PLAN Taskforce 529 open house - Massive photo link!!

MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
Maggern said:
Indeed. We have the Gulf of Aden. But that's pretty much it. And of course peacekeeping in a whole bunch of countries, but that again is little combat and more engineering and stuff.
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Peacekeeping recently is more like police work and some cleanup - but still the dangerous kind, though.

Back to the pics I took...

While the interior is strictly no-photo, but I can tell you the interior is pretty well lit and roomy, even for a warship per se...even the doorways is enough for 2 grown man to walk by, chest-to-chest fashion. The trio torpedo launcher is not far from the door that leads to the helicopter deck, the size of it shouldn't be heavy torpedo but compatible to the Whitehead in terms of size.

VLS is definately hot launch like the Mk-41 - I asked one of the officers and he admitted it, though he did said this is for SAM only and not for other ordinance...

The single barrel 76mm deck gun at the "A" position is designated as PJ26, weighted at 11.5 metric ton, as the plate below the barrel written.

The other things that caught my interest that day were the small arms and equipment used by the special forces: the 3-men display as the sample for various loadouts, the full arsenal of weapons and equipment laid out on the tables. The models (real folks, I assure you) are allowed to be photographed, the stuff on the tables weren't...yup, I sneaked a few shots with my cameras, and that means I can't get all pics, not only most turned out to be blurry the personnel was getting suspicious on me - an eager-beaver with camera, what more obvious than that?

In short there's nothing new with that group, they didn't even have the Type 03 silenced SMG and the silenced pistol is the Type 67...they said the new arms didn't come to them when they set sail, same goes for their helmet cover (non Type 07 pattern). The low-light sight unit is no secret but I can bet few if any took close-ups of it like I did and put online.

2 types of backpack radios were used, the regular radio and one SATCOM.

It's no secret that PLA took on the MOLLE concept for their new webbing and gear, but perhaps they don't trust velcro, those pouch and pockets used push-buttons instead.
 
Maggern

Maggern

Junior Member
MwRYum said:
Peacekeeping recently is more like police work and some cleanup - but still the dangerous kind, though.

Back to the pics I took...

While the interior is strictly no-photo, but I can tell you the interior is pretty well lit and roomy, even for a warship per se...even the doorways is enough for 2 grown man to walk by, chest-to-chest fashion. The trio torpedo launcher is not far from the door that leads to the helicopter deck, the size of it shouldn't be heavy torpedo but compatible to the Whitehead in terms of size.

VLS is definately hot launch like the Mk-41 - I asked one of the officers and he admitted it, though he did said this is for SAM only and not for other ordinance...

The single barrel 76mm deck gun at the "A" position is designated as PJ26, weighted at 11.5 metric ton, as the plate below the barrel written.

The other things that caught my interest that day were the small arms and equipment used by the special forces: the 3-men display as the sample for various loadouts, the full arsenal of weapons and equipment laid out on the tables. The models (real folks, I assure you) are allowed to be photographed, the stuff on the tables weren't...yup, I sneaked a few shots with my cameras, and that means I can't get all pics, not only most turned out to be blurry the personnel was getting suspicious on me - an eager-beaver with camera, what more obvious than that?

In short there's nothing new with that group, they didn't even have the Type 03 silenced SMG and the silenced pistol is the Type 67...they said the new arms didn't come to them when they set sail, same goes for their helmet cover (non Type 07 pattern). The low-light sight unit is no secret but I can bet few if any took close-ups of it like I did and put online.

2 types of backpack radios were used, the regular radio and one SATCOM.

It's no secret that PLA took on the MOLLE concept for their new webbing and gear, but perhaps they don't trust velcro, those pouch and pockets used push-buttons instead.
Click to expand...

Hot launch VLS?? Wow, I thought the general consensus (adding to certain pictures of launches and certain structural features) hinted towards cold-launch...
 
D

dingyibvs

Senior Member
Maggern said:
Hot launch VLS?? Wow, I thought the general consensus (adding to certain pictures of launches and certain structural features) hinted towards cold-launch...
Click to expand...

To think about it, have we seen many pics of 054A launches? By my recollection, we've only seen some 052 launches, no? It could just be my memory jamming up of course :)
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
Maggern said:
Hot launch VLS?? Wow, I thought the general consensus (adding to certain pictures of launches and certain structural features) hinted towards cold-launch...
Click to expand...

