But it seems like Jane’s may have misidentified it. The bow design of the fourth ship (as identified by Jane’s) differs significantly from that of the Type 054B frigate.
054B/new generation frigate
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
How so?
It seems the hull of both ships are already fully assembled but the one marked as "Hull 4" has a noticeably sharper bow compared to the confirmed 054B hull 3. It also seems ever so slightly longer than hull 3 as well.
So possibly something else?
Exactly, that’s what I’m going to say. Thanks @Tomboy. If it’s not a Type 054B frigate, then what is it? A new batch of Type 052D destroyers, or the long-awaited next-generation frigate?
It is possible that the bow of "hull 4" looks sharper because the upper most module/level of the bow has yet to be installed.
The lower module/level of the bow section may well look sharper, which is how hull 3 looked at the beginning of the year:
054B/new generation frigate
The 3rd 054B FFG under construction at Hudong-Zhonghua. Posted by @星依樱未 on Bilibili.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
For LUCAS like drone swarm attack, I think the main gun’s AA capabilities will really come into its own as its high RoF, huge air burst blast radius and massive magazine will be extremely useful against saturation style drone attacks.
Why hamstring yourself trying to deal with next gen problems with previous gen weapons?
The best and most obvious hard counter for surface drones would be air based missiles and loitering munitions. The attack variant of the Z20 will be very useful against suicide drones, and China basically has loitering attack munitions coming out of the seams these days. It would be trivially simple to load some of the countermeasure tubes with loitering munitions instead. Alternatively, it would be an afternoon’s work to bolt some attachment points to take army drone swarm mass launchers, but frankly given US and western industrial capabilities, that would seem ridiculously overkill. Merely having loitering munitions loaded into 1/3-1/2 of the tubes of the decoy launchers will more than cover all realistic swarm attack scenarios. If it does encounter an unexpectedly large suicide surface drone attack wave, the preloaded loitering munitions should buy more than enough time to get the onboard helicopter loaded with ATGMs and airborne to help out, and crews can reload the tubes between firings or even just set up man portable launchers to continue spamming loitering munitions.
Like the Army's Type 625, the 1130 was designed for counter-munitions rather than anti-drone. Its rate of fire is too high, making it easy to run out of ammunition.
A more ideal projectile weapon for anti-drone would be a revolver cannon. However, I still believe that unmanned helicopters, anti-drone loitering munitions, and APKWS are more effective choices.
A more ideal projectile weapon for anti-drone would be a revolver cannon. However, I still believe that unmanned helicopters, anti-drone loitering munitions, and APKWS are more effective choices.
As I wrote in the next gen ddg/ffg thread, the most optimal and viable short term self defense weapon against small drones, would be something like the HQ-15's smart fuzed autocannon+small SAM combination.
It's small enough to mount a pair amidships of a 055, and maybe even 052D and 054B sized warship, and should have the ability to balance cost effectiveness versus capability. And of course it will not require meaningful deck penetration (as we can see on its configuration on the truck), and its overall size is no greater than a standard CIWS in PLAN service.
One would not need the full four face array setup of HQ-15 (as the overall weapon should be integrated into a ship's overall sensor suite inclusive of its primary multifunction radar and surface search radar to cue the mounts), but will retain its own FCR and EO ball of course.
Only the hardware in the red border.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
If drone swarms was truly to become a serious consideration, then the most effective hard counter would be a naval version of the army’s microwave anti drone swarm weapons. Although I wonder if the massive modern AESA arrays on modern warships could achieve sufficient energy output to function in a similar way to a microwave weapon at a pinch.
But for warships, it seems improbable that opfor would be able to get swarms of short range suicide drones within strike range unless the warship really went out of its way to make that possible. Even doing shore bombardment with the main gun, the warship should be comfortably outside of small suicide drone range.
The only realistic scenario I can think of where a naval warship might actually encounter an enemy drone swarm out in the wild is if a new model of unmanned surface drone boat was loaded with a loitering munitions mass launcher. But in that case, killing the launch platform before it can launch its munitions would be by far superior counter method over trying to shoot down all the attack drones.
