Xiyazhou did elaborated more on his initial post, here are the summary of the relevant part:
- 09IIIB was only built en masse due to 09V being delayed
- 09V has gone through atleast one major design revision as the original design was considered too conservative
- Both factors mentioned above caused 09V to become almost like a "parallel project" to the new SSN in timeline
- The overall design of the new SSN is a massive improvement over traditional design; despite using the same (or similar) set of propulsion arrangement, the lack of a sail would mean the new SSN will have up to 15 percent drag reduction at high speeds which means significantly improved top speed.
- The sail is also the second largest cause of noise at high speed after propulsion, removing the sail would effectively remove a major cause of noise at high speeds. If your propulsion arrangement is silent enough (09V's nuclear IEP is mentioned to be SOTA globally), removing the sail would result in an extremely quiet submarine even at high cruise speeds.
- TWZ's statement on this new SSN being sort of like an underwater interceptor is partially correct, this SSN is designed to track and destroy American underwater assets efficiently between the first and second island chain.
- As a dedicated hunter killer, this submarine likely does not have any VLS cells (Though, we know now that this is likely incorrect as there were some VLS multipack tubes spotted, but given the minimal amount of only ~12 cells, I don't think this changes the conclusion much) and instead rely purely on a large amount of torpedo tubes like the Seawolf.
- This submarine may also be equipped with larger than 533mm tubes to launch UUVs, Xiyazhou expects all future designs to include provisions for these "underwater loyal wingmans".
- It is also possible that this submarine will include smaller 380mm torpedo tubes to launch dedicated anti-torpedo torpedos for active defense, as with how fast sensor technology is improving, current countermeasures like bubble decoys or jammers may become insufficient in the near future.
- There were already some rumors about this in the past, but he did not expect it to come so fast. It is now possible that the Type 09V will not see mass production.
I also attached his full post for anyone who wants to read it in depth
View attachment 176278
