You do realize that is not possible. Australia has ground based planes and anti ship missiles. A2/ad applies in the case pla attacking Australia. Moreover, most of the vls cells in these types of destroyers are used for air defense missiles not anti-ship or ground attacking missiles. Moreover, those missiles are likely to be shot down by Australia's own air defense missile systems. I doubt even 10 type 055 can realistically destroy Australian navy or other assets. They might do somw damage but not catastrophic damage. This is not the job for air defense destroyers. You usually use carriers for offensive operations.
Obviously if China actually want to invade Australia China will send more than two ships and it'll be after dealing with the US, but that doesn't mean there's no entertainment value in thought exercises:
- How VLS cells are filled depends on the mission, so how they're filled "most of the time" doesn't matter, what matters is are they capable of being filled to achieve the mission.
- Type 055 is capable of being loaded with 48x >1000km range anti ship hypersonics
- Australian navy has no fixed wing carriers so it's a purely naval
- Australian navy has 3x Hobart class DDG and 7x Anzac class frigates capable of firing anti air missiles, of which only the 3x Hobart class has ability track incoming hypersonics and only one ship carry SM6 to even make an attempt at intercept.
- For ASM Australia has Harpoons and NSM, both with <250km range
- All other Australian navy ships are not combat relevant.
So in the ought exercise, yes a single Type 055 operating at ~1000km standoff range from Australian coast and with satellite targeting can very much annihilate the entire Australian navy if engagement started within range.
Then the actual reason you'll need to bring multiple is to cover all sides of Australia so they can't simply run.
Australian airforce does have 7x KC30A tankers which will be required to allow their F-35s get within ASM engagement distance of Type 055 at standoff distance, and this is where the remaining VLS across the Type 055 and Type 054 comes in, and this is of course ignoring Australia lack any long distance detection, and that their NSM inventory is actually zero as of 2025.
