Some musings on the large chinese VLS system and its viability for frigate and corvette sized ships:
What are the roles of such ships in PLAN? Since long range AAW and cruise missile attack seems to be served by destroyers, frigates seem to be relegated to an ASW role, local area AAW and some general antishipping capability. Corvettes seem to be tasked with ASW and antishipping. Both also require some missile self defense capability, with corvettes not required to be as potent in that regard as frigates.
Thus, what is needed for frigates? Efficent way to store local area defense SAMs, ASW missiles, Antishipping missiles and perhaps some longer reach self defense missiles. (longer reach than HQ10 offers)
If frigates are to use the new, common VLS system, what needs to be done to fully utilize their potential on such ships? A new weapon, instead of HQ16 is definitely needed, as HQ16 is just awkwardly and inefficiently sized for the new VLS.
While China can devise a missile of their own or is maybe already testing such missiles, let me just pick one existing missile as perfect design for our VLS. Russian made 9M96 missiles. It is fairly compact, only 15 or so cm longer than HQ16 in its boostered, long range variant. It would fit the 7m long variant without any issues, length wise. Or PLAN could devise another length of its VLS - basically as long as the VLS on 054a, with slightly bigger protrusion over the deck.
Retrofitting existing 054a with such new VLS would enable 16 cells being installed forward, with some room/weight to spare around the entire new VLS module. Depending on exact size of its missiles and their launch method, such modernized 054a could feature 2 to 4 Yu8 rocket launched torpedoes per cell and/or 3-4 9M96 sized missiles per cell. That'd amount to, say, 8-16 Yu-8 and 36-48 9M96 comaparable missiles. (and the 8 slanted antiship missile launchers)
If one wanted to do a little bit more tinkering underneath those 054a and change the footprint of its VLS well, 20 cells could fit up front, if a new 4 cell module was devised. And by changing the footprint i don't mean increasing overall area but managing its width and length.
Some new, elongated 056 variant could also house such VLS, even if just 4 cells. That would still give it some decent Yu8 capability. Or if the variant is made a little bigger, then even a proper 8 cell could be installed, with half of the cells being self defense 3.3 m long ones, probably nicely packed with missiles.
Again, designing a custom made missile would be more efficient. Using a Tor like missile would not use the entire length of the VLS, but its width would prevent more than 4 missiles being packed. Using CAMM like missile design/capabilities would enable at least 6 if not 8 missiles to be packed inside.)
Of course, the tech may not be there yet to get CAMM like capabilities from such a small size. But eventually the tech will get there.
