At the point of 300mm artillery, it would make more sense to just lob rockets no? You can achieve a much higher volume of fire compared to a gun system, while also having much shorter setup time.
Self Propelled Gun/Rocket Launcher
- Thread starter FORBIN
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Cost
This is a rocket though, just a gun launched one. Think of the gun as a reusable first stage for the rocket.
I can't help but mentally connect this idea to Zumwalt's Advanced Gun System. 420km ranged naval gun support with a round of that size seems like AGS but much more magnified. AGS is 155mm firing a rocket assisted projectile to 150km with 11kg bursting charge, this thing is similar idea but on steroid.
A Chinese Zumwalt, cruiser sized with a single 300mm gun might be able to fulfill the same role but to a much greater range. If it can actually hit moving ship sized targets then we have to question if naval gun fire with 420km range is useful today.
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With the requirements of heavy machinery to load the shells, additional wear and tear due to increased shock loads, the cost will quickly approach that of rocket artillery.
If you're just going to put rockets on a artillery shell and chuck it in a turret, it'll be more space efficient just to use missiles in the first place, might be more cost efficient, but it also allow you to stay within safe ranged compared to naval gunfire, which would be far within CAP range by the time they can fire. Not to mention you can't really hide a shell flying at another ship so it can get intercepted by AA missiles.
Zumwalt ultimately cancelled their fancy gun system because rounds were becoming crazy expensive, China might pull off a economics of scale on this one, but the same would also apply to missiles which would offer more.
300mm rockets don't require heavy machineries?
They do, but they can offer a large throughput of fires compared to a gun system in a short span of time, while the gun system is limited by fire rate. My main thought is that smaller gun (122,155mm) systems will have a much smaller logistical tail compared to a system that needs a crane just to reload, at that point you might as well just go for rockets.
I think the idea is that the cost of the associated equipment required to load 1 RAP shell vs. a MLRS rocket set is probably not going to be a huge gulf. I have this same thought in my mind. This shell seems like a MLRS minus the ML part.
It all depends what PLA wants to accomplish. A single 300mm gun can keep an airport on the Taiwan island inoperable indefinitely.
No matter how complex the reload system is, the fact it can exist beats 300mm rocket system.
RAP has lot less rocket propellant than a MLRS rocket. Probably less manufacturing cost too.
It would have to be a pretty significant difference to be worthwhile to deploy a whole new system.
That being said, this might be more of an academic/pushing the envelope project to derive more practical systems in the future.