054/A FFG Thread II
- Thread starter tphuang
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I am referring to ships in service; I tend not to count ships that are half-built or that only exist on paper. Regardless, calling a variant the "standard" even though it will be present in less than 50% of the class even at its maximum expected numbers is rather surreal, and more importantly in no way papers over the fact that the 054A still has no VDS at all regardless of what you are or are not calling a standard.
The only way you can legitimately called the 054A+ the "standard" of the 054 class is if the 054As go into midlife refit and come out updated to the 054A+ standard. I'd welcome any evidence to this effect other than mere speculation.
That's not the point, though. You're talking intent, he's talking capability. The 055 and the 052D are surely more potent ASW ships than the 054A by virtue of sensor package, speed, magazine capacity, helo reload capacity, and in the case of the 055, more helos. Does this mean the PLAN intends to use either of these ships as primary ASW assets? Surely not. They will use frigates.
Actually there is no reason to expect the primary ASW asset to be more at risk of attack than any other nearby ship, and any other nearby ships would certainly be fairly close by (as in 10-15km or so) in order to most effectively protect the ASW ship from anti-air threats. If the sub exposes itself to take a shot at an ASW asset, especially a frigate, it knows that even if it succeeds in sinking the frigate, any other ship in the group (typically members of the "outer screen") could just deploy their own VDS/TAS and continue ASW operations without hardly any interruption. Which basically means that the sub will tend to go for the highest value asset in any case, rather than whichever ship is performing ASW at the moment.
That is fine, so long as we all understand that what the last few posts that have been talking about 054A and its ASW capabilities were talking about hull 17 and onwards.
I don't grant you that, nor do I agree that even if this had been the case that it should have been the case given the significantly larger numbers of the 054A in the PLAN ORBAT compared to the 054A+ iteration.
In that case we'll have to agree to disagree.
D
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Well there is one more part in which the Type 54A would excel in ASW compared to the Type 52D or Type 055. And that is cost and numbers, it's a poor comparison to be sure. But it is certainly much cheaper to equip a frigate sized ship with all the essential sub hunting kit compared to a destroyer.
And can someone tell me if there is a relation between the size of the sonar array to detection range as it is with the surface area of radars ?
And with bigger numbers, the Type 54A can be deployed to cover more areas compared to a single destroyer for the same price tag. And there is the issue of being disposable. In a rather cold hearted calculation, it would be much more acceptable to sacrifice a frigate in the dangerous job of sub hunting than to risk an expensive destroyer, like to lure a submarine into firing and giving away its position. Though this would be cold comfort for the crew of the frigate in question.
As for the number of VLS, while a single frigate would certainly carry less then a destroyer, this can again be off set by the fact that there can be multiple frigates on station for rotation duty due to lower costs.
And can someone tell me if there is a relation between the size of the sonar array to detection range as it is with the surface area of radars ?
And with bigger numbers, the Type 54A can be deployed to cover more areas compared to a single destroyer for the same price tag. And there is the issue of being disposable. In a rather cold hearted calculation, it would be much more acceptable to sacrifice a frigate in the dangerous job of sub hunting than to risk an expensive destroyer, like to lure a submarine into firing and giving away its position. Though this would be cold comfort for the crew of the frigate in question.
As for the number of VLS, while a single frigate would certainly carry less then a destroyer, this can again be off set by the fact that there can be multiple frigates on station for rotation duty due to lower costs.
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You have it backwards here. Not taking noise canceling measures into account, GTs operate at much higher rpms than diesel engines. Therefore their noise signature will have peaks at high frequencies, whereas the diesels at low frequencies. Noise damping increases with noise frequency, therefore for equal noise pressure at origin the higher frequency source will be less audible at distance than the lower frequency one.
Second, gas turbines are much smaller than diesel engines, which should require less weight for noise canceling measures.
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There is such a thing as low frequency gas turbine noise, and lots of it.
There are ways to mitigate those, as these abstracts show.
PIston engines can use counterweights to dampen vibrations.
Gas turbines need to run at a higher RPM otherwise the engine is prone to stalling. Since GTs need to be run at their maximum RPM, they also produce a much large quantity of noise. Noise isn't just in the compressor, but also in the air flow entering in the engine, and out of it. The shaping of the intakes and the exhaust plays a large part of it. The bigger these ducts are which is necessary for the larger volume of air needed to run the engine at maximum RPM, the lower the noise frequency is. It works like a musical instrument, like a tuba. Since the engine runs at a higher RPM, you would need larger reduction gears to exchange RPM for torque and those gears also produce noise, with large gears producing lower frequency noises.
This all sounds like pure unadulterated speculation. Please produce some linkable supporting evidence for these claims. As far as tanks go at least the M1's GT is well-known for being significantly quieter than comparable diesel engines, enough even to earn the Abrams the nickname "Whispering Death".