055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread

[tidalwave]

Horribly. They'd likely be sunk before radars of any of their helicopters even spot the CSG ships. And even if for some strange reason they manage to get in position where their helicopters found one of the CSG destroyers, they would themselves be too far away from those destroyers to actually fire upon them with railguns. That being said, if the railgun isn't the weapon of choice, they might be successful with engaging the said CSG destroyers with YJ-18 missiles.

Why helicopter? Does 055 has its own radar search for carrier?

055 has enough air defense power to suppress the incoming opposing air fighters and get close enough the CBG

Rail gun can reach 250 miles and its shot cannot be intercepted whereas YJ18 or any missiles can be.

 

[Tam]

No they’re not. US has 20 Ticos to 11 carriers + 10 LHA. China has 8 055s to 2 carriers and 1(?) LHA.

What even gave you that idea?

Ticos are in a bad shape. Two or three of them might be listed in operational condition but they aren't so and have been sitting on base. Their systems are also getting outdated. Next decade, some hard decisions are going to be made if any ships are still going to be retained, and when they do, they will be refitted and upgraded. But the cost of retaining and refitting older ships --- the pressure is on the Navy to deliver a 355 ship fleet --- can mean an alternative cost of having less money to procure all new ships of some other class. Ideally it would be better to scrap all the Ticos and procure new ships. The USN is looking for some new large surface combatant --- I believe it might be using a modified San Antonio class with VLS tubes --- as a replacement, and hopes to make contracts by 2023. That's like a 23,000 or 25,000 ton class ship here.

055s have an important distinction over Ticos and that is they are much stealthier, both passively, by reducing long range low frequency radar cross section with their angular shapes, and actively, the use of AESA all over by the 055 means the ship can have LPI emissions throughout.

 

[DGBJCLAU]

No they’re not. US has 20 Ticos to 11 carriers + 10 LHA. China has 8 055s to 2 carriers and 1(?) LHA.

What even gave you that idea?

Others have responded to your question.

Again there is a timeline to consider. Among those 8 055s, 4 are going to be operational in the near term for 2 carriers. The remaining 4 will be operational well into the 2020s, by which time a third PLAN carrier will be operational. There is a close-to-zero possibility that, say, 3 055s will be assigned to escort each existing carrier, and we will be able to see patterns in the 2019 parade, or when the ships are identified to be assigned to operational units.

 

[Tam]

Why helicopter? Does 055 has its own radar search for carrier?

Rail gun can reach 250 miles and its shot cannot be intercepted whereas YJ18 can be.

Yes, but the Earth is not flat. It curves, and that curvature means that a ship can disappear under the horizon. The taller the ship is, the higher the location of the radar instrument, the lower the radar can peer down the horizon and extend the radar horizon. Unfortunately for the 055, the radars are not placed high enough. From a ship, depending where you are, the other ship will disappear under the horizon around 30 to 50km. Microwaves actually bend through the atmosphere due to refraction and scatter allowing following the surface, but the farther you go, the weaker they become, the less accurate they become.

That's why you need airplanes. The higher you go, the greater the radar horizon although at this point, you are using the airplane or the helicopte's radar. That's why those Y-8 or Y-9 maritime patrol aircraft can be so important. Or your helicopters with radar. Or J-16s from your carrier.

In order to engage, the aircraft has to spot the enemy first, then send the coordinates to the ship, which fires the missiles to those coordinates. The faster the missile, the quicker they reach there, and the less the targets would have moved from the point they were detected. The target ships would be caught within the range of the antiship missile's radar guided seeker. All ASMs are active radar guided.

For a slower antiship missile, the aircraft need to stay longer to keep updating the target locations to the antiship missiles, putting the spotter aircraft under danger and fire. This is the other advantage of doing supersonic, and then hypersonic missiles, over subsonic antiship missiles. The other advantage of course, is to greatly reduce the defender's reaction time. Note that antiship missiles sea skim in order to lower detection via hiding under the radar horizon. They have to be detected once they are over the horizon and you have line of sight, or by your own aircraft on search.

