Ideal PLAN missile boat

Totoro said:

[qimg]http://static.flickr.com/110/299961538_cff4eeaea8.jpg[/qimg]

there, my contribution.
Do not be fooled by its appearance. it is not a sub. it can not go underwater. it is not built to withstand any kind of depth pressure. What it is built for is to have majority of its body submerged, with just the main tower and the tip of the spine protruding from the water. main tower would have the radar (blue), various comm equipment, chimney (at half the height of the tower), bridge, etc. small sam vls unit in the class of sidewinder would be located in the smaller ffront section of the spine. (not marked by color, sorry)

antiship missiles are marked by pink color. doesn't have to be just 6, that's for illustration only. Anyhow, whole idea is to sacrifice speed for stealth. at the same time, with length of 40 meters and a very, very small crew, there'd be enough space for long endurance missions. Also, i believe ship's layout would be very stable at high seas (though, granted, still very vomit inducing for the crew) I don't believe max speeds could go over 20 (cruise speed even lower) so technically it wouldn't be be Fast attack craft... maybe more like SAC

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Pretty cool. The North Koreans and Iranian both use submerrsible boats - more boat than sub - although these vessels don't look anything like your design and can submerse completely.

I still think there's some merit in mini-FACs but I agree to their limitations.

One way of making compariatively small boats blue-water capable is to utilise VSV (Very Slender Vessel) technology in which a wave-piercing (as opposed to wave riding) bow is married to funnelled monohull. These boats go straight through waves rather than over them, massively reducing the g-loading on the structures and achieving great speed and comfort even in heavy seas.


I've not seen any FAC designs with this hull form, perhaps because certain aspects are heavily patanted in the West.

Anyway, here's my first attempt at a VSV missile boat:

Using quad 8x1m missile tubes - big enough for C-602 - as my starting point, I've calculated that this design would need to be 60m long with a beam of 6m.

The non-specific main gun is unusual in that I've mounted it above and behind the bridge so that it does not obscure visibility. If the gun was large enough - 57mm or 76mm, it could be used to fire "smart" air-defence rounds which I think are the way forward, replacing CIWS.

Even as I was drawing it I could see many refinements that would increase internal volume without significantly increasing displacement. In fact I think it sould be shorter and wider - 50m long by 9m beam - the same length/width ratio as in the real VSVs (48ft x 9ft).

planeman said:

What do YOU think the ideal FAC would be? Bigger? Faster? Stealthier? Cheaper? Cooler? Ocean-going? Multi-role? Shore-bombardment?

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What is the ideal PLAN missile boat/FAC?

I know this is not necessarily the answer that you are looking for, but as to the ideal missile boat or FAC for the PLAN, I think the PLAN itself is letting all of us know by its own actions what they believe the answer to this question is. And here it is:







In my estimation, there have already probably been upwards of 20-25 built to date, with more building. They appear to be stealthy, fast, and to carry a significant ASM punch...which, if they are data link capable, will make them a signifcant threat in any littoral waters...even dashing out to deeper waters against threats that come in close enough.

But the sad reality is that they arent. Those migth present some ultimate Soviet '30s era coastal defence thinking, but they are way too far from modern naval theather and by the simple fact that their defence systems are limited into questionable RCS features and single optically controlled 30mm just makes you wanna cry...The conditions of modern naval warfare requires simply too much on coastal attack combatants that boat class vessels are coming to their end.
The fact that china is building that sort of tactical missfires only presents the conservative, reactionary and inflexible thinking were past doctrines and economical issues have weigthed more on the cup than the conditions were the PLAN needs to conduct its coastal defences.

Gollevainen said:

But the sad reality is that they arent. Those migth present some ultimate Soviet '30s era coastal defence thinking, but they are way too far from modern naval theather and by the simple fact that their defence systems are limited into questionable RCS features and single optically controlled 30mm just makes you wanna cry...The conditions of modern naval warfare requires simply too much on coastal attack combatants that boat class vessels are coming to their end.
The fact that china is building that sort of tactical missfires only presents the conservative, reactionary and inflexible thinking were past doctrines and economical issues have weigthed more on the cup than the conditions were the PLAN needs to conduct its coastal defences.

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We don't really have any data on the capability of the Chinese modified AK-630 CIWS. If they can shoot down subsonic anti-ship missile 90% of time, that would be adequate air defense.

AK-630 is what it is. It doesent turn into anymore supergun even if it has new sthealthy case...and still, there isent any radar for it so it would anything more than little bit faster rate optical AAA, and days of those are gone...so where you get 90% accuracy thing out of??

Gollevainen said:

But the sad reality is that they arent. Those migth present some ultimate Soviet '30s era coastal defence thinking, but they are way too far from modern naval theather and by the simple fact that their defence systems are limited into questionable RCS features and single optically controlled 30mm just makes you wanna cry...The conditions of modern naval warfare requires simply too much on coastal attack combatants that boat class vessels are coming to their end.
The fact that china is building that sort of tactical missfires only presents the conservative, reactionary and inflexible thinking were past doctrines and economical issues have weigthed more on the cup than the conditions were the PLAN needs to conduct its coastal defences.

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I think you're setting to high of an expectation on a FAC. They're meant to operate in littoral waters relatively close to shore so wouldn't a proper shore air defense system supplement the FAC's lack of adequete air defense?

Might those boats probably indicate some guerillia tactic thinking ??
I mean every single boat can carry some ASMs, thus meaning a real threat even to DDGs and maybe more. On the other hand there may be a lot of them later, and you'd have to chase every single one. So you need a real good battle management and have to expand at least one missile/few gun rounds on those boats. This leads to a high ammo usage that has to be supplied in theater. If you let them operate under a AD layer (coastel batteries or bigger AAW vessels) they have a not to bad defence.
And if you loose some, it schouln't be that big a problem, because you may have lots of them and they are relativly cheap.

logical, or do you others consider that crap ... ??

Gollevainen said:

AK-630 is what it is. It doesent turn into anymore supergun even if it has new sthealthy case...and still, there isent any radar for it so it would anything more than little bit faster rate optical AAA, and days of those are gone...so where you get 90% accuracy thing out of??

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I'm simply giving an example. My point is that we don't know the capability of the Chinese modified AK-630 (they got licensed production for these I think). I was quite impressed reading about the capability of type 730 CIWS last time. If they can take any of the technology on 730 and incorporate it on AK-630. It might have a good chance of depending itself against helicopters. (assuming the helicopter carries no more than 2 AShM)

Golley, I think you are underestimating the '022 in two serious regards:

1. Its stealth. I don't think it's "questionable". compared to "stealth" ships in general, these FACs are in the top tier with only the Visby and Skjold (spelt?) being overtly more covert. Close up photos of such details as the window edges and aerial mountings confirm the genuinity of the stealth attempt.

2. Its seakeeping. It's basically a "sea cat" fast ferry with missiles - its wave piecing catamaran hull is surely far more seaworthy than most other FACs allowing genuine blue-ocean operations, albeit of modest endurance.

BUT;

a) I agree that its air defence is poor - though not very unusual for FACs.
b) Whilst the missile fit of 2x4 YJ-83 is better than past PLAN FACs, it's not as potent as many other FACs out there. It would be better with YJ-62, SS-N-22 Sunburn or SS-N-27 Klub. And ideally even a second tier of IIR/TV guided short rangfe missiles for littorial combat - like C-702s or TL-10s.