Cruiser missiles fly higher than AShW missiles.
doesn't matter, the TLAM travel low enough that the engagement distance is not going to change much. Any you should think about more importantly the difference between defending against the two types of missiles. In one case, you know the missile is coming at you or another ship, in the second case, you have no idea where the missile is going.
I thought of that. What I think is, PLAN will have some ships patroling close to the coast anyway. And it is better to have those ships to have the ability of defending cruiser missiles. 1 054A is close to or probability better than the ability of a Tor M1 battalion.
China has a HUGE coast, and HH-16 has no where near the range needed to be able to make much of a difference. Now, 052C and its follow ups do have a role to play, but that's another topic. I don't want to go through all my weird theories in one post.
It's far more important for 054A to be assigned to protect the fleet than civilian locations.
Because I don't understand why PLAN waste so much money in recent 10 years. It seems what they want is as many air defense ships as possible. Every type of new ship has drawbacks. The 2 last sovs and 052Bs are actually not necessary if you can build 052C in only a few years. And you only build sth like 051C when you badly need some float AAM station but had no other choice in 2-3 years. While 054A is better, but do you have to build it in such a hurry? the first one even doesn't have number yet now you have 4 in the water. And, 054A is not perfect either.
So, what I think is PLAN want an air defense line before 2008, it's a firm order from the top and they had no choice but more and more ships, anything can shoot an air target at >20km.
well, 052B is needed, because they couldn't proceed directly to 052C. Too much a technological leap. 051C was an issurance for 052C, but it's turned out to be a waste of money since it came out long after 052C. The Sovs were bought for numerous reasons, I don't want to get into the specifics. Some of the reasons are political.
As for 052C, it's just a start to what PLAN needs. Frankly, it's hull needs a lot of improvements too. The newer European AAW are far more stealthy than it. Basically, PLAN is in a prolonged catch up, they can't get to what they need right away, that's why you have all these incremental classes. 054A is as close as they get to a world class ship especially for its cost. They basically build something that's better than Sov in air defense, anti-ship missile and stealthiness for less than 1/3 of the cost. And if you look at the current PLAN, you will see that 054A is badly needed in every fleet to just protect the rest of the fleet. Do you want more reasons on why 054 series needs to be mass produced?
