PLAN Naval Helicopter & ASW Capability II

Jeff Head · Aug 4, 2016

FORBIN said:
Hangar for 2 helos enough rare only 052 can host same number.

Exactly Forbin.

it is good to see the two hangers on the 167:

...and on the 112 and 113 (Type 052):

But that's it! For the PLAN, those are the only ones.

I think one of the weaknesses that the PLAN has in terms of ASW is the lack of two helo hangers on such a vast majority of their combatants.

If you look at the major combatants, particularly with all of the new ones, you find:

10 x Type 053H3
02 x FFG Type 054
25 x FFG Type 054A

That's 37 Frigates...not a single one of them can carry two helos.

01 x Type 051B (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 051C
04 x SOV
02 x Type 052 (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 052B
06 x Type 052C
11 x Type 052D

That's 28 destroyers...only three (167, 112,and 113) can carry two helos.

So, with 65 very decent major surface combatants (and more building), you have only three that can carry two helos.

Look at the US.

The OH Perry Frigates are about all gone now...but every one of those ships could carry two ASW helos.

Now they are being replaced by the LCS...and every LCS can carry two helos.

06 x Freedom LCS (two helo hangar)
07 x Indenpendence LCS (two helo hangar)

With destroyers:

28 x Burke I and II (no hanger, just pad for refueling/rearming))
37 x Burke IIA (two helo hangar)
02 x Zumwalt DDG (two helo hangar)

Cruisers

22 x Ticonderoga (two helo hangar)

So the US Navy has 102 major surface combatants launched right now (and more building). Of those, 74 of them can carry two ASW helos each.

It a HUGE advantage when it comes to ASW warfare...as well as SAR, ASuW, VREP, Patrol, etc.

With two, you can always have them out there...as one nears bingo fuel, the other takes its place.

For ASW this ability to continuously prosecute targets is a key advantage.

LCS Hangar

Burke Hangar

Tico Hangar

Zumwalt Hangar

Blitzo · Aug 4, 2016

Jeff Head said:
Exactly Forbin.

it is good to see the two hangers on the 167:

View attachment 29690

...and on the 112 and 113 (Type 052):

View attachment 29691

But that's it! For the PLAN, those are the only ones.

I think one of the weaknesses that the PLAN has in terms of ASW is the lack of two helo hangers on such a vast majority of their combatants.

If you look at the major combatants, particularly with all of the new ones, you find:

10 x Type 053H3
02 x FFG Type 054
25 x FFG Type 054A

That's 37 Frigates...not a single one of them can carry two helos.

01 x Type 051B (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 051C
04 x SOV
02 x Type 052 (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 052B
06 x Type 052C
11 x Type 052D

That's 28 destroyers...only three (167, 112,and 113) can carry two helos.

So, with 65 very decent major surface combatants (and more building), you have only three that can carry two helos.

Look at the US.

The OH Perry Frigates are about all gone now...but every one of those ships could carry two ASW helos.

Now they are being replaced by the LCS...and every LCS can carry two helos.

06 x Freedom LCS (two helo hangar)
07 x Indenpendence LCS (two helo hangar)

With destroyers:

28 x Burke I and II (no hanger, just pad for refueling/rearming))
37 x Burke IIA (two helo hangar)
02 x Zumwalt DDG (two helo hangar)

Cruisers

22 x Ticonderoga (two helo hangar)

So the US Navy has 102 major surface combatants launched right now (and more building). Of those, 74 of them can carry two ASW helos each.

It a HUGE advantage when it comes to ASW warfare...as well as SAR, ASuW, VREP, Patrol, etc.

With two, you can always have them out there...as one nears bingo fuel, the other takes its place.

For ASW this ability to continuously prosecute targets is a key advantage.

LCS Hangar

View attachment 29692

Burke Hangar

View attachment 29693

Tico Hangar

View attachment 29694

Zumwalt Hangar

View attachment 29695

Yes, all good points -- however given the Chinese Navy's present and recent past stage of development and especially given their inability to have a reliable source of a high capability medium weight ASW helicopter, I think the bigger issue the Navy should look at is to develop their own MH-60R equivalent first.
After all, having the extra accommodation for an extra helicopter doesn't mean much immediately if one's supply of helicopters is unreliable to begin with.
So I think the more important thing is for them to develop a navalized Z-20 variant first, and with folding rotors and tail, it should be able to be taken up into the current hangars that are used for Ka-28/Z-9, given those hangars are able to fit a folded SH-60/MH-60. Once they have a reliable supply of capable medium weight helicopters, then they will probably design ships with two hangars to take advantage of it... but at present, I imagine the trade off of giving up twin hangars for a single hangar is probably sensible given the potential penalties of desiring twin hangarss and also the lack of sufficient numbers of helicopters to fill the hangars.

