055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread

[Blitzo]

You missed the entire point by comparing Flight IIA to Flight III. We know for a fact that there are major changes that require a significant power increase, namely a GaN SPY-6 and GaN AMDR-X. The SPY-6 is quoted as requiring twice the power of the SPY-1D. The problem for your argument is that there are no major changes from a Flight III to a 055 that necessitates a dramatic power increase since we are already assuming the 346B is GaN and not GaAs, which actually is by no means a guarantee, and assuming there is a GaN X-band panel on the 055 as well, which actually is also by no means a guarantee. Even assuming that all of these are true, you've got nothing more than that over the Flight III. You've got a ~20% larger ship, which as I said could easily be more than offset by four 4MW generators generating 16MW. So your argument for 4 extra MW is basically HPM, and/or a 25% penalty in power for 'Chinese inefficiency', yes? Because SPY-6 + AMDR-X presumably only requires 3 extra MW between the two of them, and they are the largest and most power-intensive electronics systems on the ship. But yet somehow we can squeeze in 4 extra MW somewhere into the 055 for various unnamable electronics reasons.

The bold part is the difference in our positions.

You seem to believe that there are no major changes between Flight III Burke and 055's electronics suite.

I on the other hand, am saying we only know Flight III Burke's electronics suite (as well as how it differs from Flight IIA), however we do not know what 055's electronics suite consists of.

055's electronics suite might happen to require a similar amount of power to Flight III, or it may even require less, or it might require more. Point is, we don't know.
Right now we aren't even certain what Type 346 variant it uses, let alone how much power it consumes relative Type 346A (or SPY-1 or SPY-6), let alone its suspected X band radar, let alone how extensive its EW suite may or may not be and how much power those may also use.

 

[AndrewS]

Like I said, the ONLY thing you have going for you is the hypothetical "HPM", as both GaN sensor and EW is ALREADY present on the Flight III Burke and it only requires 12MW. So please drop the "sensor" and "EW" part because for the purpose of this discussion they are both completely irrelevant unless you can somehow demonstrate that the 055's sensor and EW power requirements are in the neighborhood of 67% higher than the Flight III, and we both know you can't do this, so....

As for the HPM, this pie-in-the-sky weapon is about as much justification for "20MW" (another total conjecture) as "Martians live under the earth because we know that some of them are mind-controlling us". One total conjecture being used to justify another total conjecture is not much of anything in the end.

GaN modules apparently can handle 10x the power of GaA modules, as per the press releases for the AMDR.

My read is that they would have liked to add even more power to the Flight 3 Burke, except that they settled for a straightforward and codt-effective upgrade of the electrical gensets within the same space constraints. If they had a fresh design, would they have put in 4 gensets instead of just 3?

And remember that the AMDR was originally supposed to be used on the Zumwalt which has a total of 78MW of electricity available (ableit for propulsion as well)

 

[Lethe]

You don't need directed-energy weapons to explain significantly greater electrical requirement and generator capacity on 055 compared to Burke-IIA/III/etc.

And of course greater displacement of 055 does not significantly impact on electrical energy requirements. Rather, greater hull volume allows for the greater generator capacity to serve greater end-use needs, where both would feed into greater displacement in the first place.

And that's the elephant in the room. The limitations of Burke III are all in the public record. The ship is not big enough to do what USN wants it to do, and it has no margin for future growth. What is that referring to, exactly? It's obvious: it's referring to generator capacity, sensor size/capability, and in future directed-energy weapons. They had to go down from a planned 20ft AMDR on Zumwalt to 14ft AMDR on Burke III -- a 50% reduction -- not only because the smaller array is cheaper, but also because the Burke hull can't mount the larger array that USN wanted and the ship doesn't have the electrical capacity to power it!

Contrast to 055 where PLAN has developed a clean-sheet design where -- one can only assume -- power generation has been to tailored to sensor and other energy requirements, to hull size, including a suitable margin for future growth, all tailored according to a list of desired capabilities spelled out from the very beginning.

The mistake is in taking Burke III as some kind of benchmark in the manner that Burke I/II/A were. It isn't. 055 and Zumwalt and Type 45 are the new benchmarks, as modern clean-sheet designs without the compromises and idiosyncrasies that come with trying to shoehorn 21st century systems into a 20th-century design.

TL;DR: The question is not "why does 055 have so much generator capacity?", but rather "why does Burke III have so little?" And the answer is because the latter is a 30yr-old hull designed in a different era when electrical requirements were not nearly as high as they are projected to become over the coming decades, i.e. the era for which 055 has been designed.

 

[Iron Man]

The bold part is the difference in our positions.

You seem to believe that there are no major changes between Flight III Burke and 055's electronics suite.

I on the other hand, am saying we only know Flight III Burke's electronics suite (as well as how it differs from Flight IIA), however we do not know what 055's electronics suite consists of.