Without using aircraft, the first mode of detection of one fleet over the other is through the signals each fleet emits, such as their radars and communications. These signals bounce up the ionosphere and downward, allowing for over the horizon detection. That's why the first line of detection is through a ship's ESM. Its possible to target a ship well beyond the horizon at long range through the target ship's own radar signals. The US can do this using their Harpoons and ESM (SLQ-32), the Soviets likewise (Mineral, Garpun), and that same technology has been passed through to the PLAN (Mineral ME to Type 366). For this reason, the USN practices radar discipline, emissions free exercise, and they have become very good at it. Its up to the PLAN if they can exercise the same level of radar and communications discipline. The whole point is that those ship radars can be made to work against you.

Targeting another ship with antiship missiles via radar is only possible if both ships are within radar line of sight of each other. That's pretty close. But it can happen if you are dealing with small and fast littoral vessels so you still need to have this capability built in.

Now back to the 055, its shape appears designed to lower radar cross section against long range low frequency bands used by ship and maritime patrol plane radars. AESA radars used by the ship can mean LPI emission, which means their radar signals won't be intercepted or detected, and if detected, might be interpreted by the enemy ESM as noise or static. The ship maybe hard to detect, although pairing it with older and less stealthy ships can ruin it and give away the ship's location. But if 055s work as an all and only 055 pack, or paired with stealthy future 052X or 054X designs, you might have a fleet that might be hard to catch. For the fleet to target another fleet, it would have to cooperate with airborne or satellite assets.

So why do you need the radars then for? You need them for your self and fleet defense, engaging enemy aircraft and their missiles that are hunting for you. If your radar has LPI, you might be able to detect, track and target the enemy plane without the plane's radar warning going off. Otherwise, for a search aircraft, your own search radar can also be used against you and reveal your location to the enemy plane. If the enemy plane is an ECM one, it may try to jam you. But at the same time, a plane's radar can be used against the plane, allowing you to detect it first through your ESM and track the plane through its signals, then use your own radars to light up the plane and guide your missiles at it.

 

[AndrewS]

Cost is unlikely an issue. Chinese destroyers are going to cost much less than the $1.85 billion being charged for a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke. But the USN are doing year to year contracts which makes the ships expensive. Using a 10 ship block contract, the Flight III Burke will only cost $1.75 billion --- cheaper --- despite the massive cost of the SPY-6 AESA radars.

China could be buying ships in massive multiyear contracts --- I suspect the Type 054A contract is a straight up 30 ship deal, which will drive the cost to the ground. I think the 052D might be another massive 30 ship deal, and the Type 056 a massive 60 ship deal. Mega deals may not be unusual, if not typical, with the Chinese ship building industry --- COSCO has a current multiyear order for 25 ore carriers for example and each of these are huge ships that cannot go through the Panama or Suez Canals. Previously China procuring ships on a single ship class (Type 051B), or dual ship contracts (Type 052, 052B, 054) are the ones that end up being more expensive. Type 052C, only on a six ship contract, may end up being more expensive than a Type 052D, if the 052D is on a 30 ship block contract, despite the technological advancement on the 052D.

If China procures only 8 of Type 055 on a multiyear contract, its going to be lot cheaper than a single ship contract. But its going to much much cheaper per ship if you do a massive 20 or 30 ship contract.

So the question is what kind of negotiation is made?

I think max, JIangnan and Dalian maybe able to output 4 destroyers for each shipyard every year, for a maximum of eight, using their assembly line modular construction. This kind of modular construction favors large block contracts, so you can be building all the modules somewhere, even if the dry docks are filled assembling the ships.

Bigger contracts are better yes and I agree that a 5 year block-buy for destroyers is so much better than single year funding.

Apparently the rule of thumb in US military procurement is that a doubling of the procurement rate results in a 20% decrease in cost.

From what I've seen of the construction learning curve for the Arleigh Burke, the 10th ship only required half the construction man-hours of the 1st ship.
After that, there was minimal reduction in construction man-hours after that 10th repeat build.
And of course, raw material costs remain broadly the same.

But where we should see continuing large cost decreases (beyond the 10th destroyer) is in electronics, radars and weapons systems.
Note these elements account for the majority of a destroyer's cost.
And that T/R receivers for radars and other electronics are all about upfront R&D and semiconductor production costs. Afterwards, the actual cost of an extra unit should be pretty low.