That said,I do believe the Navy is on the cusp of having a more reliable supply of advanced ASW helicopters; it's expected that 055 will have two hangars (probably for Z-18 class helicopters, but even if it is "only" for a Ka-28/Z-9 class helicopter would be alright), and I hope/expect 054A's successor FFG class to have two hangars as well for a navalized Z-20/Ka-28/Z-9 sized helicopters as well.

Jeff Head · Aug 4, 2016

Bltizo said:
Yes, all good points -- however given the Chinese Navy's present and recent past stage of development and especially given their inability to have a reliable source of a high capability medium weight ASW helicopter, I think the bigger issue the Navy should look at is to develop their own MH-60R equivalent first.

Yes, they most definitely do need a high quality and very capable medium sized ASW platform...and working off of the Z-20 they may be able to do so. This of course presumes that they have the high capability sensors and weapons to attach to it.

Bltizo said:
After all, having the extra accommodation for an extra helicopter doesn't mean much immediately if one's supply of helicopters is unreliable to begin with.

So I think the more important thing is for them to develop a navalized Z-20 variant first, and with folding rotors and tail. Once they have a reliable supply of capable medium weight helicopters, then they will probably design ships with two hangars to take advantage of it.

Well, having two Ka-28s or even the newer Z-9s on a ship would be better than having just one of them. I would argue they need both...a better helo, and the two hangers...becasue they would still be much more effective with what they do have if they had two helos prosecuting targets and staying on them.

Bltizo said:
That said,I do believe the Navy is on the cusp of having a more reliable supply of advanced ASW helicopters; it's expected that 055 will have two hangars (probably for Z-18 class helicopters, but even if it is "only" for a Ka-28/Z-9 class helicopter would be alright), and I hope/expect 054A's successor FFG class to have two hangars as well for a navalized Z-20/Ka-28/Z-9 sized helicopters as well.

HAving two modern and capable Z-18s on a large DDG would be a very good thing for the PLAN. Hopefully their Type 055 will accomodate that.

Like having two Merlins on a single vesel.

But, developing a good naval varian of the Z-20, and then having FFGs and DDGs with two hangers is paramount for good ASW work...both defensive and offensive.

Blitzo · Aug 5, 2016

Jeff Head said:
Yes, they most definitely do need a high quality and very capable medium sized ASW platform...and working off of the Z-20 they may be able to do so. This of course presumes that they have the high capability sensors and weapons to attach to it.

Well, having two Ka-28s or even the newer Z-9s on a ship would be better than having just one of them. I would argue they need both...a better helo, and the two hangers...becasue they would still be much more effective with what they do have if they had two helos prosecuting targets and staying on them.

Yep, that is very true, however as I mentioned, they don't exactly have a large quantity nor a reliable consistent supply of Ka-28s or even Z-9s (probably due to the Navy's reluctance to commit to a large single fleet due to the limited capability of the two types), and considering their qualitative capability is also somewhat limited, and also considering the other more pressing needs the Navy faces for their surface combatants in terms of design characteristics (especially in more mature arenas such as AAW, ASuW or general command/control), I can kind of understand why they've chosen to defer fielding twin helicopter hangars aboard their current major combatant classes.

I imagine they would've been willing to go the extra more costly step to field twin hangars aboard all of their current major combatant classes if they had a reliable source for a capable medium weight helicopter, but without it, they probably made the cost-benefit analysis and decided one hangar would have to do, for their foreseeable combatants.

HAving two modern and capable Z-18s on a large DDG would be a very good thing for the PLAN. Hopefully their Type 055 will accomodate that.

Like having two Merlins on a single vesel.

But, developing a good naval varian of the Z-20, and then having FFGs and DDGs with two hangers is paramount for good ASW work...both defensive and offensive.

Yes, I personally am nursing the idea that the 055 class will field two Z-18 sized helicopters, while the next generation frigate has a single large hangar that can field either two Z-20s, or a single Z-18 + 2 small VTOL UAVs... but that's probably asking for a bit much.

