china: world leader of stealthy ships?

bd popeye said:

Roger is correct. The rail gun is well off into the future. The USN DD(X) program has been scaled well back. Probaly only 12-14 ships will be built.

As for stealth. The PLAN ships sure do look stealthy. Appearance is only one part of stealth. But in reality are they? One thing that would help them would be developing superior ECM that changes it's appearance on radar. Perhaps they already have such ECM. Anyone know?

Click to expand...

I love the subtle tone of your post, Popeye. You are totally correct that hull form is only a part of stealth. That's why some don't seem to understand how the Burke/Kongo overall design is so stealthy. There are more ways to mask your ship signature than hull form. Much more effective ways. This type of hull form does not necessarily mean that the vessel has an enhanced stealth. Ask the Scandinavians. They know real well. This type of hull form is detectable with an adapatable radar mode. I actually think the Scandinavian Navies have the lead. Maybe Gollevainen is correct that France is ahead. I wouldn't doubt it. America will probably jump ahead with the inception of DD(X)....maybe, but that's still a ways off. And take alook at the work the USN has done with Sea Shadow.

BTW, I wouldn't even bring DD(X) into the picture yet as a comparative platform, because there are no hulls out there to compare it to yet. America has only begun the manufacturing process for the first one. It's gonna be awhile before we see it.

Seeing as the only true stealthy ships in the world are real small ones, like the Visby (Swedish corvette) and Skjold (Norgwegian MTB), I guess it must be a reason for it.

Large DDGs have much more weapons onboard than this smaller ones, and this complicates the matter when you have to hide the weapons under the deck.



Swedish Visby corvette.


Norwegian Skjold MTB.

bd popeye said:

One thing that would help them would be developing superior ECM that changes it's appearance on radar. Perhaps they already have such ECM. Anyone know?

Click to expand...

they have some kind of ECM and ECCM installed but i don't think the capability are revealed. but maybe someone could guess base on the foreign parts they are using.

but i think most ECM doesn't change the signature but confuses the radar of the actual range and position of the ship.

---

i think the radar is the still most revealing piece of equipment. most ship has passive sensors that can detect radar emission and track back to source. so if you are using a big ass radar, it wouldn't matter if you are stealth or not cause everyone will know where you are!
:rofl:

only when the radars are on reduce emission or passive state will the stealthiness be more noticable i think.
:coffee:

I really wonder how the designers of Type 052C and 051C came up with those designs when trying to take stealth into consideration

Did they use supercomputers to calculate radar return of their design from all angles and ranges? From the looks of this ship I somewhat doubt it. It seems like they just drew it on paper and decided it looks kind of stealthy so they went along with it :coffee:

China doesnt have any stealth ship they only have some stealthy features wich are quiet useless, so China cant be worldleader of it.

Wingman said:

I really wonder how the designers of Type 052C and 051C came up with those designs when trying to take stealth into consideration

Did they use supercomputers to calculate radar return of their design from all angles and ranges? From the looks of this ship I somewhat doubt it. It seems like they just drew it on paper and decided it looks kind of stealthy so they went along with it :coffee:

Click to expand...

are you somehow implying you know how the ships were built simply by looking at them? chinese ship designers probably spent years developing these designs, on computers.

so far, the ships have
rcs reduction
irs reduction
and the rest we dont know, and we wont asumme anything
so china is a world leader of stealth as far as we know

are you somehow implying you know how the ships were built simply by looking at them? chinese ship designers probably spent years developing these designs, on computers.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't know how the ships are designed, however it just looks to me like they didn't take radar coming from different angles into consideration, especially from above. It seems they're only worried about ship-ship radars, since only the middle and lower sides are flat and sharp, the top doesn't seem to be protected by any form of stealth features. All those instruments are fully exposed. When being scanned by an aircraft radar, I doubt these flat lower sides are going to provide any stealth protection at all.

Maybe this will be helpful against the Taiwanese navy but against the US navy which relies much heavier on aircraft I have my doubts on its usefulness

Wingman said:

It seems they're only worried about ship-ship radars, since only the middle and lower sides are flat and sharp, the top doesn't seem to be protected by any form of stealth features. All those instruments are fully exposed. When being scanned by an aircraft radar, I doubt these flat lower sides are going to provide any stealth protection at all.

Click to expand...

the possibility of a aircraft flying directly (or almost) overhead you is... well if it did it would be visual already, no need for radar!!! :roll: in truth you only need to avoid certain angle to greatly reduce your radar exposure. if you do the math, base on expected radar range, altitude of a given radar system, you will be able to design an effective design against them (eg. planes and ships). there is also radar absorbing coating and others design features.

the original stealth fighter has a flat belly, because rarely will a radar be DIRECTLY under it and get a soild reflection!

No no, I'm not implying planes should be searching the ship from directly above. But still I'm mistaken, there isn't too much difference between the angle of incoming radar from ships and from planes at a large distance, so the ship should have roughly equal stealth protection against both ships and aircraft. However, considering the flat sides only cover about half of the ship horizontally (the rest (stuff at the top) is all exposed) I doubt this design is going to improve stealth by much.

Half just isn't enough. I read somewhere that during radar tests on the F-22, it is able to remain undetected but as soon as it opens its weapons bay, that's enough to give it away. You need the whole ship to have stealthy design, not just the bottom half of it

well personally i beilive the weak points in the stealth of chinese vessels are primarily their large radar and sensor masts and the anti ship missle launchers. but taking them away would reduce the ships abilities. a vls system would be the solution, and it may be on 52d.

so the ships will have reduced signature, making the opponent beilive them as patrol vessels rather than full ddgs.