PLA Navy news, pics and videos

sanblvd said:

Jesus Christ, this start to get into Scifi territory, and yeah I agree if every single launcher has electromagnetic propulsion inside that would not be realistic, so it might be more like traditional turrets but that would defeat the whole purpose of VLS because the rate of fire would be slow as hell, the extra 200km would not be a trade off.

Unless the found a way to launch missiles with electromagnetic rail turrets, with very high reload speed for the missiles inside?

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Let's have a look at railguns, which are a more mature technology.

The rounds are unpowered, but can be fitted with guidance electronics. Range is 300km max to the surface (but less for airborne targets) and the rate of fire is comparable to an artillery gun.

For shorter range air defence / strike (say within the radar horizon), an unpowered but guided round is generally much better in term in terms of cost, weight etc. But the rate of fire is still an issue because of the short reaction time available, so VLS is probably better.

So that leaves longer range air defence and strike, which needs a motor to provide impulse after the projectile has been launched.

Generally, these missions don't need the rate of fire that a VLS provides and so favours a reloadable launcher.

And because the missiles are accelerated to Mach 3-4 instantly, an EM missile launcher favours scramjet/ramjet missiles which operate at these speeds anyway.

So the missiles don't need an initial rocket booster to get up to speed for the engine to work, which results in better speed, weight, reaction time

So that means the EM launcher won't be replacing VLS anytime soon, instead its whole new weapon system. If so then I don't think it will be anti air missiles, because HQ-9B already have range of 200km, then this means the missiles being launched by the EM launcher would most likely be targeting lands or surface warships with 600km+ range, that means the missile probably have remote guidance technology.

Also I don't know if EM railgun is consider to be mature technology, they had to replace the originally designed EM guns on Zumwalt with traditional turrets.

latenlazy said:

Power consumption would depend on the muzzle energy of the launcher(s). They need not be as powerful as a full power rail gun.

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let me see what I uttered this morning:

Jura said:

(plus the power consumption of possibly dozens of launchers ...)

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OK what I was thinking about was pretty big power would be needed for flinging like two-tons missile let's say 50 meters up, so that 'EM launch' would be 'cold launch' if you know what I mean, and I couldn't imagine 'ripple firing' this way ... but I'm leaving it to Electrical Engineers

Jura said:

let me see what I uttered this morning:



OK what I was thinking about was pretty big power would be needed for flinging like two-tons missile let's say 50 meters up, so that 'EM launch' would be 'cold launch' if you know what I mean, and I couldn't imagine 'ripple firing' this way ... but I'm leaving it to Electrical Engineers

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Well, at 20 meter per second (about 70 km/h) a 2 ton payload would need about .4 MJ of energy. At 50 m/s you would need about 2.5 MJ. Not crazy. Keep in mind the railgun the USN intends to deploy should be about 32 MJ.

Here's what wiki says about power requirements:
"Currently, the only US Navy ships that can produce enough electrical power to get desired performance are the ; they can generate 78 megawatts of power, more than is necessary to power a railgun. Engineers are working to derive technologies developed for the DDG-1000 series ships into a battery system so other warships can operate a railgun. Most current destroyers can spare only nine megawatts of additional electricity, while it would require 25 megawatts to propel a projectile to the desired maximum range (i.e., to launch 32MJ projectiles at a rate of 10 shots per minute)"

Now, obviously, this is not the actual weapon in question here, so we're on a bit of a diversion, but some food for thought.

latenlazy said:

Well, at 20 meter per second (about 70 km/h) a 2 ton payload would need about .4 MJ of energy. At 50 m/s you would need about 2.5 MJ. Not crazy.

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if your numbers are correct (I'll go eat my dinner right after I finish this post), then I can imagine they could pop four at once ... my guess

(based on pretty much nothing except knowing a railgun is to shoot let's say one-hundred pounds stuff)

at the time of posting Today at 7:51 AM was a power one order of magnitude higher than what you're saying would be needed

latenlazy said:

Keep in mind the railgun the USN intends to deploy should be about 32 MJ.

...

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I've heard; I'll leave it at that since we're in
PLAN breaking news, pics, & videos

Does anyone know what the fate is of the 25000 man strong People's Liberation Army Navy Coastal Defense Force is going to be in the current PLA shake up ? This seems a pretty obselete force with the strengthening of the other branches of the PLAN.

a wild J-15 catapult test at huangdicun possibly appeared???

actually it's not breaking news at all but anyway:

Right now there is 25 - 054A in service. So the graphic is not current.

When it comes to the EM launcher, I think some of you may be a little too conservative in thinking it's just going to be a new way to launch the same old munitions, when I would expect it to be designed for and around new gen weapons.

Remember all the work China has been doing with hypersonic gliders? Now imagine instead of using a big giant ballistic missile to get it up to speed and altitude, they used an EM launcher.

For such weapons, VLS is entirely feasible, since the goal is to gain max altitude and then dive down into the target at extreme speed.

They won't want to fit such launchers in every cell, but they could easily design 4-8 VLS banks as a magazine for a single launch cell. So you have 1 launch cell for a roll of 4-8 cell bank. The remaining 3-7 cells becomes a magazine for the launch cell (and could easily be double, triple or even quad stacked with missiles since the projectiles will only be a fraction of the launch tube length), with a simple autoloader system to feed munitions across (could even allow multiple munitions types to be stored in different cells to be picked by the autoloader as needed).

Such weapons would only be suitable for AShMs, cruise missiles or ultra long range SAMs where reaction time is less of an issue.

For medium range missiles, we will potentially see a return of the old arm launchers to mount the EM launchers, to allow you to aim the missiles in the right direction as soon as they are launched.

For short range, you can use railguns.