The long covers are for the vents, just like the MK 41. though the Chinese version is bulkier than the US system.
 
Z

ZTZ99

Banned Idiot
Maggern said:
Hot launch VLS?? Wow, I thought the general consensus (adding to certain pictures of launches and certain structural features) hinted towards cold-launch...
Click to expand...

The general consensus for the HQ-16 VLS has been hot launch, not cold launch. In fact all debate essentially ended when the VLS setup on the 054A was revealed photographically for the first time a couple years ago. Hot launch for sure. The real question now is whether this VLS has enough hardware and software flexibility to accomodate other missile types such as ASW rocket-boosted torpedoes, LACM's, ASCM's, and quad-packed point defense SAM's.

MwRYum said:
The long covers are for the vents, just like the MK 41. though the Chinese version is bulkier than the US system.
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I don't think that the modules themselves are necessarily bulkier, though the surrounding platform on which these modules are mounted is definitely bulkier.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
ZTZ99 said:
The general consensus for the HQ-16 VLS has been hot launch, not cold launch. In fact all debate essentially ended when the VLS setup on the 054A was revealed photographically for the first time a couple years ago. Hot launch for sure. The real question now is whether this VLS has enough hardware and software flexibility to accomodate other missile types such as ASW rocket-boosted torpedoes, LACM's, ASCM's, and quad-packed point defense SAM's.


I don't think that the modules themselves are necessarily bulkier, though the surrounding platform on which these modules are mounted is definitely bulkier.
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Possibly the structural strength factor - while the hot-launch system is simpler due to the omission of the ejection system, but there's the engine blast that the system has to endure, as well as the possibility to launch failure. Obviously, China has only access to the Russian cold-launch technology, but the more compact and simpler nature of the hot-launch still has more merits to pursue, the problem is there's no easy access to such technology - that's from the Western bloc, so a lot has to get on their own.

Though I believe once they make this a standard for the 054A frigates, it'd be a matter of time they get a hang of it and build more refined model -weight saving on shipborne systems is like a religion, y'know.

As for the ordinance, even the US packed their anti-shipping missiles separately; for the rest it'd more depend on how much effort China put into miniaturizing the cruise missiles and ASROC, and whether this model of VLS be adopted for their next class of destroyers, or even cruisers if they fancy for it.
 
Z

ZTZ99

Banned Idiot
MwRYum said:
Possibly the structural strength factor - while the hot-launch system is simpler due to the omission of the ejection system, but there's the engine blast that the system has to endure, as well as the possibility to launch failure. Obviously, China has only access to the Russian cold-launch technology, but the more compact and simpler nature of the hot-launch still has more merits to pursue, the problem is there's no easy access to such technology - that's from the Western bloc, so a lot has to get on their own.

Though I believe once they make this a standard for the 054A frigates, it'd be a matter of time they get a hang of it and build more refined model -weight saving on shipborne systems is like a religion, y'know.
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There is nothing to suggest China could not have mastered the technology required for multi-platform flexibility on the first go. I don't know why you think this system is somehow a difficult technology to master. Not to mention the technology is already 30+ years old. My question is not that they somehow don't have or cannot easily master the technology to make it multipurpose, but rather whether the designers had enough foresight and/or enough money to plan for future upgrades to the system.

MwRYum said:
As for the ordinance, even the US packed their anti-shipping missiles separately; for the rest it'd more depend on how much effort China put into miniaturizing the cruise missiles and ASROC, and whether this model of VLS be adopted for their next class of destroyers, or even cruisers if they fancy for it.
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IMO the USN kept the antiship missiles out of the VLS for both monetary and doctrinal reasons. There was a program to make the Harpoon Mk 41-compatible but it was canceled (I think for financial reasons). The Tomahawk had an antiship version that was installed in Mk 41 launchers but they later all got converted to the LACM variant. I think the bulk of the antishipping duties were placed onto the shoulders of the accompanying carrier air wing. The Standard and ESSM are no slouches when it comes to antishipping duties either. A half dozen or so of these missiles pumped into a ship and you've got a mission kill at the very least.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
ZTZ99 said:
There is nothing to suggest China could not have mastered the technology required for multi-platform flexibility on the first go. I don't know why you think this system is somehow a difficult technology to master. Not to mention the technology is already 30+ years old. My question is not that they somehow don't have or cannot easily master the technology to make it multipurpose, but rather whether the designers had enough foresight and/or enough money to plan for future upgrades to the system.


