Yes, of course.
However, those that you havr mentioned can only happen if the aforementioned requirements (amongst others that I haven't listed in detail) that will justify putting a railgun on a PLAN warship have been met.
055 Large Destroyer Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
However, those that you havr mentioned can only happen if the aforementioned requirements (amongst others that I haven't listed in detail) that will justify putting a railgun on a PLAN warship have been met.
Yet your requirements are unrealistic in some areas.
HVP rounds fired from conventional howitzers have already demonstrated the capability of such types of rounds already. BAE along with the US Army/Navy tested it against various targets (subsonic, Coyote, CRAM, C-UAS). Forcing a small gun to do the job of super-sized ATBM interceptors is against conventional wisdom. Buying railguns alone means you freed up alot of tasks for the missiles already.
Buffing a railgun into a SLRC-ranged cannon is also not logical at all. You are looking at 2050s level of power generation, super-sized boost glide projectiles and Gustav-sized gun. Not suitable for any ship unless you want to convert LPDs into gun monitors like the AGS-Lite proposal. Standoff NGFS is obsolete and shouldn't even be contemplate in the near future. 200km is fine for most kind of naval fire support or shooting small vessels anyway.
Yet a railgun round will be several times smaller than these missiles. Even the subsonic YJ-83s. Most of those that you list are fired from either dedicated box launchers or from VLS cells in which they left no reserved space of any kind. Compare that to conventional munitions which you can easily pack a couple hundreds inside a standard mount and still reach the low-end performance ballparks of missiles.
Compromises, compromises.
Only nuclear powered gnerators can replace gun propellant and reduce footprint as nuclear fuel is unlimited in practical terms. Conventional ship uses fuel to generate electricity. The fuel takes the place of the gun propellant. The electric generator for a EM gun equipped ship is certainly larger than a non EM gun ship, higher capacity means larger size.
Railgun of the same notional calibre (whatever that means) is much larger than a conventional gun because it has super-capacitor and battery banks besides the electricity generator. These capacitor and battery banks are huge, essentially taking up same space as gun propellant.
I don't think the advantage of railgun lies on its footprint saving, but more on unification of various power generation and chemical propellants into only one power source. making its mission management flexible.
Looking at current technology, a rail gun will have fairly long cooldown before another shot is fired, anti USV will also be one of the mission of the gun, especially since swarm tactics seem to be fairly viable. As such having a fast firing chemical gun might be better than using a rail gun.
There are missiles and autocannon for CIWS roles. Is there a need for large caliber naval gun specifically for interception?
From recent events Airborne UAVs, Cruise missiles and USVs can be used to simultaneously perform attacks on surface vessels, CIWS should be reserved for airborne threats as the deck gun is really not doing much otherwise. It's not like even with 300km range it's going to do a whole lot. You will need enemy tac air to be completely disabled for the gun to come into play.
I don't think it's that much bigger than the 052D. Maybe 5.5m. SPY-6 is only 5.3m square and uses tons of cooling equipment, but of course array size and cooling are not actually dependent on each other. It's the amount of power the array needs that's been calculated as needed for it's mission. At this scale we are dealing with anti ballistic missile.
GaN only means you have a bigger cup before it gets full. Means you can throw more power at it before it melts down, and this because it runs cooler that gives it the better heat margin.
The thing is, if you want your array to be cool, why run a big array at all, since your power output per module is low. It would become more economical to have a smaller array with less elements but higher power per module. Of course a larger array would achieve better angular resolution but it's range would not be as good if transmission power per module is low. Which brings to mind why build a huge array if range isn't good, even thought about you can compensate part of that with the larger array's larger receive area and gain.
With GaN you can choose to run it conservatively within it's limits to meet moderate cooling systems such as air cooling (in aircraft) or you can go full bongo with it, running it as hard with as much power before it melts. The cooling system is there to prevent it from melting so you can push more power to it.
Also, even if each module has the same power as the previous design, having more modules means more power used as a total aggregate of the number of modules, which also means you need a matching cooling system.
So sandwiching the bridge between the radar deck and the cooling systems with the plumbing running through the bridge space may not be at all that efficient compared to bringing the radar closer to the cooling system, although that sacrifices radar horizon which has to be made up with other means.
Given that GA railgun testbed fits directly onto a standard 8x8 truck chassis while H/PJ-87 needs a 10x10 AFV I would reckon this claim needs quite alot of sources especially simulations/comparisons of some kind. Capacitors could be fitted into a normal size mounting, you just need to take a weaker gun ( that would still perform better than most powder gun anyway). The main problem is energy generation.
Never stated that it would reduce the footprint tho. 76/62 overdeck takes that cake.
The second clause is more in line with what I said "removal of conventional propellant".
Anyway we are going way over OT so lets end this railgun debacle here.
Back to the Type 055.
The early 055 DDs spotted single SATCOM bubble right behind the funnel ( see wikimedia pic). Like this, and it also comes with another SATCOM bubble that is placed right ahead of the mast instead.
But on later models like this one, the rear bubble should be replaced by a smaller, flatter array placed on the smokestack.
Which is quite exceptional comparing to its peers like AB Flight 3 all of which are packing 2+ SATCOM arrays. I could see some similarities in T45 and Horizon, both of which are equipped with only 2 array ( T45 has it side-by-side of the main mast instead). Looking at FFG-62 renditions pointing towards 4+ AN/WSC-6 or whatever. Seems like the PLAN has great confidence in their ability to maintain sat links in combat environment. Though with proliferation of datalinks drones/helis carrying comms pods should fill out any capability lost from downgraded SATCOM. It would also creat provision for LORAN which would be a great substitute for standard satnav. Or just attack the jamming nodes with HOJ/mmW YJ-21, whatever...It was six years ago today that the lead ship of Type 055 was launched. Some high-resolution images to mark the anniversary.
