVLS cells. The only (major) variable here is the number of UVLS cells of their respective variants on the 052Ds versus the 055s.

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That means in the near future we will probably see 052d DDG using YJ-20, YJ-17 or (YJ-15, YJ-19 if possible) ?

Squadson said:

That means in the near future we will probably see 052d DDG using YJ-20, YJ-17 or (YJ-15, YJ-19 if possible) ?

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Yes for the YJ-17 and YJ-20, if not already the case by now.

As for the YJ-15 - I don't think they are needed on the 052Ds and 055s, given that both these DDG classes already have better options readily available (i.e. YJ-17 and YJ-20 in the hypersonic domain, and the YJ-18C in the subsonic+VLO domain).

And as for the YJ-19 - While the size of the missile certainly makes it an easy fit inside the UVLS cells of the 052Ds and 055s, the YJ-19 is meant to be submarine torpedo tubes-launched (from the 093/A/B SSNs and 039A/B/C SSKs). Plus, there is also a full-sized variant of an air-breathing HCM (YJ-XX?) meant for the UVLS cells of DDGs that is yet to be revealed, so there likely won't be a lot of YJ-19s loaded inside the UVLS cells of the 052Ds and 055s going forward.

Inque said:

64 VLS may be relatively few for a destroyer of this displacement...

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Not sure where this idea comes from. 052D is a relatively "dense" combatant compared to its peers around the world. Ships of similar size include Spain's Alvaro de Bazan frigates and their Australian Hobart-class derivatives, Japan's Akizuki and Asahi-class destroyers, the Franco-Italian Horizon-class destroyers, Italian FREMM frigates and their American Constellation-class cousins, and India's Nilgiri-class frigates and Visakhapatnam-class destroyers. 052D is more heavily armed than all of those combatants, in most cases significantly so, and that implies trade-offs have been made elsewhere, likely to some combination of range and endurance, crew accommodations and facilities, survivability and quieting, and future growth margins. The only modern, similarly-sized combatants that are more dense than 052D are Turkey's upcoming TF-2000 destroyers, which undoubtedly embrace similar trade-offs.

One implication of this is that it is entirely possible to imagine a future PLAN medium destroyer, one that is only modestly larger than 052D, that retains the same basic VLS configuration (or adds only 8-16 cells), with the bulk of displacement growth relative to 052D being addressed to other areas in line with PLAN's evolving strategic requirements.

ENTED64 said:

Further 052D has 24 cell HHQ-10 which Burke needs to use VLS for. Granted that would be quad pack missiles but it means 052D is more like 70 VLS.

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I think there is some confusion here. HHQ-10 is similar in size, role and launcher configuration to USN's RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM). The quad-pack VLS missiles that you refer to are the significantly larger Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM). An ESSM weighs 280kg against RAM's 74kg, with corresponding implications for their respective performance envelopes. RAM has historically been deployed on USN's non-AAW ships, but absent from Burkes and Ticos owing to their combination of Phalanx CIWS and ESSM. In recent years, 21-cell RAM and 11-cell SeaRAM launchers have begun to be rolled out across the Burke inventory to replace Phalanx, while there is still no evidence that PLAN has yet deployed a mid-range quad-pack missile comparable to ESSM.