Chinese submarines thread

[Violet Oboe]

Re: Chinese sub thread

Yes that is indeed the ´talk of the town´and recently I read something very interesting on a blog (..don't know that guy so be careful):
The story about the massive modernization refit of the old XIA launched back in '82 reappearing in '01 like brandnew is bogus.
PLAN made a little exercise in disinformation and was apparently quite successful ...

Personally I like the story but I would not bet on it ...

 

[Chengdu J-10]

Re: Chinese sub thread

Few nights ago their was an 1/2 hour talking about China's navy SSBN and SSN force. It was talking about the Type 094 & 093 about its tactics, deployment areas and etc. It was on Phoenix television channel but it is only in Mandarin so if you cannot understand Mandarin then bad luck then. Cause they talk about China's military every week.

 

[fishhead]

Re: Chinese sub thread

Nevertheless more and more open sources are indicating that China has solved this kind of ´raw´machinery and tools problems since the late 90's. Today chinese sub yards are definitely better equipped than their russian counterparts and are approaching at least french and british standard although Groton/Electric Boat remains in the lead for now.

Not really totally solved. See the following picture you will find the gap in technology: the marked surface on Ohio has the two-dimentional complicated surface while Chinese Yuan's is basically one-dimentional curve at marked place. It's mainly due to the lack of big advanced CNC machine tool.

There is improvement there compared with Xia, but not USN level yet. Maybe for Yuan as a conventional sub it doesn't need that(a few percentage gain in noise performance but you add cost by 20%). This is why it's very interesting to see the photo of real 094, it will tell you the real status of Chinese technology level.

Show off time for Yankees, but you have to say they do have the finest technology in the world.

 

[Violet Oboe]

Re: Chinese sub thread

Basically there are several ways to explain the level of hull technology currently displayed by PLAN's modern conventional subs (Yuan, Song):

1. China has imported russian machinery developed for production of the Kilo-class. Nevertheless I would suggest this as slightly unlikely since Moscow is certainly not interested in undermining her own sub exports!

2. China has reverse engineered russian machinery successfully perhaps with the help of some russian experts. (A quite probable scenario...)

3. China has acquired western equipment most probably in France. This would be a major strategic coup for Beijing and Paris would be well advised to keep that as secret as possible (perhaps only blueprints and tech information were transferred) since Washington would be very angry with her ´special ally´.
(Currently this is rather unlikely, may be in 5 to 10 years such deals with France will be possible since China would then be able to compensate Paris generously for every losses incurred by US repressions. )

4. China has launched a major effort to develop and reverse engineer machinery needed for production of large subs back in the 90's and meanwhile they have achieved a first breakthrough. At the first stage they would have set the russian ´finish level´as the target and after reaching this the american/western standard would be the aim.
(Regarding China's ample financial, personnel and organizational resources this would be a very logical scenario.)

So in my view explanation 2. and 4. are certainly most likely. What do you think dear fishhead?

 

[Roger604]

Re: Chinese sub thread

There is improvement there compared with Xia, but not USN level yet. Maybe for Yuan as a conventional sub it doesn't need that(a few percentage gain in noise performance but you add cost by 20%). This is why it's very interesting to see the photo of real 094, it will tell you the real status of Chinese technology level.

Good points on the pics. I wonder why it costs 20% (!) extra to make a more hydrodynamic hull for the Yuan. Once you build the machine tools, you can use it to serial produce other Yuan hulls.

Perhaps the Yuan simply reflects a slightly older (2004) era of Chinese shipbuilding standards?

 

[yehe]

Re: Chinese sub thread

China is also accelerating the R&D of automating welding and cutting technologies. KDR reported earlier that in order to build new generation nuclear submarine SSBN/SSN, China had imported automatic welders from Russia. Nonetheless, most of the welding and cutting operations on the PLAN battleships are using semi-automatic equipments. A source from the Chinese shipbuilding industry says that Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Welding Technology Research Institute and Jiangnan Shipyard are jointly developing robots for cutting operations. Shanghai Shipbuilding Technology Research Institute has also successfully developed a three-dimensional automatic butt-welding system, claiming that the new system can improve operation efficiency by several times.

 

[Roger604]

Re: Chinese sub thread

This is the same model as the one shown in front of the Chief Submarine Designer.

Notice the same kind of 2D surface as the Ohio.

 

[fishhead]

Re: Chinese sub thread

This is the same model as the one shown in front of the Chief Submarine Designer.
Notice the same kind of 2D surface as the Ohio.

It will be a shocking progress if it's true.

I want to see real 094 today.

See the following picture, building normal steel plate for submarine with biger rollers. But this process can't make 2-d shaped steel plate, only can make 1-d curve.

 

[crobato]

Re: Chinese sub thread

This is the same model as the one shown in front of the Chief Submarine Designer.

Notice the same kind of 2D surface as the Ohio.

[qimg]http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5030/jinlr0.jpg[/qimg]

Interesting pic. The sail is more in alignment with the sail seen allegedly for the 093 (now used as thumbnails article entry in Hui Tong's site on the 093). If the 094 is based on the 093, I suspect the sail should be more like this if the sail is true to be that of the 093, and not look like a Xia/Han class sail, like that in the enlarged 092.

 

[Roger604]

Re: Chinese sub thread

Interesting pic. The sail is more in alignment with the sail seen allegedly for the 093 (now used as thumbnails article entry in Hui Tong's site on the 093). If the 094 is based on the 093, I suspect the sail should be more like this if the sail is true to be that of the 093, and not look like a Xia/Han class sail, like that in the enlarged 092.

Good catch Crobato! Now that you mentioned it, its striking that both this model and Huitong's 093 show a square sail.

The square sail seems to be common on American submarines while Russian submarines have long rectangular sails.

The newest submarines continue this tradition.... Virginia also has a square sail, and the Borei has a long rectangular sail.

Could it be that Type 093 and 094 have absorbed American technology also? Could they be a smaller, Chinese version of SeaWolf / Ohio?