055 DDG Large Destroyer Thread

[AndrewS]

In missile salvo exchanges, fewer larger ships tend to fare worse off against more numerous but smaller ships: the number of missiles needed to disable a ship grows with the cube root of a ship’s displacement. One thousand bomb equivalent (TPBE) can put a 1,000 ton ship out of action, 2 TPBE can put a 8,000 ton ship out of action and 3 TPBE can put a 27,000 ton ship out of action..

Where does this rule come from?

 

[YISOW]

Where does this rule come from?

From someone‘s imagination

 

[Zichan]

Where does this rule come from?

That’s something that’s taught at US Naval schools. This particular rule comes from research by Lt Thomas Beall who drew his data from WW2 records.

Some of the more recent quantitative work is classified, but there was a publication in Naval Institute Proceedings titled “Cruise Missile Warfare “ which proposed a rule of thumb based on a ship’s length: 1 missile warhead would incapacitate a ship up to 300 feet long, and another equivalent warhead is required for every additional 100 feet. By that measure, 7 missiles are needed to incapacitate an aircraft carrier, 3 missiles for an Aegis cruiser and 2 missiles for a frigate.

 

[The Observer]

That’s something that’s taught at US Naval schools. This particular rule comes from research by Lt Thomas Beall who drew his data from WW2 records.

Some of the more recent quantitative work is classified, but there was a publication in Naval Institute Proceedings titled “Cruise Missile Warfare “ which proposed a rule of thumb based on a ship’s length: 1 missile warhead would incapacitate a ship up to 300 feet long, and another equivalent warhead is required for every additional 100 feet. By that measure, 7 missiles are needed to incapacitate an aircraft carrier, 3 missiles for an Aegis cruiser and 2 missiles for a frigate.

off-topic discussion, but that is only if the ship is properly designed, crewed, and maintained. If the ship lacked one or more of those criteria, the result is Moskva 2.0

 

[BoraTas]

what's the purpose of a crusier these days?
or put in another way, what differ the crusier and destoryer this days? larger tonnege?

Basically yes. Cruiser as a merchant escort or raider has been an obsolete concept for a century. Ever since aircraft became common surface units are not used for battle recon either. During the cold war, cruisers were built for accommodating large amounts of large missiles. For the USA these missiles were SAMs and for the Soviets it was ASCMs. Their size was also used for accommodating command facilities. But missile miniaturization and developments in C3 blurred the line between destroyers and cruisers. So yes, the main difference today is tonnage.

 

[dasCKD]

That’s something that’s taught at US Naval schools. This particular rule comes from research by Lt Thomas Beall who drew his data from WW2 records.

Some of the more recent quantitative work is classified, but there was a publication in Naval Institute Proceedings titled “Cruise Missile Warfare “ which proposed a rule of thumb based on a ship’s length: 1 missile warhead would incapacitate a ship up to 300 feet long, and another equivalent warhead is required for every additional 100 feet. By that measure, 7 missiles are needed to incapacitate an aircraft carrier, 3 missiles for an Aegis cruiser and 2 missiles for a frigate.

I think there might be utility in the PLAN potentially constructing larger ships, more to the scale of 20k displacement cruisers, in the future. Whilst a larger ship is, obviously, putting a lot more valuable assets in one place, there is still a LOT of advantages that a larger ship possesses. Thanks to the square/cube law, your ship grows in volume far faster, proportionally, as the length goes up. A ship double the length of another, but with the same proportions, has 8 times the volume. The power and fuel needed to move larger ships is also, in comparison to the amount of tonnage it is moving, proportionally lower than that of a smaller vessel of similar design and technology. There's a reason, beyond just the nuclear reactor, that American carriers have so much better range and can quite handily outrun their escorts, after all. You can fit a far larger engine on a carrier than a destroyer, and the carrier engine isn't pushing out that much larger of a water cross-section out of the area to advance. Scaling up a type 055 will allow the movement of a larger amount of firepower for a considerably lower amount of fuel and crewing requirements meaning that it's cheaper to get the things that go boom where they need to be.

Of course, one big vessel is typically more vulnerable to attacks than two smaller ones. I think this is an issue of tradeoffs, however. Taking your proportions it might only take 4 missiles instead of 3 to knock out this hypothetical PLAN missile cruiser, but said cruiser would have the dimensions that allow you to mount more capable rockets. She might take fewer missiles to kill, but if those larger dimensions and potentially larger VLS tubes allows for the maximum or effective range of her anti-ship hypersonic glide vehicles to be higher then she might still have greater effective survivability than a traditional type 055 from a holistic perspective. A ship that you can't sail safely within 1500 nm of is vulnerable to a smaller proportion of a navy's rocket arsenal than a ship you can safely sail within 500 nm of.

That said, I don't think China really needs such missile cruisers right now. Even the type 055 is arguably already too big, considering that the PLAN is still confined by their first island chain and their continent-based missile networks are capable of prosecuting attacks against enemy vessels at a far lower cost and at far greater force survivability than any combination of Chinese destroyers realistically could.

 

[AndrewS]

In missile salvo exchanges, fewer larger ships tend to fare worse off against more numerous but smaller ships: the number of missiles needed to disable a ship grows with the cube root of a ship’s displacement. One thousand bomb equivalent (TPBE) can put a 1,000 ton ship out of action, 2 TPBE can put a 8,000 ton ship out of action and 3 TPBE can put a 27,000 ton ship out of action.

@Patchwork_Chimera

Does this still apply these days?

 

[latenlazy]

That’s something that’s taught at US Naval schools. This particular rule comes from research by Lt Thomas Beall who drew his data from WW2 records.

Some of the more recent quantitative work is classified, but there was a publication in Naval Institute Proceedings titled “Cruise Missile Warfare “ which proposed a rule of thumb based on a ship’s length: 1 missile warhead would incapacitate a ship up to 300 feet long, and another equivalent warhead is required for every additional 100 feet. By that measure, 7 missiles are needed to incapacitate an aircraft carrier, 3 missiles for an Aegis cruiser and 2 missiles for a frigate.

Explosives are much more powerful per unit of weight than they were in WW2. Also there’s much better understanding of blast physics today than back then.

 

[Zichan]

Explosives are much more powerful per unit of weight than they were in WW2. Also there’s much better understanding of blast physics today than back then.

With a few exceptions (super carriers and Zumwalt but only partial), modern ships have virtually no armor, unlike their WW2 counterparts. I wouldn’t be surprised if they fared even worse than what that study predicted.

 

[asif iqbal]

total 8 x Type 055

we have 896 x VLS