---

But what you're discussing now is what sort of contracts Dalian and Jiangnan are on.

I would expect them to be operating on a 5 year contract cycle as well, as it neatly aligns with all the other 5 year government plans we see.

For Dalian and Jiangnan, remember that they are also working on other ships as well, so I think a baseline of 2 destroyers per year for each shipyard is reasonable from a production/efficiency/requirement perspective.
That gives each shipyard a 5 year contract for 10 destroyers. That is a baseline they can plan to, and allows the shipyard to get really efficient at destroyer construction.

Then there are the additional contracts for more Type-52D or the Type-55, which has a lot of similarities.
So the end result is that the Chinese Navy has 2 shipyards always in competition with each other for more contracts.

The US has something similar going on, with the Arleigh Burke 5 year block buy. It's 6 for Ingalls, 4 for Bath, and 5 up for grabs.

 

[Tam]

The more AESAs you use, the volume production of the T/R modules will go down, even with subsequent generations.

The modules can be inter-branch: same X-band modules for use in the J-20's radar as the Type 055's fire control radar, just for theoretical example.

If you have 054B frigates and 056X corvettes using S-band AESAs, these radars can share the modules used on 052D/E and 055. Lowers the costs of the radars on 054B and 056X, and it will also lower the cost for the 052D/E and 055. Its a cycle that reinforces each other. The standardization of modules also lowers the cost and improves the ease of logistics. You can store the same stock of modules as replacements for burned out ones for all these ships.

For this reason, I think the MLU for the 052C means it will have to be fitted with the same radar that uses the same T/R modules as the rest. It not only brings the 052C to the same radar performance level, but logistically more compatible with the rest of the ships.

 

[ougoah]

Railguns can have a 250 mile range?! how accurate would the round be at those ranges? how destructive? Surely against a moving target there's almost zero chance of actually hitting the target.

 

[Deleted member 13312]

Railguns can have a 250 mile range?! how accurate would the round be at those ranges? how destructive? Surely against a moving target there's almost zero chance of actually hitting the target.

There is talk about how the increased speed of the projectile (Mach 6) can help mitigate the issue of accuracy by reducing flight time, plus the increase velocity/energy will also help counter adverse effects like gravity and wind shear.
Ultimately, one can only make conjectures until the first railgun is actually fired in anger.

 

[ougoah]

Let's say a muzzle velocity of mach 7 is achieved in operations - roughly 2.4km/sec. I've read somewhere the aim is around 200km effective range which means it will take about 83 seconds to reach that range limit even if the round doesn't lose speed across its ballistic trajectory, but it will. Essentially the round MUST be guided and controlled somehow if PLAN wishes to engage targets at any significant range that can give it similar reach to medium range missiles. Because there is no way a ballistic round can hit anything moving even 30 seconds after it leaves the barrel. Of course guided rounds are definitely being developed for this railgun because it is a glorified conventional gun without it. Hitting stationary targets is entirely different and may be achieved at those ranges.

 

[Deleted member 13312]

Let's say a muzzle velocity of mach 7 is achieved in operations - roughly 2.4km/sec. I've read somewhere the aim is around 200km effective range which means it will take about 83 seconds to reach that range limit even if the round doesn't lose speed across its ballistic trajectory, but it will. Essentially the round MUST be guided and controlled somehow if PLAN wishes to engage targets at any significant range that can give it similar reach to medium range missiles. Because there is no way a ballistic round can hit anything moving even 30 seconds after it leaves the barrel. Of course guided rounds are definitely being developed for this railgun because it is a glorified conventional gun without it. Hitting stationary targets is entirely different and may be achieved at those ranges.

Reality often differs from that of theory, in the case of weapons systems. Many are employed well within their stated maximum range due to reasons as radar interference, lack of forward observation and so on.
And it is really a given that any potential railgun will come with guided projectiles to better facilitate their accuracy, but naval guns are seldom used to hit targets with single shots. But rather to bombard an area with projectiles. The current stated rate of fire for the US railgun is 10 rpm, with the designers stating that they hope to bring it up to 20 rpms as with existing Mark 45 guns.