055's electronics suite might happen to require a similar amount of power to Flight III, or it may even require less, or it might require more. Point is, we don't know.
Right now we aren't even certain what Type 346 variant it uses, let alone how much power it consumes relative Type 346A (or SPY-1 or SPY-6), let alone its suspected X band radar, let alone how extensive its EW suite may or may not be and how much power those may also use.

Correct, we know NEITHER the entirety of the 055's electronics suite or the Flight III's electronics suite. Unfortunately for your argument, this doesn't really mean much. We know what electronics systems it ought to have: radars, sonars, ESM, ECM, communications, satcoms, datalinks, combat data systems, weapons, propulsion, desalination, water distribution, heating/cooling, food storage and prep, waste processing, interior lighting, etc. etc. etc. Most of these systems have predictable (and similar) power requirements, and both ships will pretty much have all of these systems on board. The only real unknowns are the big power suckers, the radars. I don't even grant you that the EW system is a big power drain since I've already posted how large a jammer actually needs to be, and since the only part of an EW system that requires any degree of power is the actual jammer (the rest being passive detectors/receivers), you've got nothing much here as far as EW is concerned suck up your 4 extra MW. So all you've got now is the 346. So your argument seems to be basically that if not the HPM, then the 346 + X-band radar is what is sucking up 67% more power to run than the SPY-6 + AMDR-X. I guess it's running on GaSDN (gallium super-duper-nitride). In any case, is it "possible" for a GaN-based 346 radar to suck that bad? Yes, I guess it's possible. Is it plausible? No, I think not.

 

[Iron Man]

You don't need directed-energy weapons to explain significantly greater electrical requirement and generator capacity on 055 compared to Burke-IIA/III/etc.

And of course greater displacement of 055 does not significantly impact on electrical energy requirements. Rather, greater hull volume allows for the greater generator capacity to serve greater end-use needs, where both would feed into greater displacement in the first place.

And that's the elephant in the room. The limitations of Burke III are all in the public record. The ship is not big enough to do what USN wants it to do, and it has no margin for future growth. What is that referring to, exactly? It's obvious: it's referring to generator capacity, sensor size/capability, and in future directed-energy weapons. They had to go down from a planned 20ft AMDR on Zumwalt to 14ft AMDR on Burke III -- a 50% reduction -- not only because the smaller array is cheaper, but also because the Burke hull can't mount the larger array that USN wanted and the ship doesn't have the electrical capacity to power it!

Contrast to 055 where PLAN has developed a clean-sheet design where -- one can only assume -- power generation has been to tailored to sensor and other energy requirements, to hull size, including a suitable margin for future growth, all tailored according to a list of desired capabilities spelled out from the very beginning.

The mistake is in taking Burke III as some kind of benchmark in the manner that Burke I/II/A were. It isn't. 055 and Zumwalt and Type 45 are the new benchmarks, as modern clean-sheet designs without the compromises and idiosyncrasies that come with trying to shoehorn 21st century systems into a 20th-century design.

This limitation of the Flight III and Arleigh Burke hull doesn't have any relevance to this discussion. The fact is that 12MW is sufficient to power the SPY-6 whether or not the USN wanted a larger panel. We are NOT talking about future-proofing, which I have already said is a possible reason for a possible 20MW (which BTW I find amusing that the rest of you just automatically assumed is true without showing even the least bit of skepticism, presumably because it's so much moar awesome power). We are talking here about justifications for "current requirements" for 20MW as Bltizo specifically stated and I am directly quoting.

 

[Lethe]

This limitation of the Flight III and Arleigh Burke hull doesn't have any relevance to this discussion. The fact is that 12MW is sufficient to power the SPY-6 whether or not the USN wanted a larger panel.

Umm, the two are directly related. A larger panel with more elements can draw and radiate more power. 12MW may be sufficient to power the SPY-6 on Arleigh Burke, but it's insufficient to power the array that USN actually wanted. And that's the key difference: 055 is much closer to what PLAN wants than Burke III is to what USN wants.

Do you really think it is plausible that China's desired radar capabilities on a clean-sheet, 12k ton hull miraculously bear less resemblance to USN's desired capabilities and greater resemblance to the capabilities that USN was forced to fall back to in order to fit the 9k ton Burke hull? It is more likely that 055's radar capabilities exceed those of Burke III, largely because the former have not been artificially constrained by hull and electrical limitations imposed a priori, and that 055's significantly greater electrical generation capacity reflects this.

We are NOT talking about future-proofing, which I have already said is a possible reason for a possible 20MW (which BTW I find amusing that the rest of you just automatically assumed is true without showing even the least bit of skepticism, presumably because it's so much moar awesome power).

I assume that future requirements were anticipated in the design of 055 because I assume that the relevant folks involved were not idiots. Nobody designs and builds a new warship intended to serve for 30+ years without thinking about possible future requirements and upgrades.