FORBIN · Aug 5, 2016

Jeff Head said:
Exactly Forbin.

it is good to see the two hangers on the 167:

View attachment 29690

...and on the 112 and 113 (Type 052):

View attachment 29691

But that's it! For the PLAN, those are the only ones.

I think one of the weaknesses that the PLAN has in terms of ASW is the lack of two helo hangers on such a vast majority of their combatants.

If you look at the major combatants, particularly with all of the new ones, you find:

10 x Type 053H3
02 x FFG Type 054
25 x FFG Type 054A

That's 37 Frigates...not a single one of them can carry two helos.

01 x Type 051B (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 051C
04 x SOV
02 x Type 052 (two helo hangar)
02 x Type 052B
06 x Type 052C
11 x Type 052D

That's 28 destroyers...only three (167, 112,and 113) can carry two helos.

So, with 65 very decent major surface combatants (and more building), you have only three that can carry two helos.

Look at the US.

The OH Perry Frigates are about all gone now...but every one of those ships could carry two ASW helos.

Now they are being replaced by the LCS...and every LCS can carry two helos.

06 x Freedom LCS (two helo hangar)
07 x Indenpendence LCS (two helo hangar)

With destroyers:

28 x Burke I and II (no hanger, just pad for refueling/rearming))
37 x Burke IIA (two helo hangar)
02 x Zumwalt DDG (two helo hangar)

Cruisers

22 x Ticonderoga (two helo hangar)

So the US Navy has 102 major surface combatants launched right now (and more building). Of those, 74 of them can carry two ASW helos each.

It a HUGE advantage when it comes to ASW warfare...as well as SAR, ASuW, VREP, Patrol, etc.

With two, you can always have them out there...as one nears bingo fuel, the other takes its place.

For ASW this ability to continuously prosecute targets is a key advantage.

LCS Hangar

View attachment 29692

Burke Hangar

View attachment 29693

Tico Hangar

View attachment 29694

Zumwalt Hangar

View attachment 29695

weaknesses that the PLAN has in terms of ASW

In more Chinese Navy don' t have enough helos for her combattants only 38 helos ! enough unusal.

And only 3 SH-5 with some Y-8Q now in service no sure !

AndrewS · Aug 10, 2016

Anti-submarine warfare
Seek, but shall ye find?

A proliferation of quieter submarines is pushing navies to concoct better ways to track them.

DURING war games played off the coast of Florida last year, a nuclear-powered French attack submarine, Saphir, eluded America’s sub-hunting aircraft and vessels with enough stealth to sink (fictitiously) a newly overhauled American aircraft-carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, and most of her escort. An account of the drill on a French defence-ministry website was promptly deleted, but too late for it to go unnoticed.

Nor was this French victory a fluke. In 2006, in what was very far from being a war game, a Chinese diesel-electric submarine surfaced near Okinawa within torpedo range of another American carrier, Kitty Hawk, without having been detected by that carrier’s escort of more than a dozen vessels and anti-submarine aircraft. And, from the point of view of carrier-deploying navies, things are threatening to get worse. Saphir, launched in 1981, hardly represents the state of the art in underwater undetectability; in the decade since the Okinawa incident diesel-electrics have become even quieter. For an inkling of the silence of the new generation of such subs when they are running on battery power alone, without their engines turning, Jerry Hendrix, a former anti-submarine operations officer on the Theodore Roosevelt, asks: “How loud is your flashlight?”

Read more:

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Deino · Sep 6, 2016

Anyone with an idea, what this strange white boxy modification is ???

Z-8 new version + strange white box - comp.jpg

GingerZombie · Sep 6, 2016

Do you have a source for that bottom picture? That could be a Z-18 and not a Z-8, some of the Z-8s have the more modern cockpit but it's very similar (being built off the upgraded version)

Iron Man · Sep 6, 2016

Deino said:
Anyone with an idea, what this strange white boxy modification is ???

View attachment 31697

Maybe this represents 3 uprated/different turboshafts?

by78 · Sep 22, 2016

Carrier ASW helicopter spotted in Hainan...

(2048 x 1371)

(2048 x 1371)

PLAN Naval Helicopter & ASW Capability II

Jeff Head

General

Blitzo

Lieutenant General

Jeff Head

General

Blitzo

Lieutenant General

FORBIN

Lieutenant General

AndrewS

Brigadier

Deino

Lieutenant General

GingerZombie

New Member

Iron Man

Major

by78

General