IMO the USN kept the antiship missiles out of the VLS for both monetary and doctrinal reasons. There was a program to make the Harpoon Mk 41-compatible but it was canceled (I think for financial reasons). The Tomahawk had an antiship version that was installed in Mk 41 launchers but they later all got converted to the LACM variant. I think the bulk of the antishipping duties were placed onto the shoulders of the accompanying carrier air wing. The Standard and ESSM are no slouches when it comes to antishipping duties either. A half dozen or so of these missiles pumped into a ship and you've got a mission kill at the very least.
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Unlike the frigates, they haven't even figure out what kind of standardization for the destroyer...and don't forget, China's military technology, even at its bleeding edge, still behind the western bloc by 20 years, even its precision machining need to rely on imported models from Germany and Japan - they just can't make the same grade themselves. Material wise, they sit on the largest known deposits of various rare-earth-minerals and can produce alloys and compounds at laboratory level, but still lacks the capacity to do it in production - which is one of the factors that dogged all Chinese effort in new generation engines' R&D.

For the firepower projection, China is still lean towards the ex-Soviet model due to hardware constraint - the insufficient no. of high-performance fighters available, wide adoption of precision guidance packages still years to go, ski-jump carrier takeoff made aircraft can't utilize the full payload capacity, insufficient number of suitable tankers - all in all, this mean fleet firepower has to rely on the ships to do the heavy lifting, and their ordinance has to be big in order to cover the required range and payload, not good news if you need to slim down to fit into the VLS module.
 
Z

ZTZ99

Banned Idiot
MwRYum said:
Unlike the frigates, they haven't even figure out what kind of standardization for the destroyer
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Actually, you haven't figured out isn't necessarily the same as they haven't figured out. They have been testing both cold and hot launch for many years now, and we will see with the next class of destroyers exactly what they have figured out.

MwRYum said:
...and don't forget, China's military technology, even at its bleeding edge, still behind the western bloc by 20 years, even its precision machining need to rely on imported models from Germany and Japan - they just can't make the same grade themselves. Material wise, they sit on the largest known deposits of various rare-earth-minerals and can produce alloys and compounds at laboratory level, but still lacks the capacity to do it in production - which is one of the factors that dogged all Chinese effort in new generation engines' R&D.
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20 years is a standard stereotyped answer that has little application to anything specific. Some industries are probably even further behind than 20 years, and some very close to US military standards. I doubt anyone here can give us an 'average' number. Nonetheless what does this have anything to do with designing and building a domestic hot launch VLS? Not much at all. This type of system is neither state of art in materials science, software design, or manufacturing precision. It's in essence a box to launch missiles from, not some new 5th generation stealth fighter that pushes the limits of Chinese military technology.

MwRYum said:
For the firepower projection, China is still lean towards the ex-Soviet model due to hardware constraint - the insufficient no. of high-performance fighters available, wide adoption of precision guidance packages still years to go, ski-jump carrier takeoff made aircraft can't utilize the full payload capacity, insufficient number of suitable tankers - all in all, this mean fleet firepower has to rely on the ships to do the heavy lifting, and their ordinance has to be big in order to cover the required range and payload, not good news if you need to slim down to fit into the VLS module.
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All this just sounds like a cloud of obfuscation that doesn't really do anything to help determine whether the PLAN has designed a flexible hot launch system, which has nothing to do with fighters, ski jumps or sufficient numbers of tanker aircraft.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
1. Of course, only the PLA Navy knows themselves what they were doing...the thing about taking side between cold or hot launch has to do with the reliability of the ordinance - specifically, the booster engine - nobody wants a dud round left inside the system

2. This has a good deal to do with it - material's heat resistance affects the structural service life of the system, or the provision if a failed launch led to premature detonation inside the system - cold launch is bulky and complicated but it practically blew the round out of the ship before its booster engine kicks in, so as long as it doesn't fell back onto the deck it's safe, but that translate into less tonnage for protection, fuel and armaments.

3. Flexibility in this department would have to do with the operational requirement - hardware wise, in this case is about if the box can fit and the necessary flight software is available. However, with the aerial performs not carrying the main offensive punch, the lack of precision guidance leads to bigger warhead to compensate the inaccuracy, that dictates the size has to be big in order to cover the fuel, engine and payload size to fit the requirement.
 
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