 

[Iron Man]

Umm, the two are directly related. A larger panel with more elements can draw and radiate more power. 12MW may be sufficient to power the SPY-6 on Arleigh Burke, but it's not sufficient to power the array that USN actually wanted.

Which do you think sounds more plausible: that both China and USA, working from the same fundamentals and with respect to similar levels of technology, arrived at similar desired radar capabilities, or that China's desired radar capabilities on a clean-sheet, 12k ton hull miraculously bear greater resemblance to the capabilities that USN was forced to fall back to in order to fit the Burke hull?

Who cares whether the 12MW is or is not sufficient to power the array that the USN wanted? How is it relevant to what the PLAN wanted? Besides, I have only heard that the Arleigh Burke hull is unable to accommodate a 20 ft AMDR, NOT that it could not install enough power to use a 20 ft AMDR. Do you actually have any evidence that sufficient power generation capacity was determined to be unable to be installed into a Flight III to power a 20 ft AMDR? I suspect that you don't.....

In either case, I don't see a 20 ft radar on the 055. Do you??? I see a radar roughly the size of SPY-6 on there, actually. So where is all this "forced" talk coming from? Looks like PLAN constructed a similar sized 346A/B all on their own.

I assume that future requirements were anticipated in the design of 055 because I assume that the relevant folks involved were not idiots.

You can assume whatever the hell you want, but it has nothing to do with what Bltizo and I were talking about.

 

[FORBIN]

Who cares whether the 12MW is or is not sufficient to power the array that the USN wanted? How is it relevant to what the PLAN wanted? Besides, I have only heard that the Arleigh Burke hull is unable to accommodate a 20 ft AMDR, NOT that it could not install enough power to use a 20 ft AMDR. Do you actually have any evidence that sufficient power generation capacity was determined to be unable to be installed into a Flight III to power a 20 ft AMDR? I suspect that you don't.....

In either case, I don't see a 20 ft radar on the 055. Do you??? I see a radar roughly the size of SPY-6 on there, actually. So where is all this "forced" talk coming from? Looks like PLAN constructed a similar sized 346A/B all on their own.
View attachment 40587

SPY-6 even in 4.26 m/14 foot is very capable, the 20 foot/6.1 m variant initialy planned was better vs Ballistic missiles, SPY-1 A - D do 3.7 m/12 foot.

The new radar will require twice the electrical power as the previous generation while generating over 35 times as much radar power

What is electical power of a AB ? and AEGIS like Chinese DDG 052C/052D also if it is possible.

052D Type 346A 4.3 x 4.3 meter/14 foot

055 have 346B ? a little more larger

Type 055 is equipped with advanced active phased array radar with a larger diameter than the Type 346A radar fitted aboard the Type 052C class. One Type 346B radar array is larger than the 4.3x4.3 meter of the Type 346A arrays

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And for 052C ?

 

[Jura The idiot]

... I don't see a 20 ft radar on the 055 ...

before I'll forget myself Jul 4, 2017

... taking this graphics:

of an AN/SPY-6(v) (of a Burke Flight III)
while assuming the panel is an octagon with the span (shown in green, twice) of 4.2 m

(so that
"Flight III’s radar array surface though 0.6 meters greater than the old radar, has a diameter of only 4.2 meters."
from the link I quoted again above;
3.7 m, which would correspond to "12 octagon" from

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is shown for example in:

)

and considering

1. area = 2*(1+sqrt(2))*(side)^2;
2. area = 2*side*span

then combining 1. and 2. gives:
side = 0.41421 (of course rounded) *span

so a side of such an octagon would be about 1.74 m, its area about 14.6 m^2 (I checked using both 1. and 2. so that I don't screw up)

meaning: if the panel of a Type 055 is a square, its side needs to be at least 3.8 m for that panel to be bigger than the above octagon

and Jul 5, 2017

going from

to

then taking norms within
a = [6.4 14.1]; b = [1.5 29.3]; c = [18.9 14.1]; d = [14.3 29.7];
EDIT and "averaging" (for nitpickers LOL who would say abcd doesn't form a rectangle or whatever)

it appears the panel is ROUGHLY 33:26 ("higher than wider": if its bottom is 1.0, its side is ABOUT 1.27)

***

plus later I was guessing (but didn't post as LOL it was based on the height of individuals standing in the Type 055 bow in some picture) the side of the Chinese radar from the above post to be five meters, so the area would be about twenty square meters

 

[Tyloe]

Besides the accuracy of the 20MW figure, couldn't a seeming excess of power capacity be explained in these all Burke comparisons by:
1. A requirement to have a larger hull space for the additional generator sets to satisfy or supplement the power demands of the new electronics; already fitted or planned. and/or.

2. Those side structures are indeed part of the integrated combat system, which contemporary ships don't have?

Besides propulsion, it would explain why 055 needs the extra juice; to power additional Search, passive, or EW arrays (GaN based or not), or HPM, rather than being mechanical such as cooling plants or doors which could be better fitted to keep the RCS decrease over 052D.